Dmitri Young has been $10 million of sunk costs since the day Jim Bowden re-signed him, in what was probably the most vain of all JimBo's many, many vanity moves.
Now that even Meat is talking like his career is over, can we please DFA him now?
Just think. We didn't have room for this guy, but we did have room for Dmitri Young. Oy.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
What is this "defense" with which you speak of?
I can't argue with my own eyes. If the Nationals are going to get better, they need to stop hanging on to people who can't cut the mustard just because they signed them to X amount of dollars for X amount of years.
*sigh* What team is Langerhans playing for now?
BTW, what are your thoughts on Rizzo as the Nats regular GM next year? Whom should we get as manager? (It sure as hell better not be Riggleman!)
Re: manager, I'd like it to be someone I've never heard of. I know that sounds silly, but the point is that they need to pass on all the retreads, and with the enormous pool of coaches across MiLB, I bet there's some really talented people who don't get chances just cuz MLB is an old boys club.
We're going to talk about rizzo on the podcast tomoorrow.
We traded Langerhans to Seattle for Mike Morse. It was supposedly a junk-for-junk deal, except we gave up a useful role player for junk.
Rizzo's worst deal by far.
Resigning Dmitri was certainly an atrocious move. I don't know what value it would have had for him to get a September call-up, but I know he must have been entertaining and a positive clubhouse influence on some of the young kids.
Probably the best thing for him and for us would have been to have a successful run in the minor leagues, feel out whether he might have some coaching potential in the organization, and hopefully help contribute to a Syracuse stretch run and then earn some feel good at bats in September.
Once we gave him that contract we had to eat it to the bitter end.
My bigger problem is how can you in good conscience keep Kearns and trade Langerhans. I had to eat crow today because Kearns got a game winning hit, but Kearns and Belliard's presence on the roster are two things that make it hard for me to take our organization seriously.
"We traded Langerhans to Seattle for Mike Morse. It was supposedly a junk-for-junk deal, except we gave up a useful role player for junk."
Steven, I continue to want to remind you that the Langerhans deal was a mercy deal for Langerhans not a sabermetric equation. Langherans was a good organization guy who deserved a better fate, agreed. The sabermetrics sucks. The compassion doesn't, especially when you consider Rizzo's subsequent Syracuse outfield moves.
At this point, Langerhans wasn't even going to see outfield time in Syracuse on a regular basis. We have to play Maxwell for his development. We have to play Dukes for his development. And you can't justify benching Padilla's all-start .363 average. Kudos for getting a position player who can contribute to Syracuse's stretch drive even if he has no value to the major league squad.
The right thing to do was to DFA Kerans and promote Langerhans. That's what the production merited. But we don't have the stones in the FO [probably coming from ownership] to do that.
Morse is hitting for Syracuse and is contributing to their stretch run. Yes, I hope he never sees a big league roster, but it was better than a straight up release of Langerhans.
And for those who are counting....
Langerhans in July's got a .729 OPS with 4RBI and a HR.
Kearns has a .634 OPS in July post Langerhans trade. And Kearns was 4-37 in June before the trade.
My hope is that the trade deadline brings the Kearns experiment to a merciful end or a sudden hot streak post Willingham or Johnson or Dunn trade.
I don't necessarily disagree, but the "mercy" deal for Langerhans should have been:
1. DFA Belliard
2. DFA Kearns
3. DFA Meat
4. trade Nick or Willingham for whatever you can get in prospects
5. Promote Dukes and play him every day.
6. Promote Langerhans and play him 2-3 times a week as your defensive replacement in LF
Just a little dose of perspective-
Jim Bowden's bad signings *all put together* do not match many of the other horrible contracts for a *single* player-- like Vernon Wells, Juan Pierre, or Barry Zito. ESPN.com baseball page has a headline article enumerating some of these albatross contracts. Bowden's money to FLop and Meat Hook were small potatoes.
No doubt that's true. The best thing about the Lerners being cheap. We aren't stuck with the consequences of Bowden's terrible decisions for that long.
Dimitri blew himself away with his fork and with booze. Too bad.
Steven,
As a philosophy, we don't DFA unproductive players with high salaries. That's the problem with this squad, and it probably comes from ownership. When you don't DFA on merit, all sort of other bad things happen and Langherhans helping the Mariners and not us is just the fallout.
I'm glad he's found a place where he can play, and hopefully some voice of reason in our organization will learn from the mistake.
--SD
I don't necessarily disagree, but the "mercy" deal for Langerhans should have been:
1. DFA Belliard
2. DFA Kearns
3. DFA Meat
4. trade Nick or Willingham for whatever you can get in prospects
5. Promote Dukes and play him every day.
6. Promote Langerhans and play him 2-3 times a week as your defensive replacement in LF
It seems like you're agreeing with me that it was a mistake to get rid of Langerhans, that he should have been with the MLB team.
What are you disagreeing with me about?
As an M's fan I can honestly say I feel your pain...even though my team is the bastards what took Langerhans. Every time I think about the Bedard deal I want to vomit. But hopefully both our teams have put lousy roster construction behind them for the time being.
Not to rub it in...but Langerhans in 18 games has a WAR half that of Dunn. Yeah...Dunn's bad at catching things. The Nats seriously need to find an AL team that wants him.
Jack Z. was my 2nd choice after Rizzo to replace JimBo. I'm pulling for y'all. And besides, we get credit for dumping Bavasi. It was the sweep by the Scats in Seattle the finally did him in.
Post a Comment