As you may or may not have heard, the Arizona Diamondbacks fired Josh Byrnes, one of baseball's smarter General Managers. As Dave Cameron of Fangraphs points out, ",if this was truly a decision made because of the D’Backs’ record the last few years, then I think their ownership just royally screwed up." I could not agree more.
Byrnes has built a quality young team in his brief tenure as GM and made some plus-quality moves this offseason in signing both Adam LaRoche and Kelly Johnson at basement bargain prices. Both players will likely fetch a quality investment return (both have already produced their salary's worth of production and could net a decent prospect) or, at least in Kelly Johnson's case, provide the Dbacks with a semi-long term, cost controlled option.
This move, a clear loss for the Dbacks organization, could be a big win for a team in need of a quality front office. Hint hint, Mr. Ricketts. This is the chance -- get rid of Hendry now and let Byrnes work his magic.
I'm sure WE'RE better than Jim Hendry but Byrnes has made a lot of dumb moves as well.
ReplyDelete-He's paying Brandon Webb this year and since Webb is gonna hit the free market and b/c of Webb's injury last year and what was expected of him this year, he should have just cut him
-The Chris Young/Javy Vazquez trade looks dumb b/c Javy is awesome in the NL and Chris Young's best season is this year and has been awful the past two years and most of his time in Arizona
-Re-signing Eric Byrnes because he had an 85 RBI year
-Kelly Johnson has been "worth this K" but hasn't done shit since May
Sure the D-backs have a handful of good players but I'm not going to jizz my pants like you seem to be going to go get this guy. Nothing jumps out at me that says "He's a top tier GM" because the Diamondbacks roster, seems to me, can just be described as pretty good. He's made some good trades and good moves and some bad moves.
He probably didn't deserve to get fired but if I were the Cubs, I would definitely look at Byrnes. But he doesn't shout "Must Hire"
Sexy Rexy,
ReplyDeleteWhat good would've cutting Brandon Webb done? MLB contracts are guaranteed. It wouldn't have saved the D'Backs a dime.
There is a lot of talk that Moorad had more to do with the resigning of E Byrnes than J Byrnes was.
Kelly Johnson gave the D'Backs an .865 OPS for a one year $2.35M deal in 2010. That is a sensational deal.
I can only agree with you on the CY for Javy deal.