Sanchez, as in "wtf"

[JohnU]

Reds signed Jonathan Sanchez to a minor league contract.
This guy's job will be to clog up the minor-league pitching staff so that the best prospects will be trapped in Double-A. No clues on where this turkey was the last 2 years.
Why does a front office exist?


DIRTY SANCHEZ STATS LINE

 

[eburg5000]

Not sure why they signed this guy. They have released guys last year that are as good or better. I'm thinking that this up coming season for the Reds. Is going to be a record breaking season for loses.

If I were Price I would hand in my resignation.

 

[JohnU]

Seems like if all you want is organizational filler, at least sign some guys who have a little heart left. Indy leagues are full of guys who can throw up an 11.03 ERA and walk 8 guys every 13 innings.

 

[chico ruiz]

i better preface this post with a disclaimer of 'because it's mlb pitchng in 2016 (not 1966),' i am most likely completely wrong. btw, i saw a list of mlb's best all-time bullpens, and the 1964 reds were mentioned. 19 year old billy mcCool and sammy ellis (23) had phenomenal years. hutchinson and sisler did some interesting transitional usage of jay, purkey, tsitouris, and nuxhall between starters and relief. john probably remembers this year better than myself, but it's interesting because pinella did kind of the same thing with mahler and charlton in 1990, although i believe, if memory serves, this was due more to the injuries / DL's of jackson and rijo. i believe scudder had some spot starts too.

nevertheless, here goes. i'm actually a little relieved the reds didn't sign arroyo. the bronson quotes i read sounded like a guy overselling himself. the reds need to get their young pitchers moving up the food chain unencumbered by mlb filler / second pitching coach nonsense. signing any of the 'affordable' FA vet starting pitchers would be yet another insult to this cincinnati reds fan. i'm also becoming less and less enthralled with jocketty's disingenuous statements. it would be nice if jocketty lent an air of authenticity to 2016. blaming the state of mlb is the biggest cop out i've heard in a long time. couldn't have been mismanagement, could it? yep, the reds hire a paper gm and the brewers hire a real one. any of you guys been following what david stearns (check out his resume) is saying and doing in milwaukee? the first thing he said after being hired was ''acquire, develop and retain the best young talent in baseball. that's our goal to create an organization and a team that can consistently contend for postseason appearances.' yeah, they're just words, but it's informative that they were the first ones he uttered. you know what? i'll bet he does it. and he was completely honest with brewer fans about the process. look for the brewers to be successful long before the reds get back to competitiveness, and the following is part of the reason.

two months before stearn's hiring, a deal to send bruce to the mets fell through because the reds, again raised the price tag. apparently the deal involved zach wheeler. i take the hot stove mlb rumor stuff with a grain of salt. but, if this is true, i would have taken a shot at wheeler coming back from tommy john and having a true 1 or 2 in my rotation by july, with club control for 3+ more years. inexplicably the reds backed out, then came back asking for more. what kind of negotiating skills are those? not only has jocketty proven to be a dishonest broker, his timing is horrible. take the chapman situation. a lot of potential value there, right? a lot of teams were willing to pay for that 100mph shutdown production last summer. one report i read linked arizona to chapman. the d-backs were only 5 games behind the dodgers in late august. i believe larussa and stewart thought they still had a shot at the division. their offer included braden shipley, with another top ten farm talent, plus 2 more. the reds wanted more, to the point that diamondback gm dave stewart said he was "uncomfortable," the asking price so high he had to back away. "I don't want to talk about the number of prospects, but it was a good number," stewart said when asked the price the d-backs would have had to pay. it was uncomfortable. that's the best way I can put it. when something doesn't feel right in my stomach, then I don't normally do it." wally lost the opportunity to get more value for chapman. he could not foresee the domestic violence issue, but a more robust prospect package could have better filled voids the team still has, including good-hitting outfield holes that prospect jesse winker can't fill alone. and here's the part that annoys me and seems disconnected from reality. jocketty told reporters, "we weren't necessarily interested in moving them," in the same scrum, jocketty claimed the series of moves last summer represented a reboot, not a rebuild — a way to contend in 2017 and 2018 without losing next season. doesn't seem to be a very honest assessment by the reds gm. the word 'maladroit' comes to mind for me. jocketty also said he made the most recent trades when the players were at their maximum value to other teams. i completely disagree with wally on this, and so does most of baseball. now the reds have to bank on bruce having a good start to 2016. do you think the reds will get a better offer than wheeler + 1 in july? chapman's max value was undoubtedly last summer. the yankees did not give up one top ten prospect for chapman. not one. and you have to ask, if the yankee prospect pool is deeper than yours, do you have a problem as a small / mid market team?

regardless of whether i am accurate about the trades, the reality is that you can't trade for prospects, in a period of 6 months, and expect to replenish a farm system that was barren for almost 5 years. other small market teams have kept their systems vital with position balance prospects while remaining competitive at the ml level. this one can't be blamed on baseball's financial imbalance. time sensitive moves needed to be made 4-5 years ago. they weren't, leaving nothing in the pipeline. btw, i am not discounting suarez and desclafani. those players are turning out to be good acquisitions. have to give credit where credit is due. latos was never going to be a true mlb #1 or 2, and neither is desclafani. suarez can hit (actually but bat on ball), and may develop into a adequate third baseman. but, if i had to guess, the 4 - 5 years, referenced above, will probably match the number of losing years the reds, and we fans, will have to endure. you don't just wake up one morning, as a organization (gm), and think, 'aw geez we're a little thin down here.' i don't know if the coaches and instructors are necessarily inept, but -and as 1507 also mentions- there has clearly been a disconnect somewhere between management and the reds farm system the last 8 years. one poster wrote, "The Reds have been slow to identify the cream of their farm system pitching and are allowing once higher regarded prospects to lose value as a result. A team should be able to evaluate their own talent and move prospects before outside organizations realize the deficiencies." i don't think there could be a more damning criticism, and i do not understand what has delayed castelini relieving wally of his duties. is there any other organization in mlb that would not have by now?

jocketty has often received the benefit of the doubt due to his years as st. louis's general manager, where he won a couple executive of the year awards. many insiders seem to think jocketty, in part, has more maverick moves held hostage by uber-competitive reds owner bob castellini. regardless, and even if that is true, it's a recipe for a failing organization. not just a few down years, but 5 years to a decade of 90 to 100 loss seasons. it's a severely flawed mind-set that requires a completely new business plan. otherwise it becomes cyclical, with the result being two (maybe 3) winning seasons and 5-10 'rebuild or reboot' losing seasons, more reliant on a cynical semanticist than a general manager.

 

[JohnU]

Asking for more and settling for minor league fodder/filler in Jon Sanchez has become a recipe for what the Pirates were for two decades. It was time to tell Sanchez, thanks but no thanks. We just are not an organization that needs washed up lefties in our system. We have young guys who can and should be building up the innings so that when they hit the big club, we don't need to put a stop watch on their innings.
What the FUCK does Sanchez do to improve the future of this organization?

 

[Redsfan1507]

To do the same things, and expect different results, is evidence of stupidity or insanity. The Reds really haven't addressed what got them into this predicament. Painting zebras doesn't make them thoroughbreds.

It's harder to lose more than 64 games than you might think....Change isn't much of a risk anymore for the Reds. Unfortunately, they're only changing the players.... It's like changing the front bumper of your car over and over, and ignoring that you have no brakes.

 

[JohnU]

I realize that agents need to get people signed and it's part of the process for front offices to deal with agents, on the off-chance that someday a real player will come around. So hoping that's all this signing is about, it's still so completely counterproductive to the principle of a 'rebuild.'
The Marquis fiasco of a year ago was not as bad as this, but the Gregg fiasco was this bad.
So was Jeff Francis and a few other turkeys over the years.
If the Reds had a quality bullpen, an experienced staff and no need to move up players, I could see plugging an old lefty into the Bats rotation for a couple of months, maybe until one of the kids gets his passport approved.