Sorry, but you are using 100% hindsight by quoting what the players did AFTER the trade was made.

Paul Quantrill was a 33 year old relief pitcher with middle relief stuff, who signed a 3 year $9.6 million contract on August 3, 2001, two months before Gord Ash was fired. For reference, Scott Downs just signed a 3 year $10 million contract in the ’07/’08 offseason. We’re not even going to discuss who has better stuff between those two because it’s plain to see for anyone who’s ever watched baseball and Quantrill’s deal was signed 6+ years before Downs’. Since then the market for pitching of any kind has gone berserk, and if you add in the fact that Scott Downs is a lefty, you can see that Gord Ash clearly overestimated Quantrill’s value. J.P.’s orders were to strip the payroll down to $50 million ASAP. Quantrill was definitely on the hit list and I am surprised he wasn’t the first one out the door instead of Billy Koch.

I cannot believe we still have somebody pining for Cesar Izturis, but with hindsight anything is possible I guess. In almost 2000 AB in the minor leagues at the time he was traded, he had batted .262/.294/.333 (AVG/OBA/SLG). You don’t have to go very far for a reference point that illustrates the degree of suckitude in those numbers. He occasionally plays shortstop on the current team: John McDonald, who in 2500 minor league AB hit .261/.321/.329. Yes, let that sink in. In their respective minor league careers Johnny Mac outhit Cesar Izturis and he plays better defense, despite Izturis’ GG. Ok, Izturis is a better runner, but evidently not good enough to steal first base.

Luke Prokopec was converted to pitcher from the outfield in 1997 at age 19, and he shot through the Dodgers system earning a promotion in September of 2000, at age 22. That’s a prodigy. His minor league numbers are extremely similar to a current beloved Blue Jay: Shaun Marcum. The only difference comes in their control. Prokopec walked 2.47 per nine innings in his minor league career, which is very good. Marcum was insanely good, walking only 1.47/9 IP! Other than that, pretty damn similar. Both of them also had trouble with the long ball in their first extended exposure to the big leagues (2007 Marcum: 1.53 HR/9 IP, 2001 Prokopec: 1.76 HR/9 IP). Prokopec’s major league DL profile at the time of the trade had 1 trip to the DL for a finger blister. There was no indication that he was about to get struck down at age 24, by an elbow impingement. The Jays didn’t turn their backs on Marcum when he had gopher ball struggles. Please explain to me why J.P. shouldn’t have gone after a live armed 24 year old starting pitcher, with no major injury history and 5 years of pitching wear on his arm. Oh, right you would’ve advised him not to because you consulted your crystal ball, which told you he would go 2-9 with a 6.50ish ERA and suffer a career ending injury. Can you help me pick my 6/49 numbers on Saturday? I can’t wait to get my hands on that $27 million.

Then, there was Chad Ricketts, a 27 year old minor league pitcher with a live arm. Like Prokopec, he had more strikeouts than hits allowed in his minor league career. He was good at keeping the ball in the yard, had walked a shade over 3 (3.07) per nine innings and struck out a shade under 9 (8.96). He had 58 career minor league saves at the time of the trade, so his minor league managers must’ve seen something in him. He never threw a pitch in the big leagues, but he was more like the throw-in that you try to catch lightning in a bottle with.

Obviously, this trade did not work, duh. Tell me something I don’t know. But to say it wasn’t right at the time to move an expensive 33 year old middle reliever and a crappy hitting shortstop for a couple of very good looking arms, one of whom was admittedly older than the typical prospect, and one of whom looked like a solid starting pitcher with just a shade over one year of service time on a low mileage arm is ludicrous, hindsightish, Monday morning quarterback garbage.

I’m not sure why we have to re-visit something that happened over 6 years ago. Oh, yeah because it wound up as a completely one-sided win for the Dodgers, and it’s further proof that J.P. sucks and has always sucked. AT THE TIME, it looked like a pretty good deal for both teams, and that is the only way to analyze these things, unless you’re the second coming of Nostre-freaking-damus, but he tended to deal in generalities rather than specifics, like most soothsayers, fortune tellers, and astrologists. Sorry for the rant Michael. Just had to get that off my chest.

MW: Well, I had said all that stuff, just more briefly, but thanks anyway.

Obviously when you painted Quantrill as aging and overpaid you made his subsequent performance relevant.

If you had worked for the Oilers in the late 80s, I’m sure you’d have built a Jimmy Carson statue when they dumped Gretzky’s salary.

Anyway, Luke Prokopec — Rest In Peace.

MW: If you’re not talking in hindsight, then Quantrill was an aging, overpaid middle reliever, with no place on a team going in the direction the Jays were. As Canadian as he is, you can’t have a middle reliever making 6% of your payroll when your first baseman is making 36%. If you’re talking in hindsight, his subsequent performance is relevant.

First, I make the argument against that trade pretending I don’t have the benefit of hindsight.

You then make incorrect statements about three of the players involved. When I use stats to show your assertions aren’t true, you pretend everything I said was based on hindsight.

Could we pleeeeeeeeeease get Dan Shulman back!!!!

MW: You’re big on the insults, and it speaks ill of you. Regardless, since an acceptable definition for “sophist” is “philosopher”, I’ll gladly accept. And, no, they don’t pay me well. While you did pretend that you didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, I answered without the benefit of hindsight as well. You then decided to discuss what the players had done after the trade, hence my comment. Where did I lose you?

Izturis, won a gold glove and made the NL all-star team.

Prokopec signed back with the Dodgers less than 12 months following the trade and never pitched in the majors again.

He went 2-9 with the Jays. More importantly to you obviously, his WHIP was 1.6. He is now herding sheep in Australia. Guess I don’t know what a mediocre prospect is.

I listen to Jays Talk because its the only thing the media serves up to ball fans in this town. I’m like a starving man at a foodbank, I keep coming back for more but I never enjoy it.

MW: Boy, hindsight is pretty cool, isn’t it?

I never suggested you were being unfair to Reed Johnson. I was more using your post as a starting point for my own only partially related rant, so I wasn’t so much criticizing you as saying that, well, the Jays exist to entertain us, and in fact to entertain the most baseball-ignorant person in the crowd as much as the stats-wizard. Players like Reed who can create some sort of fan reaction, in a town where the sound of tumbleweed in the outfield is as common as cheering (ok, that’s OTT, I admit), are important EVEN if their numbers suck. The perception is arguably more important than the reality! That’s why I really wish JP had thought twice about just leaving someone like Reed to slink away on a coin toss for Shannon Stewart.

Give me this stat if you can find it. Mike doubted that Reed got people to the ballpark. I can only guess – but how many shirts with “Johnson” on the back sold the last three years, and how many (pro rata) with “Stewart”?

You asked why, without the benefit of hindsight, any objective person wouldn’t “love” the Luke Prokopec trade?

It took me a couple of days to stop laughing but I’m finished snickering now. The short answer is this trade was a pure salary dump with a unique twist.

JP traded Quantrill, arguably the best set up man in the league at the time. Most GMs could net at least a medium prospect like LP from that alone.

Instead JP decided to throw in his own prospect – Izturis – for a pitcher some number cruncher told him was a great prospect. The results were entirely predictible.

A better question is why would anybody not on the Rogers payroll love a salary dump that actually cost the Jays a blue chip prospect and returned nothing?

Heres another question. I remember McCowan, Ferguson and Shulman hosting the equivalent of your show, and none of them generated the animosity you do.

Q. Is that because you are inherently less honest than them or is that because Labatts didnt own the radio station they worked for, and as a result, cheerleading wasn’t in their job description?

I tend to think its the latter.

MW: You’re entitled to think that, but then why would you ever listen to me? Prokopec wasn’t a mediocre prospect. He was a 23 year-old with a career big-league WHIP of about 1.33 with 25 major-league starts who had dominated AA as a 22 year-old in 2000. Those guys are gold, and to get him, Ricciardi gave up an aging, overpaid, middle reliever and a great defensive shortstop who couldn’t hit. It was a terrific, aggressive gamble. As for those other guys, I think way more people hate McCown than hate me (obviously, way more people love him, too, than love me), Shulman is Shulman – best in the business – and Fergie was nice to everybody.

“MW: You went to a game 18 months ago? In January of 2007?”

Ouch – I can’t count above 10 without taking my socks off. Not much hope of me making sense of baseball stats then!

Actually I went to one at the end of 2006 season (I think).

And wow, I don’t know what to say about the 18 month thing. Count it out Mikey, I know you can do it!

MW: June is the 6th month of the year, January is the first. There are 12 months in a year. OK, so maybe 18 months earlier than June is December. The point still stands.

Oh well, at least I’m in good company. ;)

Just call me Joe Friday or that $@%*head that Mike refers to as his intern. I don’t care and to quote others “I’m a big boy”.