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From: david@fisher.UUCP (David Rubin)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Mortgaging The Future (Paciorek Acquisition)
Message-ID: <710@fisher.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jul-85 10:25:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: fisher.710
Posted: Mon Jul 22 10:25:18 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 01:37:23 EDT
References: <690@spuxll.UUCP>
Organization: Princeton University Department of Statistics
Lines: 44

> What do you fellow netters think?

Oh, wow.  My opinion was solicited...

I think, in general, it [the proposition that a team in a pennant
stretch trade away some prospects for immediate help] is a sound
idea.  If you always look to the future, and never make the deal
that helps today but hurts tomorrow, you're going to wind up like
the Tigers of the post-WWII era: you're going to be THE top team over
a period of a decade or whatever, but you're consistently going to be
beaten out by teams willing to make the move for that particular year.

If you're the Orioles of the '60s and '70s, you can get away with never
making such trades, because you have SO much more talent coming
through your system than anyone else in the league.  However, if you
are not in that position, than you can't do that, and must deal.
Winning teams give up more talent than they get, as they are looking
for specific kinds of talent; losing teams get more than they give up,
as they're looking to maximize talent, and can use it most
everywhere.  The Mets, while they have probably the most productive
farm system in the NL at the moment, are still in the same class as
the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Phillies in producing talent; they cannot
assume the isolationist attitude that Baltimore and Los Angeles have
sometimes taken in the past.

My criticism of the Paciorek-Cochrane deal is not the general one of
trading away the future, but the very specific one of not having
gotten enough for the present.  The warning sign is that the White
Sox, the other team in the deal, are NOT a non-contending team looking
just toward the future, nor do they possess an overabundance of the
quality Paciorek supposedly represents: bench offense.  Now, I've
heard all the stuff about the Paciorek-LaRussa feud, but I doubt they
were very material; instead, I suspect the White Sox have decided he
is over-the-hill.

Paciorek replaces Christiansen on the Mets' roster.  He must produce
more than Christiansen would have, or the deal is manifestly in
error.  I think it is likely that it will prove to have been in error,
as I see no reason to expect Paciorek to produce much more in New York
than he did in Chicago, and I see many reasons to expect Christiansen
to improve on his first half.

					David Rubin
			{allegra|astrovax|princeton}!fisher!david