John Sickels Likes Matt Holliday - Brett Wallace Deal for Oakland

Though that can be nullified with “foshiggidale.”

He’s the bee’s knees. That’s how you people spoke back then, right?

in the bottom of the 14th inning at Safeco.

you should also include the value of four months of Holliday. He wasn’t great, but he was still better than replacement value.

While Mortensen needs some work on his command (like Greg Smith), he does throw a sinker, which should give him a lot of ground balls. Pitchers can make it pretty far on ground balls. Smith, on the other hand, had a GB/FB ratio of 0.75 last season (but yeah, he does have that awesome pick-off move).

There are legitimate baseball folks (like Sickels) who think that Wallace is a tremendous hitter. If he puts up a line of .300/.380/.500, and he plays average 3B, he’s a star.

Now, I don’t think it’s likely that he’ll hit like that, but it seems to be possible. I also don’t think it’s likely that he’ll stick at 3B, but it’s also possible.

CarGon is a very good CF who might hit enough to be a very valuable player. Wallace is likely to be a very good hitter, who might field well enough (at 3B) to be a very valuable player. He could hit so well that he’ll be an asset at 1B or DH, but that would involve him getting to pony-land hitting performance, from what I can tell. I think any projection of who’s going to be more valuable over the course of his career, at this point, is almost entirely guesswork and intuition.

There’s just no way we’re going to get anything like that for 3 months of Matt Holliday. Given what we had to trade, I think that it went very well.

Since the trade deadline is approaching, you could throw out some ideas for trades that would net the Athletics a top 10 hitting prospect, but I think you would probably have to start with Brett Anderson (or maybe Cahill) as someone we give up.

Gonzalez’s career OBP in the minors is 42 points lower than Wallace’s, while his SLG is only 18 points higher. There’s no basis for implying that Gonzalez is or will be a better hitter than Wallace.

The Harden trade. But really, what would we get for RIch now?? his 5 ERA and health, really has him at a 0 value

Donaldson has refound his hitting stroke that he lost in the Cubs’ system; Patterson is in the majors and still might be a good player; Gallagher, even after slumping and getting a room in the Billy Beane Doghouse still netted the team Hairston; and, FWIW, Murton got us Wimberley.

Harden is giving up homers this year at a Cahillian rate. I have no problems at all with the Harden deal, even in retrospect.

Relievers grow on trees.

Power-hitting middl infielders don’t.

not a huge difference. Rodriguez is leading the PCL in OPS so he can’t be all smoke and mirrors. I don’t know about his D or how good he was as a SS. What don’t you like about him his upside besides his lack of hitting in the majors in a small sample?

I would keep Wuertz and have a really affordable set up guy for the next two years instead of Sean Rodriguez. I’m not impressed….

but only because the Cardinals can’t play a DH and 1B isn’t exactly a position of need on their roster.