Royals Acquire Mike Jacobs for Some Reason

that the outcome is no more Gload and a Shealy/Jacobs DH with Butler taking 1B duties. Please God let that be what is happening!

why would the fan shot be taken down for this?

I was initially very much against this. But I’ll soften up. I think we’re focusing too much on what Jacobs can’t do – which Bill James has written can be a flaw of bad franchises. Yea his defense is lousy. Yea, his OBA is awful. Yea, he struggles against lefties. But he does mash home runs. Even if they go down slightly at Kauffman, he does provide a proven track record of 20-30 home run power, something that is sorely needed in Kansas City.

And let’s be honest. Ryan Shealy is nearly 30 now with not much of a MLB track record to go on. Kila was a non-prospect until last year’s dream season. They are huge question marks.

I do think this means Billy Butler is on his way out and if we can spin him in a Matt Garza type deal, this might start to shape up to look pretty good. (If he deals him for Yunieksi Betancourt, I think I might jump out a window).

I think devil_fingers said it best when he said that this is probably a good short term deal for the Royals that immediately makes them better, but is probably short-sighted in the long-term and reveals a deeper flaw in Dayton’s acquisition of offensive players with low OBA. We shall see. In the meantime, it will be nice to see someone in the lineup able to hit the ball out of the ballpark.

of course, his other attributes could mean….

I just realized we have a very odd fetish for Mets minor league catchers:

Ed Hearn
Justin Huber
Mike Jacobs

Who wants him? What’s a good offer? Best fits?

We add immediate power. The thing that EVERYONE has been ranting and raving about all year on this board.

We add MLB experience.

Playoff race experience.

What about the other things? Intangibles? Leadership? Work ethic? (grit?) I threw that last one in for some of you out there.

We moved an often injured relief pitcher for a power bat. We got the upper hand in that deal.

This gives JoGui some protection in the lineup (Im joking).

.265 average with 50 BB and 100 K.

KC struggled against RHP last year and Jacobs helps them for that reason. Leo IMO is not a long term answer in the pen. IMO his(Nunez) body will continue to breakdown. I don’t know how the ballpark plays in Miami for LH but it is pretty big 345 RF, 385 Power Alley 434 CF. He hit well on the road (.872 OPS) and against RHP (.857) and is a decent platoon 1b option with Billy.

Can’t stand the move for all of the previously stated reasons.

Here’s a prediction for the now-inevitable Butler trade: Part of a package to the Rockies for Holliday. Butler is exactly the kind of guy the Rockies love, and I’m frightened to know what numbers he would put up in Colorado. Moore has a growing relationship with Boras; I’m ready to put money on Holliday being in the outfield next year.

You guys are still way, way off.

Can we still expect a Rangers-Royals trade?

   1. Josh Phelps (957)
   2. George Crowe (934)
   3. Marcus Thames (932)
   4. Olmedo Saenz (929)
   5. Luke Easter (929)
   6. Josh Willingham (929)
   7. Steve Bilko (927)
   8. Bob Hamelin (925)
   9. Dave Revering (923)
  10. Harry Anderson (920)

Tony Pena is still on the team?

the most feared 3/4 in the Central? Only time will tell

Nunez is an “Elite” reliever…what have you done Dayton?

Sam Mellinger seemed kinda down on the deal

and I apologize if it’s already been covered, but I haven’t had time to read through all the posts, but one possibility could be that Billy the Kid is optioned to Omaha to start the year in order to give Shealy the opportunity to play everyday at IB with Jacobs as the DH, or vice versa. If Shealy bombs, then you bring up BB.

This still leaves Gload on the roster, and I am doubtful that he will be released. That would mean that Teahen would have to go, IMO.

1. Mark Jacobs: awful player or the worst player ever?

2. Dayton Moore: the worst GM in baseball or the worst GM in professional sports?

could we cobble together a quick Gload/Jacobs comp?

I thought it would be good if Shealy and Jacobs were part of a LH/RH platoon except a little research reveals Shealy can’t hit for shit against righties.

See ya Ryan.

Jacobs rakes, and although the OBP sucks, we still got a big power guy for the small price of a middle reliever.

Did Nunez even have that much service time left?

The Royals didn’t give up too much for him, but a .250/.300/.500 1B with poor defense is something that can be found for $1M or less on the FA market. Now the Royals will be paying $3M+ for it, as well as giving up Nunez. Not an awful acquisition, but a poor one.

We saw what Shealy has become and cockblocking him with someone like Jacobs is inexcusable. Nunez was one of my favorites after pitching very well since he wasn’t traded for Bradley, but I guess Dayton is set on getting rid of every single trinket of the Baird era this off-season.

platoon partner platoon partner platoon partner over and over.

Its not a bad deal when we look at it that way.

we traded a non pivotal asset in Nunez who if we believe in Moore’s high success rate in finding quality relievers (hopefully not just statistical noise) then its nno loss there.

It was easy rooting for him after the Milton Bradley debacle.

There are many problems with this trade, many of which have already been enumerated above. But one which has been glossed over a bit: I think somewhere I saw some remark about getting a “proven” 25-30 HR guy. He hit 32 this past year, never more than 20 before that. He had the one bizarre power burst at the end of his fractional first season with the Mets, and got over thirty last year, and otherwise has not been that strong a power guy. There’s too strong a possibility that last year was a stastical fluke/27-yr-old peak to trust that Jacobs is going to provide this kind of pop on any regular basis. For some teams this might be an OK trade but it hardly seems the best use of resources (both financial and personnel) for the Royals at this point.

I fully expect Jacobs to regress to Gload-ian like levels this season (.250/.290/.430 is not out of the realm of possibility) and then Moore to reward him with a 2-year contract loaded with bonuses, incentives, and an option for a third year!!!

I kid, I kid.

But does anyone else find it amazing that Moore has yet to acquire ONE well-disciplined hitter at the MLB level, yet? Think about it. Not ONE.

Is it possible that GMDM got dazzled when Jacobs jacked 2 HR off the Royals in the interleague series?

I actually think this trade makes sense. Also, I believe we won this trade. Jacobs possesses obvious holes in his game (defense/baserunning/plate discipline), but anytime you can get a 35-HR potential hitting full-time, competent first baseman for an injury prone set-up man, I think you’re doing yourself a duty.

However, I hope this doesn’t signal the negatives that Will mentioned above. What about Kaaihue? Selling low on Butler? Shealy’s career as a Royal possibly over? The 1B/DH logjam? Given that Jacobs has reached his peak, I’m hoping he can reach his 2006 or 2007 levels.

I do wonder if Jacobs could be used as further tradebait.

so after some initial freaking out, I think I am settling into some sort of equilibrium regarding this trade. As long as B-Butler isn’t traded as part of this deal, I think i’m ok with it.

Nunez, yeah, he’s good but i agree that we got at least a fair return on him… if not somewhat of a bargain.

I have some hope that Jacobs can improve a bit — his minor league numbers don’t show a whole lot of promise, but have a look at his OBP numbers:

(age)

2002 (21) .289
2003 (22) .372
2004 (23) .248 (injured, only about 100 PAs)
2005 (24) .376

Overall, his minor league OBP was .342, or .055 above his batting avg. I think that shows some promise when coupled with a .264 BABIP for 2008. I think with some improvement in his BABIP, we could expect an OBP for 2009 to be around .320-.330. That coupled with SLG around .490-.520, he could be a valuable asset to the offense… as long as some guys get on base in front of him.

We got basically a stop-gap 1B that has the ability to help a team win.

Keep in mind, we only have control of him for 2 more years (I think). That would be about a year ahead of the earliest Hosmer pace. He has a hell of a better track record than Shealy or Kila. as Royals fans, we have been conditioned to think it is OK to go into a MLB season with un-proven commodities and hope that we catch lightning in a bottle. This move spits in the face of that and I like it.

I don’t care that Nunez is gone. I wrote in one of the threads that is locked before this deal went down that I hoped it was Nunez that we traded. he’s just too frail to stay healthy for his career, and HIS track record shows that.

We got a 25-30 HR hitting 1B/DH for 1-2 years for a 60-80 inning a year pitcher (at best).

The Kansas City Star’s Bob Dutton on the first notable trade of the off-season:

      The Royals wasted no time Thursday in pulling the trigger on their first major off-season move by acquiring slugging first baseman Mike Jacobs from the Florida Marlins for reliever Leo Nuñez.

      —snip—

      Jacobs is a left-handed hitter who provides the Royals with some much-needed punch for their lineup. He hit a career-high 32 homers this season in 141 games, although he batted just .247 with a .299 on-base percentage.

      “We’re delighted to acquire a productive hitter to impact the middle of our lineup,” general manager Dayton Moore said. “Mike’s a winner and has a very aggressive approach to baseball, and we look forward to his presence on our club.”

      The Royals haven’t had a player hit 32 homers since Jermaine Dye had 33 in 2000. José Guillen led the club this season with 20.

      —snip—

      Nuñez, 25, was 4-1 with a 2.98 ERA in 45 games last season. He fits better into Florida’s salary structure because he is not yet eligible for arbitration, meaning he’s in position for only a modest raise from $405,000.

      The trade raises several issues within the Royals’ existing roster. It suggests the club is not convinced that either Ryan Shealy or Kila Ka’aihue is ready for regular duty, and also appears to recognize veteran Ross Gload was overexposed.

      It also suggests the Royals might be ready to adopt a harder line in assessing Billy Butler’s development.

If not for my lingering affection for the team of my misspent youth, this might strike me as funny. But instead it’s a little sad and a little infuriating.

Mike Jacobs is not a good baseball player. He’s just not. Jacobs’ career OPS+ is 110. That number almost perfectly describes Jacobs’ current abilities, as he has been quite consistent. Here are his OPS+ numbers for the past three years: 106, 100, 109. Good for a hitter, but not for a hitter who plays first base.

Yes, he did hit 32 home runs last season. To be a good hitter with a .299 on-base percentage, you have to hit at least 40 homers. Maybe 50.

Oh, and fielding? According to the numbers, Jacobs is one of the worst-fielding first basemen in the majors. He’s lousy on bunts, he’s lousy on the balls hit to his left, he’s lousy on the balls hit to his right and he’s lousy on … wait for it … the balls hit right at him.

I don’t mean to suggest that Jacobs will be a disaster next season. He’s only 28. If he can maintain the power and add 20 walks he won’t be the worst first baseman (or DH) in the American League. But this is exactly the sort of trade a team like the Royals shouldn’t be making. They’ve got organizational strength at exactly one spot: 1B/DH. With youngsters Butler and Ka’aihue, those two hitters’ spots — along with Alex Gordon and third base — are essentially the only positions management should not be worrying about. Relievers are fungible, and Nuñez is just the sort of reliever who should be used as trade bait to fill holes on the roster.

That doesn’t mean you just give him away.

The moment I learned that Moore had acquired Jacobs, I recalled this passage from an interview Moore gave to Joe Posnanski just a few weeks ago:

      “We have to understand the importance of on-base percentage,” Moore says, and he repeats those words — “on-base percentage” — about 29 times during the interview, which is good to hear. The last five years, the Royals have finished 12th, 13th, 11th, 13th and 13th in on-base percentage, and frankly it’s really, really hard to score a lot of runs when you can’t get on base (especially when you do not have much power — and the Royals don’t. Plus they play in a big ballpark).

Moore repeated on-base percentage 29 times in one interview. Dayton Moore gets it, finally … until his very first significant offseason move, when he acquires an everyday player who will, more than anything, be a drag on the team’s on-base percentage. This is exactly the sort of thing the Royals would have done 20 years ago — those teams were perennially OBP-challenged, too — which, come to think of it, makes a lot of sense because the man making the moves 20 years ago was John Schuerholz. Moore’s mentor before he got his job with the Royals? John Schuerholz.

Moore was supposed to build Schuerholz’s winning Braves of the 1990s. But instead he’s rebuilding Schuerholz’s losing Royals of the late 1980s and early ’90s. And we had such high hopes for the young man.

from what I see in this thread quite a bit more. Why didn’t KC get Hanley Ramirez? KC only had two everyday players OPS higher than Jacobs. DAMN YOU GMDM you have crippled KC for years with this trade.

I would like the haters to take a look at the list that OPS’d around .800 and tell me who they could’ve gotten for Leo instead? Is Ryan Shealy really proven? Yes he should start the season in KC but is he a lock to be on the midseason 25. Is it that unbelieveable to believe that his hot september was fluky? At least Jacobs can hit RH for power something KC lacked with the exception of AG.

May mean that this trade has inspired some passionate reaction, but I think it truly means that we were absolutely desperate for the Series Somewhat Resembling a World Series (in which a really long rain delay was the most interesting thing that happened) to end so we could get on with baseball stuff that actually means something to someone outside eastern Pennsylvania (where they don’t cling to guns-and-religion, just cheesesteak and foul language) and the seven guys who actually bought Rays season tickets.