Ricciardi Trade History Clarified

There seems to be much confusion regarding the analysis in this morning's column of J.P. Ricciardi's track record as a trader. The list of 17 trades that I used was only those trades in which he was trying to maximize the return on a well-paid starting player or pitcher that had already been established in the majors.

We have always agreed in the column through the years that Ricciardi is at his best when dealing for undervalued players -- especially pitchers -- and getting the most out of them. But Halladay in no way qualifies in the same category as trading Mark Hendrickson.

The 17 trades were, in chronological order, were sending away 1-Billy Koch, 2-Alex Gonzalez, 3-Paul Quantrill, 4-Brad Fullmer, 5-Pedro Borbon (maybe a little sketchy), 6-Dan Plesac (and yes I would question that Cliff Politte was a good move), 7-Raul Mondesi, 8-Felipe Lopez, 9-Shannon  Stewart (and you can't use the commutativbe theory for Ted Lilly because Bobby Kielty does not qualify as an established player for purposes of this study), 10-Orlando Hudson and Miggy Batista, 11-Corey Koskie, 12-Shea Hillenbrand, 13-Scott Schoenweis, 14-Terry Adams (also sketchy), 15-Eric Hinske, 16-Troy Glaus, 17-Dave Eckstein.

I was not ignoring good trades, but Halladay is a big-time property and they need maximum in return. Ricciardi has not proven he's the man for the job.

R-Griff   

Comments

[jeremy]

I would say that none of those trades are comparable to trading a player of halladay's calibre. Was Mondesi not just a salary dump?

[Penguin]

If JP is not the absolute worst GM in baseball, I can't think who might be and heaven help those ball clubs with a GM who has a worse track record of trades and free-agent signings. JP has had some success at drafting, apparently with some at least promising young pitchers. But where are the position players? With the exception of Travis Snider, where are the potential outfields, not to mention other position players? We got lucky with Marco S, who was expected to be a useful utility infielder, otherwise we would still be looking for a day-to-day SS (much as I love Johnny Mac).

[Sivart]

He hasn't exactly had to trade a superstar yet, and quite frankly is there a right gm for the job? Even the great twins did poor so far in their return for Santana, if anything it comes down to the quality of the scouting staff that the gm has.

[Andrew]

I'm no fan of JP, but this "study" you're claiming to do in your column has some serious issues. You judge the value of the players traded away by whether they are still in the majors. Yet you judge the value of the players the Jays got by whether they are still with the Jays. How does that make any sense? Whether the player is still with the Jays tells us absolutely nothing about what his value in the trade was.

[mike]

Richard - your explanation doesn't match your analysis.

For a specific example, consider Felipe Lopez and Dave Bush.

Lopez is considered an established player at the time of his trade - even though he had fewer than 500 ABs in the majors at that time (with a .240/.293/.399 batting line for those ABs).

At the same time, Dave Bush is not considered an established major leaguer at the time of his trade. Even though he had a 4.15 career ERA at the time, having pitched almost 250 innings and 40 starts.

Was Bush ignored because he returned Overbay and Lopez included because he returned Jason Arnold?

And then as far as evaluation of trades ... Dan Plesac for Cliff Politte is considered a bad trade?

Which of these two relievers would you rather have?
Pitcher A: 57 IP, 3.61 ERA, 57 K, and 19 BB
Pitcher B: 23 IP, 4.70 ERA, 27 K, and 12 BB

Those are the lines for Politte (A) and Plesac (B) after the trade and before Plesac became a free agent at the end of the season. I know I think the Jays came out way ahead in that deal.

[mike]

Penguin ... have you seen Adam Lind play this year? He's one of those potential outfielders you're looking for. If you're going to criticize the GM (and there are many reasons for which one can do so), at least don't do it by implying he didn't draft one of the best young outfielders in baseball this year.

[jon mcdonald]

Why exactly does Bobby Kielty not count as an established player, but Felipe Lopez does?

Kielty was 4th in rookie of the year voting before the Jays acquired him. By the time the Jays had traded Kielty, he'd played in almost 300 games.

[norm depalma]

i wouldn't judge JP necessarily by his trades of 'established players' in the past...he is a lousy GM because he fielded a team according to Moneyball principles, principles which only work when steroid use is rampant.

this year, he actually has done a decent job but for one little omission---his failure to trade for a good lefty bat like adam laroche has cost the team probably 3 games in the win column and has doomed the team to another mediocre season.

[Ryan]

Pet peeve: most of the criticism of "Moneyball Principles" revolves around the idea that the "principles" were about building a team around walks and homeruns. Moneyball was about identifying inefficiencies in how talent is/was being evaluated. At the time, that meant that OBP was being undervalued and 'tools' were being overvalued.

Applying Moneyball Principles now would mean identifying what the inefficiencies are NOW. Since there are many GMs who now highly value OBP and youth, that COULD mean that older players who hit homeruns are being undervalued - see Russell Branyan or Andruw Jones for example.

[Jack]

JP doesn't suck because he followed Moneyball principles - it's precisely the opposite.

There was nothing Moneyball about the Vernon Wells, Alex Rios, AJ Burnett, and BJ Ryan contracts. Each of those contracts was the old-school thinking of a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Moneyball, at its core fundamental, is maximizing the value of the dollars available in your budget. To say that a GM that accomplishes this goal is bad is to completely misunderstand the role of the GM. To say that Moneyball represents anything else is to have never read and understood the book.

[William]

First of all i'm no Riccardi fan, i've been calling for his firing for at least 3 years and simply put at times it's embrassing being a fan and having this clown as GM. However in fairness not all of his moves have been poor. As Richard alluded to a couple weeks ago, moneyball has run it's course and it's no longer new. Certainly in it's time it did revolutionize scouting and the way players are evaluated but now all 30 teams see the value of OBP and other stats that were considered obscure at the time.

JP's major flaw as a GM has always been falling in love with a guy (the moneyball type) and pursuing him to the point when he's over the hill and no longer wanted (see Thomas and Wilkerson). He's an arrogant clown that needs to go......I say hold on to Doc for the rest of the season, can JP and then let a real GM have a chance at righting the ship

[norm depalma]

i have read and understood the moneyball book...it is a load of half-truths and disingenuous claims.
billy beane's 'success' was predicated on fielding a team of cheap, slow-running, bases on balls taking hitters to surround a core of sluggers who would drive in the slowpokes with three run homers. no running, sacrificing or situational hitting required because we will just wait for the sluggers to come through.
unfortunately, that strategy works only when those sluggers are taking steroids. when they are not, you leave men on first and second too often and you become the current version of the A's.

yes, it is true that billy claims that moneyball just means discovering undervalued players. NO KIDDING! everyone knows that. the problem with billy is that he is only able to discover the 'undervalued' in a steroid era---he is too dumb to adjust to post steroid era... for example, he knows that he should be trying to pick up players whose fielding prowess is undervalued. but since he relies on stats and not scouting, and since fielding stats are notoriously unreliable, he is unable to identify said players.
hence my claim that moneyball is a load of junk...

[norm depalma]

as for jp, his record is mixed..but there enough negatives and enough time spent here to justify his canning...asap...

do i trust him to get the right package for doc in a trade? no chance... unless he is trading with billy beane...

[Jack]

Norm, clearly you are confused. First, Billy Beane is not the one that coined the term Moneyball, nor is he the one who can make legitimate claims to the meaning of the word.

Michael Lewis (the author, of many books, particularly with a focus on economics / finance, but also sports) is the one that coined the term.

Secondly, after writing your second post, please explain how that is consistent with your first post in any way.

Your second post implies that Moneyball follows one of two definitions: building a team around walks and home runs or else finding market inefficiencies. Your first states implies JP was a failure because he followed those principles.

JP has never built a team around walks and home runs - only once in his tenure have they had more walks than the AL average. Furthermore, overpaying for players (more specifically, signing extensions when there was no need) has been one of JP's biggest failings.

Put the shovel down and stop digging.

[norm depalma]

Jack: Try reading carefully and looking for nuance. And where your shovel metaphor comes from I have no idea. A bit too bucolic for the topic, no?

First, I never said Beane coined the term moneyball.
Second, my posts are consistent.

In short, the book Moneyball is a crock. Lewis, in his quest to find the new new new thing (see his previous sophomoric, yet highly readable drivel)tried to marry his twin loves of finance and sports. He latched on to the sabermetrics phenomenom and found an irascible, 'complicated' hero figure, Beane, to drive the narrative. But he kind of forgot to do something called basic research. If he would have spoken to other baseball pros, and/or done some rudimentary analysis he may have realized that Beane's strategems were bunk/half truths. (Due to the steroid reasons I mention above).

As for JP, he followed Moneyball principles by signing classic Moneyball players to 'get on base- who ended up clogging the bases waiting for the three run homer that never came, or at best came enough to warrant 86 win seasons.
players like, Matt Stairs, frank catallanato, brad wilkerson, jason phillips, frank menechinno, shea hillebrand.

as for 'violating' moneyball principles by overpaying for wells, rios, ryan etc, see beane's signings of eric chavez and others. That's the point really...Beane and JP followed one basic principle---signing slow white guys on the cheap...but they also spent as much as their respective budgets allowed on the few 'stars' they needed....and they didn't spend wisely---and somehow out of this melange of madness was concocted this myth of genius at work. Moneyball---which in reality is one idea, now made obsolete post steroids.

look at beane's genius at work today---signing retread former steroid heads and overpaying for coors field stats studs---leading to another pathetic season.

[William]

Norm, i think you do have a lot of good points, i'm not sure I agree with you saying that lack of steroids is the reason 'moneyball' no longer works but I agree with what your saying. This all started with Paul Godfrey, if you remember correctly at the time the Jays were cutting payroll and Godfrey wanted to find a GM that would come in cut costs, and build a winner cheaply. At the time the organization that was succesful at doing this was the A's, so Godfrey took one of Billy Beane's right hand men and decided to try and make the Jays the Oakland A's of the East.

Over the years Ricciardi openly talked about the fact he placed no value on speed, bunting, or 'small ball'. HE was the one that went out and got big slow boppers (Hillenbrand, Glaus, Thomas, Overbay, Wilkerson etc), only when that failed miserably did he begin to change his tune. Even when wells was performing Riccardi often spoke publicly of how he needed to improve his OBP and take more pitches (the funny thing is he didn't then and does now!).

In my opinion 'moneyball' alone never worked (A's won 1 playoff series in all those years) and doesn't work now because the rest of the league has caught on, here's the kicker if a guy's main skill is taking walks how about this idea THROW HIM STRIKES ! It was a good and revolutionary way of thinking, but no organization will be successful using this philosophy alone, it must be combined with traditional baseball analysis.

[norm depalma]

Thanks, William. It was nice to see the jays turn it around last year when Cito came on, brought up Lind, and preached, if not small, then at least smaller ball.
This year started off with a bang as Snider filled the left field and lefty hitting spots nicely. A month into the season JP should have assessed the situation and made one simple move, get another good lefty bat. he sat on his hands. And when Snider slumped and was sent down, JP HAD TO go out and find a decent lefty hitting replacement. he sat on his hands again. meanwhile, the pirates continued their fire sale getting rid of all star Mclouth. At that point, we could have picked up Adam Laroche for two decent prospects. JP again did nothing.

and now season is basically over.

[VitoFromHamilton]

The only thing that will mollify my frustration concerning the disaster that has become the Toronto Blue Jays is the severance of JP Ricciardi.