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Transaction Oracle
— A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen
— A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Red Sox - May or May Not Have Acquired Bay
Boston Red Sox - Engaged in a big 3-way trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates that's too long to describe in a single line.OK, let's take it one-by-one. Assuming of course, this one is correct. After wacky back-and-forth rumorings-a-transpiring, I don't know what to believe anymore.
The Pirates trade Jason Bay and get Andy LaRoche, Bryan Morris, Brandon Moss, and Craig Hansen. I like this package better than the Brignac deal. They improve the outfield depth and get LaRoche, who, when completely healthy, is a more completed prospect than Brignac is, although not a shortstop. Like I said in the previous Bay trade entry, it's the kind of thing the Pirates do need to do, even if Bonifay and Littlefield were too incompetent to build a team properly. LaRoche has been tentative since coming back, but hopefully that'll be ironed out for '09. Morris-and-Hansen both have issues to work out in the minors, but they're about as good as Niemann.
The Dodgers give up LaRoche and Morris for Manny Ramirez. They should've taken Bay, who I'm not convinced is, at this point in their careers, any lesser a player than Manny when defense is included, and he's signed reasonably for next season. I'm also not convinced that the Dodgers will end up making the best of the situation - they finally just started taking playing time from Andruw Jones and John Peter, craptastic outfielder, always seems to get playing time no matter what degree of horrible he's playing in a specific time period. It's not a disaster if they go with a Ramirez-Kemp-Ethier outfield, but I don't think they will and even if they do, the Dodgers are only competing to be the least lousy NL West team. Of course, it worked for the Cards a couple years ago.
The Red Sox give Hansen, Moss, and Ramirez for Bay. The Red Sox get rid of their problem and get an essentially equal, cheaper, younger player, but give up Hansen and Moss for it. I'm not sure, however, either really figured into their long term plans. Hansen, in particular, kind of fell out of favor - the Red Sox tried to turbo him to the majors the way the A's did with Huston Street, but Hansen just wasn't ready then and he's not really ready now. Like a lot of pitchers of the type, he just needs to throw more strikes, but that's easier said than done.
Projections forthcoming - wanted to get the transaction up before the 400 post thread tires everyone up.
2008 ZiPS Projection - Jason Bay ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Period AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Year-to-Date 393 72 111 23 2 22 64 59 86 7 .282 .375 .519 Rest-of-Yr 183 33 51 12 1 10 32 27 45 3 .279 .374 .519 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 576 105 162 35 3 32 96 86 131 10 .281 .375 .519 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2009? 561 102 153 29 1 29 108 80 144 8 .273 .367 .483 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Top Comps: Greg Vaughn, Ron Gant
2008 ZiPS Projection - Manny Ramirez ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Period AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Year-to-Date 365 66 109 22 1 20 68 52 86 1 .299 .398 .529 Rest-of-Yr 154 27 43 8 0 10 33 25 38 0 .279 .390 .526 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 519 93 152 30 1 30 101 77 124 1 .293 .395 .528 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2009? 478 79 138 25 1 26 90 75 108 1 .289 .394 .508 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Top Comps: Bob Johnson, Brian Downing
2008 ZiPS Projection - Andy LaRoche ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Period AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Year-to-Date* 214 34 49 4 0 6 29 36 27 3 .229 .343 .332 Rest-of-Yr 125 16 31 6 0 4 16 16 18 1 .248 .338 .392 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * - Includes Minor League Translation ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2009? 412 62 104 19 0 12 51 55 59 5 .252 .341 .386 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Top Comps: Bob Aspromonte, Ken McMullen
2008 ZiPS Projection - Craig Hansen
----------------------------------------------------------------
W L G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA
----------------------------------------------------------------
Year-to-Date* 2 3 43 0 44.2 41 23 2 29 36 4.63
Rest-of-Yr? 1 1 18 0 22.0 21 11 2 14 18 4.50
----------------------------------------------------------------
* - Includes Minor League Translation
----------------------------------------------------------------
2009? 3 4 56 1 71.0 70 34 4 40 56 4.31
----------------------------------------------------------------
Top Comps: Terry Adams, Duane Ward
2008 ZiPS Projection - Brandon Moss ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Period AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Year-to-Date* 245 32 67 13 3 8 34 18 66 3 .273 .326 .449 Rest-of-Yr 152 17 39 11 1 4 21 14 40 1 .257 .323 .421 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * - Includes Minor League Translation ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2009? 455 54 125 30 3 13 61 44 117 4 .275 .340 .440 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Top Comps: Bruce "Not That One" Campbell, Ron Swoboda
Dan Szymborski
Posted: July 31, 2008 at 05:25 PM | 84 comment(s)
Related News: Boston, LA Dodgers, Pittsburgh
Related News: Boston, LA Dodgers, Pittsburgh
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This trade kind of sucks for the Dbacks right now.
You are an evil, evil man.
Nah, Mike Hampton and the Rockies.
Nah, Mike Hampton and the Rockies.
Russ Ortiz.
Surely there's money going to the Dodgers. They supposedly needed money to take on Casey Blake.
I'm also surprised the Dodgers didn't toss something else in to get Wilson off the Pirates.
Looks like a fine trade for the Red Sox.
Now, where does Manny get to take his pee breaks without the Green Monster? Don't sit in the first couple of rows in LF.
He's a real lesson in what a few truly craptastic PA can do for you. The last 3 years his OPS+s are 94, 96 and 97 in 1410 PA. But 127 truly crappy PA in his first two years (about a 27 OPS+) bring his career OPS+ all the way down to 90.
Anyway, it is nice to see the Pirates making some moves for their future. I'm just worried that they've added a lot of "organizational depth" without much quality.
The Sox are paying for Manny the rest of the year.
The Dodger bullpen is out there.
He goes to the bench, picking up spot starts. As he should, since he's a minus glove with an average bat.
Is LaRoche's glove superior? His ZiPS projection works out to a whopping 93 OPS+ making him a little worse a hitter than Bautista. This can't be anything more than a minor upgrade -- if that ZiPS projection for LaRoche is accurate.
I also like this for the Pirates. They got 4 useful players, with LaRoche appearing to be the best. They might have done a bit better waiting and trying to get 1-2 great prospects, but what they got was decent.
I don't love this for the Dodgers. Manny is a little bit redundant and he is going to punish them in the vast OF in LA. It's not a terrible move, though.
Give up .33 years of Manny, 1.33 years of Hansen, Moss, and about $14.5 million (6.7M for '08 Manny, 1.9M for '08 Bay, 7.5M for '09 Bay less, say, about 1.5M for Hansen and Moss in '08 and '09)
Receive 1.33 years of Jason Bay
Is that correct?
I'd say it's Andy LaRoche, but of course he IS going to the Pirates, so...
If he doesn't get out of Boston and just lingers around as a AAAA player, there's a good chance that he never makes any real money. Nothing is certain (he'll still have to perform, obviously), but his earnings expectation for the remainder of his pro career just went way up.
Trade .33 years of Manny, which would have cost them $7 mil. They get back Bay for 1.33 years at a cost of $16.5 mil (his salary plus Manny's). To keep Manny for those 1.33 years would have cost $27 mil. To get those savings (and a slight upgrade in talent) they traded Moss and Hansen.
The more things change...
The biggest thing that bugs me about LaRoche is that he's going to turn 25 in September. If he doesn't start to outhit that projection in the header next year, he's likely never going to be more than an average 3rd baseman on the whole (maybe one or two close to All-Star years, but pretty much average the rest of the way). That has value certainly, but it's a risk.
On the other hand, the Dodgers have so completely screwed around with him, that he may be able to catch fire. I'm a big believer in the importance of regular MLB playing time for development purposes, so hopefully the last two months will be key for LaRoche. Having his brother around hopefully will help his confidence as well.
Darren, I think we're comparing two different things. You're comparing the cost of acquiring and having Bay for the next 1.33 years to the cost of keeping Manny for the next 1.33 years (by exercising his '09 option). I'm only comparing what the Red Sox gave up to what they acquired in this particular deal.
I tried to exclude Moss from the equation, as he has almost no service time -- we have no idea what he'll do or be paid over the next six years. I frankly don't know about Hansen -- I misread his contract on Cot's, and it looks like he's signed only through '08. Is that right? It says he signed a 4-year deal in '05 and gets 700K this year, but only had 0.108 years of service time prior to '08. What happens after this year ends?
I don't think the Dodgers really have screwed around with him. They wanted him to get the starting job out of spring training - it was his to lose - when he got injured and had surgery on his thumb. During his rehab stint he showed a fraction of the power he's shown in the past, and has continued to show a lack of power - my understanding is that it's not uncommon for players coming off of major hand injuries to take a while to recover their power, even when "healthy". Playing everyday this season might help him, but I suspect he won't really be back until next year.
If he's a Super 2, he'll be eligible for arbitration. If not, then the team can renew his contract for a salary similar to what he got in 2008. He'll be arbitration eligible until the first offseason when he has 6 or more years of service time.
Hmm... Scott Cooper was a two time All Star.
He must have signed a ML-contract as a draft pick. All that did was keep him on the 40-man roster, it doesn't impact service time, arb-eligibility or FA-eligibility. So he's got a while to go to get to arb.
And for those that don't know, in Cots-speak, .108 is 108 days of service time.
He's going to be Joe Randa?
I don't see the distinction. They gave up Manny and Moss and Hansen and the costs associated with them. They acquired Bay and the costs associated with him (which, for convenience, I added to Manny's remaining salary). These are the things they gave up and what they acquired.
Chan Ho Park?
It's gotta be wrong. LaRoche has star written all over him, the Dodgers have just been screwing him around. </sarcasm>
Seriously, he might be an above-average major leaguer if he can keep from hurting himself. He's got a ways to go to even equal Adam.
But in post #22 you ran the numbers including $20 million if they kept Manny -- that may be a cost, but it's an illusory one when you consider that the Red Sox could have kept Manny WITHOUT exercising the option. I don't think you can count that as a savings. The team's options were:
1. Trade Manny + for Bay in this deal
2. Keep Manny +, and exercise his option for '09
3. Keep Manny +, don't exercise his '09 option, and use the savings to get someone else (Teixeira or Dunn or Burrell?) -- at this point, and only at this point, can you do a comparison between Manny at $20 million, with all of his positives and negatives, and where you spent the $20 million instead
I'm NOT saying that the Red Sox got a bad deal, and I DO recognize that there are advantages to getting Bay at this point (as Gainsay said in post #43; plus, you aren't guaranteed that you'll get one of those guys mentioned above). But if you're going to run the numbers for this deal, then I think you can run the numbers only for this deal. In other words, option #1 only.
Carl Pavano. $40 million, four years, 111 crappy IP.
Mr. Ramirez, meet your fellow 500 HR predecessor. Deja vu? Don't think he will ever become a MLB mgr though.
I don't think that it is. But even if it's accurate, Bautista has about as little value as it's possible for someone with his offensive numbers to have. He's streaky, he's fragile, he's probably around a -10 as a true-talent defender, and he even showed up on Dewan's list of the five worst baserunners (so far) this year. He's able to fake it at five different positions, but that's not really an attribute you use a lot as an everyday 3B...
Ian in #47, I've noticed that too. Every new acquisition seems to be a white guy replacing a Latino.
JD DrewScott Hatteberg.Best. Offense. Ever.
Conversely (like many), I think he's a better hitter than he's shown...
I don't think that was an option. 1 - They would have needed to come up with more prospects. 2 - They would have needed to find the cash to pay him.
That brings the Krivsky brainstorm down from
the worst ever possibly conceivable past, now, future in any possible conceivable universe
to...
the worst ever possibly conceivable past, now, future in any possible conceivable universe
and that's weighed 99.999999% actual results and .0000001% reasonable expectations going forward
dang those reasonable expectations
The Pirates reportedly settled for Brignac and Niemann - I suspect that the reason that didn't go through was because this fell into their lap. Bay makes $1.8 million for the rest of the year and $7.5 million next year and I'm sure the Dodgers aren't that cash-strapped.
Dan, I heard from both sides on Thursday that this offer was never made by either side.
Hatred? Who could hate Manny? That's hardly the emotion that's being tossed around, at least that I can tell or have heard.
rather than vague allusions to racism, how about some actual data crunching on this "whiter and whiter" theory of yours?
By my back-of-the-envelope count, the "whiteness" of the team has been pretty stable each year since 2003. Arguably, this year's team as it came out of spring training was the least "white" of any Sox team since Henry bought the team. Now that Manny's gone and Lugo's out it is a bit whiter than when it started the year, but soon Lugo will be back and Colon will be in the rotation.
In the Henry era we've almost always had whites at C (Tek), 1B (Millar, Youks), 2B (Bellhorn through Pedroia), and RF (Trot, Drew). We've almost always had nonwhites at DH (Papi), SS (Nomar through Lugo), LF (Manny), and CF (Damon through Ellsbury). We've gone from a white 3B (Mueller) to a nonwhite (Lowell). The proverbial "10th man" used to be white (Hillenbrand), now he's nonwhite (Crisp).
The rotation has generally had either one nonwhite (Pedro, Dice-K) or none. The top three or four roles in the bullpen have almost always been majority white, but this year three of the top four roles are nonwhite (Oki, Delcarmen, Lopez).
I don't know how you can say the team is getting whiter and whiter, unless you think of Lowell and Ellsbury as white guys and you forget about Lugo and Colon. The 2004 through 2006 teams were appreciably whiter than the 2008 team, especially in the pitching staffs, but also at 3b.
I've seen it reported both ways. I don't know that we'll ever know the truth for sure.
No real comment on Toby's point, but wow, I'm out of touch with a number of player ethnicities. If you had asked me, I would have identified Damon, Lowell and Ellsbury as "white". Of course, no one asked me... :P
Lowell is Cuban (his father is of Irish and German descent), Ellsbury is Navajo, Damon's mother is Thai. Of course, ethnicity is a slippery concept. Most people don't realize Ted Williams was Latino; his mother was Mexican. Conversely, most people don't realize Keith Hernandez is *not* Latino; his parents came here from Spain.
Regardless, the point is the aesthetic. The team has replaced dark-skinned players with light-skinned players. Fact.
If you aren't implying racism, why even bring it up? Yes, the team has less players of a dark skin pigmentation than a few years ago, but what's the point?
I guess he just thought it was odd.
I have no doubt that this is not some master plan of the FO, but is just a fluke of talent acquisition that is a bit more noticeable given Boston's history.
He didn't mention the Sox were being racist. He suggested that you were making vague allusions to the Sox being racist. The only thing you've cleared up since then is that you count ethnicities differently from Toby (and Mike Lowell, and Jacoby Ellsbury). That one has to quibble over whether Mike Lowell has lighter, similar, or darker pigmentation than Bill Mueller, or the same for Ellsbury vs. Crisp vs. Damon, or the same for Lugo vs. Renteria vs. Cabrera vs. Nomar, in order to indicate any kind of trend is a pretty good indication that there's no clear trend. Fact.
It's a fact in terms of a trend is what I was asserting. You used to have an OF 2/3 African-American with a middle infield that was Hispanic. Now it's Bay & Ellsbury, Lowrie & Pedroia. That's 4 guys of "color" replaced with 4 guys free of "color". Just interesting to see the turnover coincidentally happen that way.
Where is this vague assertion that the Sox are racist?
In this case, it's pretty easy to draw the inference because the correlation you assert isn't even true -- the Sox are not, as a clear trend, getting whiter and whiter under any empirical analysis. At least not one that I can see, and certainly not one that you have demonstrated. If you yearn for the days when Troy O'Leary and Carl Everett were 2/3 of the outfield and Jose Offerman and Nomar Garciaparra formed the middle infield, I think that makes you the one who's being PC.
I'm not sure anyone thinks the Red Sox use race in any way to make personnel decisions - it's just weird that the team seems to be changing in that way. Nothing wrong with pointing out the obvious. I'd like to see the Red Sox be more diverse (a bunch of white/whiteish dudes just seems boring), but not at the expense of quality of play.
So, yeah, if you ignore three fielding positions - and the four (C, 1B, 2B, RF) that've been white for a while, and DH - there's a trend toward lighter-skinned players. There's also trends toward Canadians, Asians, laptop-swindlers, cancer survivors, and players whose last name starts with "B". Some of these are more worthwhile topics.
Wouldn't mind betting the Dice-K contract ends badly, though he's certainly no troublemaker.
That's certainly true. Of course, the Celtics have brought in guys with similar personalities, who happen to be black.
If you look point by point at the guys they got rid of from the "idiots" squad, they were predominantly good baseball decisions. Which of those guys should they have kept? Derek Lowe, in hindsight, I suppose, and maybe Cabrera, but those were all defensible decisions at the time they were made. The team has kept winning. So, if you agree that Damon and Pedro, for example, were done, whom would you have brought in who was a good ballplayer and more less "white-bread?" I don't think they're ignoring talent. For what it's worth, the 2006 Red Sox did, I believe, set a record for the most Jewish players used during a season (Youkilis, Kapler, Stern and Breslow).
Except for the latter two guys, and for Papi of course, I think it's pretty fair to say that every one of these nonwhite acquisitions were expected to make significantly bigger contributions than they have. They've all been significantly disappointing. And I think that's what's at work here. Darren and I discussed this on a thread a year or two ago. The personnel is not getting whiter and whiter, but you can make a case that the star power is. Renteria and Lugo and Matsuzaka and Pena and Crisp and Colon were expected to have a big impact, and they haven't. Most of these guys are still here, but they are less important and lower profile than expected. (I still have hopes for Colon.)
Albert Belle tried to go this route but it didn't quite work out the same way.
Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if next week we hear that the Dodgers were going to sign Albert Belle.
It's a subjective thing, of course, but I haven't seen anything that's convinced me that the Sox haven't gotten whiter in recent years.
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