2 days ago
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Nats fleece the Padres
In a trade announced today, the Padres traded Brian Lawrence to the Nationals for Vinny Castilla. The Expos got rid of an albatross, actually received something of value (a back-of-the-rotation starter is has a history of staying healthy, which is reasonably uncommon among starting pitchers), and opened up a spot for uber-prospect Ryan Zimmerman. Meanwhile, the Padres traded a starter for a 38-year-old 3rd baseman when they could have gotten an equally good or better third baseman from the scrap heap. Castilla has had some success before (especially in Colorado!), but the rest of the NL West should be happy with this trade. (Go Dodgers!)
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My buddy Matt Silverman called me this morning crowing about the Rays hiring Gerry Hunsicker as their GM. That bodes well for those guys, I should think. The baseball winter meetings are in Dallas this year and Matt and I are planning to hook up when he's in town.
That last comment was mine. I prematurely sent.
Hmmm, I don't really have an opinion about Hunsicker. He seems to be open-minded about different types of analysis instead of being some old-school, pole-in-the-ass stickler, which is the main thing I look at with new hires. I can only hope the Dodgers get Theo Epstein. Pat Gillick has also been taken, and I think the Dodgers were interested in both Hunsicker and him. Of course, Silverman is from the sort of crowd in baseball that tends to hire people intelligently, so I certainly would be inclined to trust his view on Hunsicker. (For what it's worth, I think that a couple of the managers they're considering hiring are really strange choices.)
There are some rumors we might make Orel Hershiser our GM, which would not be good because I don't think he has anything in his background to prepare him for that. For a GM, I typically want a clever, well-educated person rather than a former player (there are exceptions---Billy Beane was a player). On the other hand, I would be ecstatic if we hired Orel as our pitching coah, as he clearly knows a ton about pitching and we could bring our hometown hero back in the fold that way.
Hmmm... It is now July 2012 and I happened to see this post again just now because somebody (or some robot) found the website today. I am noticing a couple of things: (1) I accidentally referred to the Nats as the Expos in my text, (2) my comment about Brian Lawrence staying healthy and helping out the Nats didn't end up working out quite that way, I didn't proofread the text of my entry well enough on this particular occasion (and I didn't bother to correct it later).
But at least I was right about Ryan Zimmerman...
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