Toldja he was gonna be traded and traded before the deadline. He’s off to the Braves – they NEED a good leadoff guy and center fielder and Nate McLouth has stunk up the joint since leaving Pittsburgh.
Ed Wade PAID the Braves to take Bourn AND he did not get Mike Minor (top notch pitcher) or ANY top guys ready for the majors. Braves fans are laughing themselves sick, just like the Phillies fans did.
Ed Wade – well, I just can’t say anything good because I am trying not to use Bad Words. Even Richard Justice can’t find real too much good to say except Ed Wade is trying to save his job. IF Crane and his basketball manager CEO do get the team, no reason to fire Ed Wade – he’s cheap and that’s what they want.
We’re getting Jordan Schafer – a major leaguer who hasn’t hit and has been hurt. He can field, according to Braves fans and my own eyes, but there is nothing else good to say. He was at the top of their prospect list 2 years ago, and they wouldn’t even listen to offers for him or Tommy Hunter (now one of their good starters) and now they got PAID to get rid of him for a much better player. Best I know this isn’t a Colby Rasmus situation with managers. He just isn’t any good at hitting ML pitching.
And this is just what we need seeing as how our pitching coach is doing such a great job helping our young hitters adjust to ML pitchers.
Basically, Braves fans don’t think much of Schafer, to be nice about it – which is completely the opposite of what Phillies fans said when we got Bourn – they ALL told me he was gonna be a SERIOUSLY good CF and leadoff guy, although he had no power.
AA LH SP Brett Oberholtzer age 22, drafted 8th round 08 - 3.70 ERA/1.22 WHIP, 8.4 H/9, 2.7 BB/9, 6.6 K/9 (a significant negative change from his stats last year at A ball)
AA RHP Paul Clemens age 23, drafted 7th round 08 – 3.73 ERA/1.35 WHIP; 8.5 H/9, 3.7 BB/9, 7.7 K/9 and these are essentially his same stats from last year at A+ ball
RHP Juan Abreu age 26, crappy AAA reliever: 2.25 ERA (because 6 of his 18 runs allowed over 40 IP were unearned) 6.4 H/9, 5.1 BB/9, 12.8 K/9. 6 year average ERA 4.41/1.47 WHIP.
No top notch AAA guys, you notice. And Ed Wade PAID them to take Bourn.
And Wandy will be going soon too, unless a miracle occurs. The local guys are dead wrong about how “bad” and “inconsistant” Wandy is thought to be by actual baseball front offices…
Ed Wade is so BAD, paying teams, PAYING teams to take Pence and Bourn, when they were certainly worth having the entire salary picked up for the crap we got – he is gonna take a massive pounding on Wandy, too. He’s absolutely – so bad I don’t have enough Bad Words.
Tim Purpura, what little he was allowed to do, did a better job. And that is SAD.
I have not decided at this time whether or not to stop being an Astros fan – and this will be an immediate and permanent split in which I will not watch them or care about them EVER and I mean EVER again and that means no matter WHAT – and this decision will be based on whether or not Bud decides to give Jim Crane – who is gonna make Drayton look like Steinbrenner – this team, him and his BASKETBALL guy who will be in charge. It will be the end of this team for decades and I can’t and won’t support the willful destruction of my baseball team so that some money poor millionaire can make 30 mill a year in welfare and blame Astros “fans.”
I do know that Ed Wade, to put it mildly, got took to the Cleaners on the Oswalt trade, the Pence trade, the Bourn trade. I do know that Ed Wade has managed to draft and develop 2 players – JD Martinez (if he can hit ML pitching) and Jordan Lyles. I don’t count Castro because he’s not a major leaguer, even if he is on the roster. Plenty of guys have taken up space on ML rosters who don’t belong because management happens to like them. (Altuve wasn’t drafted, yeah, technicality – he wasn’t expected to do anything by either this team or those all-knowing scouts and prospect list makers. Sort of like Chris Johnson.)
I hate to think of what he’s gonna get for Wandy – bet he gets a huge pile of nothing and pays 3/4 of his salary. Any other GM would have been able to trade Wandy AND not have to pay some other team to take him.
Angry is not a strong enough word to describe how I feel. It’s not that I don’t know that Wade had done a horrible job this past 4 years with drafting and developing. I know he had to trade the players for whom there is a trade market. Which means Keppinger, Pence, Bourn – and also Wandy – get your head out of 2006, please. But it was supposed to provide top quality guys who could help the major league team NEXT year.
Maybe it is a good thing that for some reason I don’t know, this afternoon’s game is not being broadcast, and I absolutely DETEST the radio guys. Not that I care – Jason Useless Michaels, not Bourgeois, is playing right field.
UPDATE: Listening to Ed Wade right now – he’s expecting those 2 AA pitchers to be in the rotation next year (yeah sure) and that A ball guy to be playing first, middle of the lineup 30 homer hitter. Philly wouldn’t even TALK about trading him for OSWALT last year and now they OFFER him for Pence. Tells me all I need to know.
Also that Wallace is toast – well, I already knew they had given up on him by early May when he was pulled against all the leftys.
I HATE Ed Wade.
Also, in the middle of this “youth” movement, he is going to keep Clint, age 33, the SS of the future.
I absolutely HATE Ed Wade.
Tags: Atlanta Braves, Braves, Houston Astros
This is a salary dump, pure and simple. Drayton told Wade to take the hit to get rid of Bourn and Pence so everyone would be mad at the “old regime” and give new ownership a “fresh start” with a micro payroll. This takes over $20m off the payroll in 2012 and another $12m in 2013.
This reminds me of 1994 when they gave Bagwell the 7-year money he deserved and then dumped two all stars in Caminiti and Finley for almost nothing, since they claimed they couldn’t afford them. That would have been a world series capable team had they stayed.
Anyway, Wade got a bunch of cheap folks who won’t be in the majors until at least 2013 ( if ever ) so the payroll stays low. I’m sure there was negotiation between Crane and Drayton as to how much Drayton would spend to get rid of the guaranteed contracts. Crane would love to get rid of Wandy and Myers also, but Drayton may not be willing to eat the cash to do that. I guess we will find out shortly.
When all is said and done, we may be in $40m or less territory. Crane will make a lot of money, and I’m sure he will say stuff such as “I’m building a winner” and crap like that. But we know his debt problems and he doesn’t have a lot of motivation to do much more than field a team that is seen as slightly better than the year before so he can claim “improvement”. This year makes that easy for at least two or three years, even fielding AAAA players.
Terrific business decision — horrible, disastrous for us few baseball fans.
I think the Astros “going young and cheap” has to extend to the GM’s job as well. Five years ago, no one thought the Pirates or the Rays would ever amount to anything again, but Huntington and Friedman have proven that wrong.
It’s time to sack Ed Wade and send him to that well-known retirement home for GM’s: MLB Network.
steve
exactly – it’s what the pirates did for 15 years before bud selig told them they had to stop it – at least for a couple of years
i would also bet it would be possible to get rid of myers next month, too
we ALL know that owners can make tons of $$$ with a low payroll putting a terrible team on the field and trading anyone who is any good the minute they can make any money. crane is gonna make drayton look GOOD – he’s really REALLY enjoying killing the team completely as he leaves, isn’t he?
rafe,
of COURSE new ownership will dump ed wade at the end of the year. whoever they bring in won’t matter a damm because he won’t be able to clean up the mess for decades. and crane is NOT gonna pay to bring in anyone top notch.
i do NOT believe for one second that gerry hunsicker would come back or that andrew friedman would humiliate himself working for the guy who screwed his dad out of the team with his phony money
I agree with Steve. It was clear that we couldn’t afford to keep Bourn because of Boras, but Pence with his winning mentality would be an ideal leader for a rebuilding team. The package for Pence wasn’t bad, but a very risky one since Cosart’s delivery still is a concern & nobody knows if Singleton turns out to be another Wallace or even worse. The prospects we got for Bourn is in contrary a total joke. The Phils fans are not of the same mind whether they gave too much for Pence or not, but almost NONE of the Brave fans complained about the Bourn trade, enough said.
I still love the ‘Stros as long as Crane doesn’t take over the franchise, but if he does… well we’ll see…
I miss the old day when players like Biggio & Bagwell with their winning attitude & workmanship would be rewarded as lifetime Astros and that wife beaters would be fired instantly. With Bourn & Pence who remind me of the Killer Bs being no longer part of the team, It’s like taking soul out of a body, the classy metality & love for the team can never be replaced by any sort of package.
OK, I won’t post any more of those prospect lists!! No mas!
Having said that, this trade stinks.
That trade has me fuming…Ed Wade is just an awful GM..not even ONE of the top pitching prospects in the Atlanta farm system ?!!!
What’s next…Wandy for players to be named later ? I’d be OK with Carlos Lee being traded for a case of Red Bull.
Hey Bruce, your one of those few fans left and you sure can have your own opinion, We’re only firing bullets at the management which is the origin of all suffering.
Lisa, you’re right — the eight figure guaranteed contracts for both Wandy and Myers means they can probably clear waivers in August, so the deadline to trade them is probably in a month.
Elmer, I agree with you, but I’d say the package for Pence is marginal given that he’s good for this stretch run plus two more years before he becomes a FA. We should have gotten at least one more almost sure-fire Big Leaguer for a mid-year call up in 2012. The package for Bourn is just so mind-blowingly atrocious that I don’t even know what to say. Altlanta have up almost nothing for a huge upgrade both defensively and offensively — an all-star with another year of club control.
But as others have said, Wade was under orders to dump salary in his final two months of work, and he said “yes sir”. If he can dump Wandy and Myers, maybe they can field a team for, let’s see, um, Major League Minimum x 25 players is around $10M, right? So maybe they can keep it under $20M/year. Wow, that would be a travesty worth seeing. What a train wreck this franchise has become. I’m very, very sad.
One other thought: I’m out here in Silicon Valley, and I remember going to Oakland games in 1978 and 1979. That was when Charlie Finley sold all the good players and all that were left were minor leaguers. There was no TV or even radio contract, and the only way to see the A’s was to go there. I was in a crowd of about 300 people clustered around the dugout for one game — and this was in a 50,000 person stadium.
As a baseball fan, it was weird going to the games. It was so quiet, you could everything everyone said — even when the on deck hitter talked to the batboy. It was fun, in a bizarre, alternate universe kinda way, at least for a while. I liked watching the kids and feeling like I was on the field. But it got old after a season, and I wanted to watch real baseball.
The A’s lost around 105-110 games, which is no worse than what the ‘Stros are doing now. So I guess we’re about to enter that era. I hope that it doesn’t last too long. The A’s were back in the world series within a decade. Maybe we can do that…
All I can say is that I’m glad I flew down to watch the “stros in the Series in 2005. I may not get another chance.
bruce
don’t mind me, i’m just angry. post all the prospect lists you want.
eric,
the AA pitchers we got from atlanta are not even in their top 5 starting pitchers list – they are meh. the braves fans are absolutely raving about the excellence of this trade, saying they gave up absolutely nothing worth a darn
steve
back in 78/79 charlie finley couldn’t make 30 mill a year for stinking.
i too am really REALLY glad i had tickets to all the playoff games in 04 and 05 – seeing as how i seriously doubt i’ll ever see another WS in my lifetime. sometimes, you have to think – well, there’s teams have never been to the WS and lots of fans who didn’t get a chance to be in the stadium when their team is in the WS
i keep saying – i can take a lousy terrible rebuilding team – like the 90/91 astros because they were filled with lots of guys who had a chance to be good. this team not so much. and not with the crap that ed wade got
Steve, yes you’re right. The key point is that the prospects both Phils and Braves traded away didn’t mean any loss to them. The Phils’ rotation is filled with aces plus Worley who’s having a great rookie year and Howard isn’t going anywhere. The prospects for Bourn are mediocore at best and it’s more than clear that dumping salaries is the main goal and that Wade by no means was trying to make the franchise better… oh wait he SURE DOES make the Phils and the Braves better.
And one more thing: taking out Pence in middle of a game just shows that the FO doesn’t care about the ball game and the fans anymore.
dumping salary i get. drayton doesn’t care and crane/mlb doesn’t care what happens to this team. and ed wade is a seriously TERRIBLE trader and both philly and atlanta knew it and knew he HAD to get rid of guys and just waited until wade caved.
i HATE ed wade. i HATE drayton. and i HATE bud selig
Yeah Lisa and I don’t know how long I can still keep the motivation rooting for the ‘Stros. As I said, the FO just took the soul (Bourn & Pence) out of an almost dead body.
Still haven’t forgiven Bug Selig for his intervenation on the rooftop closure in the ’05 World Series or moving that Chicago series up to Milwaukee. He hates the Astros, I swear.
I call him “Hand Wringer” Selig for his role in the infamous All-Star tie game. *snorts derisively*
I think about who we gave up for a two month rental of Randy Johnson and compare that to what we just got for two all stars with years left under team control. I shake my head. It’s unimaginably bad. I get the business imperatives. But honestly, it’s hard to keep rooting for such a franchise.
steve
yep. it drives me CRAZY that it is good business to play only AAA quality players and have a low payroll, have very few fans and this makes the owner MILLIONS.
i’ve often wondered how many actual FANS the marlins have – i can see how few show up.
no one goes/went to the park to watch wandy/clank/WB/ – and unless altuve or JD martinez hit like crazy or do something that makes the fans fall in love, ain’t nobody going to watch them neither. bud norris doesn’t have any sort of fan following neither
it’s gonna be group tickets of people who are not FANS and groups of cheap tix for kidz and even emptier seats and it’s BAD right now. the cubs are almost as terrible as we are and their fans aren’t coming in like they used to neither
Lisa,
You’re exactly right about the dreadful restrictions Wade, and previously Purpura, have had to deal with while working for Uncle Drayton. Wade, however, is obviously willing to do anything to appease and placate the boss, since he’s been able to keep the job for 4 years.
Given what’s known about Crane, I doubt the situation will be getting better any time soon.