Nox

What can I say, your hate of all things has rubbed off on me!

The Miami trade was one of the worst baseball transactions in the last decade. League wide. Depending on the projection model used, it probabilistically set anywhere from $75 to $150M on fire with the stroke of a pen. It was really, really bad. The Dickey trade was almost as bad. The Wells trade was indeed miraculous but ,as has been discussed, he can't really receive any credit for that. A replacement level GM knows enough to say yes to Tony Reagins in that situation. When was the last time he negotiated a killer extension for a player? You'll note that the answer to that is "not since Sartori left to work for Apple". If he gets credit for having Sartori on staff while those extensions took place (he should) he also loses credit for letting Sartori be poached. Front office talent retention is absolutely part of his job. The Donaldson trade is perfectly timed and (very) good in a vacuum but it's not an all-timer or anything. This offseason has been great but to put AA as a top 5 GM in the game is vastly over-estimating the man's intellect/ability.

Great trade. AA having a much better offseason than I thought he'd ever be capable of. Kudos to him.

"My name is Munenori Kawasaki and I might not have a team."

That was a confusing point(?) to attempt to make.

Sure, but signing someone whose skill set is a terrible match for your home park is still a pretty dubious decision.

Paying free agent prices for a RH power hitter with no other real skills seems like a terrible idea when you play your home games in Safeco.

This division is pretty nuts.

I suppose It's also possible that Lawrie's numbers from the past couple of years are suppressed by playing partially hurt (if he was trying to fight through things or came back a bit too early etc). If we knew that to be the case (we don't) we would upgrade his projection for the upcoming year. Not that Steamer has any of that info either. This team is alot more likable now. After getting rid of JPA and Lawrie, only one giant DB remains (Bautista). At least he's a bona fide superstar which makes his s*** more tolerable.

I have a pretty hard time buying a 115 wRC+ for Lawrie's underlying true offensive talent.

#1 AA Anti-Fanboy checking in: From the information we have available to us, this is a really good deal for Toronto. Even with people vastly underrating Lawrie in this thread, the sum of the parts in a vacuum don't quite add up to what we project Donaldson to be over the next 4(!) years of team control. When you factor in the Jays' position on the win curve, we see marginal wins acquired are worth quite a bit more than usual. It's a good to very good deal for the Jays. Oakland - I'm not exactly sure what they're doing. Trading 4 years of one of the best players in the game seems a bit counter to their usual MO. I can only assume that their internal projections reflect what Steamer is telling us re: Lawrie and that they have some seriously positive reports on Barreto.

Well there's also the part where physical maturity (as in peak physical skills) are different for position players and pitchers. Sanchez's velo will likely (naturally) decline a modicum each year from here on. So, in terms of physical maturity, those are equivalents. Mental maturity, sure. The vast majority of 17 year olds don't know s*** about s***. But, all of that is rolled up when you age-adjust minor league numbers (a foundational component of any projection system). With these things considered, Sanchez's minor league numbers are worse than Gomes'.

I don't know "definitely" that he won't be a good starter. I'm saying that any rational probability distribution we could construct regarding his future outcomes would have that as a low probability event. His delivery - It's all arm, the stride is short/inconsistent which leads to an inconsistent arm slot. I'm not a scout (would never want to be one) and that's not central to my argument. As stated, I'm not in love of the idea of trading him for Bruce. Bruce doesn't project to be that good going forward. A 1.4 win corner outfielder is pretty meh even if we think his upside is higher. I do think trading Sanchez for something else (better) is the way to go. I very much doubt that will happen however.

What point are you trying to make? Sanchez's age/level adjust minor league numbers are not good. Gomes' were pretty ok. If you want to make some laughably off-base, home-brew, scouting-based argument regarding Sanchez's future - fine. But don't even try to defend the statistical profile.

You have literally no idea here either. Only one of us is adding hypothetical information and then drawing homerific conclusions from it. The results as a starter have been that of a back-end guy (at best). Add to that the numerous concerns regarding his delivery and the package is not that exciting. The arm talent is obviously apparent but there's far more that goes into an asset's value than that.

Over the course of a career, Total Zone is probably better than UZR. UZR better in smaller samples.

Not really, Jim.

ITT: 1) People casually assuming that Sanchez is a 97-98 mph starter bc he was a 97-98 mph reliever last year. 2) People not understanding that a 97-98 MPH reliever with fancy numbers over a 30 inning stretch is nothing to get excited about. Velo like this is far more common than it used to be. 3) People casually dismissing the fact Sanchez was a borderline failed starter in the MiLB so far. 4) Casual Randy Johnson comps. As pointed out, this is about as intellectually lazy as you can possibly get. Let this be abundantly clear: Aaron Sanchez is will turn out to be Tommy Hunter many thousands of times before he turns into Randy Johnson. 5) A Casual Mike Trout trade proposal

Somehow had no idea Jay Bruce put up -1 WAR last year. Thought this was a very good idea at first but now unsure. All for getting rid of Sanchez at the peak of his value tho obv.

Except, you know, his contract.

Another gem from Heyman's past:

But look at his fashion sense! http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9cXxoTUaLQM/hqdefault.jpg

Even Scherzer doesn't project to be much better. Stroman is solid.

Oh, Jim. Can't even follow your own arbitrary guidelines. For the record, none of what I said was ad hominem. The ideas were stupid and labled as such. We all have bad ideas. This was a bad idea. Get over it. Trading Hutch for a league average 2B (who probably make more $) is cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Why on earth would this team be trading away cheap pitching depth? Awful idea. Unless you're of the laughable position that Buerhle is tradeable. Which he's not.