Do we overrate our pitching prospects' chances of success?

[mweb]

BTW, while we're on this subject, I believe Rshack asked recently if teams ever have gotten much of a discount in a trade by taking on salary, or soemthing like that. Well the Marlins-Sox trade is an example of that. The Sox would have had to give up a decent amount more if not for taking on Lowell imo.

Rshack is also probably enjoying this change in direction so it won't look as bad for him to fail to admit he was wrong about the A's and Braves.

[Lucky Jim]

Sigh, I love how one innocent comment referencing Trea's logic has been spun into something that had nothing to do with my comment and has become a big thing to debate with me on.

To respond to this post, I'm not saying he wasn't a pretty high value commodity.

You made the comment. I'm just saying that I disagree with it. Clearly, this post doesn't exist if the comment it responds to isn't made.

It's 12am on a Tuesday. It's not like the bandwidth we're stealing is actually depriving folks of their porn or anything. It's all good. As I said, I think this - like the Bedard trade and a few others, is a really interesting trade to autopsy. Lots of risk and lots of reward going in both directions.

[Stotle]

I've already said I think that both sides got what they wanted. I also said I thought that Ramirez hadn't been discounted much.

Right. I guess I don't understand the "getting lucky" comment. BOS was trading scratch-off tickets. FLA hit a jackpot with one of them and got some okay-to-nothing value from the rest.

Granted, maybe two of the "Match 4" numbers were showing on the Hanley ticket, and one of the "Match 3" on the Sanchez ticket. But in my uneducated opinion (particularly with regards to probability), FLA was as fortunate as BOS that things turned out the way that they did.

[mweb]

Marlins moved him because they didn't want to pay him to extend him and wanted to reload (as is their MO). My point was simply that Beckett had a ton of value and was going to land a good package. I think it's reasonable to say FLA valued BOS package (as well as the willingness to take on Lowell) a great deal, largely because of Beckett.

I understand your point about hindsight/foresight, and I agree it absolutely shoots down what Trea is trying to say.

Fair enough. Glad we could go through that whole exercise that had nothing to do with what I was trying to say.

[Stotle]

Fair enough. Glad we could go through that whole exercise that had nothing to do with what I was trying to say.

HAHA. Happy to oblige. 12am at the office requires some sort of sense of humor, no?

[Lucky Jim]

It's an interesting trade to autopsy. There's no way they get Beckett for Ramirez straight up, and Lowell was looking like absolute dead weight at that point.

I mean, Anibel Sanchez looked pretty good, too. And Delgado and Garcia were live arms at least.

Basically, the Marlins gave up one young, established arm, and one dead weight contract, and gambled that Ramirez and one of Sanchez, Delgado or Garcia would be an impact arm - and shedding payroll while doing it.

It didn't quite work out that way. Not the least because Lowell ended up being more than dead weight for the Sox. But the Sox got a little lucky on that one.

Right. I guess I don't understand the "getting lucky" comment. BOS was trading scratch-off tickets. FLA hit a jackpot with one of them and got some okay-to-nothing value from the rest.

Granted, maybe two of the "Match 4" numbers were showing on the Hanley ticket, and one of the "Match 3" on the Sanchez ticket. But in my uneducated opinion (particularly with regards to probability), FLA was as fortunate as BOS that things turned out the way that they did.

You don't think Lowell's return from "dead weight" was a "little lucky"? The Sox got something like $55m in value out of him.

[mweb]

You made the comment. I'm just saying that I disagree with it. Clearly, this post doesn't exist if the comment it responds to isn't made.

It's 12am on a Tuesday. It's not like the bandwidth we're stealing is actually depriving folks of their porn or anything. It's all good. As I said, I think this - like the Bedard trade and a few others, is a really interesting trade to autopsy. Lots of risk and lots of reward going in both directions.

I made a post that had nothing to do with where this has been taken though. So there wasn't a reason for any of these posts to exist. But yeah, it's an interesting topic, so that's great. I just don't appreciate being bombarded by posts that are attacking a point I didn't make, at least not until I joined in on the discussion that evolved from that. And even then my point was still being misinterpreted for the most part.

I'm not sure how you disagreed with it, because saying Beckett was very valuable is not opposed to what I think.

[mweb]

You don't think Lowell's return from "dead weight" was a "little lucky"? The Sox got something like $55m in value out of him.

I do agree that the Sox got lucky in that regard. He bounced back much better than expected.

[Stotle]

You don't think Lowell's return from "dead weight" was a "little lucky"? The Sox got something like $55m in value out of him.

More lucky than Ramirez hitting his ceiling, as opposed to, say, 70% of his upside? Shrug. As I said, I leave it to someone more versed in probability.

[mweb]

The real reason I brought up Hanley was because I want to make people aware that I wanted the O's to work out a trade for him when there were rumors they wanted Tejada. So yeah, I went through all that for an I told you so post!:mwahaha:

[JTrea81]

You don't think Lowell's return from "dead weight" was a "little lucky"? The Sox got something like $55m in value out of him.

The Sox scouted Lowell and determined he'd bounce back.

The Red Sox, under Bill Lajoie and Craig Shipley, could absorb it, so they took it on, insisting that the third baseman could revive his career. Theo Epstein was on leave at the time of the deal.

"It's not that we had to take Mike," Lajoie told the Boston Herald. "It's that we wanted Mike.''

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/11/trades-of-the-decade-the-hanley-ramirez-deal.html

[Lucky Jim]

The Sox scouted Lowell and determined he'd bounce back.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/11/trades-of-the-decade-the-hanley-ramirez-deal.html

That's awfully easy to say now.

[hoosiers]

Back to Frobby's point, I wonder if anyone here believes Berken, Bergesen and DHernandez were over-rated at this time last year relative to how they turned out.

I'd have to say that if someone told me one of the trio would perform to an ERA near 3.5 for a good chunk of the season at the group would be severely under-rated.

[JTrea81]

That's awfully easy to say now.

Check out this link:

http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showtopic=24722&st=30#

They were saying that at the time of the trade, with Shipley and Lajoie scouting 25 Marlins games themselves.

They asked the Marlins for Lowell to be included knowing that Mueller was going to be a FA.

[Lucky Jim]

Check out this link:

http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showtopic=24722&st=30#

They were saying that at the time of the trade, with Shipley and Lajoie scouting 25 Marlins games themselves.

They asked the Marlins for Lowell to be included knowing that Mueller was going to be a FA.

Because it was in their interest to say "we don't look for him to bounce back/he's salary relief?"

The real problem w/ those reports is that asking for him was completely unnecessary. The Marlins were trying to offload him at every opportunity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/19/AR2005071901945.html

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050723&content_id=1142430&vkey=news_fla&fext=.jsp&c_id=fla

Makes it seem like a lot of spin.