Choo traded for Stubbs, Bauer, Albers and Shaw

[The Oi]

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[Nom]

I'm not sure I'd call Perez a prospect when the Indians traded for him. He'd already player a season and a half in the pros. Obviously, he's a good player. If my qualification was "trades of any kind," sure...Perez was a great get. But I said trades involving prospects.



Who says I'm down on the trade? I said if it was another team with a good track record, I'd give it a B+. Jeez... :chuckles:




Could be a good trade. I gave it a B+ if it had been made my a team with a good track record. It better be a good trade, because the cupboard is getting bare on the offensive side of the ball for guys with any kind of value around the league.




Who cares what nearly everyone in the game had him as? I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to grade a trade based on what nearly everyone in the game thought of a player before they didn't pan out. The one thing I'll give you actually, is that perhaps the blame should lie on player development more because they're a common denominator in not developing guys who were projected as impact players.



End of story.



Of course you have to acknowledge that. These guys aren't perfect. But if they can't draft and they can't trade CC Sabathia and Cliff friggin Lee for SOME kind of impact players AND they whiff on Ubaldo...at a certain point, when is criticizing them allowed to be part of "living in reality?"

So your grading system is 'they're a good team so it must be a good trade'. Seems legit.

 

[AZ_]

Since 2008, Shin Soo Choo ranks:


2nd among MLB outfielders in OBP (.384) behind only Matt Holliday
5th in Runs Created, ahead of Andrew McCutchen, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Gonzalez and Matt Kemp
7th in wOBA, ahead of Beltran, Gonzalez, Willingham and Kemp
10th in OPS (.855), ahead of Nelson Cruz, Josh Willingham, Justin Upton, Andre Ethier and Jayson Werth.

Choo has accumulated 30 doubles, 20 steals and an OPS of .815 or better three times in his last four seasons, joining only Ryan Braun and Dustin Pedroia (MVP winners, you know, no big deal).


Not an impact player though.

 

[Nom]

Are we calling prospects lottery tickets now? Do you really think I'm arguing that?



Bullshit. Hamilton is a proven impact player. If the Indians could just once pull a Josh Hamilton out of a trade, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt for a couple years when they trade for prospects though. At this point, it certainly seems they're not capable of doing it.

And who's shitting on anything? My position is this:

I like the theory of the trade. But until the guy either pans out or doesn't...it's all in theory. I don't like the Indians track record in trading for prospects and thus...I'm not willing to get excited about it until the guy proves he can play AT LEAST as well as Choo did at his position.

So until they pull, say, two guys who receive MVP votes like Hafner and Grady - or, say, a Cy Young winner like Lee. If they could pull THAT off. Then, then my friends - I might give them credit.

 

[Nom]

.

I completely disagree with this post.

 

[The Oi]

So your grading system is 'they're a good team so it must be a good trade'. Seems legit.

Nope. I'm essentially saying I don't trust the Indians when they make trades for prospects. I'm using their track record to doubt them. You're arguing that their track record is better than I believe it is. But you're also claiming I'm arguing a variety of other things as well that I'm not.

Since 2008, Shin Soo Choo ranks:


2nd among MLB outfielders in OBP (.384) behind only Matt Holliday
5th in Runs Created, ahead of Andrew McCutchen, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Gonzalez and Matt Kemp
7th in wOBA, ahead of Beltran, Gonzalez, Willingham and Kemp
10th in OPS (.855), ahead of Nelson Cruz, Josh Willingham, Justin Upton, Andre Ethier and Jayson Werth.

Choo has accumulated 30 doubles, 20 steals and an OPS of .815 or better three times in his last four seasons, joining only Ryan Braun and Dustin Pedroia.

Not an impact player though.

Who's the worst "impact player" in the league in your opinion. Basically...where does the threshold start?

 

[jhard]

Trevor Bauer has done less than Broussard at this point. I commend you for being able to get excited about prospects that the Indians trade for, but I'm not there with you. Getting Choo out of Broussard is obviously a win, but again...Choo is nothing special. He's a 6th or 7th hitter if he's on a decent team.

Or the lead off hitter on the reds.
Are they not a good team

 

[Nom]

Nope. I'm essentially saying I don't trust the Indians when they make trades for prospects. I'm using their track record to doubt them. You're arguing that their track record is better than I believe it is. But you're also claiming I'm arguing a variety of other things as well that I'm not.

I've admittedly been building some fairly impressive strawmen in this thread.

But we're never going to agree. Yes, I think prospects are somewhat like lottery tickets. If Andy Marte and Matt LaPorta make it all the way to AAA with spectacular stats, your scouts rave about them, everyone else's scouts rave about them. If you use all of that information and weigh it against what you are losing (Coco Crisp or half of a losing season of CC Sabathia) and then pull the trigger - if things go wrong, I don't know that you can fault a team for that. You can't 100% predict how a player will perform at the MLB level. You can use all of the data available to make an assumption, but we're talking about human beings, so there is no 100% foolproof method of projecting.

You have been dangerously close to saying that A) a team should be able to identify if a player will or will not pan out with nearly 100% accuracy and that B) if that player does not pan out, it is the fault of the people either evaluating that player or developing them.

I think sometimes guys just can't hit MLB pitching.

 

[AZ_]

Who's the worst "impact player" in the league in your opinion. Basically...where does the threshold start?

Meh, you know you're wrong here. There is absolutely no argument against Choo as an impact player.

At the end of the day, your trolling skills are declining faster than the return on any Indians trade in the last decade.

 

[The Oi]

Meh, you know you're wrong here. There is absolutely no argument against Choo as an impact player.

I don't "know" I'm wrong, because I don't consider myself wrong at all. Where does YOUR impact threshold start? You did quite a lot of filtering with your statistics to make him appear to be a rarer specimen than he really is.

At the end of the day, your trolling skills are declining faster than the return on any Indians trade in the last decade.

Do you acknowledge that the Indians prospect returns since Grady, Cliff and Hafner have, when taken as a whole, been bad enough to cast significant doubt on trades they make involving prospects?

 

[AZ_]

I don't "know" I'm wrong, because I don't consider myself wrong at all. Where does the impact threshold start? You did quite a lot of filtering with your statistics to make him appear to be a rarer specimen than he really is.

Do you acknowledge that the Indians prospect returns since Grady, Cliff and Hafner have, when taken as a whole, been bad enough to cast significant doubt on trades they make involving prospects?

If we have to ignore everything outside of the Lee and CC trades, yes...I'd say it's been less than stellar.

Unfortunately for your argument, I can wrap my brain around the fact those aren't the only two trades we have to take into consideration.

We don't have to filter Choo's statistics to make him look good, just look at his numbers year-to-year. They are absolutely among the elite in baseball.

 

[The Oi]

I've admittedly been building some fairly impressive strawmen in this thread...

You have been dangerously close to saying that A) a team should be able to identify if a player will or will not pan out with nearly 100% accuracy and that B) if that player does not pan out, it is the fault of the people either evaluating that player or developing them.

I think sometimes guys just can't hit MLB pitching.

Well, after admitting you're straw-manning the shit out of me, you then go on to correctly identify about 33% of what I'm arguing...then strawmanning me again. :chuckles:

To start with (B), I AM arguing that if a player doesn't pan out it is LARGELY the fault of those evaluating or developing him. Obviously, in the end...some guys can't hit major league pitching, some guys don't want it enough and some guys get injured. I get that.

But you've gotta be able to judge how well someone's doing their job SOMEHOW... I mean, how the hell do we judge player development if not on the basis of how many players they develop? Maybe it's on the scouts instead of player development? Maybe there's not enough communication between the two? I don't know. I don't work for the organization and don't claim to have any inside info.

What outside info I have is enough for me to determine that, in regard to the trades they've made based around prospects, they've either done one or both of... scouting prospects poorly and/or developing them poorly. That's it really. As for (A), there you go again :chuckles:

You and I both know I'm not arguing for 100% of the prospects to work out to consider the FO and it's hires to be doing a good job.

 

[The Oi]

If we have to ignore everything outside of the Lee and CC trades, yes...I'd say it's been less than stellar.

Which trades should I pay closer attention to in order to demonstrate that the Indians have the ability to identify and develop impact players? Can we at least agree that impact players are what they should be targeting when they make trades for prospects? What should our expectations be when they trade their best players for prospects?

Unfortunately for your argument, I can wrap my brain around the fact those aren't the only two trades we have to take into consideration.

We don't have to filter Choo's statistics to make him look good, just look at his numbers year-to-year. They are absolutely among the elite in baseball.

Where's the cut off for impact player? Name an impact player that's a notch or two below Choo's level.

 

[Nom]

Well, after admitting you're straw-manning the shit out of me, you then go on to correctly identify about 33% of what I'm arguing...then strawmanning me again. :chuckles:

To start with (B), I AM arguing that if a player doesn't pan out it is LARGELY the fault of those evaluating or developing him. Obviously, in the end...some guys can't hit major league pitching, some guys don't want it enough and some guys get injured. I get that.

But you've gotta be able to judge how well someone's doing their job SOMEHOW... I mean, how the hell do we judge player development if not on the basis of how many players they develop? Maybe it's on the scouts instead of player development? Maybe there's not enough communication between the two? I don't know. I don't work for the organization and don't claim to have any inside info.

What outside info I have is enough for me to determine that, in regard to the trades they've made based around prospects, they've either done one or both of... scouting prospects poorly and/or developing them poorly. That's it really. As for (A), there you go again :chuckles:

You and I both know I'm not arguing for 100% of the prospects to work out to consider the FO and it's hires to be doing a good job.

But you're pushing aside every example of them doing a good job evaluating prospects and developing - to the extent you are claiming that two different 2-time All-Stars are not impact players and that Choo is just above average...

...while using a very SMALL number of trades to paint the entire FO with broad strokes. If you are willing to admit that they will not hit on 100% of their attempts, but are only willing to use the CC and Lee trades as evidence, how can you claim that is a large enough sample size to label them as terrible at trades. Especially when you have already had to stretch to not mention the large of number of good, if not great, trades they've already made.

 

[AZ_]

Which trades should I pay closer attention to in order to demonstrate that the Indians have the ability to identify and develop impact players? Can we at least agree that impact players are what they should be targeting when they make trades for prospects? What should our expectations be when they trade their best players for prospects?

Where's the cut off for impact player? Name an impact player that's a notch or two below Choo's level.

Honest to God I don't think I even know what you're arguing for anymore.

Quite frankly I wasn't expecting an impact prospect in return for a guy with one foot out the door in Choo.

With that said, I'm not exactly sure there is a set line on what an impact player is or a "hard line" that needs to be established for one to become an impact player. But there is absolutely no doubt Choo exceeds the minimum by a great deal, he's one of the better offensive outfielders in all of baseball.

You certainly haven't provided anything which would prove the contrary is true, not that we expect you to at this point.