sorry, leake is a big part of that.

and if something like that happened, the farm would be totally effed.

You left out the part where you said, “I have no idea whatsoever if he works hard. I’m just going to assume he doesn’t because he’s having a bad year and because his brother never got to be as good as we thought he would, so they must both be lazy.”

for a 24 year old with 3 full years left on an affordable contract and 16 fWAR in the majors?

I know secret player comparisons are cliche, but here it is:

Player A:
Age 22: .342/.373/.521 10 HR, 10 SB in 311 PA
23: .290/.340/.459 18 HR, 35 SB in 657 PA
24: .297/.352/.490 26 HR, 34 SB in 667 PA
25: .249/.310/.450 28 HR, 19 SB, in 668 PA
Trades rumored. Potential Unfilled. Player rumored to be lazy.

Player B:
Age 20: .250/.353/.463 15 HR, 1 SB in 417 PA
21: .300/.366/.532 26 HR, 20 SB in 588 PA
22: .273/.356/.442 17 HR, 18 SB in 571 PA
23: .289/.369/.529 31 HR, 21 SB in 674 PA
24: .268/.351/.393 7 HR, 10 SB in 339 PA
Trades rumored. Potential unfulfilled. Player rumored to be lazy.

Player A is Matt Kemp and hit .324/.399/.586 with 39 HR and 40 SB the next season. Player B is Upton.

I’m not saying that Justin Upton will be Matt Kemp. All I intend to say is that guys under 25 just have down years from time to time. It does not mean they are lazy, or done growing.

The dude is 24 and he is being written off as unfulfilled potential after ONE HALF of a season, the year after his best season yet? Ludicrous.

“Or maybe Kevin Towers is just stupid. He tried to trade him in 2010 and then Upton went out and had an MVP-caliber season.”

Stupid like a fox? Upton says he busts his butt, but he should be showing consistency by now with his talent and experience. What Upton considers busting his butt may be nowhere near the work ethic people expect, especially Arizona fans whose opinion Upton doesn’t care about.

Upton may be “cheap” now, but $14 million is a lot to pay for a guy with a world of talent who never reaches his potential. The history of the game is littered with guys like that, and both Uptons look like they’re in that category.

The team’s owner is angry with how they’re playing this year and he has a history of lashing out when he gets angry. I, and a lot of other Diamondbacks fans, are worried that he may trade Upton just to punish the team for performing poorly.

Why would Towers be willing to trade a player like Upton? Why was Colorado willing to trade Ubaldo? Didn’t seem right either did it?

It’s far more complex than that though. Or I could counter with saying, why did the Rangers want to trade Arod? IIRC Jiminez was unhappy with the Rockies because they were giving away long term deals, and Jiminez wasn’t getting one. A bunch of back and forth bickering, and they traded him. That he hasn’t worked out* isn’t a notch in favor of the Rockies, considering the crap they are putting out now.

*Unless this was a reason for trading him; however, no one referenced it at the time so to do so now would be a bit disingenuous.

Matt Harvey plus two players of the D’Backs choice: Duda, Nieuwenhuis, Valdespin, Flores.

Fine, he’s hit like an slighly above average SS on the road. Still a H/R split of 44 pts in wRC+ is huge and can’t be explained by anything but an inabilitty of the adjusted metrics to capture the full benefit of hitting in AZ. Most elite hitters seem to have about a 10-15 pt difference, but still hit well on the road. He is a completely different hitter away from AZ.

Also, I’m not sure I buy the “lack of advancement” thing with Upton. He played through an injury in 2010. When accounting for that, he’s shown pretty steady improvement for four years before a bad three and a half months.

Lets see…..

The Indians 3rd baseman is 35 years-old and going downhill/

They have a real nice SS in Astrubal Cabrara, but they don’t even have a back-up for him to play SS.

And they are looking for another starting pitcher because they need one so badly.

Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti have been running the Indians front office for years. They may well be the most mediocre front office in all of baseball. They want to acquire good players, but they have nothing in their farm system due to terrible drafting and poor development. They have 2 sensational relief pitchers, 2 starters that blow hot and cold, and 4 everyday players that are decent, none of which qualifies as a star.

Congrats to Manager Manny Acta and his staff for somehow keeping the team in the race with the awful roster he was given to work with.