I'll give you an offer you can't refuse...

According to Joel Sherman of the NY Post, the Mets and GM Omar Minaya have a clear-cut strategy as the trade deadline looms:

“The Mets are trying to locate a pitcher (probably a reliever) who is overpriced and not having a particularly strong season”

That’s just awesome. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

A few months ago, I went through a partial list of my favorite active player names. So to all of you who read it, I have but one question.

WHY THE HELL DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME THAT THERE IS A CONTEST TO DETERMINE THE BEST NAME IN THE MINORS??? This has been going on for over three years now, people. At least one of you must have known about it and chose not to tell me. Well screw you, random reader. Screw you, indeed.

To the rest of you who were as ignorant as I, it’s basically an NCAA-style bracket where viewers can vote on which names makes them giggle (for me, it’s Seth Schwindenhammer and of course, Rowdy Hardy).  Only one round has been completed so far and there already have been some upsets as number 1 seed Forrest Snow (who never should have been seeded so high to begin with) was predictably taken down by #16 Gookie Dawkins. So clearly, this seeding system is incredibly flawed and we need to right these wrongs.

So I ask you all to keep checking this page, just to make sure that a man named Sequoyah Stonecipher does not lose to Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Because let’s face it. Salty’s only there because he’s already a recognizable player among the MLB fanbase. You do not beat Sequoyah Stonecipher, sir. That is a name that belongs in a sci-fi video game where the character is voiced by Casper Van Dien.

At the beginning of this month the Arizona Diamondbacks fired highly regarded GM Josh Byrnes and replaced him with interim GM Jerry DiPoto, a former major league reliever who pitched for the Rockies as recently as 2000.

It took only a few weeks for DiPoto to drive his franchise off a cliff.

Haren will take his acery back to the AL West.

The news came down today that the Diamondbacks have traded ace Dan Haren to the Angels for pitcher Joe Saunders, two marginal prospects and a player to be named. Even before we know who the player to be named is, this trade is so unspeakably bad for the Diamondbacks that its hard to know where to begin.

If you only look at traditional statistics (wins, ERA), on paper Haren and Saunders seem to be fairly similar pitchers who are both having an off year this season. I’m sure Jerry DiPoto looked at Saunders’s 17 wins in 2008 and 16 wins last season and figured that compared favorably with Haren’s 16 wins and 14 wins, respectively, only at a much cheaper price.

The massive problem for the Diamondbacks going forward is that even the most rudimentary understanding of advanced metrics shows that Haren is a vastly superior player to Saunders, both in terms of absolute talent and in terms of value versus dollars going forward.

Both players are the same age (29), which is still fairly young for a pitcher, but Haren is under team control even longer than Saunders (2013 vs 2012), and whereas Saunders heads to arbitration this offseason, making his future cost unpredictable, Haren is signed at below-market and below-value rates.

Saunders had one great season in 2008, when he went 17-7 and posted a 3.41 ERA, but that season was largely an illusion created by an incredibly lucky .267 BABIP. Saunders’s xFIP in the best season of his career was a very mediocre 4.65.

Meanwhile Haren is having what appears to be an off-year this season, posting a 7-8 record with a 4.60 ERA, but all his peripherals are just as good as ever, and he has clearly been the victim of a very unlucky .350 BABIP – his xFIP is actually a sparkling 3.38, and the ZiPS projection system expects him to have a 3.33 ERA going forward over the rest of the season.

All told, Saunders has a career xFIP of 4.69, which is 4th starter material at best, whereas Haren has a career xFIP more than a full run better at 3.61, which is clearly at ace level.

Over the past three years, according to Fangraphs, Haren has been worth an average of $26 million per season, and thus seems a good bet to provide value even at his 2013 salary of $15.5 million, barring injury.

Saunders's underlying performance suggests a 4th starter on a good team.

Meanwhile, it is not even clear whether Saunders will be worth the big raise he is likely to get in arbitration this offseason. Over the past three seasons, which includes his strong 2008 campaign, Saunders has only been worth an average of $8 million per season. Last season Saunders was only worth $5 million, and he is on pace to be worth about $6 million this season. And while he earning a reasonable $3.6 million this year, he is likely to double that salary in arbitration.

When all is said and done the Dbacks traded that rarest of major league commodities – the true ace starter – in the even rarer package of a reasonable long-term deal, for a league-average starting pitcher and at best a grade B propect (depending on the PTBL, who is reportedly not top Angels prospect Mike Trout).

What has to terrify Dbacks fans, perhaps even more than the long-term implications of the trade itself for the team’s competitiveness going forward, which are horrifying enough, is what this deal indicates about the decision-making process in the Dbacks’ front office.

First, they fired Josh Byrnes, shocking the baseball world. Byrnes was one of the saavier operators in the game with a good grounding in statistical analysis. True, he had made the one mistake of hiring the unexperienced A.J. Hinch as manager and then compounded it by backing up Hinch despite the team’s struggles this season. But otherwise his actual player-personnel moves had pretty much all been good, which is pretty hard to pull off as a GM. Perhaps the sole exception was the 3-year deal he gave to gutsy, gritty, intangible-laden outfielder Eric Byrnes in 2007, but that move is widely held to have been forced on him by ownership.

Second, they fired Josh Byrnes in July. It’s got to be hard enough for even a competent and highly experienced GM to step into the role in the middle of trade deadline fever, but for a rather inexperienced hand like interim GM DiPoto it has to be even tougher. Was Byrnes such a danger to the team that he had to be fired, and thus the front office had to be thrown into chaos, right at the most crucial part of the season for a GM?

Third, the handing over of the reins to DiPoto, who as a former player is an “experienced veteran” who “knows the game,” along with the hiring of legendary grinder Kirk Gibson as manager and now this trade, suggests an ownership enamored of gumption, grit, and grizzled veteraneity over solid statistical analysis, or even scouting.

Gerard DiPoto completes the delicate transition from bullpen stalwart to front office chump.

Some people are postulating that this trade was a pure salary dump, but that does not make sense to me. The Diamondbacks already had one of the lower payrolls in the game, and they already had about $30 million coming off the books this offseason. Plus, the hasty firing of Hinch and Byrnes suggests that this franchise actually does care about wins and losses quite a bit. And it’s worth reiterating that Dan Haren is under team control until 2013! There was absolutely no pressing need to move him now, or t0 sell him off for cheap.

No, the much scarier prospect is that Jerry DiPoto, and presumably whoever is advising him, and presumably Diamondbacks ownership as well, actually think this is a pretty good deal. Sometimes it can be easy to forget what it’s like to evaluate pitchers pretty much only in terms of Wins and ERA. But if that is how you operate, and you have the chance to trade a player who has gone 16-8 and 14-10 for a player who has just gone 17-7 and 16-7, and the only slightly bothersome point is that the one you are getting has a career ERA of 4.29 (but is a winner), where as the guy you’re trading has a career ERA of 3.71 (put can’t always “put it together”) AND you have a chance to save a lot of money AND get some “prospects”?

Why then you take that deal and you think you just did awesome.

But obviously that kind of thinking is not what wins championships anymore, or even divisions. Which is why it’s a great day to be an Angels fan, or a fan of any other team in the NL West.

In September, 2008, Sarah wrote a post for MLB Trade Rumors speculating that the Braves might trade Jeff Francoeur to the Royals. She wasn’t the only one. Joe Posnanski and the AJC’s David O’Brien also said Frenchy would end up in Kansas City.

The speculation made sense. Frenchy never lived up to the hype in Atlanta and Dayton Moore, who drafted and developed Francoeur while with the Braves, had landed the GM job in Kansas City.

Obviously, that trade never happened and Frenchy was shipped to New York instead.

But now the Mets are looking to trade Francoeur, and the price is almost certainly very low, and Moore is still in charge in KC and…well, how could this trade not happen?

Since the day he was drafted, Frenchy was destined to be a Royal. Personable, athletic and completely unconcerned with his on base percentage, Francoeur is the ultimate example of the flaws of pre-Moneyball scouting.

As for the Royals, the team actually has a semi-respectable .336 OBP this season, which places them right in the middle of the pack. But that OBP spike is totally at odds with Kansas City’s long and storied history of walk-hating teams. And it likely won’t continue. A pair of this season’s OBP heroes, David DeJesus and Jose Guillen, are unlikely to return in 2011, for various reasons. Their departures would, theoretically, make room for Alex Gordon and Kila Ka’aihue, who have both been raking at triple-A.

But wouldn’t it be too perfect if KC could postpone their promotions just a little bit longer, in favor of the free-swinging Francoeur? This was a trade whose time has come.

This morning I started my day by heading first to ESPN.com, then to MLB Trade Rumors, then to Philly.com, searching for any news about a possible trade that could help the Phillies get back in the playoff hunt.

Instead, I found this article by Philadelphia Daily News columnist Paul Hagen, who suggests the Phils trade struggling and elderly outfielder Raul Ibanez to the Seattle Mariners:

The pitch would go something like this.

You thought you had a contending team this year. It didn’t work out, but except for Cliff Lee (there’s that name again) you still have the nucleus you thought so highly of in the spring. Now that Ken Griffey Jr . has retired, you could use a veteran with World Series experience. Remember, when Ibanez departed Seattle as a free agent, several players left behind described him as the best teammate they’ve ever had. He’s wildly popular with your fans. He’s hitting a little better lately. And, as a bonus, we’ll pay half of the approximately $15.5 million he has left on his contract.

That’s quite a pitch, right? I imagine Seattle’s response, after the laughter subsided, would go something like this:

First of all, Ken Griffey Jr. never played in a World Series. Never. Moreover, we’ve already got Chone Figgins, who possesses a World Series ring and a .229 batting average, and that’s all the veteran leadership we can stand at the moment. What we need is offense. We’ve scored fewer runs than any team in baseball, and that’s a direct result of posting the lowest slugging percentage of any MLB team, and the lowest OBP of any team not named Houston. We need mashers, but you’re trying to convince us to take a rapidly declining outfielder who is struggling to hit for power in one of the most hitter-friendly parks around? There are five left fielders with a lower OBP than Ibanez this season, and only one guy (Carlos Lee) with a lower batting average. Also, guess what? We’ve seen Ibanez play defense in Safeco, and it isn’t pretty. But hey, no biggie, because he’s a great teammate! And he’ll only cost us $8 million! Where do we sign?

I’m honestly not sure if there’s a team out there that could find room for Ibanez on it’s roster, even if he were making the league minimum. There’s just not a huge market for light-hitting outfielders who play below average defense. The fact that Ibanez is scheduled to make $11.5 million in 2011 makes him untradeable, which Hagen confesses is the “conventional wisdom.”

The adjective “gritty” seems to be one of the highest complements one can pay to a baseball player. It implies a player who shows up every day, battles through injury, and is willing sacrifice the body to win. The kind of player who runs into walls and is not afraid to get his shirt dirty diving or sliding.

Dustin Pedroia is the reigning god of grit, with a grit index of 124.

I decided to try to find out who are the “grittiest” players at each position in the game today. To find this out, I used a method vaguely similar to that used in our “Crowdsourcing the Greats” series, whereby I Googled “gritty center fielder,” “gritty second baseman” etc. and totaled up the hits for each player to a number we might call that player’s “grit index.”

The currently active players with the highest grit index at each position made the starting lineup of our “All-Grit” team (number of hits in parentheses):

C Jason Kendall (5)
1B Kevin Youkilis (115)
2B Dustin Pedroia (124)
3B Mike Lowell (46)
SS David Eckstein (54)
LF Brett Gardner (5)
CF Aaron Rowand (105)
RF Jeff Francoeur (6)

Some other players who posted particularly high grit indexes during my search included 2B Chase Utley (53), CF Shane Victorino (87), and RF Trot Nixon (27), who would have easily beat out Jeff Francoeur in right field, but who would first have to come out of retirement in order to make the team.

As you can see, certain positions seem to be more prone to “gritty” performances than others. There obviously aren’t too many “gritty” corner outfielders, and catchers seem not to be labeled “gritty” too often, despite all the hard knocks they receive.

You will also notice that David Eckstein is the shortstop, despite the fact that he mostly plays second base nowadays. But the the fact is that the reputation for grit that Eckstein built up over his years as a shortstop still earn him 54 hits, blowing all other shortstops away, and I have no doubt that the gritty manager of Team Grit (I nominate Arizona’s Kirk Gibson) would not hesitate to shift Eckstein back to short, because grit cares not for range and arm strength.

Lastly, you will notice that this entire team is pretty much of the Caucasian persuasion. It has often been remarked how sportswriters and fans only seem to apply labels like “gritty,” “scrappy,” “gutsy,” and “tenacious” to white players. In fact, the only non-white players who came up in my searches were SS Jimmy Rollins (6), 2B Orlando Hudson (5) and OF Juan Pierre (3), all of whom are African American.

It seems that in the minds of most of the people on the internet, Latino players can never be “gritty.”