Too bad about Wily Mo. I will always have a soft spot for him and his oddly spelled name, his terrible penmanship, and his one tool ability. But man, think of what he could have achieved if he could have put that power to good use. I saw him hit one out of Fenway a couple of years ago on TV that cleared the Green Monster by about 40 feet.

I almost put Gomes and Kearns on here. Now that I look at it, I don’t know why I left Kearns off. Not much of an average, but he gets on base and plays good defense. In other words, he’s exactly the type of player I want to see Dayton going after—OBP and defense are relatively cheap and effective at improving a baseball team. Actually, he’s another player due for a good old fashioned “BABIP regression to the mean” comeback season. He put up a .251 and a .258 in 2008 and 2009, respectively. If his BABIP goes back up to around .300, that average will improve to around the .260s. I’d take that, especially if he brings some of his power back from those early seasons.

I left Gomes off because I don’t know how to feel about him. His bat varies pretty wildly from year to year. His best year was 2005, where he hit .282/.375/.534 with 21 HRs. That’s pretty awesome. But then he was below average the next three seasons, and his ABs suffered as a result. Last year he started coming back to his best numbers, posting a .267/.338/.531 line and hit the 20 HR mark again. Keep in mind this was with the Reds in the NL. His defense is also pretty awful, as his career UZR/150 in LF is -25.7 and -20.2 in RF. Which is still, incredibly, a vast improvement over Guillen. Wow.

You know, I wouldn’t mind Gomes either, for the right price. There are a whole lot of cheap decent options out there.

It’s just what I would do if I were in Dayton’s shoes. For all I know, he’s going after all of them. I hope he is. I don’t want to hate my favorite team’s GM, it’s just that he leaves me no choice by making the same mistakes repeatedly and running the Royals into the ground. When Dayton starts making smart moves and turning this team around, I’ll be the first one to praise him.

Judging from his track record, though, especially in the last two seasons or so, I don’t think he’s looking for relatively cheap, relatively young talent. He seems to overvalue veteran leadership and has trouble identifying holes that need to be filled, addressing instead “problems” that nobody sees except him, like getting a veteran catcher this offseason or his never-ending quest for a fast leadoff hitting centerfielder.

they are so lucky to have him and his valuable insight

I hope you’re right.

Pos was right, this team more and more of Major League every day.

in 2014

I’m just going off of MLBTR. The last thing they said about us in regards to Pods was on Dec. 10, and it said we were not willing to offer him a second year (maybe Dayton is finally learning?).

Where did you read that we weren’t interested anymore?

Good luck to the Cardinals next year, too. Hopefully the I-70 series is more competitive this year. I always look forward to those games because I’m from the east side of the state and grew up cheering for St. Louis.

But then I saw that he only has one season where his OBP was above .330, and that was 2006 where he put up a .348. He ended up with .330 exactly in 2008. He’s also just coming off of a torn ACL and will likely be slower and less effective as a top of the order guy. His defense is pretty great, but I don’t think his bat is good enough to warrant starting him. Zack would probably hit with more power, he can’t really steal bases, and he doesn’t walk a ton.

I would not mind bringing Crisp back for the right price, maybe 1 yr/3M with an option year? He probably wouldn’t take that though. I definitely agree with trading Guillen for anything in the world, even if you have to pay most of his contract. It still beats the hell out of paying ALL of his contract for him to be worse than dead weight on this team. I think we should try and trade Meche at the deadline this year, especially if he has a good first half. He’s now on the wrong side of 30 and the injuries are kind of piling up. It wouldn’t be selling him at his most valuable, but we could move him before he’s worth any less.

I agree with going after Bedard, but only if we avoid overpaying. Since we’re talking about Kansas City, we’ll almost certainly have to outbid any other suitors, thus paying him more than he’s worth to overcome his desire not to come play for a small market losing team. I don’t know what it would take to get him here, but it would probably be something like the Meche contract. Lots of years, lots of money guaranteed.

Branyan would be nice. He could DH for us and be okay to fill in at 1B or RF every so often to give other players a rest. I have a feeling he’s going to want more than we want to give him though.

Im sure that guy would actually jump at the shot to play

Look him up on Fangraphs and check out some of the articles that mention him. His situation is very similar to Kila’s in that he has put up some monster numbers his whole minor league career but just can’t get a break into the big leagues. In an ideal world Dayton would come to his senses and give Kila a shot next season, but it doesn’t look like that will ever happen. I also never said that Whitesell would be a star—simply that he would probably be above replacement level for close to league minimum.

Scott Pioli inherited an awful situation with the Chiefs. I don’t think he’s looking for stars on the trash pile either. It’s just that he thinks other teams’ castoffs are better than the “talent” Herm and Carl amassed over the last few years. He’s just trying to patch something resembling a football team together to make it through this season and next. When he’s had a couple of drafts to mold the team the way he wants it, he won’t be picking up so many dudes off the street.

as silly as it sounds. Minaya is probably on of the few GMs worst than GMDM.