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With Padres GM Jed Hoyer headed to the Cubs in the same capacity under former boss Theo Epstein, another Epstein protégé, Josh Byrnes, takes over in San Diego. Although Hoyer's tenure didn't last as long as anyone expected, he made a few key moves that will help shape the course of the franchise.

The most significant of these were the Adrian Gonzalez and Mike Adams trades that helped rebuild a farm system that had been depleted in recent years. Those deals, coupled with a strong 2011 draft overseen by Hoyer and assistant GM Jason McLeod (also headed to Chicago), brought an influx of young talent that will be under club control for some time—always a good thing when operating on as tight a budget as the Padres must.

Byrnes now has the opportunity to build on what Hoyer and his predecessor, Kevin Towers, started. Unlike Hoyer when he arrived in San Diego, Byrnes comes to his new position with GM experience under his belt. After leaving Boston, he served as GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks from October 2005 to July 2010. During that time, the Snakes reached the postseason once, winning the division in 2007. Byrnes also helped lay the foundation for this year's surprise team that reached the playoffs despite widespread belief among experts (including us) that they would finish last in the NL West.

Byrnes wasn't solely responsible for the 2011 success, but he played an important role in it. Players he drafted, signed as free agents, and acquired in trade all made a difference for this year's Diamondbacks. The Padres, coming off a 91-loss season, hope that he can have a similar impact for them.

While we wait to see what Byrnes does in San Diego, let's look back at his time in Arizona.

The Good
Arizona's 2011 top prospects list is littered with Byrnes draftees. Some of these guys (Wade Miley, Paul Goldschmidt, Josh Collmenter) contributed in 2011. Others (Chris Owings, Bobby Borchering) have a ways to go, while the now-healthy Jarrod Parker made a September cameo and appears poised to help the 2012 club.

Rank

Player

Year

Round

Comments

1

Jarrod Parker

2007

1st

“Five-star,” ranked 42nd overall

3

Chris Owings

2009

1st supp

Struggled as youngest regular in California League

4

Bobby Borchering

2009

1st

 

5

Matt Davidson

2009

1st supp

 

6

Marc Krauss

2009

2nd

 

7

Wade Miley

2008

1st supp

Went 4-2 in seven starts down stretch

10

Paul Goldschmidt

2009

8th

Starting first baseman down stretch; by far the best offensive performer for his team in NLDS

11

Tyler Linton

2010

14th

Bought away from a North Carolina football scholarship; has yet to make full-season debut

12

A.J. Pollock

2009

1st

After missing 2010 due to elbow injury, ranked third in Southern League in doubles and stolen bases

13

Keon Broxton

2009

3rd

 

14

J.R. Bradley

2010

2nd

Hittable in Midwest League

18

Charles Brewer

2009

12th

 

19

Josh Collmenter

2007

15th

Key member of rotation for much of season

20

Tyler Green

2010

8th

 

Also, Tyler Skaggs and Pat Corbin (ranked second and eighth, respectively, part of the trade that sent Dan Haren to the Angels), as well as David Holmberg (ranked ninth, acquired with Daniel Hudson in the trade that sent Edwin Jackson to the White Sox), came to the Diamondbacks via players that Byrnes acquired.

Beyond the draft, Byrnes made several trades during his tenure. Some worked to his advantage:

Date

Sent

Received

Comments

12/20/05

Javier Vazquez

Orlando Hernandez

Luis Vizcaino

Chris Young

Young was regarded as a top center-field prospect at the time and has developed into a fine player; Christina Kahrl praised Byrnes for his aggressiveness in acquiring Young.

12/25/06

Greg Aquino

Johnny Estrada

Claudio Vargas

Doug Davis

Dana Eveland

Dave Krynzel

Not a blockbuster, but Davis kept Arizona from signing Barry Zito to a disastrous contract, while Eveland became part of the package for Haren.

12/14/07

Brett Anderson

Chris Carter

Aaron Cunningham

Dana Eveland

Carlos Gonzalez

Greg Smith

Dan Haren

Connor Robertson

Anderson was another Byrnes draftee (with scouting director Mike Rizzo deserving much of the credit); losing Gonzalez hurt (although Oakland didn't get much value for him), but acquiring Haren on the heels of a division championship made a statement to the fans that the team was serious about contending (even though it didn't work out that way).

8/11/08

Dallas Buck

Wilkin Castillo

Micah Owings

Adam Dunn

Dunn played reasonably well after being brought in as a rental when Arizona led the division by a game and was fighting for a post-season berth; none of the players sent did anything in Cincinnati (Castillo and Owings went as PTBNL).

7/7/09

Tony Pena

Brandon Allen

Pena is a marginal big-league reliever, while Allen was Arizona's second-best prospect entering 2010 whom current GM Kevin Towers traded (thanks in no small part to the presence of Byrnes draftee Goldschmidt) for reliever Brad Ziegler, who pitched well down the stretch before getting shelled in two playoff appearances.

12/8/09

Max Scherzer

Daniel Schlereth

Edwin Jackson

Ian Kennedy

Scherzer and Schlereth were Byrnes draftees; Jackson was traded by interim GM Jerry DiPoto for Holmberg and Hudson, the latter of whom anchored this year's rotation along with Kennedy.  

To be clear, Towers (as we've noted before) deserves a good deal of credit for building this year's NL West championship club. But he built on the groundwork laid by Byrnes, as well as predecessor Joe Garagiola (hello, Justin Upton) and DiPoto.

Speaking of Upton, Byrnes is the man who inked the young star to a long-term deal that keeps him in a Diamondbacks uniform through 2015. When a 23-year-old posts a 5.0 WARP season for $4.25 million, it is nice. When he is locked up to a club-friendly contract ($45.25 million over the next four years in what should be Upton's prime), it is even nicer.

The Bad
To this point, we've made it seem like Byrnes could do no wrong in Arizona. If that were true, he'd still be there. Let's examine some moves that didn't work as intended.

Exposing Dan Uggla to the Rule 5 draft in 2005 turned out badly, although this would have been difficult to anticipate at the time. Uggla was coming off a .297/.378/.502 campaign at Double-A Tennessee, but at age 25 and with serious questions about his defense at second base, he didn't figure to become the new Jeff Kent. As Kevin Goldstein observed prior to the 2006 season, “Uggla is not without skills, but he shouldn't be a major-league starter for any team.” We have to ding Byrnes because the player succeeded, but we can't call it a disaster, because nobody saw Uggla coming, and the process by which he came to be available was sound.

Taking Daniel Schlereth over Lonnie Chisenhall with the 26th pick overall in 2008 doesn't look good. Schlereth wasn't seen as an overdraft at the time, but he is a reliever, while Chisenhall has become one of baseball's brightest prospects (ranked 40th coming into 2011). Still, as we've seen with the trade that brought Jackson and Kennedy to Arizona, Schlereth had his uses.

Byrnes also made a couple of questionable trades. Both made a certain amount of sense at the time, and neither had a huge impact on the fortunes of either team, but one wonders if he could have gotten more for what he gave.

Date

Sent

Received

Comments

7/27/07

Scott Hairston

Leo Rosales

Not a terrible deal, but Hairston should have fetched more than a Quadruple-A reliever.

12/14/07

Jose Valverde

Chris Burke

Juan Gutierrez

Chad Qualls

Made sense at the time, but Valverde continued to pitch well in Houston; Qualls had one good year, one decent year, and one terrible year, while the others contributed nothing.

Aside from the one clunker coming up next, Byrnes didn't make bad trades in Arizona.

The Ugly
The elephants in the room are two transactions that occurred within four months of each other toward the end of 2007. And no, I didn't just call Carlos Quentin an elephant.

On August 7, Byrnes signed veteran outfielder Eric Byrnes to an ill-advised three-year, $30 million contract extension. At age 31, the outfielder was putting the finishing touches on a career year that helped push the Diamondbacks into the postseason and resulted in the player receiving marginal (if misplaced) NL MVP support. He was a key part of a good team and a fan favorite (he also had been a client of Arizona owner Jeff Moorad, a former player agent, which may or may not have played a role). This doesn't absolve GM Byrnes of the extension, but it does place it in context.

History will show that the contract was every bit the disaster that analysts thought it would be. As Joe Sheehan noted 21 months after the deal, outfielder Byrnes “signed his contract at the absolute peak of his market value, less than two years after his career possibly looked over, and right as he was about to collapse as a player.” Or, as Christina Kahrl put it at the time:

…I have a hard time buying the suggestion that he's a difference-making power source in left field for anybody. Byrnes might age decently, considering that he's more athletic than your average 31-year-old, but you're still talking about a guy who can't slug .500 in one of the best hitting environments in baseball, and one that you're pasting into a premium offensive position.

Beyond the fact that outfielder Byrnes provided no value for his club while tying up resources that could have been used to address areas of need, his presence made the younger Quentin expendable. And on December 3, GM Byrnes shipped the 25-year-old slugger to the White Sox for Chris Carter. (Granted, Carter became part of the package for Haren, but as Sheehan commented, “it's not hard to see a universe where the D'backs might have had both players.”)

Here is what Byrnes and Quentin did for their respective teams, and at what cost:

Player

Years

Team

PA

BA

OBP

SLG

WARP

$M

Eric Byrnes

2008-2010

Ari/Sea

520

.210

.268

.367

-1.1

30.0

Carlos Quentin

2008-2011

ChA

1,978

.257

.352

.505

9.9

9.2

Consider also that Quentin hit 36 homers in his first year with the White Sox, while the Diamondbacks finished two games out of first place in the NL West. He might have made the difference in 2008. Either way, there simply is no way to cast this series of moves in a favorable light. It looked bad when it happened, and it has gotten even worse over time.

Bottom Line
In answer to the title question, the Padres are getting in Josh Byrnes an experienced GM who has a strong trading record (and who is aggressive in dealing when his team is poised to make a move) and a decent drafting record (few stars, but some useful pieces), and who once made a terrible decision regarding two outfielders headed in opposite directions. Padres fans will be interested to see whether Byrnes has learned from that mistake, as one of their former GMs (Towers) learned from a similarly terrible decision regarding Randy Myers that hamstrung his club for a while.

As Christina Kahrl said at the time of Byrnes' ouster as Arizona's GM, “He was handed a well-regarded core, and he added to it.” Now, thanks to the efforts of Towers and Hoyer before him, Byrnes finds himself with another well-regarded core. If he can duplicate what he did for the Diamondbacks and add to San Diego's core, the Padres and their fans should reap the rewards sooner rather than later.

Thank you for reading

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hmamis
10/25
Could someone do an evaluation of Theo Epstein's tenure as GM in Boston?
h. mamis
ofMontreal
10/25
This is a great summary. I hadn't realized Josh was in AZ for 5 years. One quibble: Isn't well known that JByrnes didn't do the Eric Byrnes contract? That was supposed to be all on the owner. I know it's par for the course to put the blame on the GM but you should also note it in some form. Like an OMDB (Over My Dead Body) signing. "The Ugly" looks a little less ugly that way.
gyoung858
10/26
Thanks, glad you liked it. I acknowledged Moorad's role in the Eric Byrnes extension, but I hesitate to lay all the blame on ownership because a) I'm not sure the degree to which either party was responsible, and b) part of a GM's job is to push back if he/she feels strongly about something. That being said, I agree that this probably wasn't entirely on Josh Byrnes.
LlarryA
10/26
In Byrnes' defence, Carlos Quentin the D'Back bore no resemblance to Carlos Quentin the Southsider. D'Backs fans were not sorry to see him go, as he had shown flashes, but no consistency, and an attitude problem. I don't see where he would ever have been productive here. Sometimes you just gotta send the guy off, and if he works out better elsewhere, that's just the way it goes...
gyoung858
10/26
Thanks for the additional perspective on Quentin. From the outside, it appeared that they gave up on him too soon, but this is much easier to say now that we have the unfair advantage of seeing what he became after leaving.
tombores99
10/26
I was surprised to see the Haren trade filed under "the good." I'm sure that the fans appreciated the message sent with acquiring Haren, but at the time it was a coup of prospects to send along for a single asset. CarGo was ranked #1 on the D-Backs prospect list just prior to the trade (according to Baseball America), Anderson ranked #3, Cunningham #7, Carter #8, and Smith came in at #13. CarGo became a superstar, Anderson was one of the top young arms in the league prior to TJ surgery, Cunningham is a useful 4th OF, Carter remains one of the top prospects in the Oakland system (#2 by BA coming into the year), while Smith and Eveland both saw PT in The Show.

It seemed like an insane cost of young talent at the time, and 4 years later it still looks imbalanced; and that's before we consider that the D'Backs were not competitive in the years following the Haren trade, and ended up re-flipping Danny H for a much-diminished prospect return. I will give Byrnes credit for trading for a player with cost control and a very friendly contract, which is what made Haren so desirable in the first place, but I am thinking that most GM's would have been able to get more value from such an impressive collection of prospects.

Just a minor quibble, as I would have dumped the Haren deal into "the bad" category, but overall an excellent article... thanks for the read!
Sacramento
10/26
Calling Carlos Gonzalez a "superstar" is a bit of a misnomer. His career splits:

Home: .329/.381/.609

Road: .265/.317/.427

Either that's a Coors Field mirage, or I need to start looking for John Frum.

Anderson has been good when healthy, while Cunningham never panned out, Carter is looking like a Quadruple-A player, Greg Smith has bounced between Triple-A and the majors after one good mediocre year, and Dana Eveland has left a trail of broken hearts around the leagues.

Quantity doesn't always have a quality all of its own.
gyoung858
10/26
Thanks for reading and commenting. I see your point about the cost to acquire Haren, but I think that given what the D'backs had done in 2007 and their expectations for the short-term future, it was justified.

Also, it's worth noting that CarGo fetched even less for the A's, who turned him into 63 games of Matt Holliday before flipping Holliday for Clayton Mortensen and Brett Wallace. They later became, in separate deals, Ethan Hollingsworth and Michael Taylor.

This has nothing to do with Arizona or Byrnes, but it's good to remember that the D'backs weren't the only team that sold short on CarGo, which raises the question of just how much value any GM could have gotten for him.
jrathkey
10/26
Nice article, but I think you are missing the one transaction that truly cost Byrnes his job - hiring AJ Hinch. I thought it was an interesting experiment when Hinch was hired, but it certainly failed miserably.
BeplerP
10/26
This was always my impression. A GM has to know what the difference is between an interesting transaction and one which can lose him a team. That Hinch never had a chance is not an argument in anyone's favor.
gyoung858
10/27
You raise a good point. I was thinking specifically of player personnel moves, but the hiring of Hinch as manager clearly didn't work. If that is the move that cost Byrnes his job, presumably he will have learned from the experience.
tombores99
10/27
Sacramento - Well-worded response, and I guess we can agree to disagree on CarGo (especially when it comes down to semantics), as I think that he is probably in the top 5% of his peer group at the big league level. How many OF's 25-and-under would you prefer to have on your ballclub? Justin Upton, and... maybe Andrew McCutcheon? Mike Stanton? The list is a short one.

The Coors effect is interesting, particularly when you compare CarGo to Tulo, who had similar overall ratios in 2011. CarGo had extreme home/road splits (242 points of OPS worth), while Tulo was fairly consistent (just +67 pts of home OPS vs Road). The common conclusion drawn from these numbers is that road stats are a closer approximation for "true value," and thus Troy is the far superior hitter. But I have to wonder why C-Gonz is so much better at Coors? Most batters perform better at home, and while CarGo might enjoy the best home environment in baseball, he is also the best player in the game at exploiting that environment (that fact is not a mirage) - he consistently out-hits Tulo in their own home. I think that has value, and that his stats cannot be washed away with park effects.

As for the other guys in the trade, I challenge you to find another trade that involved one side getting 6 prospects who all saw MLB time. Quantity is a definite factor in evaluating trades, and the deal did not exactly lack in quality (CarGo was #3 in NL MVP voting last year). Also, the key players that the A's acquired (CarGo, Anderson, Carter) all have yet to reach their prime, and the trade will probably look more lopsided three years from now.

Geoff - I definitely agree with the CarGo angle, vis-a-vis the A's. I actually wrote an article about it over at BDD a couple weeks ago, highlighting the A's inability to reap value from the aformentioned revolving door of prospect trades. The downward spiral of CarGo-Wallace-Taylor is ugly enough on the surface, and looks uglier when one considers the $8 million that the team paid Holliday for his rough 93-game introduction to Oakland (he played 63 for STL that year).

http://www.baseballdailydigest.com/2011/09/23/blog-eat-blog-agony-of-defeat/

gyoung858
10/27
Ah, 93 games in Oakland; my mistake. And thanks for the link. (As an aside, those before and after photos of the Coliseum are depressing.)
tombores99
10/27
One last note on park effects... I remember when Alfonso Soriano went from the Rangers to the Nats, and the conventional wisdom said that Soriano would fall on his face in Washington, due to a home/road OPS split of 372 points. Everyone knew that Texas was a hitters paradise, and Soriano's .224/.265/.374 road line was surely a harbinger of doom.

Then the swingin Soriano defied the pundits to put up the best season of his career (at the age of 30), with a virtually non-existant home/road split.

It's just one example, but my point is that conventional wisdom usually falls short of explaining reality. More curiously, there appears to be an effect where certain hitters adjust their approach in some of the more extreme home parks, and then struggle to re-adjust when on the road. A player who makes a habit of pulling short bombs in Boston will be really disappointed when he tries the same trick in Citi Field... just ask Jason Bay.