FanPost

What Might 2008 Look Like with Bedard and Jones?

I agree a lot with Jeff's sentiment to the left about the move making sense but not really fitting with the team as it stands because we do not have a good enough shot at overtaking the Angels and mortgaging parts of the future just to stay in second place is pretty dumb. Furthermore, trading for Bedard is "win now" but losing Jones in the process outsets nearly everything you gain from Bedard.

However, a Bedard trade wouldn't be the end of the offseason obviously, so I undertook an exercise to see if there's an easy way to make the Mariners project around 90 wins assuming that Bavasi makes a trade for Bedard.

Here's the trade that I'm working with for purposes here. I know this isn't a slamdunk proposal for Baltimore to offer, but I think it's reasonable given what we've seen. Feel free to flame me if you think differently.


Bedard traded for Wlad + Morrow + Clement + Rohrbaugh + Saunders

Why this? Well, a lot of the hubbub around the Haren deal was the pillaging of the As did from the DBacks top ten prospect list. I do not have access to the BA list for the Ms, so I used the BP list from Kevin Goldstein posted in a diary below. Clement, Wlad, Saunders and Rohrbaugh represent the 1st, 4th, 7th and 9th players on that list. With Morrow along I find this a comparable package to Haren. And we keep Jones. That's the key here.

Other Moves:
-Sign Jenkins/Wilkerson type
-Implement Ibanez/Sexson 1B platoon.

How good could this team be?

GETS WORSE
DH: Vidro regresses to expected line, circa 2006.
Projection: -10 runs (-10 RS / 0 RA)

CF: Suzuki regresses from a peakish season in 2007 to average of 2006 and 2007.
Projection: -10 runs (-10/0)

Bullpen: Drops with loss of Morrow and regression of others
Projection: -20 runs (0/+20)

STAYS SAME
C, SS, 3B, Other 4 SPs

LF: Jenkins gets pushed into a mostly fulltime role and moves to the AL so expect his OPS to decline. He wont post offensive numbers at Raul's level, but his defense will be spectacularly better. Jenkins made 20 more plays than Raul in ~130 fewer innings. I'll assume the defensive improvement offsets the offensive downgrade (I think this is a conservative estimate).

GETS BETTER
1B: Sexson + Broussard combined for about 65 runs created in 2007. Ibanez eclipsed 100. I'd assume that moving to the less stressful 1B and sitting against LHP staves off any bat decline for Raul. Also I assume that Richie bounces back somewhat and only has to face LHP (752 ops in '07 against LHP). All told I'd expect north of 100 runs created and improved defense since Raul would get the lion's share of playing time.
Projection: +50 run improvement (+40 RS / -10 RA)

2B: Lopez improves to a year between 2006 and 2007. ~680 OPS.
Projection: +20 run improvement (20/0)

RF: I covered this here but long story short, Jones projects to hit roughly as well as Guillen with much much better defense. See the post for a thorough explanation.
Projection: +20 runs improvement (0/-20)

SP: HoRam/Weaver to Bedard. Bedard regresses to average of 2006 and 2007 seasons (~100 PRC) and replaces Jeff Weaver and flotsam
Projection: +40 runs improvement (0/-40)

TOTALS
+40 runs scored = 834 runs scored
-50 runs allowed = 763 runs allowed

Pythag record: 88-74