Dejesus’ Injury is a Blessing in Disguise and May Wind Up Saving Dayton From Himself

This argument turned out to have three parts.  Wow.  Wasn’t expecting that.

Part 1: The importance of somehow obtaining extra draft picks.

Let’s relive, as briefly as possible, a conversation that surfaces every year on this site around draft time, and about which I’ve already ranted too much (if you’re tired of the sandwich pick rant, skip to Part 2).  Let’s just look at this year’s draft.  The Angels had five first round draft picks.  Five.  FIVE!  And the Red Sox—who have prospects and money and sports cars and Bill freaking James working in the front office and need an advantage in the draft in approximately the same way Apple needs a leg up in the awesome phone market—had three first round picks.  Given their smarts and money, I really think Boston would be competitively even with other teams if they had ZERO first round picks.  But instead they weaseled three, because that’s what they do, and one of those was Anthony Ranaudo who was, not so long ago, projected to be among the top 3 players taken.  If you have three first round darts, one of them is going to hit, even if you’re throwing blindfolded.  Ranaudo just dominated the Cape Cod league.

But it’s not just Boston and Anaheim-of-Los-Angeles who are in on this loophole; the Blue Jays stole their own extra pick via the departure of the towering Greg Zaun.  How does this happen?  Well, you need good players to lose—which is why the Royals have had exactly one extra pick* in the last four years* (am I wrong about this?)—and you need to lose them at right time.  This second part is key.  You need to squeeze all of their worth into your team, like a tube of toothpaste, and then lose the player right before the tube is empty (or, apparently, after you’ve murdered the tube to the extent you’re brushing your teeth with water.  See: Zaun).  It would seem a clever strategy, then, to sign free agents expressly for the purpose of stealing extra draft picks.  Moore did this once upon a time—he signed David Riske who kissed a toad and became Mike Montgomery. 

*Oh yeah, I was going to do one of those Posterisks.  That one extra pick we’ve obtained in the last four years turned out to be who some consider our best prospect. 

The extent to which Moore knew Riske would be good enough to garner an extra pick is debatable.  But he also signed Dotel to a similar contract, in my mind, under the assumption one of them would at least reach type B status.  

A Posterisk with no asterisk!  Crazy!—I’ve always wondered the extent to which players know they’re being obtained for purposes of getting sandwich picks.  Billy Wagner, for example, for whom Boston obtained at least one of their extra picks this year, must have felt like a piece of meat.

As Chuck Klosterman would say, ANYWAY…  The point is, or rather the points are: (1) you have to have talent to lose to get extra picks, and (2) ideally, you want to hog as much of that talent for yourself as you possibly can and then lose it just in time to replace it with more talent (extra picks).  It’s pure, unadulterated greed folks.  But teams have to be greedy—Moore said those exact words himself the other day on WHB radio: “We have to be greedy.”  I liked him for saying that.  Yes, Dayton, that’s exactly right.     

You Have Now Finished Part 1 of a very long Fanpost.  Flip the cassette to side B. 

Part 2: A (hopefully) Quick Rehash of the ‘We Need Multiple Waves of Talent’ Argument Most Aggressively Pushed By Soren Petro.

If you listen to WHB and you were checking out some of their shows around the time of the draft, you may remember Petro and other broadcasters voicing an awful lot of concern over the Christian Colon pick.  And It wasn’t just concern over the Colon pick, it was concern over the fact that the draft was college-heavy.  The basis for the concern was that the Royals deliberately chose players who would ‘fit into’ this current wave of talent they have coming up through the minors—a strategy that Piccolo and Moore readily admitted they employed.  The idea is to create a super wave of talent that will all reach the majors at the same time.  And the concern is that there will be nothing behind it.  The concern is that they took a bunch of low-ceiling college players simply because they intellectually fit into this One Wave strategy, rather than basing their draft selections on best talent available. 

I think ‘best talent available’ actually means ‘youngest guy with most unknown—and therefore potentially highest—upside’ to most fans who are fixated on prospects.  You drool most over the guys you know less about.  If a high school kid mashes one homer 500 feet, a lot of fans would rather take him than a college player who has hit a thousand doubles.  But I digress…

Okay, so these guys over at WHB were really jumping up and down about the stupidity of this One Wave idea, and worrying plenty that there weren't enough high school players taken to fill the tender early levels of the pipeline.  They want little Moustakases reaching AAA every single year.  And they have a worthwhile point.  We’ve been building for the future for so long now, that when the future arrives, if it happens to be not as spectacular as promised (See: Gordon…and to a lesser extent Butler?), you want other young’uns coming up right behind them.  What if Moose and Hosmer don’t pan out?  What if Hosmer does, but Moose doesn’t?  Well, what else do we have in the cupboard?  Myers.  Okay, if Myers pans out, you add him to Hosmer and now you have two guys.  You add a free agent.  Following year you’ve got another loaf or two just coming out of the oven, and the year after two more, and so on. 

Point here is, there is a little worthwhile concern that the early levels of the talent conveyer were not stocked in the draft this year. 

Part 3: How All This Relates to Dejesus.

Dejesus, as we have been over a hundred times, likely represents extra picks.  Moore has acknowledged in interviews that this represents a significant chunk of his value.  There’s no secret here.  But Moore has also repeated again and again that he is looking for guys that ‘fit into’ his current wave of talent.  The One Wave strategy.  Given these comments, I think there’s a reasonable expectation that Moore is looking to trade Dejesus for guys that fit into the current wave.  I’ve hearded ‘major league ready’ bandied about nearly as much as Baird used that phrase leading up to the Beltran trade.  He just traded Callaspo for two guys who fit into the Super Wave. 

But, as Rany has pointed out, why not keep Dejesus, squeeze more paste out of that tube?  The guy is playing the best baseball of his career, he’s finally reached his Zenith, and what’s your plan for the outfield next year anyway?  Gordon and…Jordan Parraz?  David Lough?  Hosmer hasn’t taken any reps in the outfield to my knowledge—which is worth at least 2,000 words by itself.  And where’s your gritty veteran leadership?  What, you want Kendall as the lone grand poobah?  Look, Dejesus has more to offer us, we should hog more of his talent.  And then, when he’s ready to walk, we should happily take those potentially TWO extra first round picks, and convert them into YOUNG talented players.  Players like Mike Montgomery.  Players like Anthony Ranaudo.  Or, if you prefer, Johnny Damon (another sandwich pick). 

So, following all of this logic, the wrist sprain protects us, protects Dayton, from diving headlong into the Super Wave.  It probably gives us a really good outfielder for an extra year, and may force us to do what we should be doing with Dejesus, which using him to stock the early levels of the pipeline.