After 1 ½ years of the Dean Taylor regime, and several trades, I thought it would be a good idea to go back and look at the moves that have helped define him so far and to see what is to be expected in the future.
November 4, 1999: Named Davey Lopes manager for 3 years
They had to name someone, and Davey Lopes seemed a good idea to me. He’s fiery, a winner with LA, and he worked the strike zone. Three things I hope he’ll make the Brewers.
A situation leftie is always nice, but an all-around quality
reliever is better, and Leskanic was better.
Damned fine trade, even despite Leskanic’s current shakiness.
December 2, 1999:
Re-signed RP-R David Weathers to a 2 year, $2.4 Million deal
One of Dean Taylor’s first moves was to trade away the beloved Jeff Cirillo. This, in retrospect, seems like a good trade. Cirillo has been okay in Colorado, earning an all-star berth last year based mostly on good home cooking. Here are his quick stats:
AVG OBP SLG OPS
Home .403 .472 .607 1.079
Road .239 .299 .372 .628
That is the definition of the Coors Field split, and I cannot explain what happened to Jeff. He was a pretty typical .300/.400/.450 guy for the Brewers, who had a slight pitcher’s park. Anyway, those road stats are atrocious, and he has not really recovered this year, hitting .294/.341/.464. That OBP is really out of whack for him.
Jimmy Haynes has been about replacement level the last two years, though he had a nice stretch this year. He’s a combined 18-25 with a 5.28 ERA. His BB/9 IP and H/9 IP have both dropped, though, so you might expect more improvement. The problem is that they have yet to drop very much. Not so hot.
Jamey Wright, after a couple DL stints, has righted his ship a bit the last couple months, and his combined Brewer efforts are 15-14 with a 3.69 ERA. Ahh, that’s better. He and Ben Sheets have done their best to give the Brewers a chance to win, but he’s had a couple tight losses. His 3.06 ERA this year is encouraging, and his WHIP has dropped from 1.488 to 1.380.
Henry Blanco stinks. The only good thing about him is that he controls the running game, if he can play. He’s essentially an unhealthy Mike Matheny. Let’s compare both of their performances over the last couple years, 2000-01:
AVG OBP SLG OPS RC RC/27
Blanco .222 .298 .364 .662 46.55 3.25
Matheny .253 .322 .343 .665 69.16 3.60
When you look and see that Blanco makes just over $700,000 a year, and Matheny makes $850,000 a year, that’s the only suitable answer to “Why on earth did we bother with Blanco?”
This is a disaster. A team that has financial constraints can not spend $10 million on a mediocre player. Hernandez plays a damned fine shortstop, and he has some power, but his OBP (.307 as a Brewer) is horrific. As a utility player, he’s excellent. But as part of the starting lineup, he’s harmful.
Acevedo missed a chunk of the year and appeared in 62 games with a 3.81 ERA. Vina has appeared in almost 200 through half of this season and has about a .370 OBP. It is notable that no one on the Brewers has a .370 OBP.
Acevedo was then traded this year for Mike DeJean (detailed below). I personally think a solid OBP lead off hitter with very good defensive skills is worth more than a very good relief pitcher, but it’s not the worst trade in the world.
The two PTBNL were SP-R Matt Parker and C Eliezer Alfonzo. Parker is 9-6 in A-Level High Desert, with a 5.00 ERA, 9-6 record, and 91/48 SO/BB ratio in 108 IP. That’s not bad, when you consider that it’s a severe hitter’s park. He’s still just 22. So if he can progress a bit, this deal looks a bit better.
Eliezer Alfonzo is a 22 year old catcher with the Low A Snappers. He’s got a gaudy .276 average but only 5 walks in 290 ABs. He does have some pop (.466 SLG), so he may turn out to be something. If one of these two can make the Majors (particularly Alfonzo), this trade will be a pretty good one.
Cal Eldred for Navarro was an attempt to rejuvenate both their careers in a new place. After all, Navarro has some nice seasons in Milwaukee, and maybe Eldred could forget all about Phil Garner. He sure did. Navarro didn’t do anything right, except pitch well enough to get signed by the nose-diving Indians after being cut by the Crew. Eldred pitched well for 4 months for the ChiSox, but he eventually broke his elbow again and now his career is essentially over. That’s four months of good pitching the Brewers could have used.
John Snyder is laboring in AAA. Jose Valentin was almost an All-Star for the Sox, being their steadiest performer in the first half of this season. He has the best Range Factor for Shortstops, so Ken Williams goes and gets the incomparable Royce Clayton for defense. Because Jose made 36 errors, which is about 16 more than the league average. Some comparisons:
RF Errors Total Plays Plays-Errors
Jose 5.12 36 804 768
Royce 4.90 16 751 735
LgAverage 4.71 20 727 707
Jose is getting to 60 extra balls per season over the average Shortstop AFTER accounting for his errors. Royce gets to about 28 more (based on 2000) than the average Shortstop. Jose bests him by about 33. Pitchers prefer Unearned Runs and No Runs more than 2 to 1 to Earned Runs. You could look it up.
Jose sure would have looked nice as the Brewers Shortstop last year instead of Jose Hernandez. The ChiSox re-signed him.
Valentin’s problem is that teams focus on what he does wrong and cannot focus on what he does right. He makes lots of errors, but he makes up for that with INCREDIBLE range, and he and Vina were the most unbelievable DP combo in the league. He batted in the high .220’s for a long time, but he WALKED. When he batted .224 and .227, he still had OBPs of .323 and .347, which are acceptable given his power numbers. He doesn’t steal bases, but he’s a good baserunner. This is not the fault of merely the Brewers, the White Sox, after all, insisted on moving him to Center Field because of his faulty Shortstop defense. His Zone Rating of .847 last year bested the golden gloved Omar Vizquel (.838), who at least had only 3 errors as an excuse.
Bad trade. BAD, BAD DEAN.
Ochoa went on to have a greater season in 2000 in Cincinnati than he did for the Brewers in 1999, when Garner and Lefebvre finally put him in the lineup to get rid of the horror that was Marquis Grissom. Sweeney has sucked. He was injured when the Brewers traded for him, and right now he’s trying to earn a return trip from AAA Indianapolis.
The Player to be named later was RHP Gene Altman. Altman has a 6.00 ERA in High Desert, with a 35/24 SO/BB ratio and he’s only 22 in a hitter’s park. He’s pitching relief. That makes the trade somewhat more palatable, but only if Altman moves up the chain.
Not a bad trade for middle infield depth. Brewers had a good bullpen, and Lopez helps out when the injuries come. He’s got decent pop and would have been a better starter for the Mets than Rey Ordonez and his $4 million a year deal.
This was supposed to Taylor’s big coup. The Brewers had been eager for Sexson for years. I had hoped that had died with the last administration. I hoped wrongly. Although I do think it was a good trade. Sexson’s power is indisputable, and I don’t mind the strikeouts. The issue is the walks. Last year, after the trade, he batted .296/.398/.559. I had hoped the plate discipline change was real. Again, I hoped wrongly. He is right now at .253/.322/.500. That’s okay, but that’s not All Star first baseman-ish.
If Woodard had recovered (and I still think he will), that hurts the trade value. Wickman and Bere had to go for the Brewers to get better, though I loved Wickman, and Rigdon looked good for a while (before getting hurt), but his ERA is still over 5.00 as a Brewer. Kane Davis was traded for Elvis Pena (detailed below).
Getting a first baseman with such power potential is good, but throwing in Woodard was getting no value for somebody worth something.
The PTBNL was SS Marcus Scutaro, who is currently batting .300/.393/.445 at Indy with 8 HR and 45 BBs. The Brewers moved him to 2B. This may be a move to pressure Belliard (or trade him!). At any rate, he looks good, and he’s 25 years old, about 2 years below average age in the International League, but he is repeating the league. I’d sooner see him moved back to Shortstop, but Elvis Pena has dibs.
Brandon Kolb has had sip of coffee with the Crew so far. He’s nothing exceptional, and his 4.36 ERA with a 40/20 SO/BB ratio is really nothing to write home about. Chad Green, on the other hand, seems to be out of organized baseball.
Ugh.
These guys are pretty much even, with Marquis able to generate a little more power versus Devon White’s higher batting average. Neither one walks. Still, this is the greatest trade Taylor made, essentially getting rid of 2 years of $5 million of Grissom for 1 year at $6 million for White. The Brewers have the option to pay Devon $5 million more next year or take a $1 million buyout. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Crew to re-sign him.
The PTBNL for LA was RP-R Ruddy Lugo. I’m not sure if he’s much of a prospect, but he’s got 15 IP this year in Low A ball with a 4.02 ERA and a 16/5 SO/BB ratio. They’re grooming him for relief, which isn’t anything special.
April 4, 2001:
Traded RP-R Juan Acevedo, RP-R Kane Davis, and Minor League SS Jose
Flores for SP-R Mark Leiter, RP-R Mike DeJean, and Minor League 2B Elvis Pena
Mike DeJean has a sparkling 1.92 ERA, and Mark Leiter made one good start before getting placed on the DL.
Jose Flores is batting .280 with a .359 OBP in Colorado Springs, which has got to be a hitter’s park. That’s still a bit better than Elvis Pena’s who is mucking it up to .236/.292/.297 at AAA Indianapolis. Davis is currently pitching adequate middle relief for the Rockies, as is Acevedo. This wouldn’t be a bad trade if Leiter were still healthy and/or Pena were performing.
There are talks of trading or re-signing David Weathers. I say trade him. Yes, he’s good, that’s why you can trade him. Lopes can handle a bullpen, and a pseudo-Weathers can be picked up for almost nothing. Just convert a failed starter, or bring up another AAA lifer. Almost anybody can be a good reliever.
Dean has made one good trade, a couple stinkers, signed some mediocre players to ridiculous contracts, and has yet to make plate discipline a concern of the farm system. He has acquired some pitching depth at the cost of some offense, and he hasn’t identified that OBP is the stuff of offense. Tools without baseball skills don’t win ball games. Just ask the Devil Rays.
The problem with Taylor’s trades is that he trades a lot of players when they are at their minimum value. He traded Steve Woodard, the projected ace of the staff, as a throw-in after having a couple bad months, clashing with Lopes, and getting sent to the minors. He traded Vina after he had missed essentially a year with an injury and was grumpy at the Brewers for starting Belliard over him (That one was actually Bando’s fault, he should have traded Vina the year before). He traded Valentin because he couldn’t see his value. Trading for Jaime Navarro is NEVER a good idea.
He did trade Cirillo and Wickman at their peaks, but Cirillo really could have netted so much more than 2 questionable (at the time) pitchers and a terrible catcher. Wickman netted their first baseman, which was very good. I feel he could have gotten more than a pinch hitter and low A prospect for the very good Alex Ochoa.
The good part about Taylor is that he does have a plan. I just disagree as to the term of the plan. Getting a run-controlling catcher is bad if he can’t get on base 30% of the time. Ignoring the effects of Coors when signing a player and expecting Coors-like numbers is just plain stupid. $7 million, so he can sit on the DL for 2 months and bat .270/.340/.400 (in a good year!?!)? Awful. A GM must know not to expect these things. It absolutely floors me that he chose to ignore the effect of Coors Field.
Dean must start pressing the need for plate discipline. The big league squad is plagued with an absence of it, and the minors don’t look much better. As Belliard and Burnitz are the only players who believe in taking a walk, the same small ratio of prospects believe in it, too.
As a low revenue team, the Brewers should not sign expensive mediocre veterans. They should devote one large sum to a superstar and develop the farm club by signing and trading for prospects.
I applaud Taylor for some things, but the Brewers are really on the cusp of something, unfortunately, it could be the cusp of mediocrity if Taylor does not identify the flaws in his plan soon.