DM says Kendall cheapest good option available

I like this. It's like the kid who's really excited his dad bought him a 15 year old BMW with 250K miles and thinking about how superior it makes him to the kid with a new Corolla.

I kid.

about 2 years ago WURoyal 10 comments 0 recs |

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I see two words wrong with that sentence

“cheapest” and “good.”

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by RoyalsRetro on Dec 14, 2009 10:39 AM EST reply actions 1 recs

Reasonable enough

GMDM wanted a veteran mentor rather than just someone to receive pitches in the major leagues. I can see arguments for and against, but it certainly isn’t a terrible reason to pursue Jason Kendall and sign him to a 2-year contract.

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by cmkeller on Dec 14, 2009 11:30 AM EST reply actions

Wouldn't Buck have been the cheapest good option?

You really should get professional help. Your obsession with ND football is not healthy. ---Dr. lookingdeadred

by averagegatsby on Dec 14, 2009 1:13 PM EST reply actions

Buck would not have been a "good" option, either

There aren’t really a ton of “good” catchers at the MLB level right now…there are some amazing ones like Mauer, and then a whole lot of mediocrity without much in between.

If we had signed Kendall to the deal Buck got from the Jays (one year, $2MM), I think you would see a lot less criticism of the Kendall signing, because Moore would have basically replaced Buck and Olivo with a higher OBP player at about 60% of what either of them would have cost. That would have been a reasonable move. Heck, the first half of Kendall’s contract isn’t that bad—$2.25 mil is still over a mil cheaper than what either Olivo (through his option) or Buck (through arbitration) would have gotten. It is the backloaded second year of the contract that makes the deal suck.

This would depend on how much of a raise Buck would have gotten in arbitration (though Royals players under Moore tend to sign rather than going to arbitration), but Olivo may have ended up coming cheaper than Buck. In any case, it would have been the smarter move to retain just one of them or to even just pick up some random backup catcher and give B. Pena the chance to prove he deserves to catch 120 games a season.

by DarthYoshi on Dec 14, 2009 1:20 PM EST up reply actions

Note that Buck and Olivo both project to be about a win better than Kendall in 2010

and, yes, that includes defense

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by Matt Klaassen on Dec 14, 2009 2:01 PM EST up reply actions

Yeah, it's not so much Kendall that I hate

It’s the price that DM paid for him that I really, really hate.

by AxDxMx on Dec 14, 2009 2:11 PM EST up reply actions

+1

by DarthYoshi on Dec 14, 2009 2:25 PM EST up reply actions

I've gone ahead and plugged this into my AutoComplete:

Yeah, it’s not so much _________ that I hate It’s the price that DM paid for him that I really, really hate.

I get sick of typing it out over and over again after each of Dayton’s moves. This way I just have to plug in the new player’s name each time.

Yeah, it’s not so much Gload that I hate It’s the price that DM paid for him that I really, really hate.

Yeah, it’s not so much Bloomquist that I hate It’s the price that DM paid for him that I really, really hate.

etc., etc.

"Now…put that in your [BLEEP]ing pipe and smoke it." -Hal McRae

"I was doing this when BJ was in his father's nutsack." -Renzo Gracie

by Sweep_the_Leg on Dec 14, 2009 3:58 PM EST up reply actions

Right on.

Can say it about way too many deals, excluding the deals where you also hate the player acquired.

by hippdoghipp on Jan 4, 2010 6:05 PM EST up reply actions

...hence why I said the smarter move would have been to just retain one of them

…or to just give the job to Brayan Pena and let him prove he can or can’t hack it.

Kendall may not be worth quite $2.25MM in 2010, but he almost certainly is not going to be worth $3.75MM in 2011, which is what we should really be focusing on, with Guillen, Cruz, and the Professor coming off the books.

by DarthYoshi on Dec 14, 2009 2:24 PM EST up reply actions