Not sure wher ehis info came from. He is friends with most of the guys and he is in AZ working out for the offseason. On Matt W. When we were in SD last summer his kids sat right below us and according to others travel often with him. When I originally heard the colorado rumors I was skeptical because of him having to move. I knew he was recently divorced and was not sure that he would want to move his kids or move away from them.
Ouch, thats a real kicker right there. That will probably cause the trade not to happen. I don't think anyone can make a decision like that in 72 hours. Didn't he have that one hot wife they kept showing last year during the World Series?
Its debatable between Colorado and Florida pued-I mean they unloaded better talent than they got back and took on a ton of hampy's salary. The braves have minimal risk in this deal as they only pay mike 2.2 mil each of the next 3 yrs, how stupid by the marlins/ rockies. Also, anyone want to explain to me how Arizona=who got loaned money by MLB a few yrs back is getting to pursue Larry Walker and Glavine/Maddux?
The Braves risk is only minimal the first 3 years. They pay the last 3 years of Hampton's contract in full ($43 million). The real risk is will Hampton turn out to be the pitcher he once was. If not, no team will want to touch him. Atlanta is a good park for pitchers and the Braves do a good job with pitchers. If Hampton can;t make it there, he ought to learn to play the outfield and get his bat in the lineup everyday . I wholeheartedly agree with your question concerning why is Arizona allowed to make any deals where they take on additional salary. The commissioner should not approve any deals until they get their financial house in order.
My point is bobrek, if I were atlanta and basically got a good reclamation project for almost free, i would consider it mimimal risk. The braves are good at ressurecting pitchers and they basically get a 3 yr trial run, and AOL can afford the back end of mike's deal, so i think they did very well, sadly.
Not sure if this is the full explanation or not. The problem in AZ was due to massive salaries being paid out. The team will be rid of 3 of those in Jay Bell,Todd Stottlemeyer and most likely Steve Finley. They also will get Brian Anderson(around 4-5 mil?) and Rick Helling(around 3 mil) off the books I believe.
But they are taking on huge salaries in Walker and Glavine. The last two years they have had to borrow HUGE sums to pay the salaries. Now they are making service on that debt and taking on two big salaries. Sounds like a recipe for financial disaster to me.
Exactly why I stated earlier for the Colorado deal to go thru (unless for some odd reason Williams waives his no-trade) the Rockies would have to pay part of Walkers salary or have it deferred. There is no way they take his full salary and not get some help or dump Williams salary. The following figures are from: http://cbs.sportsline.com/u/baseball/mlb/teams/ARI/salaries.htm Jay Bell $8,000,000 Todd Stottlemyre $8,000,000 Brian Anderson $5,375,000 Steve Finley $5,375,000 Rick Helling $3,000,000 Greg Swindell $2,833,333 Armando Reynoso $4,125,000 Mark Grace $3,000,000 Greg Colbrunn $1,800,000 All of those guys are FA's. I expect they will resign Grace. But that is a pretty good chunk of change that they probably won't hav eback. Also this article states that they have asked Walker to defer some salary and it explains the Williams family situation. http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2002/1120/1463836.html
Ok, but this still avoids the fact that the Rockies have to be the stupidest organization in MLB. How long does o'Dowd have up there? Seriously, consider this trade : Rockies give up Larry Walker, who despite his age is still a tremendous hitter, and a pretty good defensive outfielder, because he makes a lot of money. Except that Williams makes a ton of money too, and he's not that good. The best player in this deal that the Rockies get happens to play the same position as their best player. And this talk of moving him to the outfield in Coors is not gonna happen, maybe left field in the juice box, but Coors is waaay too big. Durazo, despite being a pretty good hitter, gets stuck in another unfortunate position, unless the Rockies can flip around and trade him to an AL team for pitching or a prospect. Of course, this was the same thing they were going to do with Jack Cust(another really nice hitter that can only play 1B and that just barely, he's probably ML ready too) - and he's still a Rockie. BTW, Mike Myers for Jack Cust was a lose-lose trade. O'Dowd can't have too many more years of failure before he gets the axe, can he? GMs seem to last far longer than they probably should, and don't get hardly enough blame for horrendous jobs they do. and now I'm done.
That is the plan actually. Actually Myers has not been all that bad for AZ. He was pretty decent towards the end of the season. Cust has not been that good. He is a 1B no matter how many people tell you he can play OF. They are wrong. Colorado should have stuck with the original plan and tried to move him to the AL. Agreed. O'Dowd has made some very strange moves. I think the original Hampton deal would not have been so bad but the Commisioners office did some re-working on who paid the salaries and when. It is funny how the blame for non performance often goes on the manager when it is the GM that usually brings the non-performers to the club.
Ok I have made a mistake. Well not me but my source did. The above statement was supposed to have read "he D-Backs are also looking into possibly making an offer for Maddux." During our conversation we talked about both guys. I asked if the D-Backs were thinking of making offers to either guy. Due to a slip of the tongue I was told Glavine but Maddux was intended. I originally suspected that but forgot to bring it back up until another conversation yesterday. I just wanted to post this so as not to ellicit a ton of flames if the D-Backs signed Maddux and not Glavine.
Oh, Myers did his job very well. I just thought Arizona lost out because they gave up their best position hitting prospect for a lefty specialist and I'm not sure a lefty specialist will ever be worth a top flight hitter; and Colorado screwed it up by getting a guy who can only, and barely at that, play first base. Seriously, Jack Cust makes Ward look like Willie frickin' Mays.
I think though that Cust is not the hitting prospect that AZ thought he was several years ago. He tore up A and AA but has been marginal at best at AAA. In 360 AB he hit .265, 23 HR(not bad) at AAA. At the ML level he had 65 AB hit .167 with 1 HR. His AAA numbers were about the same with Tucson in the prior season. The problem with him is exactly what you said. He is a Fair at best defensive 1B. AZ kinda screwed him because their AAA manager, instead of working him in slowly and putting him in LF with less ground to cover at Tucson electric Park. They put him in RF with a pretty large area. He was never going to be able to play RF there. I think the D-Back thinking with that trade was this. We are the WS champs. We have most of our core back together, Lets go out and try to pick up another piece to try to get ourselves back in the WS. Could they have gotten more for him? Probably, but keeping him was probably not an option because at 1B he would be behind Grace and Durazo(who they projected to be their 1B for a long time), and he was showing that he could not even,as you say, live up to DW standards in the OF.
