Comments on: At Least We’ve Got Adrian

By: Richard Wade

Richard Wade — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:55:59 +0000

#64@parlo: It was definitely a good trade for them. They got a couple young guys with potential for a veteran who wasn't going to be around when they started to compete seriously. They were lucky enough to get a good season out of Perez and two good seasons out of Bay. Of course, there's a chance he'll be gone by the time they're ready to compete, too.

By: parlo

parlo — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:30:54 +0000

#63@Richard Wade: Pirate fans dont see it that way. They unloaded a high priced Giles at near peak, and got young talent in return. Go on any Pirate site, and the Giles/Bay trade is always mentioned as a very good trade for them. I like Giles a lot. I will hate to see him go. That doesnt change that the Padres gave up too much to acquire him.

By: Richard Wade

Richard Wade — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:55:57 +0000

#60@Tom Waits: Not this week necessarily, but this is a constant refrain. I expect people to talk about the draft, but complaining about something that isn't going to change instead of discussing the draft within the context we know it will take place in seems overly pointless. #61@Schlom: The trade at the time it was made was recognized as a bad deal for the Rangers. It turned out to be even worse than believed. The Padres' deal for Giles looked like a reasonable move for both parties at the time and has been a near wash production-wise. It's a bad comparison. It just strikes me as ridiculous to continue bitching about a trade four years later that wasn't all that bad of a deal in the first place.

By: Schlom

Schlom — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:50:46 +0000

I don’t understand why they’d be so intent in not going over slot. If a really good talent dropped to them, why wouldn’t you take him, especially if it was just over a few million dollars (granted, easy to say since it’s not my money).

The Padres decided on slot last year, how did that move make out? Instead of having the 21st ranked prospect this season (before even throwing a pitch professionally) and a likely top ten prospect next year, they drafted someone who has a good chance of not contributing at all to the major league team. All to save a few million dollars.

If the Padres front office is so smart (and I think they are) shouldn;t they avoid making the same mistakes year after year?

By: Schlom

Schlom — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:30:09 +0000

#56@Richard Wade: I never said it was the worst trade ever, just in retrospect it was a bad move. I think we can both agree on that. Look at the trade with the Rangers and the Padres in 2006. The Rangers thought that Gonzalez wasn’t a great prospect plus he was blocked at 1B. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption at the time since A-Gon hadn’t hit much in the majors. Eaton had better “stuff” then Young, plus Young was an extreme flyball pitcher in a hitters park. Again, not unreasonable. Plus the Rangers also got Aki and their bullpen was terrible in 2005. Again, all those assumptions were reasonable at the time. Unfortunately Young was younger, cheaper and most importantly better then Eaton (who was also a free agent after the season) and Gonzalez turned into one of the better 1B in the league (yet still not better then the Rangers’ one at the time). For a trade that seemed somewhat reasonable at the time, it’s going to go down as one of the worst in baseball history.

Would the Padres have been better off if they didn’t make the trade for Giles? Almost certainly. And don’t forget that Giles was a free agent after the 2005 season, if the Padres wanted him so bad they could have signed him as a free agent.

By: Tom Waits

Tom Waits — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:27:01 +0000

#57@Richard Wade: It's the day before the draft, the major league club is back to playing other major league clubs and is therefore losing, we're in 4th place, and the farm system this year has hardly set the world on fire. The Padres themselves talk about the need to build from within almost constantly. DePodesta's own blog has been all about the draft for a week. Hell, even GY, the most even-tempered of bloggers and hardly a firebrand, wants the Padres to do things somewhat differently. What do you expect people to be talking about?

By: Richard Wade

Richard Wade — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:24:26 +0000

#58@Tom Waits: Goldstein, formerly of BA now of Baseball Prospectus, is the one who ranked them 12th I think.

By: Tom Waits

Tom Waits — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:17:14 +0000

#53@The Fathers: No, many more than that. Last year it was close to half, depending on how far over they have to go to qualify. This year fewer teams may go over because they revamped the slots upward after last year’s near-collapse.

Again, in hopes that perhaps someday it will sink in, people can’t use Baseball America’s (or anyone else’s) rankings to claim that the Padres are doing well and simply ignore those experts when they strongly criticize the approach employed by the Padres (and other teams) when it comes to signability and upside. Those same evaluators who ranked the Padres 13th (not 12th) are highly critical of an excessively college-heavy approach that is devoted to the slot system. It’s intellectually dishonest to accept their praise and ignore their critiques. Yes, the system has gotten better. Yet somehow in all that success and all that praise, Baseball America never ranked us has having one of the 5 best drafts in any year. Washington climbed quite a bit in the rankings, too; in fact they leapfrogged us to land at 10, and a big part of the reason is they went over-slot to get Smoker and they took a chance on Burgess, the HS kid with huge hitting tools.

When a team graduates young players, it necessarily falls in the farm system rankings. The minor leagues will also benefit from astute trades and international signings, neither of which means that the draft is being conducted as well as possible.

By: Richard Wade

Richard Wade — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:11:43 +0000

#55@KRS1: But the fact that it ain't going to change no matter how much one cries about it and the fact that it has been relatively successful in improving the farm system over the last couple years is probably a good reason to stop crying about it incessantly.

By: Richard Wade

Richard Wade — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:09:34 +0000

#54@Schlom: I've already acknowledged that fact. Yet you refuse to acknowledge that they took on the additional salary because Giles was more of a sure thing to produce the way they both did. Also, it's not like Perez has lit the world on fire. He had one very good season in 2004 that was completely out of line with expectations and his performance since then. The Pirates were lucky to get that out of him. The trade was not a particularly good trade, nor was it a particularly bad trade. Apparently around here a near wash is equivalent to the worst trade ever.