Jonathan Kozol on Trading for Miguel Tejada

[Guest Edgy DC]

Jumping back and forth from the CPF to actual work, I occasionally get moments of epiphany when what I'm reading helps to illuminate what I'm thinking and feeling about baseball --- a pre-oocupation ever increasing the portion of my mind which it controls.

This morning I'm reading an archival article that Jonathan Kozol wrote for us in 1973. He has since gone on to become one of the nation's leading educational theorists.

Back in 1973, he wrote,

We go on from movement to movement, thing to thing. Each of the things we do may be a good thing in itself, but 'moving on' is not a good thing if it is a way of thinning us out, of spinning out our worth or squandering our capability for love and for vocation along a boardwalk of inadequate completions.

In that spirit, I'm typically unsettled by the current compulsive re-arranging of the furniture, while being able to see the reason in many of the individual moves in and of themselves. And I humbly disagree somewhat with Gotham Baseball that the Mets and their offeseason behavior have clearly established that they have a solid plan. Or that their fans are behind one. ("Marlins are available!? Get us some Marlins! Tejada said what? Let's get Tejada!")

And I'm non-plussed that "moving on" (in somewhat of the sense that Kozol is using) is all the logic we have for not at least exploring a possible brief extension of the Piazza era, and instead make a perhaps costlier move that promises little chance of improvement.

I fret about 'thinning out.' Thinning out the talent base. Thinning out the farm. Thinning out the identity of the team which I relate to. Thining out of the legendary plan and the values and the mission.

I think we adapt, because we're amazingly adaptive creatures, and our relationship is often not just to the team --- and not to the laundry either, that's crapcake --- but to each other and the culture we're a part of as fans. But we shouldn't have to or be so willing to adapt so much. It diminishes the team, diminishes the fans, diminishes the relationship between the two.

Kozol concludes in a way that is also relevant, if you change some of the education-specific nouns and consider these values as applicable to all mission-based organizations, aruging that, while there is the need for change and growth, there is:

...even a deeper need to find one solid core of concrete action and specific dedication in one neighborhood or in one city, with just one group of children and with just one group of allies and with one set of loyalties and with one deep dream of love and transformation."

In short, no, I don't want to trade Reyes and a prospect or two for Tejada.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Me neither. And for pretty much the same reasons you have.

I'm not anti-trade, as you are, but I agree in the need for some kind of stability. For this team to continue to seem like the Mets, it's important to keep guys like Reyes and Wright around.

I don't want to root for an All-Star team.

[Guest Edgy DC]

But I want to grow the team I root for into an All-Star team, which may seem like a subtle distinction, but isn't so much.

[metirish]

That's deep Edgy, I'd rather not trade Reyes either as he is such an exciting player and home grown and all that, it's certainly important to have players like Reyes, Wright, Heilman and others coming through the system,it helps us identify more with the team and it's kinda cool to see players make an impact like Wright and Reyes have done.

Like any team you need to sign FA players and trade for others, but there has to be a balance and the right mix, else you end up like Real Madrid with an All-Star team that's not a team at all.

[Elster88]

I'd personally like to see a World Championship.

The non-exploration of a deal with Piazza is completely different from a Tejada for Reyes, because in the Piazza situation, trading for Lo Duca cost us players for little appreciable gain.

Tejada for Reyes is a significant upgrade. I'm willing to deal players that might not see the light of Queens for that. Or those that have seen the light but get on base at a clip in the low 300's. If we have to part with Diaz or Milledge and a pitcher, so be it.

[Guest Edgy DC]

It's not completely different in the context of the reasons stated

[Elster88]

What's done may not be completely different in the context stated, but to take it beyond that, it is completely different:

To thin out the system and trade away/fail to pursue the familiar guys when the gain is insiginficant

is completely different from

thinning out the system and trade away/fail to pursue the familiar guys when the gain is siginficant.

At least that's the distinction that I make.
___________________
This post had the designation 101) Ty Wigginton, stud third baseman and a great loss in the Kristin Benson trade.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Sure. But we're atually talking potential gain, while we're way too indifferent about an actual loss of a different type that is dismissed way too cavalierly.

[metirish]

I think most of us would agree that Tejada would be an upgrade over Reyes, just as he would be the better player no matter who he might replace on whatever team, the way I read this thread was that while Tejada is the better player trading Reyes for him would be seen as a step too far for some fans.

[Elster88]

I haven't gotten too attached to Reyes yet. I think I'm subconciously avoiding attachment because I'm terrified of his hamstring completely detaching from his leg one day as he rounds second.

[seawolf17]

Me neither, Elster. He's too young and too unpolished. He could be Derek Jeter, or he could be UL Washington. It's too soon to tell. That's why I'm not ready to throw a long-term deal at him yet, or to pronounce him the savior of the franchise. Did I pick up a Jose Reyes Topps Rookie card just in case? Yes I did. But I'm not sold... yet.

The player most similar to Jose Reyes, according to b-r.com, is Mike Caruso, a SS for the ChiSox in 98-99. In two full-time seasons, at age 21 and 22, he stole 34 bases, hit ten triples, batted .275, made almost sixty errors, then vanished off the face of the planet -- twenty ABs with KC in '02, and that's it. I'm not saying that's going to happen to Jose, but I'm just saying we need to temper our expectations.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Nobody is casting him as the savior of the franchise, nor even proposing a long-term deal. Nor is anybody speaking of expectations for him (though you are happy to dance with the subject and Elster clearly has expectations for Tejada). What and whose expectations need tempering?

[G-Fafif]

Beyond their talents and their ceilings and their youth, Reyes and Wright give us emotional cover. The Mets are not trying to buy a championship. They developed two great young players! The second either one of them is gone (prior to said championship being actually garnered), we're rooting for just a bunch of Messians.

Whatever happened to the good old days of building a team you loved with homegrown guys like Piazza, Olerud, Ventura, Henderson, Cedeno, Dunston, Hamilton, Leiter, Reed, Hershiser, Yoshii, Franco, Benitez, Cook and Wendell? The only prospects we watched climb the organizational ladder to 1999 were Alfonzo and Ordonez (I wasn't watching Agbayani, he just appeared). That was enough. I will borrow a line from my blogging partner: Having a team full of guys who came up through your system is like excellent posture. It's nice, but it doesn't make that much of a difference.

This is not an endorsement of a trade for Jose Reyes or David Wright. Don't be crazy.

[Benjamin Grimm]

What would happen if tomorrow the Mets traded entire rosters with the Los Angeles Angels?

They'd have a pretty good team. Their uniforms would be the uniforms that we're used to. If they won the pennant, we'd be happy.

But wouldn't we feel a bit disassociated from them? I know we don't know the players personally, but it's the continuity from season to season that helps us relate to them. Of course, change is inevitable. I've seen the roster turn over a bunch of times since I signed on in 1971. I haven't walked away from the Mets because Seaver and Koosman and Grote and Jones and Agee are gone.

Too much change too fast and you start to wonder why you care.

"Home grown" is nice, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Imported players who stick around can become one of our guys. Piazza did. So did Hernandez and Agee and a bunch of others. Pedro Martinez probably will, and so will Beltran if he gets his act together.

[Guest Edgy DC]

]Whatever happened to the good old days of building a team you loved with homegrown guys like Piazza, Olerud, Ventura, Henderson, Cedeno, Dunston, Hamilton, Leiter, Reed, Hershiser, Yoshii, Franco, Benitez, Cook and Wendell?

While seemingly a parody of my position, this really doesn't characterize what I'm saying either. Yancy's last paragraph is a fairer summary.

[Vic Sage]

]I think we adapt, because we're amazingly adaptive creatures, and our relationship is often not just to the team --- and not to the laundry either, that's crapcake --- but to each other and the culture we're a part of as fans. But we shouldn't have to or be so willing to adapt so much. It diminishes the team, diminishes the fans, diminishes the relationship between the two.

mmmm, crapcake. I hear they make good crapcakes in Baltimore. If they want to pack up a crate of crapcakes along with Tejada and send that package to Queens, i'd have a crapcake-eating grin on my face.

as to our relationship to the team...

the only constant is the IDEA of the team. It is the national league franchise of NYC, inheritors of the mantle of the Dodgers and Giants.

Players change, ownership and management changes, "fan culture" changes. Edgy, believe it or not, i was a Mets fan before I had a "relationship" with you or any other Mets fans, or had any notion of "fan culture". I inherited a rooting interest from my parents, and it grew in relative isolation thru my adolescence. I can enjoy watching games by myself, or with others, but I require no "relationship" with other fans. I enjoy this site, but i've only been involved in it for a few years, while my fandom goes back to 1971.

Sure, i enjoy arguing about them, but it doesn't matter to me who wears the Jersey. I long ago cured myself of the delusion that "my team" was connected in any way to any particular player. They come, they go. My hope is that they play good ball while they're here, and if they go, we get appropriate value for them in return.

I root for my team, good or bad. I don't become a Red Sox fan because i hate the management; I don't become a Yankee fan because i'm sick of the losing. I root for my team because they connect me to ME... to my own youth, my own family history, my own core values. Those values don't include demonizing change, or spiritualizing continuity, for its own sake. My values are about choosing (choice being an existential act, not a spiritual one) to connect to the IDEA of my team, not any particular guy who happens to be wearing the uniform today. In my loyalty to the IDEA of my team, i am always rewarded by its constancy, its unchanging nature, despite all the change swirling around me.

IF the Mets should stop being the national league outpost in NYC, if they should contract, or pick up and leave, or switch leagues, i'll be betrayed (like the generation before me), and i'll question my fandom at that time. But until that time, they are my team come hell, highwater, bad trades or good ones. I don't believe I'll get greater joy from a WS title that results from homegrown kids rather than one that is delivered by mercenaries.

I do, however, believe an all-star import team is unlikely to ever WIN a WS, without a balance of youthful excuberance and talent pushing it forward. Which is why i think Omar needs to pull back from the bridge too far. I think the team can be improved enough with available FAs, with no need to surrender any more significant young talent. Milledge, Wright.. I believe we move them at our peril, at this point.

But Reyes is not a guy i ever trusted, and still don't. I believe, like Billy Beane does, that OB% is not just a skill but a talent, and while it's a skill that can be improved, if you don't have that talent, then the improvement will only ever be marginal. IMO, Reyes has a better chance of developing power over time, based on his frame and his swing, than he does of ever raising his OB% to a productive level, and its on that basis that his future potential rests. But if you can get Tejada for him, you're getting the player Reyes only has the potential to one day be.

[Guest Edgy DC]

]Those values don't include demonizing change, or spiritualizing continuity, for its own sake.

This isn't what I'm doing either. But if you want merecenaries, go to it. Clemens is available for the pluckiing.

[Vic Sage]

There are guys who i don't want to have to root for. Clemens is one of them. Not because he's a mercenary, but because i perceive him to be (rightly or wrongly) a cowardly, headhunting, unnaturally bulked up jock-bully. But Davey Cone was as much a gun-for-hire as ever threw a Laredo, and i'd take someone of his ilk in a heartbeat.

So, I'd be irritated if the Mets signed Clemens... right up till he threw his first shutout. Then i'd get over it and start perceiving him (rightly or wrongly) as a misunderstood hero who i have the honor of watching on his march to Cooperstown as one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

See how that works?

[Guest Edgy DC]

Well, i see it, but I wouldn't say that it works.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Next ten posts coming all at once...

[soupcan]

Having homegrown guys doesn't make a championship any more or less enjoyable but I think a fan is able to take a bit more pride in his team if there are several 'organization guys' that play key roles.

We can say we were there then.

We were fans and watching when Reyes and Wright and Heilmam broke through. We had an eye on Milledge and Bannister when they were but babes on the farm.

It's just another feather in a die-hard fan's hat is all.

That being said though - I think its a generally wise idea to mix an organizations own developed players with some FAs.

Look at the core of those late-90's Yankee teams - Jeter, Pettitt, Williams, Rivera, Posada. As much as critics like to say that the Yankees bought their rings, their fans can point to those 5 guys in their defense.

I'd like to be able to say the same about Reyes, Wright, Heilman, and maybe Milledge.

Hey Tejada's great but do we NEED him? If your answer is no, not really. Then its not worth giving up on the Reyes pedigree and potential.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Vic Sage: It works for me. Is that INCONSTANT of me?

Edgy DC: You're the one with the whole blow-against-the-ubermensch position.

Vic Sage: Does that mean I have to fall in line with your RELIGION? Is religious observation compulsory again?

Edgy DC: Nobody mentioned anything about religion. Or any of that other crap your trying to stick to me.

Vic Sage: No, you just forward your doctrine and expect me to kneel. And that's crapCAKE. (Yes I do all-caps because I don't use your fascio-elitist coding tools.) So you're acknowledging that religion is crap?

Edgy DC: You're getting way far away from the argument.

Vic Sage: You're AVOIDING the argument. THE FIRST COMMANDMENT (Exodus 20:2-6) I am the Lord, your God, you shall not have any other God besides me...

Edgy DC: Oh, Jesus.

metsmarathon: is that a curse?

[Elster88]

Love the throwaway marathon line at the bottom. LOL.

[Zvon]

Vic Sage wrote: So, I'd be irritated if the Mets signed Clemens... right up till he threw his first shutout. Then i'd get over it and start perceiving him (rightly or wrongly) as a misunderstood hero who i have the honor of watching on his march to Cooperstown as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. See how that works?

Like we did with Pedro.
Who, after the scene when he headlocked Zimmer, didnt have anything but ill will for Martinez? And talk about a guy with a rep as a headhunter.
remember when he pointed to his head as if to say Ill drill you right in the noggin?
But Pedro plays for us now, and we see him close up. We bury those memories, almost canceling them out with new Met memories.

Wow, he's such a hard worker.
Gosh, he's such an unselfish and good teamate who even lightens the team on the bench.
Boy, he seems to give 100% plus everytime I see him out there. Seven inning pitcher, my ass.

Both the opening post by Edge (awsumly written) and the responses, especially VicSage's are well put forth, and well recieved. Both angles apply to my beliefs.

I like a team that you can grow with and thats grows with you. I like a modem of consistancy. I like familiar faces and seeing Met career statistics accumulate.

I accept the state of flux teams go through. Sometimes changes are warrented and/or justified and sometimes made just for the sake of change. Some changes I jump for joy about. Some I bang my fist down in anger. And everything in between. But Ive learned thats part of the game.
I accept it.

I felt my 1st winds of change with the Mets (that personally affected me) when they traded Agee. He was my hero. But that turned out to be warrented, not by the trade itself or who was involved (Houstons Rich Chiles & Buddy Harris), but because he had reached his peak and was pretty much done at that point.

Seaver was another story, because he had plenty of gas left in the tank, and he showed it when he ironically went on to pitch his no-hitter with the Reds. We all know he, at some point during those years he was away, would have pitched the Mets 1st (and maybe only) no-hitter. You can say thats mere speculation,....but come-on. You know he would have.

(The Ryan deal I cant equate, because I seriously didnt see him going on to accomplish what he did, at that time)

Im just ramb'lin now, so more to the point:

Reyes is my shortstop. Im not interested in any other. Not even a better shortstop. I want to take the ride this guy provides, come hell or high water, at this point in time. If he comes up lame next season (or the season after that..), or really blows chunks as far as playing the game, I can change my opinion. Just like teams change personnel, I have the right to do that. But Ive really enjoyed seeing this kid on the road to baseball maturity. And I expect to continue to do so as long as he provides the positive aspects that make a good player.

Reapeat the above paragraph and substitue Wrights name for Reyes.
The same sentiments apply.

Both still have some growing to do. Its even fun to watch em mess up, like when Wright turned the bag on that grounder down the line in Philly. WHAT AN IDIOT, I screamed. But I bet Ill never see him make that mistake again. The fact that he did that in the 1st place is one of those things that make him who he is.

Niether one is 'The Franchise", at least not yet.
But both are the anchor a team should have for thier fans.
There should be some sense of stability on any baseball team and its a proven fact that you can go out and buy a complete all star team, and not be the best team out there. Its the intangables that make the game so great.

Bottomline, if the Mets even think of moving either while they are young and still growing I will go ballistic.
If they live up to our hopes and thier potential they should stay Mets as long as they wish to stay Mets, and we as fans should give them the support to insure they want to.

These two should be off the table as far as any quick fix trading goes.
Im my mind, the only two right now.

That can change, like baseball does.

[metirish]

]Who, after the scene when he headlocked Zimmer, didnt have anything but ill will for Martinez? And talk about a guy with a rep as a headhunter.

That never bothered me at all, no bullshit but Pedro was a favorite of mine for years, if he was pitching and they were on TV then I would tune in...he syas he was pointing at his head to tell Posado to think about what he's saying or doing......

[Elster88]

metirish wrote: ]Who, after the scene when he headlocked Zimmer, didnt have anything but ill will for Martinez? And talk about a guy with a rep as a headhunter. That never bothered me at all

Me neither. Asshead is in a ballpark of anger and disgust of his own.

[Elster88]

]Reyes is my shortstop. Im not interested in any other. Not even a better shortstop. I want to take the ride this guy provides, come hell or high water, at this point in time.

When I read lines like this, Sal's complaint---that fans get too attached to their guys at the expense of the overall quality of their team---rings true.

[Zvon]

Elster88 wrote: When I read lines like this, Sal's complaint---that fans get too attached to their guys at the expense of the overall quality of their team---rings true.

Talk to me again when Reyes is no longer on the up quality side of the equation.
Right now your just blowin wind.

[Elster88]

]Reyes is my shortstop. Im not interested in any other. Not even a better shortstop. I want to take the ride this guy provides, come hell or high water, at this point in time.

]If he comes up lame next season (or the season after that..), or really blows chunks as far as playing the game, I can change my opinion.

So he's your shortstop, come hell or high water....OR loss of ability. Do you see how ridiculously those two quotes contradict each other?

You're saying he's your guy no matter what. And then in the next line you basically say "unless he sucks."

That's basically what I'm saying. He's my guy, unless I can get something much better.

You're saying you refuse to replace him unless he doesn't perform at certain level. That is not saying you like him. That is saying you like his playing ability. You're not any more attached to him than I am.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

Pedro was never my favorite, but Zimmer attacked him on the field during that fight. I never faulted Pedro for defending himself from the old fool.

Plus, even though Pedro has certainly endeared himself to all of us this past year, I don't love him blindly. He can be a diva at times, and I'm still sure that eventually he'll break our hearts. Nonetheless, he's been everything we've asked him to be and more this past year, and with that he's earned some props.