Jason Kendall Traded

by hathaway93 on Jul 16, 2007 5:51 PM PDT Comment 31 comments

I don't know what to think of this..That was half of what I could make fun of about the A's..I can't imagine the Cubs paying the salary of Kendall because the guy is only hitting above his weight because he is a little girl..Anyways, I think the A's are pretty much giving up on the season so, we'll see if anyone else gets traded.

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Dumb Cubs

I'm giving Figgins a big F U. Seattle isn't winning 90. I am not worried.

by hauldog on Jul 16, 2007 5:46 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Funny Thing about Kendall

the living proof that Billy Beane is an overrated General Manager was Kendall - overpaid, awful at the plate, but rationalized by every MONEYBALL dimwit as "a great game-caller" as if that justified the white elephant contract and maximized playing time.

Stick That Thing Out There, Jason, a trade to the Cubs is hardly the optimum life raft off a sinking ship....

by Rev Halofan on Jul 16, 2007 5:52 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Where is this news article link?

'86 never happened!

by Downing Rules on Jul 16, 2007 5:59 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

answer to my question: MLB.com

LINK -to- STORY

'86 never happened!

by Downing Rules on Jul 16, 2007 5:59 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I can't wait for the next Zambrano Fight

and with that hothead Kendall, you know that something will go down. Once again, Cubs brASS takes on an inflated contract, and, once again, the Cubs 'aint going anywhere.

F Harvey Keitel -- this SCHMENDRICK is the AL's best pitcher!

by PieceOfAase on Jul 17, 2007 10:35 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Au Contraire...

....the A's sent much cash along with the deal. The Pirates were already paying $5M of Kendall's $13M yearly, and the A's are picking up part if not most of the tab for the rest of the year. With the year half gone, the Cubs aren't on the hook for much here.

Moreover, I'd reconsider your statement that the Cubs are going nowhere. They're 3.5 back of Milwaukee and have gone 27-13 in their last 40 games. The Angels on the other hand just got punked for the second night in a row by Joe Maddon. I take no pleasure in noting that, either.

by beercub on Jul 18, 2007 9:38 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

A's pay about 4 of 5 mil left

Cubs got a shitty player for about a mil

I'm giving Figgins a big F U. Seattle isn't winning 90. I am not worried.

by hauldog on Jul 18, 2007 9:43 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

We'll See....

...just how shitty.

by beercub on Jul 18, 2007 10:05 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Lowest OPS

Lowest OBP in the majors.

That is how SHITTY

I'm giving Figgins a big F U. Seattle isn't winning 90. I am not worried.

by hauldog on Jul 19, 2007 9:37 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Oh yeah

and he can't throw anyone out.

I'm giving Figgins a big F U. Seattle isn't winning 90. I am not worried.

by hauldog on Jul 19, 2007 9:37 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

We'll see

by beercub on Jul 19, 2007 8:42 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yes, we will see

we will see him have his on base percentage flirt with the mendoza line.

we will see him skip a ball in the dirt as he fails to throw out ryan howard stealing.

we will see him pop up to shortstop, resulting in a month long suspicion of steroid use on his part.

we will see him catch a 6IP, 2ER game by carlos zambrano, and be congratulated for good game calling.

we will see him thrown out at home trying to score from third on a single.

we will see him wear ridiculous armor at the plate and whine when a curve ball starts inside and breaks over the plate on him.

...

anything else "we'll see"?

by Caseys Kiss of Death on Jul 19, 2007 11:25 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah but he likes to fight

by melvintoast on Jul 19, 2007 11:12 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Who benefits from this deal?

Do the Cubs improve? Doubtful, given the numbers Kendall is posting this year. Do the A's improve? Long term, yes, because Kendall is a drag on their payroll, but in the short term they're pretty much waving the white flag on this season.

As long as Kendall continues to suck for the Cubbies, my hope is that the Brewers are the biggest beneficiaries.

by Brew Angel on Jul 17, 2007 10:52 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Kendall

is a free agent at the end of the year. I see no LT benefit for Fremont

I'm giving Figgins a big F U. Seattle isn't winning 90. I am not worried.

by hauldog on Jul 17, 2007 11:32 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

My Bad

Thought he had one more year. Either way, the A's still suck.

by Brew Angel on Jul 17, 2007 12:31 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

I'm giving Figgins a big F U. Seattle isn't winning 90. I am not worried.

by hauldog on Jul 17, 2007 12:43 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Who am I supposed to hate now?

Kendall was the only player on the A's that I really hated. I'm kind of at a loss now...

by Of Angels and Angles on Jul 17, 2007 11:01 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Let me help

Sha-VEZZ -- He still kills us, even though he seems to decline every year, has that pouty look on his face, and throws submarine instead of overhand from 3B.

Loiaza -- Drunk driver.

Kotsay -- Looks like a roadie for the Spin Doctors.

Street -- Tight pants, white shoes, babyface.

Kielty -- The Ronald McDonald House is that way.....

Blanton -- Bobby Jenks' brother?

Beane -- His shit don't work in the regular season.

by mattwelch on Jul 17, 2007 11:09 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Beane waves the white flag

There will be no second-half .700 sprint this year, kiddies. The genius is a seller.

It could just be my schaedenfreude (sic) talking, but it seems to me Beane went from one extreme (the Stairs/Jaha/Giambi softball-league All-stars) to another (17 no-hit centerfielders & a great defense), and only really achieved something like balance back when the Big 3 + Tejada/Chavez/Giambi were still young and under contract. The portrayal in Moneyball was that of a rigid revolutionary type who believed extremism in the cause of baseball-arbitrage was not just no vice, but the only way you could smash through the establishment.

Which makes for compelling reading, but not necessarily a perennial World Series contender. I wonder if Michael Lewis is still planning to write his triumphant analysis of Beane's genius draft of fat catchers who don't fit in Levi's (and haven't contributed squat so far)?

by mattwelch on Jul 17, 2007 11:04 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Michael Lewis

once they realize that MONEYBALL is Science Fiction, he will likelyget hired by Lucas to write three Star Wars Prequel Prequels. How much you wanna bet that Kevin Youkilis is Jar-Jar Binks' father?

by Rev Halofan on Jul 17, 2007 11:22 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Inevitable John McCain tie-in

Michael Lewis -- who I think is terrific, btw -- was basically the first national journalist to start puddling himself over the straight-talker, way back in 1996.

Here's one particularly great quote from The New Republic back then:

The shock of finding a Republican outside the Democratic convention is followed by a disturbingly pleasant sensation. I'm beginning to understand the war that must occur inside a 14-year-old boy who discovers he is more sexually attracted to boys than to girls. The longer I hang around McCain the harder it is to fight the feeling that just maybe I'm ... Republican.

Keep in mind Lewis is a Nader voter ... here's a 7,000-word smooch: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04EEDF1438F936A15756C0A961958260&sec=&spon= &pagewanted=print. He wrote another one two years later in the same venue, called "I Liked a Pol," confessing that McCain had asked him to move into his apartment during the 1999-2000 campaign, and that he was now finished with covering him because he liked him too damned much & wanted to send his campaign money.

Methinks Lewis has an interesting case of jocksnifferitis....

by mattwelch on Jul 17, 2007 11:35 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Lewis confessed to loving his story too much

and the rest of the book naturally followed. I'm not much for hagiographies, and while it's an interesting and even compelling read, its flaws render it essentially meaningless.

Ervin Santana To AAA! (But only for road games.)

by scareduck on Jul 17, 2007 1:36 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Meaningless?

Two hundred pages of fly-on-the-wall insight into the running of a cutting-edge baseball organization as it was undergoing a management revolution? Some of his interpretations were certainly off, and erred in over-emphasizing the OBP part of the equation, but that book had more "meaning" than any baseball book I've read this century, enough so that plenty of non-baseball fans could derive value from it, too.

Then again, you're the one who said Scioscia's expressed impatience with Ervin Santana is also "meaningless." Besides J.J. Putz' first-half numbers, and Ervin Santana's home-road splits, what rises to the level of "meaning" for you?

by mattwelch on Jul 17, 2007 2:03 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

The book is all vacant tribute

And misattributes the A's success to Beane where it's fairly plain these days that it was the scouting and player development crew who really won the day. Mike Magnante, anyone? It's a great showpiece for a writer exercising his skills, but by the time you get to the back dustflap, there's no real intelligence unearthed there. Beane = great is about the end of it. As for your other comments (out of context as usual):

Yeah, Scioscia's comments about pulling Santana from the rotation are meaningless in that they're an empty threat, at least so far. As I already pointed out, we've seen this talk since May and we still don't have any changes.
Putz's numbers are part of a two-year trend dropping his walks significantly while increasing his strikeouts following the development of a new pitch, a split-fingered fastball (IIRC) he learned from Eddie Guardado. I don't get the attempt to shoehorn this into a single half.
As for Santana, his craptitude is leaking onto his home starts lately, so you may be on to something there, i.e., his home/road splits will no longer be anomalous to the degree that he sucks as much at home as he does on the road.

Ervin Santana To AAA! (But only for road games.)

by scareduck on Jul 17, 2007 2:26 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

"attempt to shoehorn"

It was you who said he's better than Frankie. He's never been better than Frankie until the first half of this year (during which his K/9 and K/BB are actually down from last year). Shoe, meet horn.

And your absolutist, results-based standard for threats continues to be a hoot to observe. By that logic, the years' worth of threats to Saddam Hussein over his WMDs were "empty" and "meaningless" ... until, uh, the day they weren't. Will there be a retroactive non-emptiness applied to Scioscia's comments when Santana actually gets demoted? Say, two weeks' worth? Conversely, if he turns it around on the big-league level can we retroactively declare your howling pessimism to be "empty" as well? Inquiring minds, etc.

by mattwelch on Jul 17, 2007 2:53 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Sure, Matt

"Howling pessimism"? About Santana? When the hell did I ever give up on him? If that were true, I would have called for his trade or permanent release. He's damn well not cutting it at the major league level, and he needs a stiff kick in the ass to get it going. The Angels keep hoping they'll find a pony in the piles of shit that are his road performances. Every time he goes up there and gives up a dozen runs, management gets one level closer to realizing he doesn't belong in the majors for now.

Two more starts until Ervin Santana goes to AAA. Please.

by scareduck on Jul 17, 2007 11:17 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Well, you (and I) will soon have our wish

Methinks. Unless Bart pulls his fat muscle tomorrow.

by mattwelch on Jul 17, 2007 11:29 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Here's how this trade works

Kendall sucks in the AL West, but may still have value in the NL Central, where the pitching is easier and he has some residual familiarity. The A's get some minimal salary relief (though recall they're sending cash to Chicago, how much I don't know), and clear the way to find out what they have in former CSUF star catcher Kurt Suzuki.

It doesn't make up for the wasted dollars at the major league level, of course; nonetheless, I still refuse to sneer too much at Beane. It's true that he's made some spectacularly bad signings and trades lately:

Jason Kendall
Esteban Loiaza
counting on Milton Bradley's health
getting the unproductive middle of the Jermaine Dye sandwich

And then of course there were all those injuries, especially to the starting rotation (Rich Harden and Loaiza) and the bullpen (Huston Street, Kiko Calero, Justin Duchscherer). Nevertheless, if there's one thing the A's have shown during their recent run, it's that they know how to draft. I expect they'll be banging down some doors soon with a much-improved team in 2009-10.

And by the way, Jeremy Brown could still have a major league career as a backup. (I figured his bad numbers at Midland in 2004 would have kept him out of the Show, but maybe not.)

Ervin Santana To AAA! (But only for road games.)

by scareduck on Jul 17, 2007 1:34 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs