Comments on: Catching Conundrum

By: FunBobby

FunBobby — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:04:41 +0000

It was a paycut but we couldn’t cut him by more than 20% or something like that.

By: Texas

Texas — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:43:53 +0000

Didn’t we renegotiate Monroe’s contract and didn’t he end up taking a pay cut? I’m pretty sure he did, but I could be wrong.

By: sirsean

sirsean — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:18:19 +0000

I definitely agree with you about the contract length, when it's not a young player whom you project to improve over the coming years.

But I still think your Craig Monroe = Rondell White 2 fears are a little overexaggerated. He's not THAT old, and his injury history isn't THAT bad. He's an average player who had a down year at age 30. When we picked up White, he'd just come off a string of disappointing, injury plagued seasons, and was 34.

By: FunBobby

FunBobby — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:25:32 +0000

I think another key point is that his contract is only 1 year. If I’m not mistaken, White was for 2 at around 2.5 a year. So for all the aforementioned reasons he is a somewhat good addition to the team, and with no only one overly large contract on the books, its not all that bad. I wonder if we could have gotten him at less $$ per year, but would have had to up the years. I almost would rather have him for 3+mil a year for just this year, as opposed to 2 mil a year for 2 or more years. Number of years is always tricky, especially with an older outfielder who has had a rash of injuries recently.

By: sirsean

sirsean — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:05:31 +0000

FunBobby: I think it's more likely that WB will pick up a CF than rotation help. He probably wants to get all our young guys experience so we can be set to contend in a year or two.

Grizz: Since I want Kubel to face left handed pitching, I'd only sub Monroe in for him at DH if it's an especially tough lefty, or a guy with an unusual delivery. Note that Mauer and Morneau started to hit lefties once they got the opportunity to consistently face them. However, this is something I fear Gardy will not do, and will continue to hinder Kubel's development.

Monroe's a good 4th outfielder, who can come in and play any OF position and hit decently, and is also available as a pinch hitter. It seems to me that whether or not we overpaid for him is largely immaterial at this point.

By: Grizz

Grizz — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:51:55 +0000

I would like to see Monroe used as a RH pinch hitter and an occasional starting DH when we are facing a left-handed starting pitcher. I agree he might not be worth what his salary costs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up starting due to injury at some time this year. My guess is that there will be at least one outfielder go down this year for a while, and I would rather have Monroe fill in as opposed to Jones or McDondald.

By: FunBobby

FunBobby — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:23:01 +0000

Either way its a move he made, and it can't be taken back. Also, Monroe is a close friend of Hunter so I think the acquisition was a last ditch effort to keep Torii in town, or else make it seem like they wanted him to stick around. So when fans complain bill can say "Look, i even traded for his best friend when I know I could have gotten a similar player elsewhere for much cheaper". Maybe it didn't have that much to do with the trade, but I'm sure it had at least a little to do with it.
I wonder if Bill is done dealing. The only move I could see him making is for more stability in the starting rotation, but I don't think there are any good players to be had. Either the player in question is too bad to sign (Kyle Lohse) or the price to acquire him is too high (Joe Blanton). Both cases might be true for lohse.

By: sirsean

sirsean — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:59:03 +0000

Good point. Yes, we technically traded for him. But we still had to sign him to a contract ourselves, and the Cubs probably would have non-tendered him anyway, so they get a free PTBNL out of the deal.

It seems to me that since we were the only team allowed to negotiate with him that we should have had the upper hand in pushing down his salary. (Which is probably why the rule exists.)

If we'd let the Cubs release him and then approached him on the market, I don't think the salary-floor rule would apply, but other teams could have gotten involved ... at the time, Wild Bill had no way to know that every other team in baseball would decide not to spend money at the same time, given that A-Rod had just signed the biggest contract in history just a little bit earlier. He probably wanted some certainty, rather than having to outbid someone for the player he wanted.

It may have been another risk that didn't pay off, but it all comes down to this: I hope WB actually wanted Monroe more than Brown, Mench, and Sweeney.

By: FunBobby

FunBobby — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:52:44 +0000

Not to nitpick but didn’t we trade for Monroe? I guess he was probably going to be cut anyway, so we might have been better off waiting for him to be cut and then signing him to a minor league deal. That might have been a way around that union policy of making sure overpaid players stay overpaid.

By: sirsean

sirsean — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:27:26 +0000

Maybe WB just has to learn what he's doing in free agency. It's at least a good sign that he's forgotten everything he learned about it from TR. Hopefully he'll know what he's doing a bit better by the time we have money to spend (and there are worthwhile free agents available).

Although I suppose I shouldn't say "everything." Signing Monroe followed the old TR strategy of signing people who kill us. When TR signed Kenny Rogers and Rick Reed, he described them as guys who beat us every time we faced them, so keeping them away from other teams "gets us 2-3 wins right there!" Monroe absolutely smokes the Twins, moreso than any other team. I guess we now get to see if it's because he loves hitting in the Dome, or because he knows something about our pitchers.