Alderson Confirms Towers Statement On Peavy

First – If you were the Padres with a mandate to cut costs, is there anyway you weren’t going to trade Greene’s last year under your control, whether Peavy was going or not? That’s why I don’t think Greene changes things.

Second – You keep assuming more teams will be in on Peavy at the deadline but the reality is more teams should be in now if getting Peavy is possible for those teams. There are plenty of teams that have the players to trade and would be glad for Peavy’s below-market deal. Take the Orioles, for example. They have pitching to trade and money to spend. Peavy is young, so he’d still probably be good by the time they’re ready to compete. Plus, landing Peavy could go a long way towards getting Teixeira to consider coming to them. Why are the O’s in on this as a three-way trade partner instead of trying to get him themselves? The answer seems to be – Peavy’s severely limited his destinations.

And we’d all be in the same boat as we are now

don’t understand the plight of the Padres. None of the rhetoric that comes out of Petco Park is to be believed.

Peavy won’t throw a pitch in the regular season for the Friars. If he does — he’ll be gone by the deadline. But I don’t expect that.

At the risk or repeating myself time and time and time again — they must reduce their payroll per John Moores.

This is just to appease the fans, to make them…maybe, just maybe — believe they won’t lose a Cy Young Winner in a fire sale

This article for the Sun Times says

Two Cubs sources told the Sun-Times this week that the Cubs still are interested in Padres right-hander Jake Peavy, including one saying he expects Hendry to acquire the former Cy Young winner.

I think there is a lot of posturing on both sides, but my gut feeling is that if Hendry wants Peavy, he’ll get him.

For it to be true would be deny some of the more basic tenants of business, economics, and human nature.

“When there’s doubt, there is not doubt.”

and the other one is clearly posturing.

It makes absolutely no sense for a hopeless team with serious cashflow issues to keep around a $16M / year pitcher and risk him getting hurt and stuck there for 3 years.

Now, that said, I don’t think that they’ll trade him if they don’t find a suitable offer – they’d have to answer to their fan base if they did. But eventually things will get figured out and he’ll be shipped out, either to the Cubs or to some other team who loses out big in free agency.

For what it’s worth, Buster Olney doesn’t seem to buy Towers’ posturing either:

Look, Peavy is going to be traded, and what will be left is a team looking at a long rebuilding process. It figures the Padres will look to make deals at the meetings, writes Tom Krasovic.

Towers is told to trade Peavy. This frustrates him because he feels like he got Peavy signed to a good deal.
Axelrod tells Towers Peavy is only going to go to two or three teams and in some of those cases only if he gets a NTC or an extension.
Towers says, “Well that stinks” and publicly admits his position is weak. Towers, not happy with his job, wants the rest of the baseball world to know his work as a GM should not be judged by this Peavy trade. Towers and Hendry work out a framework for a below market trade cost on Peavy.
Padre fans don’t like it. And after a month of poor public posturing by his GM, Alderson gets annoyed. He starts pushing back on Towers to sell this trade and make it a good one.
The Cubs push back now, too – we’re not going to be pushed into this deal when we’ve got the pitching we want.

This is a lot of speculation, and could be way off the mark, but it is possible that this recent shift in Towers’ public stance and the deterioration is coming from Alderson injecting himself.

And if that’s the case, then let me write Al’s response – “It’s just like Angelos and the Roberts trade!”

… that Jim Hendry is operating under the priorities he has established and I can tell you that he’s probably ignoring anything and everything said about the Peavy situation in the media.

Like said ex-wife?

And if it’s least expensive, we’re worried about, Milton Bradley fits there. But Ibanez is getting a number of suitors. I wonder if the least expensive will end up being the guy who holds out the longest, regardless of talent level.

… that Peavy is adding more backloaded dollars. Here’s his contract terms after this upcoming season according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts page:
2010:$15M
2011:$16M
2012:$17M
2013:$22M club option ($4M buyout)

One question that I do have is on the health of Carlos Zambrano. Is there concern on the part of the Cubs front office that the problems that plagued him last season are going to persist? if there is concern about his arm (or his head) then maybe the Cubs do need an ace.

That being said, its hard to answer your question because we need to know the dollars and length of a contract when it comes to Furcal. But its a worthy question and ya, I’d probably rather have someone who can transform the top of the line-up and upgrade SS defensively than adding Peavy.

…good pitching beats good hitting (as the Yankees’ failures have demonstrated for a while now). And beholding a rotation that included Peavy would certainly be something. (I can’t recall another rotation that was that strong [on paper], though I’m sure someone will remind me).

My inclination is that it’s always smart to pick up someone like Peavy. The problem though is that at some point, there are diminishing returns on strengthening your pitching staff. The Cubs already have what appears to be a dominant pitching staff. Does adding Peavy really make that much of a difference to the overall strength of the club? Does adding him get enough additional wins to justify the cost?

If I knew that Harden will stay healthy, I would argue that the answer is no and that we don’t need Peavy. I think Marquis does a great job in the #5 slot, and so the addition of Peavy doesn’t create enough of a gain to warrant the move. People like Al and others have made that same argument, and I think it’s basically correct.

Of course, that relies on a lot of “ifs” related to Harden’s health and Dempster’s ability to perform again. (Realistically, I think our surest bet to perform is Lilly). With that in mind, it sure seems awful tough to pass up on grabbing Peavy as a way to hedge our bets.

I think we also have the luxory of considering it because we don’t need to change a lot in our offense to remain competitive. While some guys had career years last year that almost certainly won’t repeat, we’ll still have strong hitting. I’m fine with the platoon of Pie/Johnson in center, and keeping Dome in right. (Or at most in picking up a non-name, solid lefty RF). Without the need to spend money bolstering the offense, it makes Peavy’s contract at least more manageable.

On the other post you claim, or intimate, that Furcal wouldn’t be worth the cost as he’s not enough of an upgrade at leadoff over Soriano and creates more of a RH log jam in the middle of the order.

So if they can get Peavy and trade Marquis, wouldnt that leave enough to get another LH bat?