Mar
21
Okay, how about Hughes and Joba for Blanton?
ByTim at MLBTR fills us in on a rather extraordinary nugget of info: Back when the Yanks were supposedly mulling around the idea of dealing for the A’s Joe Blanton, Billy Beane asked for Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain in return. Hopefully Cash replied with “Damn yo, why you gotta be wastin’ my daytime minutes for?!?”
Actually true story…he did say that!!
Man they must be smokin some good shit out there in Oakland.
Yet he didn’t ask for Cash’s first born son? Billy is slipping.
I bet Billy just does that for every trade, and people like Sabean say… uh, ok.
LoL, Billy Beane is the Man.
Yeah, they must me smoking something good. They should share with the rest of us
And every writer writes that Beane is so reasonable in his offers.
Like when he traded Haren to Arizona. Eveyr report after was that he was great cos he didn’t insist on Upton.
I guess that is shot to hell.
In negotiation one of the biggest faults people have is that they initially do not ask for enough. It’s a common mistake. Regardless of whether or not that is a realistic trade proposal it is a high bar to throw out there as an initial request, which is exactly what an initial offer is supposed to be.
but i do not think you’d want to set your initial “bar” so high as to merit actual disbelief… i mean.. seriously.. BOTH!??! and like Sabernar says.. i think that’s an insult to Cashman’s intelligence..
If you are dealing with a stranger, you don’t want to make your initial offer so high that you insult them. If you are dealing with someone you know and have dealt with before then the likelihood of insulting them and causing them to end negotiations entirely is low.
If we’re really polite I’d bet they’d let us give them IPK, AJAX and Tabata too. I sure hope we can pull that off.
The problem is when you’re dealing with people who know what they’re doing an offer like that won’t generate an acceptance or a counter offer. You end up having to re-bid and thereby bidding against yourself. That’s a bad spot to be in. I have a hard time believing Beane would open with something so silly if he really wanted to do anything with the Yankees at that point. Color me skeptical about the accuracy of the report.
Blanton won’t even be as good as either one of them THIS SEASON. I understand about setting the negotiation bar high, but you also don’t want to insult the person you’re negotiating with. If I were Cashman I would have hung up on him without another word.
On reflection, I think this was Beane’s clumsy way of trying to get one of them, which he knew there was virtually no chance of happening anyway.
This was the funniest posting RAB ever !!!!!!!!
Seriously if I was a MLB owner I would never let my GM make any deals with
Billy ” I can write a book , but never win a championship” Beane.
CON- ARTIST….. very funny Mike A.
It’s 2008 and people still think Billy Beane wrote Moneyball?
Thinking Beane wrote Moneyball is like thinking Barry Bonds wrote Game of Shadows
http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/2008/.....moneyball/
I hope he did a spit take and hung up the phone so he could roll around the floor in his office laughing his ass off.
The idea that a ludicrous original demand is some kind of BRILLIANT negotiating tactic is pretty stupid. The idea of negotiations would be that Cashman would then come back with a counter offer that is below the original demand. Sorry, but as pointed out above, Cashman would not be wasting his time making a counter offer at that point.
Unless it was equally stupid like “Hey, we have an extra pitching machine - will you trade us Blanton for that and, uh, we have 15 cases of used baseballs we could part with too….
Yeah, brilliant negotiating tactic.
well, Beane did get a good haul for Haren. Gammons LOVES that Gonzalez or Rodrigues RHP they got from Zona.
but that’s a completely fucked up offer. no one, not even Brian Sabean would do that.
Even as objective and logic-driven as Beane’s decision-making process supposedly is, I think he just doesn’t want to help the Yanks or be seen as having helped them. That’s the reason for the exorbitant asking price for Blanton. A man in Beane’s position probably has some real resentment towards the Yankees. I know Cashman and him are friendly with each other and I don’t think he hates the Yanks per se, but deep-down the idea of helping them probably bothers him.
Thats the point though. Every writer says Beane is fair and knows not to ask for asburd players like Jay Bruce, Upton, Joba, Hughes, etc.
Its very weird.
Street wouldnt look bad in the 8th for the Yanks. Obv not for Hughes, Joba, IPK, etc.
Honestly, Beane is just economically bitter. Why help the richest team in baseball because you’re essentially one of the poorest? He just doesn’t like doing it so he asks for extravagant packages that he knows are not possible (Moneyball even outlines that, albeit briefly). Beezr has it right. The Yanks can go after Huston Street, but he’s questionable. Let the guys they have try and work it out on their own. Street had a nerve problem last year, which is totally scary for anyone trading for him, even if he has top notch stuff.
Oh, and to anybody who hasn’t heard it yet, Ensberg was added to the 40-man. Say hello to your next bench guy.
HAHA, looks like Beane has been smoking too much of those funny cigarettes.
http://aroundthemajors.blogspot.com/
You mean Billy Beane actually wanted a “high school” pitcher in Hughes? That says alot, normally he likes college guys.