More on the Greinke Trade

Stating that the package necessary to get it done would have been a mistake on the jays end, and then going on to talk about how AA is a fool… for not offering that package? uh

I read that article this morning, and was surprised to see Griffin provide no additional information, to support his claim of getting “schooled”. If Doron is right, which his theory does in fact seem quite plausible, then Griffin should come out and say it, instead of beating around bush giving vauge sporting analogies, that don’t seem to fit.

I have a feeling he was waiting for the perfect time to throw out the “9-7 unsuited” in an article, as he has most likely lost a lot of money doing the exact same thing.

What I think he meant by “schooled” was that Melvin landed the fish using not a lot of bait. When you read Posnaski’s breakdown of the prospects – it seems like either Snider or Drabek (but certainly not both) – packaged with some other lower tiered players would have been better than the Brewer’s package. However, when it comes to prospects, I only know what I read.

Plus, does anyone really know what AA offerred? For all we know, the Jays may not have offered any of the prized chips, and that’s why they lost out.

I think Griffin is just trying to justify the Greinke rumors that he himself propagated and advocated in his articles and when he went on the Fan talking to McCowan. The idea that AA was in on Greinke as much as Griffin tries to indicate even in this response presupposes that AA wanted Greinke as much as Melvin did and that both the circumstances for each GM were equal. But all along, as Wilner said and AA himself said was that the Jays were not one piece away from contending unlike the Brewers who have one last year of Prince and an offense which ranked in the top 5 in the NL. Also that Greinke would have waived his ntc to Toronto like he did for the Brewers because (as Griffin would like us to believe) the Jays are one piece away from being contenders.

Griffin is just a hack and this piece of trash response to the Greinke trade is just him trying to prove that somehow he is still a relevent baseball writer and that he can still justify being paid to publish his opinions on baseball.

If a comparable package of, say, Marisnick, Scrabble, Roenicke, and Pierra would have got the trade done for the Jays, yes, AA got schooled. If the deal was Snider or Drabek plus a couple of top guys like Hech or D’Arnaud to make it work, no, he didn’t. To belabour the awful poker analogy, Moore bluffed hard after the flop and AA folded because the odds were too low for the money. And on the next hand, Melvin took the same bluff and cashed out.

This article is more of a “Get off my lawn” article by a grumpy old man.

I think AA did the right thing. Greinke wasn’t going to make the Jays a WS contender this year and the loss of both Snider and Drabeck would hurt chances in 2012-2014.

As I said earlier, I suspect that the price for Greinke would be higher for an AL team.

I agree with your article as well. It was way too much to give up for somebody who could be gone after two years. AA played this right.

Problem is sometimes he writes articles like this. He probably thinks he had a big hand in the firing of JP Ricciardi.

If anything, I think AA schooled Melvin. Melvin mortgaged his team’s future at the same time when the Phillies just picked up the big 4. Not the greatest time to do that.

AA got the brewers best prospects and gave up less. does anyone in the media think before they write?

On one hand it looks like AA was sitting on his hands waiting for another team to poach Greinke. On the hand, its not a deal AA could afford to make by emptying out his AAA and parts of the big league team. WIth the names being thrown around in the deal, the Jays couldn’t afford to make that deal, they have too many holes now and would have even more holes if they did the deal.

I tend to think it’s all a matter of personality.

Step 1: Bob Elliot SPECULATES it might take Snider & Drabek
Step 2: Toronto Baseball media, who revere Elliot as a god, sloppily take Elliot’s speculation as an actual proposal by one of the teams and run with it.
Step 3: National media notes that Toronto media seems convinced an S/D package was discussed, and ru with it.
Step 4: when another, lesser, package actually completes the deal, self-refferential Toronto media compares actual deal to NEVER ACTUALLY PROPOSED S/D deal in order to generate even more copy about a thing that never actually happened.

S.O.P.

but Greinke didn´t want to pitch for Toronto

Melvin gave up MUCH less that what we allegedly offered to get Greinke and of course took Betancourt off their hands too( we were never going to do that). Cain and Escobar are solid players but hardly elite and the other two are a mid-level prospect and a reliever. So I think in that respect the Brewers did school A.A. In the respect of catering to what a team really needs to get a deal done. My guess is the Royals (needing a CF) wanted Gose and not Snider.