Ed Wade has made 3 GOOD trades since he has been the Astros GM: Michael Bourn and Geoff Geary for Lidge and Bruntlett; LaTroy Hawkins for some crappy nobody A-ball guy; Jeff Keppinger for Drew Sutton. I suppose some would want to add the Kevin Worthless Cash for Angel Sanchez, as he traded away less than nothing for a useful utility infielder.
We all know that Ed Wade is obsessed with middle relievers, and indeed, his forte is finding unwanted relievers on the scrap heap – he’s not near as good with trading for em or signing em as FA. Actually, he was infamous for his middle reliever obsession when he was the Phillies GM.
But since he’s been the Astros GM, his penchant for getting lousy, scrappy, not very good middle infielders has been indulged. Jason Smith. Matt Downs. Matt Kata. Jose Castillo (yes, remember him?) Oswaldo Navarro (who, like Maysonet, languished on the bench for some undetermined reason) - but they were scrap heap guys.
Wade has, I guess, decided to replace Blum, who just signed with the DBax for 2 years/2.75 mill, with Clint Barmes. Only he traded Felipe Paulino to get him.
Drat that Ed Wade – now I have to revise my 2011 pitchers entry that I’ve been working on (yes, in what little spare time I have) but I digress.
Paulino had almost no wins last year and therefore, according to stat hating media guys (the ones who didn’t vote Felix Hernandez in as AL CY Young winner this year because there weren’t enough Wins in “winner”) he must be no good. Not entirely true – Felipe was good n lousy and had terrible run support/crappy fielding, which we all know is not needed by a True Winning Pitcher to actually, you know, Win.
Anyway, Paulino had a lot of trouble staying healthy, and was out from June 10 to Sept 15 this year, along with getting run support and decent fielding. In 2010, he started 14 games and relieved in 5 more, winning 1 and losing 9 (see, toldja he’s a looozer) with an overall 5.11 ERA, 1.54 WHIP and .270 BAA. Overall, he had 9.3 H/9, 0.4 HR/9, 8.1 K/9 and 4.5 BB/9.
(Note that his numbers as a starter were better than his numbers as a reliever: 4.40 ERA; 1.51 WHIP (those walks again) but only 2 HR/86 IP, 8 K/9 IP and 4.5 BB/9 IP)
- In his win, he gave up 1 run over 8 IP.
- In his 5 ND, he gave up 4 ER/5 IP, 2 ER/6 IP (twice) 2 ER/8 IP and NO runs/8 IP
- In his 9 losses, he gave up 5 ER/6 IP, 2 ER(5 R)/5.2 IP, 2 ER (6 R)/5 IP, 4 ER/6 IP, 1 ER/7 IP, 7 ER/4.2 IP, 8 ER/4.2 IP, 2 ER/6 IP.
I keep hearing htat Paulino should be turned into a reliever – not sure why because his numbers as a reliever have always been incredibly worse than those as a starter, but it is no longer an Astros problem. The last 2 pitchers we sent to the Rox, Taylor Buchholz and Jason Hirsh, both spent most of their time there hurt and are now in AAA with other Organizations. Although the uas they had from Buchholz far outweighed the use we had from Jason Jennings, so they still won that trade. But I digress…
Clint Barmes will be 32 years old in March, was drafted in the 10th round in 2000 by the Rox. He had a few cups of coffee in 03 and 04, then had 377 PA in 05 (.764 OPS/90 OPS+) and 535 PA in 06 (.599 OPS/47 OPS+) – by the way, he’s the guy who had the weird accident in 05 in which he supposedly slipped on the stairs carrying deer meat for Todd Helton, but managed to come in at #8 for the ROY anyway.
He had only a few PA in 07, because Tulo won the SS job and our old friend Kaz Matsui was at second AND Barmes just plain ol uck-sayed, but he rebounded in 08 with 417 PA as a second baseman putting up a .790 OPS/98 OPS+) with a career high 23 homers ???!!! but declined in 09 to a .734 OPS/ 82 OPS+ and crashed in 2010 to a .656 OPS/67 OPS+ and was essentially benched for the second half in favor of Eric Young, Jr (whose daddy is no longer with the Astros Organization as their minor league baserunning instructor, by the way.)
Career, he has an .820 OPS vs leftys and a .648 OPS vs rightys. He doesn’t hit for spit away from Coors – a .618 OPS and he doesn’t GIDP much, walk much – BUT he does K about 100 times/162 games average.
Naturally, he hasn’t played much SS since Troy Tulowitski came up to the bigs; 283 Innings in 08, 103 innings in 09 and 361 innings last year (whenever Tulo was hurt) but he isn’t Tulo with the glove, although he is above average at both short and second.
I have like no idea what on earth the Astros want with this guy, unless they somehow think he for some unknown reason, will duplicate his 2008 numbers – not sure why, it’s not like he’s been hurt. I suppose they figure that they would put Sanchez at SS if Manzella has a lousy ST and use Barmes as a DR. Either that, or they think that for some reason, Barmes will hit with power outside of Coors.
Anyway, this looks like an unspeakably stupid trade as Barmes earned 3.35 mill this year and is arb eligible and I have absolutely NO idea why Ed Wade and gang prefer this guy to even Geoff Blum and his steady 84 OPS+ every year. ESPECIALLY as the Rox were almost certainly not going to offer Barmes a contract and he could have been picked up from the scrap heap in a few weeks – or was Fast Eddie afraid that Sandy Alderson would grab him???
sigh
I’m not expecting Carl Crawford, but I sure would like Wade to actually make a, like, GOOD trade sometime…
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB, Rockies
There is absolutely NO reason, Ed Wade should have made this trade. NONE.
He’s as cheap as they come. Can you imagine how much he tips, on a meal????
Ya gotta spend money, to MAKE money, and Drayton McLane and Ed Wade
are one in the same. I’m really pissed off, that Manzella gets to fall between the cracks, and Sanchez will get traded sometime in the near future.:(
So anyway, Drayton buys the team for $100M and sells for, say, $600M. So he gets a half BILLION dollars in profit, and he hardly pays any tax now, and the estate tax has been eliminated. Does he NEED a half BILLION dollars? No. Is he immediately going to turn around and spend it to give people jobs and move the economy? No, of course not. He’ll just bank it, and then pass it to his kids, who will also sit on it and live off the interest.
Do people really understand how much money that is? Imagine you could spend $10,000 every single day of your life. That’s a lot of money. It would be hard to spend that much money every single day. Weekday. Weekend. Every day. But suppose you could do it.
It would take you 137 YEARS to spend the 500,000,000 profit. At $10,000 every single day. Oh, but you still have the original $100,000,000.
OH, BUT WAIT AGAIN: while you were struggling to spend $10,000 every day, the money was earning interest in T-Bills. Assume a super-conservative 1% per year. That means that while you spent $3,650,000 the first year, you earned $5,000,000 in interest.
So YOU FAILED! After the first year of spending $10,000 every single day, you now have MORE MONEY THAN YOU STARTED WITH.
Now explain to me again why owners are in such trouble and super-duper rich people should not be taxed a little more on their profits and estates to balance the budget and provide a little help to the economy so the rest of us can find jobs and earn a living.
At least Barmes gets some. He’s a pathetic hitter who was probably on steroids for that one year, but hey, whatever. Carrying deer meat. Yeah, right. They were riding ATVs and he flipped it.
I agree that this trade was not a good one. Paulino throws hard and before he got hurt in mid-June was actually starting to show decent control. That said I disagree with you on two points.
1. I think that the Roy Oswalt trade was a good trade. The best is yet to come on that one.
2. I think Paulino would be best served as a reliever because he doesn’t have enough good pitches to last deep into games. The numbers are over a small sample size, but if he was prepared to relieve from the very beginning of spring training, I think we would see different results.
Let’s get some feedback on Drayton!
becky
i’m actually surprised that fast eddie is throwing 4 mill away, especially seeing how drayton is trying to reduce payroll to sell the team
steve,
i’m not getting why rich people shouldn’t be allowed to leave their money to their kids
- and speaking of owners and rich people, they are money-holics. they can’t never have enough because what makes their life worth living to them is getting everything and everyone else having it taken from them. they LIKE to look at all the poor people they made poor. it makes them feel good
what i do NOT get is why fans side with the owners and think that the players shouldn’t get paid. they should WANT to do it for free, i guess.
mark,
i guess you think a lot more of happ than i do. and brett wallace is on an extrememly short leash because of that stupid clank. so basically, drayton saved 14 mill to put in his pocket and i’m not real too sure how that is such a great trade for the astros
Lisa,
I have no problem with people leave money for their kids — up to a point. Leave one million, two million, ten million, sure. But as I demonstrated in my example, once you have a massive amount of money, it just sits there piling up and doing not much good for anyone; and it makes it too easy for people to abuse others with the power money brings. Huge concentrations of wealth in small numbers of families in other countries never turns out well.
Better to recycle that money and have it flow through the economy to generate jobs, income, and help build the country’s strength. I’m not saying they can’t pass along tens of millions of dollars — just say that a percentage of the estate has to go to charity or the treasury after they keep the first massive chunk of wealth.
Maybe he hits a lot of 330′ flyballs to dead left.
I think that it is way too early to judge if this trade is as bad as you all think. I hardly would consider Barmes an atrocious hitter, may a poor or little below avg hitter but not a terrible hitter. The last 10 seasons the avg N.L. player’s batting avg is about .263. barmes is .254..
I like paulino, but i don’t think he will ever be much at all. He has a history of getting hurt every single year and he has only shown bits of pieces of brilliance.
In saying that i think we risk hardly nothing in this trade.
So we will have to wait at least till the middle of next season to determine how good or bad this trade was. Just like you have to wait on most trades.
My personel feeling is that it is going to be pretty good. My opinion only.
neil
sigh
we’ll he’d damm well better to justify 4 mill. actually, last year, all 8 of his homers were to LF and all of em were >350′ and actually, he pretty much hits homers to just LF and they are all over 350′
- unfortunately, i don’t know how many fly balls he hit to left that were between 330 and 360′ that were caught…
steve
i hate politics and politicians and your comment is the #1 reason why. truth is that $$$ is the only thing, really. and the people who have most of the money run the politicians. and the mclanes only care about making more, not generating jobs – as long as the rest of us have just enough to get by so as there is no revolution. they don’t give a shtt about the economy.
what would happen with estate tax is that the mclanes and their political buds would figger out some way that they would have to pay only a drop but the estate taxes would really hit ranchers and small business owners. even though mclane (and his ilk) could lose half his $$$ and never notice it in terms of affecting how he lives, it would be like being raped because it is having it AND other people NOT having it that makes all the difference
sort of like aesop’s miser and his lump of gold – i luuuuvvvv aesop
got absolutely NO idea how the rest of us can begin to deal with a few dozen people having most of the country’s wealth, i really don’t
well sad to say but this country is headed toward being a lot like Mexico; the very few very wealthy, no more middle class and the very majority poor. Thats the way the wealthy want it and thats how and why the republicans gear most all their so call tax cuts to go mostly to the top 5% or so of the wealthy.
I am so very tired of politics and of both parties, but the republicans and i don’t care what anyone says have never ever cared about the poor and middle class. peroid. class dismissed.
Fair ’nuff, Lisa. You’re probably right that they’d find some way around it.
sceptor, i agree, but it’s more like the top 0.1%.
Yay politics. Well, with tax cuts expiring, we finally find out that they weren’t just for the wealthy, since there’s a debate over which ones to preserve – the ones for the middle and lower classes, or everyone’s. I’m middle class and paid pretty close to zero in income tax. Last I heard, over 40% of the country pays $0 or actually gets back more than they pay. I think more people should have some skin in the game, so that when politicians screw up, more people care and hold them accountable.
You know what motivates me to work, to be productive, to take risks on investments? Money, or, more generally, incentives. When does a baseball player typically perform best? The last year of his contract (especially if Scott Boras is his agent). The less money I get to keep from work and investment, the less I want to work, the less productive I am – I’d rather have the free time if I’m not gonna get to keep what I’ve earned. This is how most people behave.
Now, when a society is less productive as a whole, its quality of life falls. GDP/capita. It is why lower middle class (and a large percentage of the poor) in our country have TVs and cell phones and lower middle class and poor in Mexico don’t.
Thus, when engineering a society, you want to incentivize production and disincentivize lack of production. Doing so is beneficial for society as a whole, not just the rich.
The whole “Republicans only love the rich” is such a crock. I mean, both parties only love themselves, votes, and campaign contributions, but the idea of economic freedom for everyone is good for society, not just a small group of people.
great speech, but without the indians the chiefs are nothing; but in this real world the indians get to keep very little of their hard labors, while the top dogs keep by far the most of everything