Hardy for Gomez Notes

Carlos Gomez

Carlos Gomez was the centerpiece of the Johan Santana trade. Expected to be the Twins center fielder for years to come, he was quickly usurped by Denard Span. Although he's only 23 years old and hasn't shown what he's fully capable of in the majors, I don't think Gomez was ever going to do much in a Twins uniform.

Gardenhire had two young, talent-laden outfielders join his squad via trade in 2008. Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez never played a single game in the Twins minor-league system, and it showed. Amid the exciting flashes of talent, Gomez made bonehead plays and took some terrible at-bats. And in the Twins system, a player will not make the majors unless those things are conditioned out of his game.

It must have been frustrating for the coaches to teach the basic tenants of baseball to a guy in the majors. Not only that, but they had to give away valuable major league, pennant chasing at-bats to develop a talent.

JJ Hardy

J.J. Hardy spent the end of last year in the minors. The 27-year old had battled injuries, and his offense slumped hard after putting up 26 and 24 home runs in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

He'll be alright. I think. He's still young. Even if his offense only barely improves, he still plays great defense ( UZR). He's under team control through for the next two years. He's also supposedly good friends with Mauer, so that's not a bad thing.


Missing the scoop

I have never taken a journalism class, so my idea of journalistic integrity is rough at best. Here's how I understand the "scoop" phenomenon: To "get the scoop" is to break a story. The story essentially belongs to the journalist who researched, sourced, confirmed and published the story first. Obviously, everyone wants to be the one to break the story, so it's a highly competitive thing. It gets tricky because rumors may be flying around, and it's the journalists responsibility to sift through to determine fact from rumor. Any jackoff on a message board could write, "I heard the Twins are going to sign Barry Bonds!" and then someone else would twitter it, until it spreads around as fact. A baseball writer might hear this and call up Billy Smith to confirm it, or the writer could somehow retrace the rumor back to it's basement-dwelling source. Some rumors sound accurate, believable and true, and the media member will want to publish it before someone else scoops him. However, if it's published and turns out to be wrong, they'll lose all credability by spreading false stories. It's a high-stakes affair.

At 9:35 this morning, I received a text message from an associate in Hawaii:

Carlos Gomez for JJ Hardy, done deal?! Is this good?

I hadn't heard that. In fact, neither had the rest of the world, because it was nowhere on the internet. I searched googleblogs and googlenews, mlbtraderumors and all the relevant twitter users.

I felt excited because Alright Hamilton was in position to break the story. I imagined the headline would say, "Gomez traded to Brewers for JJ Hardy." It would be posted on mngameday.com's feed, perhaps linked to on other blogs and message boards as the day went on. I imagined that when the trade news was also confirmed and published by the Star Tribune, they would give us credit for the scoop.

However, credit would not be given unless it was written as fact. It couldn't be, "I heard they might trade for Hardy." It had to be, "Done Deal: Hardy for Gomez." But what if it wasn't a done deal? Alright Hamilton's already tiny bit of credibility would have been shot. My source in Hawaii said he believed his source 94%. After checking with our board, I decided not to run the story.

Even though Aaron Gleeman, Joe Christensen, LaVelle E. Neal, and others were probably sitting on the same info at the same time I was, it still sucks.

Santana Trade Judgment: Phase Two

Gomez. Gone. Mulvey. Gone. Humber. Gone.

Mulvey was traded for Jon Rauch.

At this point, the players on the Twins roster as a result of the Johan Santana trade are:

Deolis Guerra
JJ Hardy
Jon Rauch

Phase one of the Santana Trade was an absolute bust, as it didn't help the Twins win a single game in the two years following the trade. Commence Phase Two!