Colletti's last job was Assistant General Manager to Brian Sabean, who still has a job and bottoms our list at #30. So his pedigree is not the best. (Speaking of pedigree, here's a good resource for "GM bloodlines.")What has Colletti done since becoming the Dodgers' GM prior to the start of the 2006 season? He has consistently mishandled an astonishing core of young players that should have his team in position to compete in the National League West for years to come. Here's a snappy little quotation I found by way of Bucs Dugout:
''Do I use VORP?" Colletti said, referring to one such sabermetric tool, Value Over Replacement Player. ''I may be using it and not even know it, and if I am, it's nobody's business. There are a lot of different criteria in judging players. I think I use, um, esoteric qualitative mathematical review times five. That's one of them."If I'm a Dodger fan at that point I cringe and recoil. We've just gone from one of the most promising baseball minds to someone who snidely dismisses modern statistical analysis. Buckle your seat belts, right? Well, not exactly. Even though Colletti comes in at #26, it's because everyone else is better, not because he's been so bad. He's been bad, but it could be a lot worse.
In the interest of not duplicating work and taking credit for it, I'll merely link to a few excellent sources. First, a GM Profile from Chatterbalks. Said profile is written ironically, with every single transaction being called a "great move." However, some of the moves were pretty good. For instance, dealing Milton Bradley to the A's for Andre Ethier worked out pretty well. And other deals he has made that could have gone horribly wrong have been merely pointless in the end. A sign of a bad GM is trading good young prospects for questionable relievers, but even Theo Epstein does that sometimes.
The aforementioned Bucs Dugout has a good summary of Colletti's mistakes:
Colletti's 2006-2007 offseason was awful. Rather than being satisfied with the one good year he got out of the rickety Garciaparra, Colletti resigned him to a two-year contract, even though he had terrific prospects (Andy LaRoche and James Loney) ready or nearly ready at both positions Garciaparra played, plus another useful and fairly young third baseman in Wilson Betemit. He signed the nearly worthless Luis Gonzalez to play the outfield even though he had Matt Kemp banging on the door there. He signed Jason Schmidt to a deal that seemed reasonable at the time but that so far has failed to generate any returns.The way Colletti handled his young position players in 2007 was really criminal. James Loney and Andy Laroche had to make way for Garciaparra. The useful young Wilson Betemit was dealt to the Yankees for veteran reliever Scott Proctor. Juan Pierre and Luis Gonzalez forced Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp into the background. On any given night, there would be three young players on the bench with more ability than their on-field positional counterparts. The Dodgers should have won the division easily. Instead, they finished in 4th place.
This year the youngsters are getting more time, but only because Nomar Garciaparra is injured. Ironically, a young player in Blake Dewitt has "won" the third base job due to overlapping injuries in spring training. But now he is just blocking the far-more-talented Andy Laroche, who is being forced to learn first base in AAA. Meanwhile, the $44 million mistake, Juan Pierre, and the the $36 million mistake, Andruw Jones, are daily stealing playing time from Ethier and Kemp. Again, only injury has saved the Dodgers' stupidity there.
But Colletti is to be commended. He has not short-sightedly dealt away Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, Jonathan Broxton, Ethier, Kemp, LaRoche, Russell Martin, Chin-Lung Hu or James Loney in search of "proven veterans."
Still, as Bucs Dugout points out, "The 2007 Dodgers won just 82 games, and their success was due almost entirely to players acquired before Colletti arrived, some of whom he'd tried to block in the offseason... The only Colletti acquisitions who really played well were relievers Saito and Rudy Seanez and reserve infielder Betemit. Furcal, Ethier, Gonzalez and Randy Wolf were all mediocre; Pierre, Hendrickson, David Wells, Brett Tomko and any number of other part-timers were just awful."
Not trading away youngsters is a plus, even if it's just non-activity, but acquiring crappy players with which to block them is typical of a bad GM. Colletti's best move was Takashi Saito, but the signings of Pierre and Jason Schmidt more than make up for that. He gave too much money to Rafael Furcal, probably too much money to Hiroki Kuroda, and as it turns out, far too much money to Andruw Jones. Some of these contracts are debatable, but when they serve to block obviously superior and much cheaper young players, it's just stupid. Time will tell whether Colletti will get good value for those youngsters, whether on the field or in trades, but it is almost certain that he will hand out more large contracts to mediocre players this offseason. As a Brian Sabean protege, it's all he knows.
4 comments:
You have to pick Jim Bowden next. You just have to. The guy is awful.
His best SP draft pick ever in 16 years is Brett Tomko. He's never drafted a single starting MI ever. He's drafted 2 AS ever--Adam Dunn (made it once) and B.J. Ryan (traded for a brief rental of Juan Guzman).
The excuses constantly made for him are all claptrap--it was all Marge Schott's fault (explain Bob Quinn), he's never had the payroll (he was top 6 in payroll in Cincy for 4 years), he inherited nothing in DC (the only value the team has had the last 4 years has been it's bullpen, Cordero, Rauch, Rivera, Ayala, Majewski--100% inherited).
Just this week he had to postpone the return of his opening day starter (Odalis Perez--you have to pick him next for that alone!!!) from the DL because he forgot the rule that you can't churn through starting pitchers sending them down to the minors between starts. He tried to do that with Tyler Clippard and lost 9 days of time he had intended Perez to be on the DL.
The good deals the Pittsburgh blogger gives him credit for are overrated at best. His list:
--1-year rental of Soriano for Wilkerson and Terrmel Sledge and Armando Galarraga. We were terrible in 06 with Soriano, so what was the point? Wilkerson and Sledge turned out to be terrible, but Galarraga's not clear yet. If he keeps up what he's doing now, this could end up being a bad to terrible deal down the road. Of course, we did get 2 compensatory picks, so if those work out that's not nothing. But regardless, a 1-year rental to get over 70 wins is a high point?
--trading Bray and Majewski for Kearns and FLop. First, Kearns and Lopez are terrible. I don't care if he traded Dyan Cannon to get them. They are terrible. Majewski was hurt. Bowden was a lying sack of shit unloading a hurt player. Bray could still be the best player involved in that deal.
--Zimmerman. I love him, but he's looking a lot more like a good 22 HR guy with a great glove than the Mike Schmidt we were sold. And remember, he passed on Braun and Tulowitzki.
--Adept at reclamation projects. GIMME A BREAK. The guy brings 10,000 Simontacchis, Jerome Williamses, and Mike Basciks into camp and finds one Redding and you wanna crown him king? Dmitri Young? Nice guy, but not even in the top half of NL 1Bs offensively, a horrid defender, and oh by the way OF COURSE he's hurt. And 10 mil over 2 years? Last year, that was an adept reclamation project. This year it's stupid money for a fat, aging, fat, not that good fat guy.
--Schneider and Church for Lastings. I hope this one works out, but Lastings looks like a 4th OF to me. Can't play an even average CF, and you can't win with 12-15 HR and .270 from a corner OF. And have did you see what Ryan Church did batting in a lineup that didn't use Dmitri Young as a clean up hitter?
--Elijah Dukes. I'm rooting for him, but geez. What a risk. Glenn Gibson's a real prospect too BTW.
I got so worked up I forgot the most important part:
--2008 will he his SEVENTH CONSECUTIVE non-winning season
--16 years, 1 playoff appearance
--5 winning seasons total (2 of which were in 94 and 95 almost entirely with a team inherited from the Bob Quinn WS winner).
That's a pitiful bottom-line.
Steve, thanks a lot for your comment. It's like a whole post in itself and it helps me make my decision.
I agree that the reasons Bowden gets praise are kind of weak. He's definitely in the bottom third of GMs.
If anyone else has a strong, well-articulated opinion, I'd love to hear it.
I would like to defend Jim Bowden. I think that in fact he's done a fairly good job with the Nationals, and that he is actually one of the top ten GMs in the game. I think there are counterarguments to be made in favor of every one of the trades Steven biel has railed against.
First, Soriano: No matter what Armando Galaragga does, it shouldn't impact the grading of that trade; he was a second-tier prospect, a 24-year-old who had yet to succeed in A-ball. The trade was only "bad" because, as Biel said, the Nationals weren't going anywhere that year, but the actual value of Brad Wilkerson (and Sledge, who did nothing for Texas) for Soriano was fairly even at the time--Wilkerson's numbers were not as good as Soriano's but Soriano played in a good hitters park and Wilkerson in a bad one--and of course Soriano has been a much better player than Wilkerson over the last two-and-a-half years. Also, you cannot dismiss the importance of the draft picks the Nats got for Soriano. The two pitchers they got with those picks, Josh Smoker and Jordan Zimmerman, were rated as excellent prospects and although Smoker has been injured and terrible this year, Jordan Zimmerman has morphed into one of the best rhp prospects in the game, and maybe the best prospect in the Nats system.
As for the infamous Kearns/Lopez trade, only bad luck has kept that trade from being one of the biggest steals of this decade. Hindsight is 20/20, and yes both of those players haven't had success in Washington, but at the time of the trade, both of those players were above-average regulars at their positions--Felipe Lopez had a 118 OPS+ the year before the trade and was hitting a respectable .268/.355/.394 at the time of the deal, while Kearns was at .274/.351/.492--and at the time of the deal, the Nats gave up two relievers, and two middling prospects in Daryl Thompson and Brendan harris. The Nationals also got Ryan Wagner, a former first-round draft pick, in the deal--at the time of the trade, Baseball Prospectus thought that they had gotten in the best three players in that deal. It should have been a total steal.
Certainly, even with the crappiness of Lopez and Kearns, and the fact that Wagner never amounted to anything, this trade is at worst a wash-out. Majewski has been hurt most of this year, but in 2006-2007 he allowed 36 runs in 38 innings for the Reds, and Bill Bray has become a solid specialist, something handy to be sure but also something you can usually find pretty easily (see: Pedro Feliciano). Brendan Harris has become a solid role player...but not for the Reds. And Daryl Thompson has looked great this year, but he has broken out in a way nobody could have predicted two years ago. And even with all this said, Austin Kearns was an above average hitter last year (103 OPS+) whose numbers were brought down by his home park.
Also, there's no way anyone can spin Ryan Zimmerman into a bad move. This year aside, he became INSTANTLY one of the best third basemen in the game. He's a good hitter, and he's also only 23 years old, so presumably he can be the face of the Nationals for at least the next decade. A low-average power-hitting, great-defense 3b? That sounds like Eric Chavez. And that's his FLOOR. If he continues to develop, there's no reason why Zimmerman can't challenge David Wright for the title of best NL 3b over the years to come.
The Lastings Milledge trade, far from being an indictment on Bowden, has shown his strength, which is his willingness to take risks on high upside players who could help the next good Washington team. Wily Mo Pena and Elijah Dukes were aquired for pennies on the dollar, and although Church has been great for the Mets, Milledge could still be a star. Along a similar vein, the Jesus Flores aquisition was no accident; Bowden knew he was taking a risk rushing him to the majors, but he liked his upside, and so far Flores has rewarded him (and embarrassed the Mets).
And what's wrong with throwing a bunch of reclamation projects at the wall when you're rebuilding? That actually is an excellent strategy, and similar to his gutsy position-player moves. Even though Tim Redding (and maybe Odalis Perez) are pretty much the only ones pitchers who have worked out, compare that approach to what teams like Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Kansas City have done in the past few years, spending millions of dollars on average talent like Aubrey Huff or Matt Morriss.
In Cincinnati, that may have been his weakness; their rotations at the turn of the century relied too heavily on reclamation projects, guys like Ron Villone, Steve Avery, and Steve Parris, who was the best the Reds could throw out there against the Mets in game 163 of 1999.
But rather than anchoring the staff, Redding, Bacsik, Micah Bowie, Simontacci, etc, were, and in the case of Redding and Perez, are, simply placeholders for the tremendous pitching talent that's starting to make its way through the Nationals system. Already, John Lannan, Jason Bergmann, and Shawn Hill have shown signs of success, and in the next few years, Jordan Zimmerman, Aaron Crow, Colin Balester, et al, may join them.
His first year at the helm, he made a lot of mistakes, trading Juan Rivera for Jose Guillen, and signing Castilla and Guzman, but also, nobody had bought the team yet, so he was still handicapped by the team's lame duck status.
Last year, his re-signing of Belliard and Dmitri Young drew head scratching, but Nick Johnson's continued injuries make the Young signing look reasonable, and Belliard's contract isn't terrible and he's not blocking anyone better, either.
Bowden is in fact quietly sowing the seeds for an excellent young Nationals team. Much like the Rays' front office team (although granted he's not as good as they are), Bowden is avoiding any major mistakes while quietly stockpiling premier talent through the draft and buy-low trades.
Also, you cannot say that any of Bowden's success would be riding on his predecessors; the only players of note left from Minaya's regime are Rauch, Cordero, and maybe Nick Johnson. Most of the nationals top prospects are also draft picks over the last few years.
How embarrasing would it be if Zimmerman and two ex-mets (milledge and flores) headline the next great Nationals team? It could happen, and it's all to Bowden's credit.
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