Defensive Indifference

From the always valuable, and occasionally hilarious, ESPN.com winter meetings blog:

…[S]ome people in the organization want to see GM Jim Hendry pursue a trade for the Angels’ Chone Figgins, a switch-hitter. But the Cubs probably don’t have what it takes to land Figgins. The Angels value Figgins so highly, one person with ties to the Los Angeles organization said the team might ask the Cubs for third baseman Aramis Ramirez in return.

Yes, Figgins is fast. Yes, he is versatile. But in all other ways he’s a completely average baseball player. His career OPS+ is 99, and that includes his career year last season in which he managed a .330 BA and a 117 OPS+. But before you think that’s a sign of things to come, consider this: his BABIP was a Posadaesque .391 last season. His GB% was also abnormally high, 47%, so together that equals an überlucky season.

A-Ram, on the other hand, is coming off 4 straight seasons of OPS+ of 126 or higher, and is actually a few months younger than Chone. He’s also a legitimate power threat and a solid cornerstone player, and if Jim Hendry has a working synapse in his brain there’s no way he’s making that trade, especially with Felix Pie on the horizon (not that I’d put anything past Jim Hendry, of course). I thought the pseudo-removal of Bill Stoneman was a good thing, but if his replacement Tony Reagins is making ridiculous offers like this then it appears the status quo is intact in Anaheim, er, Los Angeles.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Cubs, Dumb GMs, Lunatics, Angels, Front office rumblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.