Yesterday, Ryan Garko got traded for Scott Barnes, a left-handed minor-league pitching prospect.
I wrote on Sunday that I would put some work in to try and help us all quantify how promising a pitcher is. This is only Barnes’ second season in the minors, and he’s only played at Single-A so, statistically - I haven’t seen him pitch, obviously - here’s what counts. These are career numbers:
HR/9 innings: .6 | SO/9: 10.3 | BB/9: 2.6 | SO/BB: 3.95
The real question, of course, is are these numbers any good? Well, the league leader stats are down on Baseball Reference (Minors), so it’s hard for me to say. But, comparatively speaking, last year Cliff Lee led the AL with .484 HR/9 innings, this year Zach Greinke has .318 HR/9 innings - which is the best anyone’s had for quite some time.
Justin Verlander leads the AL this year in SO/9 (10.345) and AJ Burnett led the league the previous year with 9.393.
Lee also led the AL last year in BB/9 with 1.370. Roy Halladay leads this year with 1.277.
And for SO/BB ratios, Halladay’s led the past two seasons - 6.150 this year and 5.282 last year.
Barnes then is a great strikeout prospect, very good at not giving up the big fly, but he needs to cut down on his walks.
When it comes to Garko, it’s not really worth talking about him because the Indians didn’t need him anyway. So, the fact that Shapiro was able to turn Garko into a promising - albeit young - left handed pitcher is a positive sign.
What isn’t going to cut it is Mark Shapiro saying this:
“[Barnes] is tall, athletic and throws strikes….We made the trade for a number of reasons. We want to give Andy Marte a chance to come up here and show us what he can do. We also want to continually add pitching.”
First of all, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Shapiro doesn’t care if Barnes is “athletic.” Since when does a pitcher have to be athletic? This, to me, wreaks of talking down to the fan base - because he knows people like my dad will get pissed if he talks about HR/9 or SO/9.
Secondly, to justify the trade by saying they wanted to give Marte another look is absurd. I’ve written over and over that the organization seems to want Matt La Porta to be the 1B of the future. This mean Victor Martinez is either going to have to catch regularly and maybe DH whenever Travis Hafner needs an off day like yesterday, or they figure Victor is gone - in which case, I still don’t know where Marte plays - unless Jhonny Peralta is gone, too, and then Marte can be put back at 3B. If the organization needed to make room for Marte, they didn’t have to trade Garko - they could have just benched Kelly Shoppach, who’s not even hitting .200.
One thing we can say about Marte, unconditionally, is that he is cheap. He made $391,600 last year and is conceivably making less now given that he’s on a minor league deal.
This, Indians fans, is the wave of the future. And it’s the major reason I expect Cliff Lee to be gone by Friday.
Lee, erroneously, is often discussed as being under contract for the 2010 season. This isn’t accurate. The Indians have the option to have him under contract for next year. That option costs $9M.
After increasing payroll this season from $78,970,066 to $81,579,166 (14th in MLB) and then watching attendance not come in line with the projections (front office is expecting the number will be 1.9M fans, not 2.2M as hoped - and zero playoff games) as the economy continues to, well, suck the team clearly needs to cut costs as rapidly as possible.
Not paying Lee next year is one big way to do that.
Everyone’s going to blame the Dolans for this, but let’s not think about this as fans for a second, let’s think of it as businessmen. If you are running a business and you’re spending more than you’re making, what do you do - spend more or spend less?
Actually, you try to produce a better product that will sell more…but that is never a sure bet. After all, the business increased expenditures this season - and look at how that’s gone.
It’s also the primary reason that - get ready - there’s a chance Eric Wedge will not be fired at the end of this season.
Fire Wedge, who’s under contract through 2010, and the organization has to pay two managers next year.
I know it’s going to be tough, but if and when these things happen, try and look at the situation rationally - and remember Shaq and LeBron are going to be at the Q over 40 times in 2009-10.
