dnosco wrote:Since Paul decided that he had to get in his shot:
The absurdity that the Brewers should have had been forced to part with players like Ryan Braun or Manny Parra for three months of C.C. (remember that Colon was under contract for all of 2003 when that deal was consumated), when 2008 is obviously the year they're going for the brass ring (Ben Sheets figures to follow C.C. out of Wisconsin at the end of the year), shows little grasp on how baseball trades work and how rent-a-players work.
let's have at it. First, do you really think ANYONE, even me in my article, is stupid enough to think we could have gotten Braun, Gallardo or Parra? That is who I wanted. Obviously there was negotiation there. But if you would have taken even ONE second to read the newspaper articles, blogs and posts that were going around it was essentially LaPorta and guys who were down in the lower half of the Brewers' top 30 prospects and their system was rated more lowly than ours, if an additional prospect even was going to be included, which in some accounts it wasn't. So, yeah, my article was a kneejerk to those low expectations, trying to make some sense out of them.
But its people like you who have low expectations that lead to trades like this being pulled off.
Your article was just rubbish and, frankly, catered right to the front office, glossing over the negative points of LaPorta, the fact that we HAVE a bunch of 1B/DH types already meaning we have filled ZERO of the holes we wanted (we wanted a power-hitting outfielder), totally ignoring the Linebrink trade last year and the fact that, besides CC, the Brewers get two draft choices in this deal, too. Why, exactly, was that Paul? Would it make your FO-serving case weaker to include ALL the facts?
So, saying LaPorta was the most we could expect for CC essentially tells us that LaPorta was worth not one but two first round draft choices PLUS a chance at a WS for Milwaukee? Man, you need to get your balance recalibrated because my guess is that yours needs to have its expectations rating brought back up to zero.
I am not even going to get into a discussion of what percentage of draftees make it to the majors in less than two years after they are drafted and how many of that small percentage have good major league careers and, if they do, if they even have an average year (for the productive part of their career) in the first year of their career. You care to share that with us, Paul because, as we all know, the clock is ticking on a lot of other good players leaving this franchise...but we can always get deals like this for Sizemore and Martinez, right?
And you are absolutely right, LaPorta is the best prospect in the Indians' organization, but so would have about 50 prospects as our top prospect is the oft-injured Adam Miller.
Actually it is you that show very little grasp over what you should get for a CLOSE TO THREE MONTH RENTAL (although 2.5 sounds better when you are making the case, doesn't it) of a Cy Young award winner. Exactly how many Cy Young award winners have ever even been dealt at the deadline?
I guess your article came out before you knew it was Bryson and Jackson as the 2nd and 3rd guys but I can't wait to see how you spin them and Green, if he is the other guy. You have done such a good job of spinning everything else so far it is really comical.
Nice article, if it is written by a Brewers' fan. You can take off your Indians' FO cheerleader outfit now.
BTW, if I reference your article in mine, I'll have the balls to at least reference it directly.
Dennis,
Sorry I’m a little late to the party on this, but you and I obviously see things for completely different angles. Instead of degenerating into personal attacks, let me just address some of the problems that we seem to have regarding the recent C.C. trade:
Your article, which was titled “What C.C. Should Yield Us From Milwaukee” (which leaves very little to doubt in terms of expectations of an article) came to the conclusion that:
Given what we know from last year with Linebrink and adding what CC brings to the table compared to Linebrink (including his hitting ability, which is a non-trivial factor), our haul should be one of the following:
1. Parra and Gamel
2. LaPorta, Gamel, Escobar (or Connor Gillespie, a good hitting OFer) and Jeffress (an all-prospect trade that probably won't help us much in 2009)
3. Braun and Gamel
4. Yovani Gallardo and Gamel or LaPorta (although I would obviously prefer Gamel)
I am thinking we could get the first one done, I am MORE than willing to settle for #3 although I think it will hurt us in 2009 (as I don't see us then having enough starting pitching) and I am dreaming we could get the 4th one done, or maybe even one slightly better than that (Gallardo, Gamel and Gillespie) done if we throw in Casey Blake or a reliever.
If we get less than one of those four or five options or something similar or better, we will have been hoodwinked in the deal, especially compared to the Linebrink deal last year.
I know that you’ve since backed off that position and have characterized it as “outlandish”, but that’s what I was going off of when I called your conclusion absurd and still would – that the organization would be “hoodwinked” if any of those scenarios didn’t play out. How am I to go off of anything outside of that as it was sitting on the Indians’ page all weekend as the truth as you see it?
For the Brewers to give up what you proposed for 3+ months of Sabathia (Linebrink deal considered) would be akin to either completely ripping EVERY prospect out of the Brewers’ organization or to ask for players that are already in Milwaukee when they so obviously are looking at 2008 as their year. The inclusion of Parra or Braun on your two “preferred scenarios”, in addition to Gamel, shows that you’re not that familiar with the way that these trades generally work.
The reason I did not link it, by the way, is that I felt that it was an article with illogical conclusions that simply set up your next article to say “That’s It?” and that the more eyes that saw it with the TCF.com banner above it was not something that I was interested in perpetuating.
As for your issue with my piece on LaPorta, it was written as an introduction to a prospect that very few people know about and what the rationale would be for the Indians to acquire LaPorta.
Does it paint a rosy picture?
Probably, if you feel that LaPorta is an impact bat who is pretty close to being MLB-ready, which most people who know better than I agree that he is.
Is this a good deal for the Indians?
I don’t know…you don’t know…nobody knows today just as very few people know what deals were out there and whether this truly was the best one. I do agree that Shapiro had better be right on this one as Sabathia was the biggest chip he had to play, but to characterize the deal as grand larceny is wildly premature at best.
We’ll know how this thing shakes out when LaPorta arrives in Cleveland (by that I mean the date on the calendar that he arrives there) and his performance once he gets there. Anything prior to that is just guessing, but my piece was done as nothing more than an informational piece on who he was, why the organization rated him so highly, and where (and when) he looks to fit into the Indians’ plans going forward to educate people who don’t follow the minors as closely as others or who have no idea who the player is behind the name.
If you took it to be organizational pandering and pointed in the direction of praising the organization (though I’m not sure that I did much more than lay out who he is and why he fits), you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, just as anyone else is entitled to theirs regarding your articles.
This trade may look good in 2012 
