Diary of a Rebuilder
By David Welch - Editor at-large
03/12/2005
Stealing Second Requires Giving up First
We just finished our rookie draft a month ago, and I walked away a happy man. With four first-round picks, I netted Bobby Crosby, Scott Kazmir, Grady Sizemore and Kazuo Matsui. These are all players with high ceilings and, thus, are perfect for a rebuilding franchise.
But this story didn’t start on draft day. Actually, the saga goes back much further. More than a year ago, I asked Sporting News Senior Editor Brendan Roberts—who is a patron of this site—what I needed to do to really get my rebuilding process going. His answer was simple. I needed to deal one of my stars—namely Bobby Abreu, A.J. Burnett, or Jorge Posada—and unlock their value and get some younger talent to the Swashbucklers. Abreu was then 29, so he stays. Posada is tradeable, but no one wanted to pay me enough.
But Stratogist colleague Rick Speciale had a keen interest in Burnett and he owned the 3rd pick in our draft, which has in its pool any player who has not been carded before by Strat. After weeks of wrangling, sometimes heatedly, Rick and I came to an accord. He sent me the 3rd overall pick, the 23rd overall pick (our league has 26 teams) and a 3rd rounder for Burnett, Houston relief ace Brad Lidge and a 2nd rounder.
I’ll readily own up to any reader criticism that I overpaid. And I think I did slightly. But there is logic here. Market intelligence told me that I would get Crosby with the 3rd pick, and God Knows Who with the 23rd. I really hated giving up Lidge and I believe that Burnett will rebound strongly this year. But per Brendan’s point, I had to deal a valuable asset or two to change the look of my team.
For three years—two of which I made the playoffs—I had Rich Aurilia at SS, 2B platoons with guys like Frank Catalanotto, Andy Fox (the year he stole 33 bases with a .370 OB versus righties) and Ricky Gutierrez. With Aurilia’s value dropping even faster than the U.S. dollar, and an unsustainable series of platoons at 2B, my team would never improve until I got real stars in the middle infield. Burnett and Lidge are top talents, but pitching is elusive and injury prone. I needed to move. And as the old baseball axiom goes, you can’t steal second and leave your foot on first.
Picking Crosby was a no brainer. Stratogist managing editor Mike SanClemente took B.J. Upton first. Upton has tons of upside, though I think he may end up playing somewhere other than SS, which drops his value. Joe Mauer went second—a calculated gamble made by Stratogists contributor David Krantz. Personally, I think Crosby has Jeter-type potential and may end up being worth more than either one of those guys since he is a good SS. But in fairness to Mike and Dave, they grabbed players with more offensive upside, and both already have stars at SS. So now my initial trade has Burnett and Lidge for Crosby and a late 1st round pick, with some later picks on the back end of the deal. We’ll get to that shortly.
With the 7th pick overall, I took Kazmir. Tons of upside and a fair amount of risk. Here is another strategic choice. It was between Kaz and Jeremy Reed. Now, I like Reed a lot, but I also had pick 11 and knew I would get either Sizemore or Alexis Rios. Scouts seem to like Reed slightly better than those two, but I figured I’ll take an arm at 7 knowing that a good outfielder is waiting for me at 11. Sizemore was there. In three years, he may look as good as Reed, or slightly worse. In any case, with Abreu, Kevin Mench, Xavier Nady and Preston Wilson already on the team, I didn’t need to draft two OFers. Toss Sizemore into that mix, and I should have three big bats in the OF one way or another next year.
Then, at pick No. 23, the baseball gods smiled. In four of the seven picks before me, Reed Adams, Matt Holliday, J.D. Closser and Ryan Madson were drafted. They’re all good players, but not as valuable as Matsui in my view. I know some managers who gave him a hard look in the top 12. Japanese ballplayers tend to come over with too much hype, but I think Matsui will provide good offense for 2B and will get at least a decent fielding rating.
So now the trade looks like this: Burnett, Lidge and Guillermo Quiroz (the player taken for the pick I gave up) for Crosby, Matsui and Ismael Valdez. Yeah, Valdez is mediocre at best, but I really needed innings. And I personally think Quiroz is overrated due to lack of plate discipline and the fact that he has never hit over .282 in the minors.
In the end, I traded an injury prone starter—albeit one with lots of talent—and a great reliever to build a middle infield that projects to be at the very least above average, if not excellent. If Burnett rebounds, the deal may look great for Rick, too. I think he will rebound, in fact. But in my analysis, I needed to build my lineup. Plus, Baseball Forecaster guru Ron Shandler makes a good point about pitchers like Burnett. Arms who are familiar with the disabled list will probably continue to be injured, and often. See Wood, Kerry.
I’m happy with my draft not only because of the talent I acquired, but because the plan worked well. I filled the biggest holes in my lineup with talented players. And in my view, a rebuilding team needs to stock the lineup first, and finish assembling the starting rotation and bullpen when you’re getting closer to a playoff run. That is, by the way, what Stratogist colleague Speciale did. His lineup was stocked, so he needed the great pitching cards of Burnett and Lidge to put him over the top in the playoffs this year. We both got what we needed.