Baseball Thread 5 - #5 George Brett Has a Story to Tell

From the Phillies/Reds gamer in the Philadelphia Daily News today:

That's impressive.

I don't remember the 2000 Blue Jays having guys with much power. Yet, Carlos Delgado and Tony Batista (!) led them with 41 HRs, while Brad Fullmer had 32 and Jose Cruz, Jr. had 31. Wow.

 

Fewer and fewer do every time they pull this crap. The funny thing is I stopped caring when they lose a long time ago, but I still hate to see the all of the salary dumping. I don't think it is good for the game when you have franchises that don't try.

 

The annoying thing is when they try to sell it as "getting pieces to build for the future."
Well, when you trade a guy like Nyjer Morgan for a washed-up never-was that's hitting under .200 for his third team (Lastings Milledge), it's kind of hard to spin it that way. You can almost forgive the McLouth trade as business as usual. But Morgan was the kind of guy the Pirates should be trading FOR.
You might as well have feces night at PNC Park. Every fan through the gate gets a free steaming pile of horseshit on their seat.

 

I agree with your overall premise, but not your characterization of those two deals. Both McLouth and Milledge are younger than Morgan, a 29-year-old Juan Pierre wannabe. To be fair, Milledge has only had 24 at-bats this season, so his average really doesn't mean much. His talent has been overrated and his attitude has been terrible, but he probably does have more upside than Morgan.

 

I agree they should have waited on McLouth. Could have gotten a much better haul at the end of the month. As it is, they've got a 20-year-old lefty with promise who's at least three years away, a 4A pitcher in Morton and a speedy center fielder who will have to learn a new position because they, uh, traded McLouth to make room for a speedy center fielder on the big league roster.

At some point, they need to deal for a good, AA prospect that could help in the rotation soon. But teams aren't exactly giving those guys away. They'll give away the Mortons, the 4A guys, because they're a dime a dozen.

I think Brad Lincoln will help Pittsburgh at some point, maybe even by September. But there isn't a lot of promise below that, though Moskos has pitched really well of late (can't belive I'm saying that ...)

 

True. Morgan is a nice left fielder and a sweet guy but he's already pretty close to topped out from a talent/skill standpoint. Milledge, on the other hand, could be an All-Star (or washed out of baseball altogether, of course) three years down the road.

 

Morgan is a left-fielder with absolutely no power who gets caught stealing way too often.

He's not the worst starting left fielder in the game, but he's not a starter on even a decent team most of the time.

 

If he can play center field, it will be his best opportunity to keep a starting job for a while. He's never going to have enough power for a GM to be content with him playing one of the corners.

 

The honeymoon is definitely over for him now.