Except he really isn't hurting the team at SS. Again, he's an 8+ WAR player this year. I don't know why anyone would want to argue for moving him off a position where he's performing at an MVP level. This season is already as valuable as Ripken's '83 MVP season and more valuable than any other season Ripken had except 1984 and his monster 1991 campaign.
I saw Cal play at shortstop, too. And I think when we all think of Cal at shortstop, we think of the refined version....the guy that made 3 errors in a season (and somehow lost the Gold Glove to Ozzie f'ing Guillen) and the guy that had a whole chapter dedicated to him in George Will's "Men at Work."
You neglected to respond to the idea that Gunnar can get better at the position. There's a lot to like with him defensively already, but he's not a fully finished product and I don't think anyone here is arguing that he is. I suspect that if you took Cal in his second season and matched that up with Gunnar, you'd see some similarities. I also suspect that Gunnar isn't the defender that he'll be in 5 or 6 years from now, just like Ripken wasn't the best defender at SS in his early seasons.
Gunnar is a 5 tool player. There's nothing that he can't do on a baseball field and I'm sure if you put him in a "traditional power position" like a corner outfield spot, he'd be just fine.
But I find it funny that you want to be called old fashioned, yet here we are discussing Cal Ripken, the guy that broke the mold for what a shortstop can be and turned it into a power position. Ripken was ultimate anti-traditionalist of the position and responsible for the slew of power hitting shortstops that came in after him. And quite frankly, I don't know why we're talking about power when we're debating defense.
Yeah, I agree something like this might happen some day, but only if the union comes around to believing MLB is on shaky financial footing -- if and when that ever happens.
I don't like the idea of voiding a players' contract then and there, but perhaps performing below a certain level would trigger some contract years in the future to automatically become option years. Something along those lines.
It's hard to imagine deals like this today, except possibly here and there for players who are known to be very inconsistent. As long as baseball is considered financially healthy I'm sure the union would push back strongly against deals like this, especially in large numbers.
Thank you. I knew there was something bogus about that post. I saw Cal play SS. And Gunnar is no Cal at SS. Not even close.
And this is coming from a big fan of Gunnar. I would like to see him play a traditional power position. Call me old fashioned. He’s hurting the team at SS.
I doubt solid MLB pitchers can be acquired just by trading position players the vast majority of the time. Look at how we acquired Bradish and Povich -- by trading solid (at the time anyway) MLB level pitchers. In those trades we were on the other end, but we forced teams to trade good young pitchers for Bundy and Lopez respectively. Now we did acquire McDermott and Seth Johnson by trading Trey Mancini. So it does happen that pitching can sometimes be acquired trading only a position player, but Mancini had had a strong major league career to that point. My point is I don't think you can expect to acquire pitching only by trading position players -- but if you can it may need to be a strong veteran that is not easy to part with.
Perhaps we could acquire Tarik Skubal for just Jackson Holliday -- or Holliday plus one or two other strong position prospects. But that would be a whole other level of a blockbuster trade.
Also, I'm not sure how we can say the system is bereft of homegrown minor league pitching talent and then complain that we traded Baumeister and Chace -- two homegrown minor league pitchers that everyone here seems to agree are talented. We can criticize the trade, but clearly there was and probably still are some desirable arms in the system that we'd rather not trade. No, none of the ones Elias drafted have made it to the bigs yet, but maybe those two would have been among the first.
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