Tuesday, July 25, 2006 |
Dodgers Move Odalis Perez, Cash, And Minor Leaguers To Royals For Elmer Dessens
At first glance, this seems to be a trade of junk for junk, but believe it or not, it might actually be a win for the Royals. Perez had a 3.80 ERA as a reliever, though that was predicated on only 21.1 IP worth of samples. Looking at more advanced statistics, BPro's WXRL (reliever expected wins added), Perez had a -0.185 score, though that seems to include his time as a starter, as well, so I'm skeptical. But Dessens, who had spent the entirety of his time at KC as a reliever, had a -0.641 WXRL, leading me to believe the Dodgers just dug themselves a bigger hole while disgorging a couple of only mildly interesting pitching prospects. Both Pimentel and Johnson had good K/9 and K/BB rates at lower levels, but both have run into trouble further up the ladder, and both got hit a lot as they progressed. It's unlikely they'll be missed, so at least Colletti managed to make a trade without moving any visibly blue-chip prospects. (Caveat: I say this without having my Baseball America 2006 Prospects Handbook at my side.)
Update: Also via dodgers.com, and AP via ESPN.
Update 2: And thus the last remains of the Gary Sheffield era comes to a close. And I'll have to check the roster more completely, but I believe the Dan Evans era as well.
Update 3: The Kamenetzky brothers declare the trade a win, along with dollar figures on the salary: "around $8 mil or so". Clearly, unloading OP had become a priority, but the deal still ends up sending a bad pitcher with cash and a pair of prospects to get an even worse reliever. This isn't good.
Update 4: Perez makes his parting comments to Dodger fans:
"You know, the team is a bad team," Perez said of the last-place Royals. "[But] I could be happy there because I can be the ace on staff or one of the good guys on the staff."Wow, what a great way to start off your tenure in a new town.
Having left on such a bad note, having become so mediocre and having done so gracelessly, people naturally forget what an asset he was when the Dodgers got him. For me, I'll always remember the August 28, 2002 game where he did it all, scoring the Dodgers' only run of the game on a solo homer while holding down Arizona, then a good team, over eight innings of shutout baseball, with Eric Gagné coming in to slam the door shut in the ninth by striking out the side. And he did it again on his very next turn, going six innings in a game that was overshadowed by a 19-1 Dodger blowout featuring David Ross's very first major league home run, obtained thanks to Mark Grace's only attempt at pitching. I remember the two-run complete game at elevation against the Rockies, another against the Giants, another against the Rockies, another against the Cubs. Damned if he didn't look like a guy who might blossom into a real ace one day. You could see it in that broad scowl he wore on the mound, the indifferent contempt he seemed to hold each batter in.
And now it's gone, and he's gone.
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