To me, they're basically the same. Wayne's moves had a greater dynamic range of "excitement" and talent but we're still here in the "Land of sub-.500" along with the Sleestaks and Pakuni.
To me, they're basically the same. Wayne's moves had a greater dynamic range of "excitement" and talent but we're still here in the "Land of sub-.500" along with the Sleestaks and Pakuni.
Meme #2 of Redszone, Wayne Krivsky is the devil.
Good stuff!
What doesn't he get? That Walt is patient and isn't spending the big multi-billionaires pocket change? Please, please, please come with something better than a handful of contracts of which Walt's closing in fast on Wayne and yet moves at a far slower pace. All you need to know about these 2 is really simple.
Wayne got talent for nothing
Walt pays market price or above for it
Wayne paid too much money to try to put out a major league team on the field with little success
Walt ditto, he just works slower
Wayne was proactive
Walt is reactive, almost
Waynes greatest loss was Cantu
Walts greatest loss is Dunn to this point
Wayne started with O'Brien/Bowdens mess
Walt started with a better organization top to bottom and by a lot
Wayne had a 152 - 172 record with said mess
Walt has a 152 - 172 record with a better situation
Wayne did not deal any good prospects
Walt has
Wayne had poor PR skills
Walt is a master of manipulating the masses thru the media
Wayne trusted only those with evaluation skills because he trusts his evaluation skills
Walt trusts Bavasi and Bonifay and anyone else with an opinion because he knows no better
As far as I can see the only area Walt excels at is comforting the masses, now I can see why Bob hired him.
"You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."
--Woody Hayes
No excuses for Jocketty. His job isn't completely different than say a new CEO of a firm like Citi or AIG. You walk in and find yourself in the middle of a financial crisis with a bunch of artery clogging positions on your books. You can't move these contracts w/o eating a significant portion and you can't add payroll due to these same decisions made a few years earlier. So what is Walt supposed to do? Harang has little mkt value, Cordero the same b/c of his contract and Arroyo is Jeckyll and Hyde.
Krivsky made a few good moves but taking flyers on failed prospects is like 1% of a GMs job. He failed in his bigger moves on a number of occasions. Picking up guys like Arroyo, Hamilton and Phillips were nice and all. I'll give him as much credit as he deserves for those moves. In the grand scheme they haven't brought us winning baseball so I'm not sure why we would choose to focus on a few singular wins when the sum of the moves has equaled what we have witnessed. Arroyo for Pena was a good move, but that move did nothing and then got lessened by the extension. The feel good Hamilton story has been greatly overrated. We got a half of solid production from him, then traded him for a guy who was lights out for 1/2 a season and then decent to good for a year. Now he is recovering from surgery and we'll see what happens in his future. Phillips was a no risk move that worked out greatly.
If you want, we can list the failed moves here as well and the record of the team. Which should be the most important grade on the report card. Most to all of WK's moves were designed to help the major league team and didn't do much for the farm. And yet the team still sucked. He spent more money than I remember seeing a GM spend in these parts. He chose to focus on the bullpen. And he failed in the overall task of getting winning baseball to Cincy.
You can say that he didn't have enough time, but the scary thing would have been to give him more time. He would have had to continue on the "win now" path without having the money to do so. I can't see WK being able to succeed in his plan, whatever that was, without money to spend.
Wayne gave, what, roughly $120MM to Harang, Arroyo, Cordero, Stanton and Gonzalez? When the situation was screaming to wait on spending until the youth was ready? Which happens to be the next couple of years, not 3 years ago.
And this is not counting the little moves like Conine and Cormier. Or Fogg. But we can total them all up and see how much money has been wasted. I'll take Walt as the winner in that battle.
$21MM or so of that money went to Stanton and Gonzo by the way. Stellar.
I'm not going to sit here and argue this on Christmas Eve. Just look at the transactions for both GM's and it's pretty clear that Krivsky was better than Jocketty.
O'Brien acquired Bailey, Bruce, Cueto, and Francisco--in two years. If adding impact players is to be the standard, as I think it should be, there's no doubt the biggest mistake the organization's made in recent years is getting rid of O'Brien.
Giving $10M to Taveras and Lincoln is inexcusable.
Giving $20M to Rolen in order to save $5M this season might be questioned, but has been considered a smart move by many. Not fair to lump it in with the other two. In fact, there's a decent chance that Rolen's production alone over the next three will be worth all the money given to all three.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |