My least-favorite Zduriencik trades, in order:

1.  Aaron Heilman for Ronny Cedeno and Garret Olson.  Cedeno and Olson were, in my view, immediate write-offs, as we said at the time.  We don't often say this, but it shouldn't have been hard to realize that these two guys weren't going to contribute.

2.  Jarrod Washburn for Luke French and Mauricio Robles.  Baseball was aghast at the alternatives turned down, were aghast that Capt Jack liked Luke French, and IMHO they were right.

Granted, G-Money thinks Robles is the key to the deal.  I understand and respect this position.

Problem is, everybody agreed that the M's were offered more -- and Zduriencik himself said that he preferred Detroit's offer "because French can help right now."  He won't.

3.  Brandon Morrow for Brandon League and Johermyn Chavez.  I've written about how good League is.   What I don't like, is my (purely subjective) suspicion that it's mostly about clearing out the last of Bavasi's glamor projects.

Geoff Baker wondered, hey.  2006 Clement, 2007 Morrow, 2008 Aumont -- can Josh Fields be sitting comfortably?  Does San Diego need a lockdown closer?

When Anaheim won the World Series in 2004, there was a lot of arguing about how much credit Bavasi (the previous GM) deserved.  There will be no such arguing about the Mariners' pennant.  Is it fair to wonder whether this is a factor, or is that unfair?  

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Trades that go in the middle laundry basket, in no order:

Morse for Langerhans was nowhere near the stroke of genius that cyber-Seattle billed it as.   Langerhans is a fringe ML player who fit the M's well -- and then they cut him that winter.  Zduriencik did, evidently, do a good job negotiating a low cost.  That's fine.  It's not more demonstration that GM A has an IQ thirty points higher than somebody else's.

Williamson for Aardsma worked out well, but Aardsma had DFA/waiver value at the time.  It wasn't so much a trade as a waiver pickup.

There are any number of arms around baseball like Aardsma, and Jack Zduriencik is not the only GM who believes in "low risk medium reward" waiver-type pickups.  Every GM throws spaghetti against the wall, boys.

What I *do* like, is the tendency to value Special Talent, even when it has warts.

Flores for Hall is an ehhhhhh trade.  I'm not super happy about having Hall's contract, and not super happy about the over-emphasis on NL Central players.   We should know the whole league, right?

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Trades I liked very well:

Clement and many pitchers for Wilson and Snell is an interesting move, panned by cyber-Seattle, which I think shows a very fine feel for molding a pool of talent into a contending ballclub.

I think Jack Wilson is a prime example of Zduriencik's obvious feel for a winning ballclub, as opposed to a random collection of $/WAR commodities.

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Betancourt for Cortes and Saito was cool, though IIRC, the M's paid much of Betancourt's salary, and it's nice to get a power arm back for our $$$$.

What I liked was not that Zdurienik could throw in a couple of extra million and get Cortes; what I liked was that Zduriencik decisively powerflushed an Entitled Veteran who was an on- and off-field problem.  The deal put "paid" to the last remnants of the Entitled Veteran odor around Royal Brougham.

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Putz and change for Gutierrez, Heilman, Carp, Vargas, Chavez, Carrera, and Cleto was a career-making, Galaxy-class move that was inspired on MANY different levels.

The trade is beloved mostly because it reinforced the recent over-emphasis on defense that we see on the internet.  

What I like about it, even better than that, is that (1) it recognized the "Shibboleth" nature of the modern-day Mr. Magic Closer, (2) showed hair-fine talent judgment (on Vargas, Carp, etc) as to which "spaghetti" players could help, and (3) accelerated Zduriencik's replacement of the franchise scaffolding.

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Aumont, Ramirez and Gillies for one year of Cliff Lee is the type of trade that stamps Zduriencik as Stars & Scrubs.   The deal is conceptually the same as the one that brought Erik Bedard in, and I love it for the same reasons.

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That's a superficial overview. 

It does lay out my own reasons for believing that -- except for the Putz trade -- what characterizes Zduriencik's admin is mostly decisiveness and coherency, as opposed to an IQ-driven ability to separate "correct" from "incorrect" trades.

Capt Jack might or might not be uniquely intelligent.  I don't know.  But I can definitely tell you that he knows what he wants.  Without a trace of exaggeration, that is the defining characteristic of a chess master.

Cheers,

Dr D