There have been some worthy wankers in our series, but IMO, Braves One Year Wanker, Melky Cabrera is the wankiest wanker whoever wanked. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways ….
Braves One Year Wanker, Melky Cabrera: Trade
- In the 2009 offseason, we traded our best starter (who had just finished 4th in the Cy Young voting), for you. The trade was instantly panned. But in Wren’s defense, anytime you can trade the closest thing you have to a staff ace for “a switch-hitting Nate McLouth with less power†(hat tip to ububba), you just gotta do it.
Wanky Performances
2. You sucked even worse than we thought you could: .255/.317/.354, 83 OPS+, -0.3 WAR. And we only gave you 509 PA to prove it.
3. You did this.
4. And this.
5) In only one season, you managed to spawn your own Braves Journal category.
6) After we put you out of our misery, you were a proven cheater.
7) And you were not very good at it.
Despite your best efforts, 2010 had plenty of good memories. I hereby consign you to the dustbin of history. Good riddance.
Thanks for reading on the Ultimate Wanker, Melky Cabrera. Check out our entire series of Wankers and Wonders here.
But it’s even worse than that. If Melky just sucked, then it would just be a failure to scout properly or something. It is the following two seasons after he left of 9.2 WAR that are really galling. He managed to only really suck for us until he hit an age decline. To be bad for just one team looks like malevolence more than incompetence.
Meh-lky Cabrera likely started juicing in KC (if not before) and went on to make 64 million dollars the next 6 years. Aside from morality, tell me why fringe talents and/or aging players shouldn’t juice and risk getting caught once?
I think many of them did — but they had better help. $64M should buy some good help
JonathanF is exactly right. It’s not just that he played like Erick Aybar. It’s that he was Erick Aybar for us and then he was J.D. Martinez for the next team. The word schmuck is too good for him.
Wow, the Braves Journal community got it collectively spot on. Even I was on the right side of history with this one.
This wasn’t discussed at the time, and it seems like we just didn’t discuss it way back then, but Vazquez was going to make $11.5M, and only had one year left of control. You know they weren’t going to trade him at the deadline. Melky was only 25 at the time, so he had lots of control left. He was only making $3.1M that year, and had a couple years of control after that.
The question is what the Braves did with that $8.1M savings for 2010. What was the subsequent deal where that money was spent?
You know, I actually thought Melky was a pretty good acquisition at the time — his age-relative-to-league was quite impressive, and he’d held his own at the majors in a young age. His subsequent success bore out those indicators.
He was just a flaming stinking disaster in Atlanta.
I’m with Alex—I thought at the time that the trade had a lot of upside.
And I’m with everyone on this blog—and all Braves fans everywhere—that Melky turned out to be the all time wankiest of Braves wankers. Thanks, Kirk, for reminding of the many reasons he was the worst.
2010 free agents
Troy Glaus $1.75M
Billy Wags $6.75M
Takashi Saito $3.2M
Or, about as much as Javy Vasquez…
Takashi Saito — what a brilliant career that guy had. Came over here after a 14-year career in Japan, and spent his late 30s throwing bullets and collecting saves and holds. Then he went back and threw some more darts at age 43 and 44 in Japan. I admire him so much.
@9
That money equated to 3.1 fWAR, all coming from the relievers.
So he gets lucky with Saito, unlucky with Cabrera, you get about what you expect from Glaus and Wagner, and you end up in largely the same place as you would have had you just kept Vazquez, signed Glaus, and signed an outfielder to play a corner. You’d have a much better rotation, but a much worse bullpen. I know GMs are vilified for sitting on their hands, but sometimes you really just make a bunch of changes to end up in the same place.
Talking about going out on top. Wagner throws almost 70 innings with a 1.43 ERA and then retires.
One really fun thing about the wanker part of the series is dissecting how the heck we got there. Why did we feel like we needed a Reggie Sanders or Melky Cabrera or Ken Caminiti? What could they have done differently? In the case of Melkman, my explanation is that by this point, the farm system was just simply gutted, so you’re re-arranging the deck chairs to see if you find gold.
One last point about Billy Wagner. I would hope that if I was that good at throwing a ball, I’d look at his $93M the same way he did: I got plenty, and I’m going home. I don’t know much about the NFL, but I know that Jay Cutler always had this rep of being non-chalant and borderline lazy. And his wife is divorcing him partly because he’s “lazy” and wants to spend all of his time on his ranch with his kids. Uhh, the guy made $123M in salaries. I’d be doing the same exact thing. I could think of worse criticisms than “that guy right there just wants to count his millions and hang out with his kids. “
Wagner not only said he wanted to spend more time with his kids before they got old but has continued to say it was the best baseball decision he ever made. My estimation of Jay Cutler just went up. The wife sounds like she wanted a bigger divorce settlement
I just love it when they go out on top. 1.43 ERA shutting doors in the 9th. Chipper Jones and his .832 OPS. Lots of great examples from this list of guys who could have kept collecting paychecks:
https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/1/3/3824352/greatest-final-seasons-last-seasons-mlb-sabermetrics
@12: It’s not quite like the Billy Wagner story, but the Rich Diana story deserves to be better known. Diana was a fullback signed as a 5th round pick by the Dolphins out of Yale, and in his only season in the NFL (1982), the Dolphins got to the Super Bowl, losing to the Redskins. Shortly after the game, Shula calls Diana to his office, thanks him for his efforts, and tells him how he intends to ramp up his role in the 1983 season. Diana stops him, saying: “Thanks coach, but I’m done. The Super Bowl bonus check pays for my entire med school education. It’s been an honor. Thanks.” He now a sports medicine doctor in CT. You don’t need to make $93 million to know there are other ways to make a living.
I’ve never been a big Jay Cutler fan (which will be shocking to Stu, I’m sure), but I’ve never understood what he needed with all that reality TV mess. Didn’t seem like his scene at all. I agree, good on him just wanting to spend time with his kids.
New thread brought to you by Jonathan F.!
https://bravesjournal.mystagingwebsite.com/2020/05/09/dusted-the-braves-make-a-bad-trade-on-november-27-1975/