...........
(Now that he's gone, I realize that Pineda had become one of my five favorite Mariners ever. My EqA/Angst = [Randy Johnson Trade Day] * 0.6.
That doesn't mean that we can't try to look at the deal dispassionately. At best, the Mariners got Mike Piazza or Manny Ramirez for a pitcher with an Inverted W. At minimum, it's a thrilling baseball trade.
Jack Zduriencik has GUTS. Gotta love it.
Don't have time at the moment, so heeeeeere's Justin, a devoted minor league analyst. -- Jeff)
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=== Justin Sez ===
The age-gate players are mostly from the Dominican Republic. Significantly better chance that Pujols himself has lied about his age than Montero.
Suspect Dr. D is not going to be a fan of this trade because Pineda was such a personal fav. However, IMO this was the exact kind of deal the M's should have been looking for.
The M's are loaded with SP depth and the Fielder talks are a good example of the reputation that Seattle/Safeco has with hitters. Montero is one of the elite offensive prospects in all of baseball, and immediately mashed MLB pitching as soon as he was called up. Ignoring position (which the M's can afford to do), Montero was probably among the top 3 or so bats you'd want for this team. My one concern on a trade like this would be the M's compromising on the quality of the bat they got back; definitely not the case with this deal!
The M's still have plenty of pitching depth. Felix is less than 3 years older than Pineda, with a better tracker and much safer injury risk. Hultzen, Walker, and Paxton are three A-level arms on the farm. And perhaps most importantly, free agent SP will be much easier to acquire than free agent hitting.
This trade makes the M's a better team for now and the future.
-- Justin
I'm with you Sandy. At this point Fielder doesn't make sense as a fit.
The Ms look to be in full rebuilding mode in 2012, but for the first time in a decade its a promising rebuild. Ms could contend as early as 2013 if everything falls into place.
Here's a somewhat reasonable everyday lineup to start 2012. The OPS+ numbers are what they actually produced last year (regardless of # of AB's). While a flawed way of looking at their production, it does in fact reflect how the players performed while actually playing MLB, very recently. ;-)
Player
Pos
2011 OPS+
Ichiro
RF
84
Ackley
2B
117
Carp
DH
122
Montero
C
159
Smoak
1B
104
Wells
LF
119
Liddi
3B
128
Ryan
SS
83
FGut
CF
53
That, my friends, is a team OPS+ of 107, and that is something we can work with.
If we can agree that there is a) some upside to some of those performances, due to the ages of the players, and b) a liklihood that the current management team will powerflush bad performers *coughfigginscough* with some alacrity, then we can agree that we could be looking at one of the good young offenses in the game.
Also, funny how you could do a salary chart along with this and it would be an almost exactly inverted graph. :-)
Groundhog day?
Great chart GL. Wow.
*Yes, 100.00% of us 'net rats can lodge objections to the above chart. But the spirit is clear. You've got a good 6 lineup spots in which 100+ production can be pencilled in, and several of those are likely to clear 100 by quite a ways.