Thread: GMs gone wild

Hot stove season filled with errors,
with Boston miscues at top of list

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - You think this has been a crazy baseball winter? You think the Chicago Tribune investing more than $200 million in Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez when it is supposedly trying to sell the Cubs was nuts? You think the Angels giving Gary Matthews, at age 31, five years and $50 million after one good season was absurd? You think the Orioles doling out $42.4 million on three middle-of-the-road relief pitchers, Jamie Walker, Chad Bradford and Danys Baez was more than a little extreme?

You think the Mets giving El Duque, who may be older than Julio Franco, $12 million over two years bordered on the ridiculous? Or the Yankees plunking down $26 million just for the rights to negotiate for Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa, whom they regard as no better than a back-of-the-rotation starter?
You think the Dodgers' investment of $45 million in Juan Pierre, who has a below-average throwing arm and has drawn 50 walks once in his career, made any sense? You think this baseball winter can't possibly get any dumber?

Well, fasten your seatbelts, folks, and wait 'til you see the idiotic signings and deals still to come this week when baseball's GMs, scouts and club officials gather here at Disney World for the annual winter meetings. How utterly appropriate - a stone's throw from Fantasyland.

Start with the Boston Red Sox, who figure to be the most active team of all at the meetings as GM Theo Epstein attempts to remake the club in his own image. The expected signing of notorious dog J.D. Drew, who has never played 150 games in a season and hit the 100-RBI mark for only the first time in his career this year, for $15 million per year may well turn out to be the most misguided and foolhardy deal of all.

Already, they're killing Drew on all the talk radio stations in Boston and for someone who has (passively) played his career in three laid-back cities - Atlanta, L.A. and St. Louis - he is in for some major culture shock in merciless Beantown.
But apparently the Drew signing is to be accompanied by the jettisoning of Manny Ramirez in Theo's grand plan to build the Red Sox around strong starting pitching (presumably to be bolstered with the signing of Japanese prodigy Daisuke Matsuzaka) and a more diversified offense.

Difficult as Manny can be for Boston management, you can be sure Brian Cashman privately will feel he's had a good winter if he does nothing more and Ramirez is no longer on the Red Sox. Epstein's most active trade conversations involving Ramirez have been with the Padres and Dodgers. From his favorite trading partner, Padres' GM Kevin Towers, Epstein is, for starters, seeking setup reliever Scott Linebrink and up-and-coming lefty-swinging first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who had 24 homers and 82 RBI last season. But even that, according to Sox insiders, won't get it done, which is why Padres' No. 1 starter Jake Peavy's name keeps getting invoked.

It's hard to believe the Padres, desperate as they are for offense, would surrender all that for mercurial Manny. Team president Sandy Alderson has told confidants flatly he will not. So the Dodgers, who can offer a less proven first base alternative in 23-year-old rookie James Loney and hard-throwing potential closer Jonathan Broxton among their stockpile of young talent, are the more likely destination for Manny.

The Dodgers also believe they will prevail over the Mariners in the Jason Schmidt sweepstakes. There was no truth to the reports that the free-spending Cubs had made a big pitch for Schmidt. Rather, the Cubs are concentrating on upgrading their rotation with Gil Meche, who pitched for Lou Piniella in Seattle; Jason Marquis, who's said to have corrected some mechanics flaws that resulted in his disastrous season with the Cardinals and bitter falling out with Tony La Russa; and Miguel Batista, coming off his first 200-inning season.
As much as they need pitching, the Cubs can't possibly believe the money they spent on Soriano and Ramirez made them immeasurably better. Not with that up-the-middle lineup of defensively challenged Michael Barrett behind the plate, career semi-regular Mark DeRosa at second, weak-armed, light-hitting Cesar Izturis at short and a black hole in center field. For the latter, they're talking about signing Kenny Lofton (ugh!) as a stopgap until top prospect Felix Pie (who regressed at Triple-A in '06) is deemed ready.

That's why the Cubs almost have to be big players for Julio Lugo, who was Piniella's shortstop in Tampa Bay. With Soriano and Carlos Lee off the board, Lugo, also being pursued by the Mets and Red Sox, becomes the top free agent position player at the Disney World market.

Of course, it wouldn't be the winter meetings without the overwhelming presence of Scott (Avenging Agent) Boras. In and around negotiating Matsuzaka's contract with the Red Sox (and trying to find a way to get past the Sox's insistence the $51 million posting money be included as part of the annual average value even if it doesn't go to the pitcher), Boras will be shopping the premier free agent pitcher on the market, Barry Zito. And it was probably an ominous sign for the Mets (who have been insisting privately Boras is over-pricing Zito as a $15 million-per-year No. 1 starter) that Texas owner Tom Hicks met with the superagent about the curveballing lefty on Thursday. Hicks has a long history of coming under Boras' Svengali-like influence and grossly overpaying for his clients (see: A-Rod and Chan Ho Park). So look for him to once again blow the market open on Zito, especially since the Rangers desperately need to do something positive for their fan base to offset all the damage done to the franchise by Hicks' hand-picked "child prodigy" GM, Jon Daniels. This is what happens when you place the fortunes of your ballclub in the hands of a 28-year-old baseball neophyte with no experience in scouting or player evaluation, whose primary area of expertise is supposedly budget management. In the two significant trades of his tenure, Daniels was fleeced - by Towers, who extracted Gonzalez, 28-year-old righty Chris Young (11-5, 3.46 this past season) and useful No. 4 outfielder Terrmel Sledge for righty Adam Eaton; and by the Milwaukee Brewers' Doug Melvin, who sent him Carlos Lee in July for outfielders Kevin Mench and Laynce Nix and closer Francisco Cordero. In both cases, the players Daniels got were in their walk years and did just that. In other words, by failing to adhere to the old Gene Michael adage "you can't give up quality talent for unsigned players," Daniels gave away six good players and now has nothing to show for it. But then Hicks long ago earned his niche as the dumbest owner in baseball and we can surely expect him to hold his own in this dumb and dumber baseball winter.

Originally published on December 3, 2006
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The Sox are going to give JD Drew $15 million per year but they wouldn't give more than $10 million to Johnny Damon? I can't figure that one out.