Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
November 12, 2006
Youth Movement?

The Yankees made their second deal of the week, once again trading an older player for young pitching:

The Orioles have agreed to trade reliever Chris Britton to the New York Yankees for starting pitcher Jaret Wright and cash, according to two team sources.

While the specifics of the deal have been worked out, the trade won't be official until it gets the commissioner's approval, which is necessary when more than $1 million in cash exchanges hands in a deal. That could happen as early as today.

The Yankees are paying the Orioles the amount it would cost them to buy out Wright's contract. In essence, they buy him out and get a pitcher in exchange.

Britton, a 23-year-old right-hander who was the Orioles' eighth-round selection in the 2001 draft, was possibly the team's second-best reliever as a rookie this past season behind closer Chris Ray . Britton was 0-2 with a 3.35 ERA and one save in 52 games.

However, team officials were concerned about Britton's lack of command of a second pitch behind his fastball, and they also were worried about ongoing conditioning problems.

Britton is listed at 6-3, 278 pounds. See yesterday's comment on Sanchez. The positives are that he put up a very good K/BB, and allowed just four home runs in 53 2/3 innings. I'm impressed that the Yankees continue to trade age for youth, something they haven't done in many years.

The Orioles reunite Wright with Leo Mazzone. If you look at Wright's career, he's only posted one outstanding season, the year Mazzone coached him in Atlanta. For $3 million dollars, the Orioles hope Leo can coax another one out of him.

The Yankees do seem to be woefully short of starters right now. Mike Mussina filed for free agency yesterday, leaving Wang the only starter healthy and officially on the team. I'd suspect that Barry Zito becomes a priority, especially if the report of the Red Sox winning the bidding on Matsuzaka are true.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:17 AM | Trades | TrackBack (0)
Comments

What the hell is wrong with Baltimore? God dammit this pisses me off...

There is NOTHING impressive about this trade except that Baltimore was retarded enough to make it. Jaret Wright's a waste of space and New York never should have been able to get anything for him.

Posted by: the other josh at November 12, 2006 01:11 PM

the yankees are unloading, time to rebuild ehh? hopefully arod ends up on the angels and the angels sweep the yanks again

Posted by: colinpads at November 13, 2006 12:24 AM

The other Josh is 100% correct.

Last year the assumption was that Leo Mazzone was going to chop .5 runs off of everyone's ERA. I'm not blaming him; but it didn't quite work out like that.

Even if he could turn Wright around, it's not like he's going to be enough to get the O's an extra 20 wins to bring them into contention. Why trade a pitcher with some value for someone they could have gotten for free (after a Yankees buyout), instead of hoarding the pitcher (Britton) and maybe using him and one or two other players to get an impact player?

The Orioles biggest problem still is an utter lack of direction.

Posted by: soccer dad at November 13, 2006 10:48 AM
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