With Tom Ricketts giving Theo Epstein a five-year window to succeed after identifying him as Hendry’s replacement, the Cubs no longer seem to have the fear of failure that was behind the Garza trade. It gave the Cubs one starting pitcher who is better than any of their holdovers but, like the Edwin Jackson trade that cost the White Sox a long-term starter in Daniel Hudson, it always begged a question: What was the point?
...Sam Fuld, who was considered a minor part in the deal, got 308 at-bats and made the catch of the year for the Rays. Chirinos, who was traded on the heels of a breakout 2010 season, is battling Jose Lobaton for the backup catcher’s job behind Jose Molina. Guyer, who hit .312 with 14 homers in Triple A, is battling for a bench job. But it was Lee and Archer who were the headliners in the trade, and their stock has increased.
Lee, 21, won a batting title in the Florida State League and is ranked as the Rays’ No. 2 prospect by Baseball America. Both he and Archer, who is penciled into the rotation for Triple-A Durham, could force their way into the picture later this season.
Handling any of these five guys should be relatively easy. The Cubs, however, will have to double down on Garza or cash out in a big way if they’re going to make this trade work for them.
Repoz
Posted: February 27, 2012 at 06:58 AM |
60 comment(s)
Login to Bookmark
Tags:
rays,
white sox
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. willcarrolldoesnotsuk Posted: February 27, 2012 at 08:03 AM (#4069373)IIRC the "catch of the year" counted as one out.
I'm busy.
Amen - if anything, it's slipped.
Hak-ju had a nice year in 2011, though.
Well played, sir.
Garza is a very good pitcher and having him is a positive for the Cubs. Fuld is a useful enough guy but a sub-.700 OPS from an outfielder who is going to be 30 this year hardly leaves me thinking the Cubs should mourn his loss. That leaves a pitcher who walks 5/9IP, a AA shortstop (admittedly who could wind up being very good) and a guy fighting with Jose Freakin' Lobaton to be a backup catcher.
The reality is that it is unlikely that those five guys will produce as much value combined as Garza will on his own over the next five years. If the Cubs let him get away that probably would be a mistake.
Agreed.
In a vacuum, even if Lee continues to develop (and yeah, he had a great FSL... but he stumbled a bit in his late season AA promotion, so I'm not quite sure where Rogers is getting this "maybe this year" from) - Garza was/is a ~3 WAR pitcher... that's a reasonable deal.
It's really the fact that the deal DIDN'T happen in a vacuum -- a 75 win became a 71 win team, so it makes little sense to acquire a solid+ front-half of the rotation SP - that gives me any pause.
Of course, the Cubs are set at SS (not you couldn't slide Lee over to 2B, of course) so it's not like the departure of Lee left a gaping organizational hole, either... Plus - we got to hear Sam Fuld trash the organization's player development and value recognition skills - which was almost worth it in and of itself.
Matt Garza = Rick Reuschel ... discuss.
That's a less important issue for the Cubs who presumably should be able to afford Garza while still putting talent around him. Even with free agency after next year there is IMHO a much better chance of Garza being an important part of a Cub contender than there is of any of the players they dealt for him. It's not like they traded these five guys for someone who went 6-12, 5.47. Garza is a very good pitcher.
Nah - he's not fat and he throws pretty hard...
Anyway, though -- I still don't think the Rays haul for Garza was all that impressive... lots and lots of flotsam in that deal -- reminds of an OOTP trade with the AI -- you just keep tossing in more and more fungible 20somethings until the AI accepts. Archer and Lee were decent prospects, but neither of them have future star stamped on them by any stretch.
The fact that people were making a big deal about Chirinos -- I mean... the "kid" was 26 at the time of the trade and had let to log his first AB. Fuld is a perfectly cromulent 4th/5th OF, I suppose - but he was 27.
The trade was basically Archer/Lee for Garza, with the Cubs sending a bunch of 4A NRIs in with the deal. Strictly on value - that's not a bad trade for the Cubs. It's really just context that makes it a bad idea.
Exactly. Even with last year's disaster, if they extend Garza, the trade is fine.
I imagine they're pretty happy to be "stuck" with it. He's the one genuine high-level asset they inherited besides Castro. They either trade him and get back at least what the Cubs gave up for him, or they have Matt Garza around. Either one is good.
I was critical of the Garza deal at the time, and I still think the thought process that led to it was suspect. But at the same time, Garza was much better last year than he's ever been. If he continues at a similar level, he'll be one of the premier players available at the trade deadline.
And if they sign him when hits FA the trade becomes unnecessary.
I wasn't crazy for this trade at the time since I think Lee and Archer were players that could have helped the Cubs for many years. Archer's star has faded a bit but Lee hasn't disappointed anyone yet. My view at the time was they could slide Castro over to third (I don't really see him ever being a good defensive SS).
Or he was traded somewhere else rather than here and they extended him before he could hit FA.
Except they also get three years of Matt Garza before that. Also, they have the opportunity to negotiate an extension with Garza over the next two seasons when they have exclusive negotiating rights. That may or may not save them money but at least it gives them a slightly better chance to get a deal done and if he goes away there is a pretty good chance that even with the new rules that Garza will be a compensation level player.
No doubt, Lee is very fast, but as he advances -- I would be a little concerned about that K rate. I suppose Castro was hardly a slugger as he zoomed through the system and cue up Mike E or someone telling me I'm wrong -- but Lee sort of reminds me of Billy Hamilton. Hamilton's a fun guy, to be sure, but I'm just not sure a slashing burnster can make it with K rates in that range.
??? He had 22 K in 100 AB, only slightly higher than his A numbers of 72 in 400. And he didn't slug .600, he slugged .310. It's virtually impossible to slug .600 with a .190 BA. It requires over 3 bases per hit.
Absolutely the case. This is the type of deal that a contending team makes - and should make - every day of the year.
Assuming he did (because there really isn't any other way the Garza deal makes sense), I don't know that it was entirely unrealistic for Hendry to think of the Cubs as a potential contender in the NL Central going in to last year, given the weaknesses of the three other probable contenders. Perhaps he fell into the logic trap that many others do - i.e. if everything else goes right we can win if we just add to our rotation depth.
-- MWE
When the Cubs we'll be lucky to hit 200 combined wins.
Or he was traded somewhere else rather than here and they extended him before he could hit FA.
Well, in 2011 and 2012 that doesn't really matter and I think Theo is perfectly capable of signing a good FA pitcher by 2013.
Are you familiar with Theo's history with signing FA pitchers?
Considering that they are shooting for 100 losses this year I don't think that is going to be a real impossibility nor am I going to be batshvt wrong if they finish with 205 or 210 wins.
And having Garza will help them win more than that. I know that may not mean much to you but there are Cub fans out there who enjoy winning a few games a week. One of the risks of doing a complete cratering is that by the time you get good again people just don't care anymore. Winning will cure a lot of ills but it won't cure all. Sometimes fans who go away just never come back. When a team sucks having something for the fans to hang onto is hardly the worst thing in the world.
And having Garza will help them win more than that. I know that may not mean much to you but there are Cub fans out there who enjoy winning a few games a week. One of the risks of doing a complete cratering is that by the time you get good again people just don't care anymore. Winning will cure a lot of ills but it won't cure all. Sometimes fans who go away just never come back. When a team sucks having something for the fans to hang onto is hardly the worst thing in the world.
There is a gigantic huge flipside to this which is that being good, going to the WS, and winning the WS brings a lot of people to the Cubs.
Which would make sense wouldn't it? If they aren't going to be good during Garza's tenure here and you can get back players that will be good when the Cubs are good they should trade him.
But I have yet to argue that they should trade Garza. What I did say was that I thought at the time that the Garza trade wasn't that good because we traded away two prospects that I thought would be good in the very near future.
Sure. What's wrong with this.
McCoy and I were about the only two arguing that the Cubs should have been active on the FA market this year. We didn't quite agree on the talent level of the team entering the offseason but I wanted to see the Cubs sign somebody like Pujols (or possibly Fielder, Reyes, CJ Wilson, etc.) with an eye toward being decent short-term (which with luck could win this division) and having genuine excellent players still around 3 years from now when the rebuild starts to hit.
Of course that wasn't what happened. Instead they cut payroll $25-30M, traded an excellent reliever, an OK but annoying starter, a young-ish guy somewhere in-between, etc. for a lot of mediocre "prospects" and Rizzo. This seemed to be "sell all the assets we have for a full rebuild." Especially since the Cubs picked up a borderline average starter in each trade they made, currently having 6 ML starters, trading the big asset for the big haul seemed the whole point.
I didn't agree with that approach but it's a valid approach and, if I knew what the Cubs are planning to do with all that money, maybe even one I could be convinced to come on board with. But they weren't able to pull off the last move.
So now the Cubs have a crappy ML team and added one pretty good prospect (#37 I think it was in the last list I looked at) which isn't enough to make this a team of the future. What is there to like about that? It looks like the worst of both worlds to me. OK, not the worst, it's not Pirates 2008 bad nor the most fallow period in the history of the Cubs system. But it's not good.
Like I said above, I assume the plan is still to trade Garza, they just didn't get the package they wanted. And I'm fine with that. :-)
Marshall had value going forward, but he also returned Travis Wood and Ron Torreyes. Other than Marshall, nobody else we've traded/failed to re-sign is even close to comparable to Garza.
Does Garza have a less talented, fatter brother?
Yeah, but Ramirez is too old to be part of a rebuilding.
They could sign Garza to a 3-year extension (beyond his arb years) and he'd still only be 32 when the contract expired.
Garza can definitely "be part of the next good Cubs team". If you get an offer you like, sure, trade him. But I'd think about extending him if the offers aren't there.
Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe somebody else gets him and extends him. Maybe the Yankee blow away their offer if he hits the open market. Maybe he never wanted to play in Chicago until he had to.
They have two years exclusive window to extend him. They certainly can sign a much better deal now than if they waited.
We know this because? Garza has not signed an extension and so far we've heard that the Cubs haven't offered one.
Maybe, maybe not.
I have no idea how to tell how much this is worth. This discussion comes up all the time, like when the Mets traded for Santana. How do you measure the value of an exclusive window for negotiation? Of course, I think it means more for a guy like Santana than Garza, but still...
Because every other move they made was geared towards a full rebuild. You don't go all-in on a full rebuild then chicken out. So I assume they didn't chicken out they just didn't get offered what they wanted.
The 2012 Cubs will stink. The 2013 Cubs will stink. And because the 2012 Cubs don't have all that much talent in the system and it will take years before the new regime's draft picks are ready, it seems almost certain to me the 2014 Cubs will stink.
There aren't many big FAs coming down the pike. We certainly are not going to see anything like this offseason. Almost all the top young talent in the game is tied up in reasonable, long-term contracts until 2016-17 so it doesn't even look to me like there are going to be any good salary dumps the Cubs can benefit from. Joey Votto and some pitchers potentially come up in two years and that's really about it.
So, no, it really doesn't make much sense to keep Garza for the next 2+ seasons if you're going to struggle to surround him with talent to get to even 500 -- or at least it doesn't make sense if you can trade him for a nice collection of prospects that fit in with your longer-term plan.
And I'm quite a little Garza fanboy but, c'mon, he ain't Halladay or Kershaw or anybody like that. Sure he could be a valuable member of the 2016 Cubs but that's not a particularly good reason to keep a guy like that around now.
You forgot about Maholm, a solid mid-rotation starter they picked up at a bargain price.
If they can fetch a nice ransom for Garza - deal him... If not, he's young enough and has been healthy enough that I have no real problem exploring an extension. No real need to do it now - wait till June/July and see if any contenders are in desperation mode for starting pitching. If the right deal still isn't out there -- and especially if you get a good roll and Castro/Jackson/Rizzo truly do look like they can form a good offensive core -- then go ahead and see what it would take to lock him up for a couple/three years or so. He's not going to command the sort of Zambrano money that could become an albatross if he starts beating up teammates, so there's no harm in say.... 3/36 or even 4/50.
How is that evidence against a complete rebuild? A complete rebuild doesn't mean they are going to only acquire major league scrubs.
Wood is under team control for 5 years. Maholm is a cheap place holder that doesn't block anybody.
Was just perusing some other rosters -- and gotta say -- it doesn't surprise me that Thed can't find a good deal for Garza at the moment. I'm having a hard time finding a team that meets the following criteria:
1) Needs a front-half of the rotation SP
2) Has the salary room to pay him 9.5 mil
3) Has anything I really want from the system
The Yankees would have been an option before the Montero trade, but who's left, really? Detroit? I'd want both Turner and Castellanos back, and I'm not sure that's a reasonable expectation.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main