Let's see how the great Omar Minaya is justifying this transaction.
"We see ourselves as a better team now. [The trade] fills two needs with players in the primes of their careers."What an awesome quote. Brian Schneider's OPS+es, since 2003 (the first year he played over 100 games):
2003: 78
2004: 83
2005: 97
2006: 72
2007: 77
Schneider just turned 31. I'm gonna go ahead and say that 04-05 was the prime of his career (and what a prime it was). It is unclear what Minaya is getting at here. Brian Schneider is terrible- we all agree on this, right?
"I'm big on defense up the middle," Minaya said. And he considers the Mets' catching "situation" as good as "any in the game."I honestly have no idea what this means. I understand that he is completely wrong, regardless of what he is getting at. But is he trying to say that Ramon Castro and Brian Schneider give the Mets a big edge at the catching position? He can't be, right? Maybe just defensively? That's wrong, too. I really don't know. I don't think the writer, Marty Noble, understands either- putting "situation" in quotes was a nice touch.
Oh, and speaking of the writer:
"Schneider's offensive production, while not eye-catching, is quite comparable to that of Lo Duca. Schneider has averaged 12.9 RBIs per 100 at-bats over the last three seasons. Lo Duca, playing his last two seasons with the Mets' more productive batting order, averaged 11.4 RBIs per 100 at-bats from 2005-07. Schneider, likely to bat eighth for the Mets, hit 20 home runs in 1,187 at-bats the last three seasons, and Lo Duca hit 20 in 1,402 at-bats. Neither played his home games in a park conducive to home run hitting."RBIs per 100 at-bats. Now that is a stat I wish I had come up with. While we're doing three year averages:
LoDuca VORP (05-07): 16.3, 27.2, 9.2 (average: 17.6)
Schneider VORP (05-07): 16.0, -4.9, 2.4 (average: 4.5)
Oh, but we weren't talking about crazy stats like VORP; we were discussing run production.
The Mets are going to pay Brian Schneider $9.8MM over the next two years. If they are lucky, they will get replacement-level production from him. They are doing this by choice- in fact, for this privilege, they swapped a 22-year old OF with a projected .813 2008 OPS for a 29-year old OF with a projected .815 '08 OPS.
All of this information was readily available to them, and people are getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make these decisions. Good work by everybody involved, really.
More on this trade: Law, R-D, ShysterBall, MLBTR.
10 comments:
Excellent work, something Minaya and Co. failed to do. The man is reaching Zeke territory with many Mets fans right now, especially Cow-bellman.
Da Edge will be missed. Terrible, terrible trade.
The only way the deal makes sense for NYM is if Schneider is good handling pitchers. By all accounts he is. Michael Barrett is a fine hitting catcher, but when it comes to calling a game, meh.
In any even, I'm not convinced Milledge will ever turn into the first rank player he's been pimped to be.
Perhaps the plan is to trade for every catcher available so no other team has any. A catcher-less national league! Omar, you're a genius! Oh, Lastings, you'll be missed.
I feel like calling a game can be a bit overrated, as you can do that from the dugout if your catcher sucks at it.
Oh, and the Nats just finished assembling Murderer's Row (literally) in the OF: Elijah Dukes, Dmitri Young, and Lastings Milledge.
Plus Wily Mo, who may not kill people, but is awesome in his own way.
The Dugout is going to have a field day.
Lastings Milledge never killed anybody. He's just a harmless wannabe-rapper, like every white boy of his (and my) generation. The dislike for his "attitude" is pretty much straight-up racism, cloaked in "respect for the game."
Lastings Milledge never killed anybody. He's just a harmless wannabe-rapper, like every white boy of his (and my) generation. The dislike for his "attitude" is pretty much straight-up racism, cloaked in "respect for the game."
The trade clearly had more to do with getting rid of Milledge than anything else. Minaya did a good job getting a starting OF and a pretty good defensive catcher for someone who had already established a troubled reputation.
Were Milledge's teammates racist for their "know your role" locker sign last season? The organization had enough of that guy.
A GM who can turn Kris Benson into John Maine and El Duque has a lot of good credit stored up.
While it was pretty racist, and while Milledge has a shitload of upside, he isnt quite polished yet. This year in the field he was pretty bad and seemed totally incapable of tracking down a routine fly ball.
It was "know your place, rook" in all caps, and who knows what their motivations were, despite being veterans who are threatened by change.
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