YogiStewart wrote:dkmo wrote:How many quality catchers did AA let slip away in order to hold onto JPA? Mike Napoli, D'arnaud, Yan Molina, John friggin Buck... And this is not even taking into account the catchers he could have potentially pulled in during previous offseasons when the cupboard was full of prospects and cash. The way he handled this has got to be the biggest blotch on his resume so far and shows that he isn't an elite GM yet.
well, not really.
Napoli isn't really a catcher. ask the Sox.
D'Arnaud was traded to bring in another coveted asset, so you win some, you lose some. jury's still out on that trade.
Yan Molina? you mean Yan Gomes, right?
trades for Esmil Rogers. Gomes is, at best, a back-up catcher. we already have that in Thole.
John Buck's the only argument i'd agree with, but, at the time, we were staking our wagons to JPA (something i didn't want, for the record). at the beginning of last season, no one would have suggested we keep Buck vs JPA. ceiling vs upside/downside of career, length of contract, lack of catcher in the minors, etc.
Ha, I can't believe I typed Yan Molina. I somehow combined Yan Gomes & Jose Molina into a single entity. But you got the point. We had a plethora of talent at the catcher position and now we are scraping the bottom of the free agency barrel for whatever is left. Next year, Navarro might be better than those former Jays players or he might be injured for most of the season... again. It's a risk that wouldn't need to have been taken if the team's assets were handled properly. Was there absolutely no one in the Jays organization who could have foreseen the downfall of JPA? I highly doubt that (The team supposedly has some of the best scouts in the business on its payroll). With the exception of the D'arnaud trade, how come we traded the others and not him when he was worth something... That's why this one is on AA's head. It's indicative of a flaw that separates mediocre sports GMs from great ones. It's a flaw that some on this board might refer to as the Colangelo-Bargnani syndrome.
