I also feel his supposedly creating a bad chemistry in the clubhouse is bull. The Seattle Mariner blogs are full of stuff about how much Jr. has helped team chemistry there, in particular by getting Ichiro out of his shell. Of course, the fans there would annoint him for sainthood if they could so they’re not too objective.

But the big point is that there were indicators that, as early as the time of the trade, Jr.’s best days were over. His batting average (and OBP) had fallen.
More importantly, he had played CF for 11 years on artificial turf. That is brutal, his father needed to leave the Reds because of what playing OF on the hard carpet had done to his knees. This made Jr. an old 29/30, his legs were 35 going on 40.

Mike Cameron was underrated, it was too bad we let him go.

I knew that Bichette would suck. He complained loudly BTW when Larkin got the MVP over him in 1995.

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it…

Thanks for the comments…I do realize they trade stories have been long…I could have just made a list, and I’ll probably still do that, but I felt there was much too be learned about how teams are built or fall apart based on the team’s talent evaluations.

I wanted to tell the story in order to keep the transactions in historical perspective to show that

1) fundamentals haven’t changed that much

2) there’s always a way to work the sytem to advantage

3) talent is still talent…young players improve, past 30 will probably decline, old player skills last, speed and defense fade….but all are important and teams need a mix

That group of executives haven’t changed their trading styles much over the years. If they did, does that make them complicit?

1) Somebody in that group could have been a starter

2) Only Sullivan was a quality reliever in 2000; some of those guys were still active; others could have been traded for more help

3) we received next to nothing for them….we gave away several players worth of talent which could have given us several years worth of value which could have been flipped for more players of value

The pitching on that 2000 team was just terrible.

She was the softball 3b I’ve ever seen, male or female. Stood about 50 feet from the plate, no matter who was up.

I disagree with this, for a few reasons:
1. They kept replacing those relievers, which showed it wasn’t necessary to keep them.
2. They got good talent in return.
3. They were, or would’ve been, costly.

But great stuff, Steve.

I also think trading for Bichette instead of signing Vaughn was a mistake.

I think letting that all team of all-star relievers get away was a mistake.

If they kept Griffey in CF, you’d have Vaughn,Griffey, and Cameron

instead of Young, Griffey, and Bichette.

Sometime, I’d be interested to see you summarize what you’ve learned from doing these (like the age 30 stuff you refer to here).

Great stuff.

There’s really something to this number.

I think there’s an interesting post to be had in here somewhere if anyone feels like crunching the numbers and layering on some insightful and witty analysis, Bill James style…