This move doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. First, why are they not offering Eckstein arbitration? There’s virtually nil chance he takes it, and you’re skipping free picks of Top 100 talent in the draft. And if he does take it, then you’re not stuck with Neifi Perez Jr. Izturis got bounced out of Chicago for Ryan Theriot, who is basically the same player. Ryan is probably the same player Theriot is, if not a little better. Can’t we learn from the Cubs’ mistake? The only good news I get out of this is there’s still a fair shot Brendan Ryan gets the lion share of AB’s until Mozeliak can swing a deal, but they could’ve saved $ 3M in the process without going through the trouble. The other piece of good news is that maybe this means the Aaron Miles era is finally over.
They could’ve at least humored us and tried to trade for Zobrist.
Speaking of free picks, the Rays signed Troy Percival. There’s your one free sandwich pick.
Filed under: Brendan Ryan, Transactions
erik
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To make room I just saw scout.com reporting JRod was DFAd….bad move why not Taguchi, Miles, ENCARNACION, come on anyone but a guy that still has talent but lost a year to an injury.
I figure if it means Miles is gone we only spent about $1.5 million but I don’t know if adding Izturis’ defense and losing Miles’ offense is worth that amount.
I saw a post recently referinging to a BP study that said a 2nd round pick was worth $3 million. Does anyone have a link to that or anything similar?
Miles offense is all in BA. no power, no OBP, and he isn’t a great fielder, esp. @ short.
Why won’t they offer Eckstein arbitration? Probably for the same reason that they didn’t offer Weaver last season. Even though he ended up with a 1 year deal there was zero chance at the time of offering arbitration that Weaver would accept. So why not offer? I’m simply convinced these are the brightest people we are dealing with here!
You are right on with your comments. We need the draft choices. At worst Eckstein accepts and he can be trade bait. I think the signing could be looked at s a low risk safety valve move in case Ryan doesn’t cut it right away. Ryan might beat this guy out in Spring Training.
I don’t mind the loss of J-Rod. The Cards have a ton of mid level outfielders and J-Rod was the least useful of the bunch. He is not a full time player at the major league level and with the likes of Ankiel, Skip, and Ludwick, there is no room for him on the bench. Keeping him around is a luxury the Cards simply do not have.
Not offering arbitration to Eck is stupid. Loosing a free pick and not hedging your bet that a 27 year old SS with one decent season three years ago can make it as a decent MLB starting SS on a winning team is down right dumb. By making the arbitration offer, the worst the Cards do is end up with the pick and have to dump Izturis ala Junior Spivey.
re: JRod
We just took back a JRod from the Blue Jays. Given how close Haerther is to the majors at this point, there’s no reason to keep them both on the 40-man roster. JRod is probably better defensively and perhaps at getting on base but Haerther has more power. Both left-handed 4th outfielders. I was on the JRod bandwagon too because he was better than our other outfield options but this isn’t any kind of real loss.
sorry to see j-rod go as well, but dfa’d in at this point does not mean he is necessarily gone or unavailable for trade next week as i understand the rules. even izturis may not make it through next week, if he really did have other suitors. the izturis signing does seem to me to offer the cards more flexibility going into next week. it will be interesting to see how they use their chips.
Haerther is 24. JRod is about to turn 30 in a month. It is clear that for most organizations you would rather take Haerther when the only real difference between the two is JRods better defense and the MLB team has the likes of Ankiel and Skip.
Now now Erik, why sign a real player for $12-15 million a year when you can instead piss that money away $3 million at a time on Neifi lookalikes and fungible middle relievers? You clearly don’t understand the complexities of building a winning team
The issue of choosing between JRod and Haerther is not necessarily one of talent ore even age. The bottom line is that Haerther has options and Jrod doesn´t.