Max wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

At the risk of picking the scab off an old wound, the Cardinals won the 2006 World Series the year after making the Mulder trade.  Using your logic, that makes it a good trade.

This isn't logic, Fors.  This is you making a bad argument . . . again.

So you admit your logic is flawed.  Congratulations Max, acceptance is the first step on the road to recovery.

"So, in the game of office politics, I reason that Mozeliak was under pressure to make the Ludwick for Westbrook trade look better than it was.  He tried to make it look like he pulled the Rolen/Holliday trick of trading for a valuable player midseason, getting that player to fall in love with St. Louis, and then signing him to a DeWitt-sized, affordable, deal.  In my opinion, Westbrook's performance this season has been poor enough that it is very hard to sell that trading Ryan Ludwick and giving up $16.5 million, plus a pro-rated portion of $11 million (or whatever his 2010 salary was) to get Westbrook's services for 2 years and 2 months was such a good deal for the Cardinals that it makes Mozeliak look good.  Rather it looks the opposite to me at this point in time."

Or maybe Moz was smart enough to know that he traded Ludwick when his value was at its zenith.  Since Moz is paid to know when to trade/not trade, maybe he knew Ludwick was headed for a steep decline in performance.  Perhaps he knew that a player who had already complained about his playing time was about to have his playing time reduced because of the sudden emergence of Jon Jay, thus making Ludwick even less satisfied.  Perhaps he even suspected that the media was inevitably going to discover that Ludwick had complained to the manager about his playing time, thus making Ludwick look like a headache and driving his value down further.

And maybe the GM felt comfortable making a move to trade for a pitcher who had been coveted by his star pitching coach for years.  And maybe the decision to re-sign that same pitcher was based not only on that pitcher's very good performance over the last 2 months of 2010, but also because that same pitching coach strongly lobbied for that pitcher's return.

"The Cardinals coveted Westbrook for several years, and pitching coach Dave Duncan is among those advocating Westbrook's return."

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_beb29f1b-3276-52a8-b66d-4f8cb8c86243.html

And perhaps in deciding to re-sign Westbrook, the team had decided to move away from the injury-prone players it had sought in the past having been so recently burned by Brad Penny.  Maybe they did their due diligence and knew that Jon Garland was headed for the knife.  And perhaps we're spending a little too much time worried about whether we got sufficient value for a 33 year old, .240 hitting left fielder.

tkihshbt wrote:

Max is interested in discussing the sausage-making of what went into the decision to re-sign him.

EXACTLY!  Thank you.

forsberg_us wrote:

Max wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

"With Westbrook currently faltering"

Faltering? He threw seven shutout innings in Tampa a week ago. I know wins don't matter in baseball, but he's one win behind the team leaders. His problem, as we've discussed in great detail, is a lack of consistency. Which is exactly what you'd expect from a guy who is and is being paid like a fourth starter.

The question is whether Westbrook is playing well enough to make signing him for 2 years at $16.5 million makes Mozeliak look good or bad.

If we're playing that game, shouldn't we also be asking if Lohse has performed well enough the last three seasons to justify a 4 year, $42M contract with full no-trade protection?

Yes, and we have done that.  I think we know more or less where each other stands on this one.  Even when Lohse was injured and stunk I thought Mozeliak made the right move, but that it looked bad in hindsight because an economic downturn very quickly made $42/4 for a middle of the rotation starting pitcher look outrageous, and a freak injury cost him, what?, about two years of effectiveness.  But the sausage-making part, that TK refers to, was consistent with what I would consider good management.

On the other hand, if you want to judge the Lohse contract in hindsight, it doesn't look like money well spent.  But to me, that kind of argument, supported as it is by a freak injury, is a bit like saying the Celtics showed poor managerial judgement in using the second pick of the NBA draft to select Len Bias, when in fact it looked like a great pick, . . . for a day or two.

Any comparison of Philly and St. Louis is a bad one. Philadelphia is the what...sixth or seventh largest media market in the country? The Cardinals cannot pull revenue like Philadelphia can. It is an impossibility.

Also, Mozeliak has worked for the Cardinals since 1995, so hiring someone who had been in-house since Jocketty started is a pretty stupid way to mess with someone.

tkihshbt wrote:

Also, Mozeliak has worked for the Cardinals since 1995, so hiring someone who had been in-house since Jocketty started is a pretty stupid way to mess with someone.

Have you ever worked in an office?  I was just talking about this with my wife yesterday.  Her supervising manager is totally professional: no gossip will be rewarded or tolerated, treatment is based upon performance, seniority, and wisdom, etc.  But her immediate boss is just the opposite: always stops by with the latest gossip, fishes about for her to reciprocate with gossip, etc.  Her immediate boss has been in his job for many years, and his immediate boss is the highly professional supervising boss.  How can he advance?

a) He can suck up to the supervising boss and hope to get her position when she is eventually promoted.

b) He can try to shoot her down and position himself to get her job when she falls.

c) He can look for another job elsewhere. 

No doubt Mozeliak, and most everyone else, faces those same choices when in an office where job-producing growth is not an option.  There clearly was a faction within the office that was gunning for Jocketty, just as there is one within the office that is gunning for La Russa, and Duncan, and Luhnow, and probably just about everyone else. 

But to be clear, I am not proposing the hypothesis that Mozeliak was hired as a way to spite Jocketty, in the way that it has been proposed that Martinez was traded to Tampa Bay, and King to Denver, as a way to spite them.  Rather, I propose the hypothesis that DeWitt wanted Jocketty out and wanted someone more beholden to him to take his place.  Why that should be is another story, but I have my guesses.

forsberg_us wrote:

If you want to have this debate fine, but let's do it with fact and not fiction.  Also, let's try to be objective.  You're on record as having no respect for Mozeliak and idolizing Jocketty.

Well actually I am on the record as saying I have had increasing respect for Mozeliak.  I don't think I ever idolized Jocketty, so let's keep the record distinct from your opinion.

As for the rest, it will have to wait, as I am out the door to take the family up the North Cascades highway to Rainy Pass.

forsberg_us wrote:

My opinion is that as happy as we all were about winning it all in 2006, in some ways it was the worse thing that happened to the organization because now that Dewitt has his championship, I'm not convinced he cares that much about getting #2 and with the financial constraints that he's imposed, I am not convinced that Jocketty could have done any better than Mozeliak has in the past 3 seasons.

I think this holds more weight then most give it credit for.  I would argue that Dewitt thinks just because things fell in place in 2006 that all he must do is wait for it to magicly happen again.  I have a hard time faulting DeWitt right now.  The Cardinals have 3 of the best pure hitters in the league.  If Wainwright wasnt hurt they would have 2 of the top pitchers in the league.  Then they have Garcia and Rasmus who are very good.  I think at the moment DeWitt thinks he has done enough.  IMO he has.  This teams isnt playing as well as it should.

tkihshbt wrote:

they might be turning the corner on producing impact players (Miller, Martinez, Cox still has a shot).

I have said in the past, with respect to the draft/Latin America, I give Dewitt credit for changing his approach and allowing the team to go above slot. Since the Kozma/Porcello debacle, the team has gone above slot for Miller, Cox and Wallace; took a shot at the kid who went to Stanford (Austin something), signed Jenkins and paid a premium for Martinez. They also initially paid big money to the kid who came down with the eye problem. I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that their 2nd and 3rd round picks this year were going to require a little bit of a premium. That's a change from past practice.

And I know Max likes to refer to it as rearranging the deck chairs, but ponying up the bucks to re-sign Holliday was a major move.

forsberg_us wrote:

When you get back to the rest, I'll add three questions for you to consider:

Crap, Teacher gave me homework on the weekend!

In the meantime, here's one for AP.  Can you tell me what's in the picture?

[img]www.flickr.com/photos/24183648@N08/5920681979/]

And another just for the halibut:

Lake Diablo overlook
[img]www.flickr.com/photos/24183648@N08/5921245788/]

Last edited by Max (7/10/2011 1:22 am)

forsberg_us wrote:

So what's my point of all of this--I can't take away the success the team had from 2000-05, and Jocketty certainly deserves credit for it.  My opinion is that as happy as we all were about winning it all in 2006, in some ways it was the worse thing that happened to the organization because now that Dewitt has his championship, I'm not convinced he cares that much about getting #2 and with the financial constraints that he's imposed, I am not convinced that Jocketty could have done any better than Mozeliak has in the past 3 seasons.

I will go further and say that 2006 confirmed DeWitt's stated belief that once a team makes the playoffs, anything can happen.

But as for the last part of you paragraph, I suspect that if we had fly on the wall access to what was going on between Jocketty and DeWitt, we might discover that they disagreed on at least two (related) things . . . and this is pure speculation on my part, but it makes sense.  They disagreed on the budget constraints that DeWitt wanted to impose, and they disagreed on how to deal with Pujols's extension.  So, it's not so much that Jocketty could not have done any better--which may well be true--but that Jocketty wasn't going to do it DeWitt's way and he got fired because of that.  But I repeat, that's pure speculation on my part.

"I suspect that if we had fly on the wall access to what was going on between Jocketty and DeWitt, we might discover that they disagreed on at least two (related) things . . . and this is pure speculation on my part, but it makes sense.  They disagreed on the budget constraints that DeWitt wanted to impose, and they disagreed on how to deal with Pujols's extension.  So, it's not so much that Jocketty could not have done any better--which may well be true--but that Jocketty wasn't going to do it DeWitt's way and he got fired because of that."

The budget constraints yes, but Pujols' extension had nothing to do with it.

In the interest of full disclosure, this information comes from two completely separate sources, both of whom I consider reliable.  Obviously, one is Chad.  The other is one of the attorneys I work with who just happened to be neighbors with Jocketty, and with whom he had become good friends.  Both told me the exact same story suggesting either a pretty massive coincidence or its truth.

After 2007 Jocketty wanted to dump a bunch of money into free agent pitching.  The 2007 rotation had been awful (see above).  Dewitt resisted, pointing to the $20M in dead money between Carpenter and Mulder.  Jocketty also proposed trading the last real asset the farm system had--Rasmus--for pitching.  In fact, the Cardinals apparently had a deal worked out to trade Rasmus and a couple of other players for Baltimore's Eric Bedard.  Dewitt again said no.  Jocketty was told to fix the problem from within (as Luhnow suggested was possible) or find low dollar solutions.  Jocketty resisted and, as you correctly stated, was fired for not doing it Dewitt's way.

There are a lot you can take from how this played out, but the reality is that neither side was correct.  The system didn't have the talent to fix the problem.  Trading Rasmus for Bedard would have been a complete disaster.  Bedard was moved later that off-season to Seattle for Adam Jones and others.  In 4 seasons, Bedard has yet to pitch more than 15 games or 100 innings (he might finally eclipse those numbers this season, but he's back on the DL) and missed the 2010 season entirely.  You can argue that perhaps Rasmus could have been traded for a better option, but the reality is that if Jocketty had been given authority to do what he wanted, he'd have saddled the team with Mark Mulder, version 2.

I think I've been fairly consistent with respect to my views on Dewitt, but at the end of the day, it is his team.  Jocketty was an employee, and if he wasn't willing to work within the parameters established by his boss, then he deserved to be fired.  I think it's safe to say that if any of us to our boss, "no, I'm not going to do my job the way you want me to," that we would meet with the same fate.

But I thought the issue we were debating was whether or not Moz has done a good job.  Again, not saying I'm a huge fan of every decision he's made, but given that he took over a below .500 team that had less talent than it had had in any of the 6 seasons prior and a farm system that was virtually barren, taking the team to 86, 91 and 86 wins and holding a share of first place a day shy of the All-Star Break isn't a complete disaster.  In fact, overall, I think he's done pretty well.  Room for improvement, absolutely.  But he could have done a lot worse.

forsberg_us wrote:

"I suspect that if we had fly on the wall access to what was going on between Jocketty and DeWitt, we might discover that they disagreed on at least two (related) things . . . and this is pure speculation on my part, but it makes sense.  They disagreed on the budget constraints that DeWitt wanted to impose, and they disagreed on how to deal with Pujols's extension.  So, it's not so much that Jocketty could not have done any better--which may well be true--but that Jocketty wasn't going to do it DeWitt's way and he got fired because of that."

The budget constraints yes, but Pujols' extension had nothing to do with it.

In the interest of full disclosure, this information comes from two completely separate sources, both of whom I consider reliable. . . .   I think it's safe to say that if any of us to our boss, "no, I'm not going to do my job the way you want me to," that we would meet with the same fate.

Thanks for the story.  That's along the lines of what I suspected.

As for Pujols, just because it does not appear in the story does not indicate that it wasn't a factor (doesn't mean it was, either of course).  My reasoning goes like this: 2007 was around the year that Pujols began eclipsing records by guys like Gehrig, if I remember correctly, and his future, and whether (and how) he was going to be a Cardinal for life must have been an enormous unreferenced elephant sitting in the room during each conversation on budget, roster, and the team's future.  All I am saying is that DeWitt surely thought about the issue, and after seeing the contract he gave Edmonds, on top of everything else, might well have thought, "this Jocketty is one of those 'player's GMs', and is pretty independent minded, too . . . I'm gonna need someone much more pliable to my way of thinking by the time it comes to negotiating Pujols's extension, if only to make sure that I do not get the blame if we are unable to resign him'.

Last edited by Max (7/10/2011 11:40 am)