Capt Jack: January 2009, Cedeno and Olson
=== 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. :- )
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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.
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Next deal: the Ryan Langerhans melodrama, June 2009
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