I don't remember anyone considered Cedeno a potential impact player ... even Jack. Cedeno began the season as the BACKUP to Yuni. He was a "must" only in the sense that he was a stoploss piece that the club desperately needed - and didn't have.
The math *to me* - at the time and in hindsight was -- Heilman is a swing-man pitcher - turning 30 - who, yes, put up a 9.5 K/9 - along with a 5.4 BB/9 and 5.21 ERA - in an NL pitchers park. The notion that Heilman was after 2008 was coming off a season like League in 2009 is just not true.
Cedeno was turning 26 and Olson 25. The 2009 season was supposed to be a rebuilding year. Heilman was more the "contending year" bullpen veteran presence that teams pick up - and he certainly wasn't highly regarded among NL watchers. He was a veteran coming off his WORST season, both in control and HRs, since he was a rookie. His value was the he "could" be a swingman - palatable emergency starter and decent mostly harmless arm out of the pen.
The hindsight here says - in 2010, Olson and Heilman were essentially the same pitcher - except Heilman got 70 innings to Olson's 35.
Yes, Cedeno was a miserable failure. But, so was Yuni. Z was CORRECT that Yuni wasn't going to work out. It just took him longer than fans like to track down Josh Wilson.
For me - the REAL eye opener part of the Cedeno timeline is that Z correctly assessed that Yuni wasn't going to work. He correctly assessed that the club had NOBODY in place to take over at short. But, the fireworks moment (for me) was -- he gave his kid a "fair shot" to show he belonged - and when the kid proved he didn't -- he was gone.
Z shouldn't be condemned for giving 200 PAs to Cedeno -- he should be cheered for giving ONLY 200 PAs to "his guy".
HoRam and Weaver didn't get cut in 2007.
Vidro got 330 PAs in 2008.
The devil is in the details - and in this case, Cedeno was not only a cheap strand of spaghetti - he was one that COULD be dumped at any instant -- whereas, the previous norm was to sign doomed-to-fail pieces to multi-year deals.
So, Z got a younger, cheaper, under control version of Heilman PLUS a stop-loss SS - (the one position completely devoid of near-ready help on the farm). No, Cedeno didn't work out - and maybe that was foreseeable. But, if you're gonna place a bet on snake eyes - you might as well do it on somebody turning 26.
=== Aaron Heilman for Ronny Cedeno and Garret Olson ===
Z's third trade, all coming within about 30 days, was to turn Aaron Heilman around for Ronny Cedeno and Garret Olson.
Seattle Mariners Receive: SS Ronny Cedeno (-.7 WAR) and P Garrett Olson (-.9 WAR)
Chicago Cubs Receive: RP Aaron Heilman (+.2 WAR)
Zdurencik flipped Heilman, a league-average relief pitcher, for two players who might have had some
potential left in them -- Cedeno, a former Chicago Cubs prospect with a .930 OPS at Triple-A Iowa, and Olson, a former first-round pick of the Baltimore Orioles. Cedeno's bat never materialized, but he played decent defense for the
Mariners for half a season before being traded to the Pirates.Olson has been a disappointment; he washed out as a starting pitcher thanks to average stuff and poor command, but has been about average out of the bullpen. A low-risk, potentially high-reward trade that did not work out.
Result: Push
Here we break from popular consensus. One major blog wrote, "Wow! I'd have given up Heilman for EITHER of those two guys, and we got BOTH!"
Yowch. The announcement of the trade gave SSI an instant wakeup call, out of the early blogmania that sold Capt Jack as infallible.
Seattle Sports Insider was aghast that ANYbody would consider Ronny Cedeno an American League ballplayer, and said so at the moment of the trade: ML Fringe Is The New Impact Player?
There was a friendly-but-long-lasting little flame war on SSI, as to whether it was reasonable to expect Cedeno to improve at the plate. We assured y'all that (1) it was not, and that (2) even if Cedeno were to scrounge an 80 OPS+ someplace, it wouldn't be in Safeco. Probably not even in the AL.
The acquisition of Ronny Cedeno, to me, demonstrated that Zduriencik wasn't using an artifact or relic from the Mayan Empire to call his shots. That was actually a rather comforting feeling...
For almost a year, Dr. Detecto took on the crowd about Ronny Cedeno's projection in the American League. I think the evidence came in on our side. :- )
...............
SSI also considered Garret Olson a complete write-off and was similarly appalled. But in Olson's case, we restrained the dogmatism. People who were optimistic about Olson were not out of contact with reality -- they were simply mistaken.
Betting on Olson was ill-advised but feasible; betting on Ronny Cedeno was ... um, a blunder.
GRANDMASTERS DO BLUNDER! In panning a Zduriencik move, we're not saying he's not great. He is.
SSI thought, at the time, that Jack Zduriencik should have known better than to have rolled the dice on Cedeno and Olson. But, c'est la vie.
In Seattle, they invested 200+ PA's in Ronny Cedeno's 35 OPS+ (pitchers') hitting lines before they figured out the obvious: that he was as outmanned against AL pitching as a class-A ballplayer would be.
Ronny still isn't hitting in the NL, but it's not quite the embarrassment that it was in Safeco.
............
Zduriencik apologists argued that he had given up nothing in Aaron Heilman.
On the contrary, he had given up the #2 piece in the JJ Putz trade. If he hadn't wanted Aaron Heilman, he could have gotten some other very nice piece instead.
At the moment of the Gutierrez trade, there wasn't much difference in value between Aaron Heilman and, say, Brandon League nowadays. Heilman had fanned 9.5 men per inning in 2008, was a previous #1 pick, a longtime Metsblog superhero.
If you don't like the League comp for value, you've got to at least concede a comp to Daniel Cortes in value -- if Cortes had thrown a full ML season or two with huge strikeouts.
The apology that this was a "low-risk" move doesn't wash. Zduriencik gave up the second-best piece of his Putz trade, for two guys that he should have known couldn't play.
.............
Overall grade: the deal proved to SSI, even the day of the trade, that Zduriencik is human. This is a good thing.
It also alerted us that Zduriencik is more about tools scouting than he is about sabermetrics. (No conceivable saber formula would have spat out Heilman-for-Cedeno.)
The myth about Capt Jack as avant-garde saberdweeb persisted until about May of 2010. :- ) Jack's a scout.
I'm very glad of that. The guy in the GM chair can -- maybe should -- be a baseball man, if the guys standing behind him are the CPA's. Zduriencik has Blengino, Tango, and others debriefing him on VORP/$. Capt Jack can focus on whether Justin Smoak has the right stuff between his ears.
.
Next deal: the Ryan Langerhans melodrama, June 2009
.
Comments
And "impact player" was a bit of hyperbole, in poking fun at blog's representation of that as another impact *trade.*
I can relate to those who doubted Heilman, and they turned out to be pretty much correct.
But if Heilman was as useless as Garret Olson, then Jack should have named somebody else in the Putz trade, no?
... a pretty smart move.
No offense intended anywhere, but...
................
When the Cruz-for-Timlin-and-Spoljaric deal comes up, it *still* gets counted as one of the worst in ML history -- it was so badly analyzed at the time that no amount of return changed the emotional echo of it.
IMHO, Cedeno and Olson were jaw-dropping misfires, but they're still remembered as more-or-less cagey moves :- )
.................
Agree of course that a logical case could be made, as you just did. Still insist that any projection of Cedeno or Olson, that involved them making a 25-man roster, was askew.
It's not really that I think the trade was "good" or "bad".
The results paint it as a push to (IMO) minor loss.
But, Heilman, I think by any stretch was an essentially "useless" piece for 2009. He was a 30-year-old, (upside behind him), meh reliever. Cedeno and Olson both still had "some" potential upside. Cedeno was always a decent glove with a weak bat at a weak bat position. Olson was a guy with nice stuff - and a horrible gopher infestation.
I can understand and accept the take on Cedeno that he was "done" - and wasn't getting any better, regardless of age.
Olson - I don't get the sentiment AT ALL. Pitchers or all flavors ROUTINELY don't get it all together until age 29, (but precious few get a chance to break out in their 30s). Olson had (and has) a good K-rate, palatable control -- and a problem with dingers. I'd say that this is a PERFECT template for cheap Yahtzee rolling with Safeco factored in.
Obviously, there is some scouting involved here - where we in the public don't get to see or hear the arguments about which fringe prospect can potentially be 'fixed'. But, *I* always had the sense that Jack was more interested in Olson as a "chance" to get lucky - and Cedeno as just as absolutely can't-do-without stoploss filler that the club didn't have at the time.
One of my arguments back then was not that Olson or Cedeno were "projectable" for future value. My argument was that both had traits that made them "attractive gambles".
During the Bavasi era, the methodology was ALWAYS - get "reliable" aging talent, and hope it doesn't fall off the table. I can't think of a pickup, (except "maybe" Ibanez), where the club acquired somebody with a CHANCE to get better than they already were.
Cedeno, Olson, Vargas, French ... even Kotchman (barely) are bodies with a "chance" to become more than they were at the moment of acquisition. My position is you will NEVER get a "surprise breakthrough" player, unless you actually are willing to take chances on players who are not ALREADY proven.
But, most prospects fail. Most AAAA pitchers don't develop. You are *ALWAYS* - no matter how good a GM you might be - going to "blow the call" more than you'll succeed. So, if you're ever going to pick up a cheap ... Carlos Pena, that everyone else has given up on ... well, you're not only going to have to pick up Carlos Pena ... you also *HAVE* to pick up some guys like Dioner Navarro's and Gabe Gross and Johny Gomes and Jorge Cantu and Josh Wilson BEFORE they blossom or fail.
My perspective is not that Z was smart for being right about Vargas. My perspective is that he was right that by getting Olson, Vargas and French he was giving himself three chances to be right ONCE.
Aardsma -- "if we can get just a LITTLE improvement in his control, he can be a closer." That's essentially the same argument for picking up Cortes. Cortes, when acquired, had a 6.4 K/9 and a 5.6 BB/9 in AA. At the time, he was an 8-K, 4-BB minor leaguer. whose control had gotten steadily WORSE through 5 seasons. From a purely SABR perspective, picking up Cortes was about 40 times dumber than getting Olson.
Clearly, somebody in the org felt they could fix his delivery.
IMO, clearly somebody in the org felt they could fix Olson's HR problem. (And with Safeco helping, that seems to me to be an easier fix).
It's not that "this guy" can be projected to succeed or fail that I liked about the OC for Heilman swap. It's the willingness to swap one pile of meh for two chances to 'stumble' into a breakout player.
I'm reminded of the joke of the guy who goes to a chapel each day and prays - "God, please let me win the lottery." For a full year he does this -- and on the last day of the year God answers, saying - "It would help, if you'd buy a ticket."
I agree with Sandy's take. I didn't like Cedeno at all, but the crack at a MOR/BOR starter was interesting and worth the shot IMO.
A lot of us didn't like Vargas either, but Vargas panned out. Olson didn't.
Nice call Taro!
Olson was another Vargas. One worked out one didn't. But if you pick up enough of those cheap flunky lefties, something good will eventually happen. I like the fact that Z stuck with a philosophy on those two and one this year looked brilliant.