of Figgins. Nuh uh. As you said I would say, Doc - WE want him because he's snuffing major league MOTOs for peanuts. Could Pryor or Capps do that? Both guys ran 2 MONTH streaks in the minors without giving up runs. It's insane.
And now Pryor's sitting on the bench with a groin injury. Pitchers get hurt, and bullpenners tend to rise and fall precipitiously. Does that mean you should take advantage of increased value when you can? Sure. It also means saying "I've got a guy for the 8th and another one for the 9th" does NOT equate to "I don't need alternate plans."
See the demise of: League, Brandon. I wouldn't have minded capitalizing on League after last year. In fact, I recommended it. We've lost a lot of value with him for not taking advantage of that. But Wilhelmsen is under club control through 2017. He's not expensive and has a long time with us to get it right. He has time to go through Kelley-esque ups and downs and still come back and help us for cheap - or to JJ Putz his way to serious prominence before a trade would be warranted.
This isn't selling high on Wilhelmsen, not yet. And I want Pryor and Capps performing admirably in the bigs for a year or two before we start talking about bullpen excess.
Like you said, if he can help get me the missing piece of this team, then sure I'd consider it. Who would that be, though?
And to simply make the ledger prettier it's a no-go for me. Figgins can be cut to free up a roster spot - ownership doesn't need to be cheap about it and bribe other teams with our closer. If you would pay League 8 million to do what Wilhelmsen's doing then Tom's earning Figgins' paycheck already. Heck, we're paying League 5 mil to do what League's doing, which is basically to set fire to half a dozen winnable games.
Fire Figgins, pretend you're paying Tom his 8 mil for 2 WAR (well, 1.5 in leveraged innings) and call it a day. Because the great thing about that is that after 2013 Tom goes back to being a couple-mil guy.
It's just book-keeping, so tell yourself whatever you have to in order to keep the talent stocking this team and get rid of the dead weight.
~G
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