Thursday, October 30, 2008

Hey! The Offseason Has Started!

A trade!

The Kansas City Royals have acquired first baseman Mike Jacobs from the Florida Marlins in exchange for pitcher Leo Nunez.

Jacobs, who turned 28 years old on Thursday, belted a career-high 32 homers and drove in 93 runs with a .247 batting average in 2008. He is a career .262 hitter with 80 homers and 247 RBI in 421 big league games with Florida and the New York Mets.

"We're delighted to acquire a productive hitter to impact the middle of our lineup,"
said Royals general manager Dayton Moore. "Mike's a winner and has a very aggressive approach to baseball and we look forward to his presence on our club."
Wait, I thought Moore was all about teaching the Royals patience, so what's with this "aggressive approach" stuff? Sure, Jacobs is powerful, but he had an OBP of .299 this season.

That said, the Royals have no power at all, so this is probably worth the risk. If Jacobs gets a few breaks and raises his batting average a tad he could be somewhat useful power infusion.

Rany disagrees, though, and he knows a hell of a lot more about the Royals than you or I will ever hope to know, so this might not be that good an idea after all.

9 comments:

Josh Fisher said...

Awful trade. There are three 1B/DH's in the organization who would be better next year. Moreover, it's a horrible allocation of resources; Nunez could have been spun for something much more useful than a 1B who manages to get on base even less than Ross Gload.

Anonymous said...

It's the second worst trade the Royals have ever made, after Hearn/Cone.

This is joke, the Royals are still a joke, their manager is a joke, and the GM has just proven he's a joke.

This is enough to make me give up.

Eric Toms said...

What does this mean for that samoan power hitter? Both his first & last names start with K, can't be bothered to look it up. Isn't he a decent LH DH prospect? Nunez has always had a great arm.

tHeMARksMiTh said...

I don't know how bad of a trade it was, but it certainly didn't make much sense. As for Nuñez, he did pretty well last season, but with his GB/FB rate of .98, he gets a lot of flyballs. Add that to his HR/FB of 3%, and his ERA will probably jump next season. Still, I'm not sure why either team made this trade.

Eric Toms said...

@ themarksmith; The Marlins have 15 guys arb eligible and IIRC Jacobs is one of them. That is the Marlins rationale for dealing him. The Marlins have a 1B prospect Gaby? Sanchez in the high minors and also have the option of moving Cantu to 1st and going with MacPherson / Helms @ 3rd. More deals to come for FLA.

tHeMARksMiTh said...

I realize why they moved Jacobs (even though they want to move or are willing to move payroll to $40M), but why Nuñez?

Unknown said...

I can see why Florida traded Jacobs, but if they don't get something better than a middle reliever for a guy whom the remaining fans are likely to over-value because of his counting stats, it's not going to matter much what we do. Regardless of whether the Fish can replace Jacobs, it looks like the Marlins couldn't wait to get started on their salary dumping.

Eric Toms said...

Marlins get Nunez because that's the best deal they could make. The other 29 GMs probably see the same shortcomings in Jacobs as his detractors here do. As well, Jacobs has an iron glove which limits his value to the other 15 NL teams.

Nick said...

This is an absurd trade for the Royals. Butler needs to play first and if he doesn't cut it than Kila Ka'aihue needs a shot. This also ruins any leverage we might have in wanting to trade Shealy who finally had some at bats that looked worthwhile. Plus, we pick up Jacobs for his age 28 year; he's not likey to get better AND we get to pay arbitration prices!

Nunez has the stuff to be a very good short reliever/closer. We totally undersold on him.

This trade makes me want to throw up.