Message #955189

[Lintyfresh85]

Yes, exactly. Because what makes Rizzo a moron or not (or makes any front office effective or not) isn't whether it works out perfectly - it's what the upside and downside risks were.  If I invest my $50,000 life savings in Powerball and I win $300 million, that doesn't make me a genius.

And to me, that's why the idea of bringing him up on Opening Day is just a non-starter.  I get the fan instinct and where MorsetheHorse and others are coming from - "I'm sick and tired of the losing, Bryce is a STUUUUD, if he helps us win three games in April, those might be the three we need to make the playoffs, etc."  I feel that too, and can't wait to see him as our starting RF.

But, any realistic projection of what he's going to do (and there's been lots of really good ones) as an age-19 player is that he'll be a good, complementary piece - not a team-carrying MVP.  Useful, helpful, contributing to getting the team wins, but not yet ready to be the centerpiece that everybody thinks he will be later on.  At best, in April, he's giving us maybe 1 WAR - so that's maybe one game we might win in April that we wouldn't win with Ankiel/Shark in CF.

Also, while I think Hondo's got an interesting argument on whether or not he'd take an extension five years out - that's a major question mark and most of the evidence so far says that he wants to be the game's biggest player on the game's biggest stage - so planning that you're going to be able to extend him to me seems like a bad bet.  So I think good planning requires thinking that he's going to do six ML years and then go.

So at the end of the day, you're left with that same trade-off - buy an extra year of Harper for the cost of three weeks of games when he's 19.  If Rizzo chooses the three weeks, and we go to the playoffs, and he resigns an extension, he's still an idiot for taking what I think would be a huge and unnecessary risk, even if he didn't have to suffer the consequences of that risk working out.

+1

"Sanity"