The Royals have made two moves this offseason. First they traded middle reliever Leo Nunez for first baseman Mike Jacobs. And now they've traded middle reliever Ramon Ramirez for outfielder Coco Crisp.
At least one longtime Royals fan (who happens to be my brother) is, shall we say, perplexed:
I'm biased toward R. Ramirez because I watched him in Colorado, and Nunez's numbers always looked pretty good when I glanced at the box scores, which I know isn't exactly scientific. But is it really better to have two mediocre position players? Seems like they gutted their middle relief, one of the strong points last year from my casual and sporadic observation. Unless you think Crisp is a franchise player, of which I haven't seen any evidence. He looks like a more expensive version of David DeJesus to me.
(I've just looked at Leo's stats and see he was born on my birthday. Now I like him even more.)
In a vacuum, Coco Crisp is more valuable than Ramon Ramirez, Mike Jacobs more valuable than Leo Nunez.
But a baseball team is not built in a vacuum. Jacobs and Crisp might push the Royals from 75 wins to 77 or 78 wins. And I'm not at all sure why you make deals that have absolutely no chance of someday getting you to 85-90 wins. If you're a 75-win team and you're going to trade two pretty good young (and cheap) relief pitchers, you should be looking for young players who might someday become stars. Not uninspiring veterans with virtually no upside.
As usual, the Royals seem intent on winning 80 games. Be still my heart.
Rob Neyer
