BABI Race 2006, RIP

Long and fantasy baseball related. I just can’t write about the Giants these days.

In writing this, I keep thinking of Cool Pounder’s 2005 BABI Talk commentary about my writing about BABI and the Pickled Pecklers in Sour Grapes last season:

“He’s honest about his own foibles most of the time, but you can occasionally see the rationalization shining through.”

He then went on to chide me for comments about the trade that will not be mentioned.

After all our talk about trading and not trading, dumping and not dumping, going for 6th place and going for 3rd place, affecting the race and not affecting the race, we made a trade today that pretty much (we think) ended the BABI race for first place:

To the Rips: Carlos Lee (08-40), Mike Barrett (06 contract) and Tom Glavine (08-11)

To the Pecklers: Eric Byrnes (08-13), Johnny Estrada (08-10) and a bum (Jason Marquis, unkeepable at any price)

As an aside, it is personally painful to let go of the guy who smashed AJ Pierzinski in the face. The 10 day suspension was worth it to us too.

I’d like to discuss this trade here. I hope it is not seen as rationalizing this deal, which is clearly a dump deal, and clearly helps the Rips enormously to lock up first place.

The Rips entered the day in first place with 85 points. The Cappers are second with 79. Everyone else is far in the distance. With this deal, the Rips are picking up homers and RBI’s, maybe some batting average (that’s close) and are sacrificing a few steals, though not many, as Lee has 13.

They also get Glavine, whose numbers (mostly 12 wins) are good, though he’s stunk for about a month. But they jettison Marquis, who without doubt will get the Bullinger of the Year award. Some of his outings have been so extreme (13 runs and 14 hits in one game, 12 and 14 in another), that we may rename the award for him. He’s not likely to be on our team next Tuesday afternoon.

On June 26, I penned an entry called “Deadwood”, which was mostly about how unwatchable the Giants are (there is something that certainly hasn’t changed). At the end, though, I concluded that the Pecklers were dead wood too, and it was time to dump. It freaked the Old Bat out, and caused him to pull the trigger. Chaos ensued.

Meanwhile, we methodically contacted teams in the middle about dumping to them. We were aiming at one large (Lee, Rolen and some more hitting) and 2 small deals (one based on Furcal, the other based on Dempster). We started with Larry Dot Net, who was in 6th place, but seemed a perfect fit. He needed power badly. We offered him a deal that included Lee, Rolen, Barrett and Jenkins. We proposed a 5 for 2, the two being Fielder and Phillips. Larry decided he couldn’t do better than third, so he passed.

We then contacted HOBO. We didn’t see a great fit here because they only had one hitter keeper (Holliday) who needs to be extended. They also have 3 nice starting pitcher keepers, though Patterson is a little dicey with a career on the DL. Getting a pitcher from them meant replacing it, which meant Glavine, who at the end of June was 11-2, 3.34 ERA and 1.24 WHIP. We started structuring a deal which would have included Lee, Rolen and Barrett for Holliday and Capuano. Hank also asked for Glavine and Dempster.

We really wanted to keep Dempster as the basis of another deal (someone always needs saves). We knew the Lickers wanted Dempster, and simultaneously we talked to them about Barfield (08-5F). Dempster was imploding around that time, ready to lose the closer job any day. Big Rick basically swapped Dempster for Barfield straight up, and when we told him to pick any pitcher, he threw in Wise (08-3). Happily for the Lickers, Dempster has turned it around (8 saves and 1.98 ERA for them).

That didn’t end the deal with HOBO, but we didn’t see Capuano as being that much better as a keeper than Glavine at that moment. So we were essentially giving up Lee, Rolen and Barrett for Holliday, in his breakout year, who will have to be extended to $23 next year. Noel chided me today for not trading them Glavine, saying that we considered him a keeper. At the time he was, but things changed, and Glavine’s effectiveness has changed radically. He’s only won 1 game since the end of June, with an ERA over 6 and a WHIP near 2. Mark is actually taking a big chance with him.

OK, maybe that’s rationalizing there. But there is no denying that Glavine through June and Glavine since June are two very different pitchers.

There was one other guy we were starting to have second thoughts about trading at that time. Scott Rolen went on a tear before the all-star game. He hit .372 in June, at which time his season BA was .343. He was suddenly looking like a keeper at $32, and we plan to keep him at this time.

At this point we actually talked to a few teams about going for it, offering Webb as bait. We never got close to a deal there, but we considered it. Meanwhile we’re sort of in the race for sneaking into the money, bouncing around between 9th and 6th over the past month. We’ve been trying, including paying $41 for Julio Lugo this week, with a backup bid on Kevin Mench at $41. We wanted one of them for sure, preferably Lugo, who steals bases. We did not pick him up to trade him, or obviously not to keep him, but to help us for this season. No one else bid more than a keepable price for him (highest was $22).

The Rips started to pull away from the Cappers. Boof had been after Carlos Lee all season, but we put him off, explaining that we did not want to make a deal that would end the BABI race. We were never really tempted, anyway, because he kept offering Freddie Sanchez. He even called the day he got Sanchez in trade offering him to us. Sanchez doesn’t hit homers and doesn’t steal bases. Before this year, he’s never done anything other than sit on the bench or the DL. But suddenly, there he is, atop the NL BA list. Is it real? Who knows?

So, as been our style, we started with the team that was behind, the Cappers. Actually, believe it or not, he started with us. Geo sent me an email asking if Carlos Lee was legally tradable, now that he’s in the AL. He was sniffing, and here is an excerpt from his email:

“I was thinking along the lines of someone like J Drew 24/08, or J Davanon 6/08, or A Kearns 26/08. B Watson is also available as a throw in.”

Oh Joy!

Geo has some nice keepers, but none of these guys are that. For Carlos Lee (29-85-13-290) we want somebody performing at a relatively cheap price. I told him that we’re willing to keep Lee, as he’s keepable if he stays in the NL, unless he’s willing to talk about a real keeper.

Looking at his roster, the Cappers have two incredibly crappy catchers, Javier Valentin (3-17-0-225), and Eric Munson (4-18-0-208). We have Barrett, Alfonzo and Nevin. We offered his choice of 2 of the 3 plus Glavine for Adrian Gonzalez (08-13). We offered Glavine because we heard he was looking for a starting pitcher to bolster his wins. He passed. As he said,

“I have to tell you, Glavine scares the ____ (his underscore, I have no problem in using the word “shit” here) out of me. The only reason I wanted to see about Lee (for offense) was to enable me to give up some offense for pitching.”

It seemed I was offering both hitting and a pitcher, but I can understand him being scared of Glavine, whose numbers since the end of June have sucked. So I decided to really look at George’s team. I don’t have the pieces (other than Webb, who he can’t have) to fix his pitching problem. He’s got a big lead in homers and RBI’s. What I could provide that he needs is steals and BA. These are critical, because Mark is ahead of him in both categories, and passing him is a two point swing in each category.

So we offered SB’s (serious SB’s) and BA. Here was the offer:

Furcal (07-30) 7-43-26-283, Lugo 12-30-20-300 and Barrett 13-44-0-330
for
Gonzalez (08-13) 19-58-0-306, Betamit (08-6) 12-35-3-285, and Munson

This deal would have finished us in the race for 6th place for this season. But we really would like a first baseman for next year. Geo passed because he didn’t want to trade Betamit.

That’s Wilson Betamit, the middle infielder now on the Dodgers who became a backup player yesterday when Nomar came off the DL. That Wilson Betamit. George could have finished with 47 hitting points and passed Mark in 2 categories, picking up a net of 6 points. Furthermore, he would have picked up the tiebreaker point between them.

So I sent an email to Boof telling him to come and get Lee. I told him we didn’t want Sanchez, but we could do a deal around Byrnes. He offered the deal we made, I confirmed it with the Doc, and the deal was done. Easy as that.

George could still win if he wants to try. He’s got Gonzalez and Dan Uggla and Edwin Encarnacion, and at excellent prices. But he’s given up, just like he gave up last year. Second place. Again. Sex with your sister. We’re going to change the name of his team to “The Aristocrats.”

Glavine might not work out for Boof, but now he’s got nice upside in homers. He might even pass Geo in RBI’s (he’s 34 behind with 7 weeks to go). And if Glavine doesn’t suck, he’s got, like everyone, upside in wins. And, most important, he’s got a 6 point lead today.

This will probably end trading as we know it this season. We’re still interested in stolen bases, if anyone wants to trade them. We’d also like peace in the Middle East.

Let me leave the last word on this to Kenny 9, who sent me this email today:

“After your trade with Boof was announced, I told Geo that Izzy, Luis Gonzalez (AZ), Aaron Rowand and Jamey Carroll were available for two of his marginal keepers. He thinks this trade seals it for Mark. I told him that he's ‘worthless and weak.’”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.