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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Worst trade of the last five years?
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1. Joey B. has ignited his October #Natitude Posted: May 13, 2012 at 10:48 AM (#4130495)I was hammering on this for awhile . . . is Casey Kelly hurt? He's only made two starts this year (in AAA, with 14 Ks and no walks or HRs in 12 IP). I still don't think he's a major league pitcher, but I've been wrong before.
Regardless of what you thought of the true talent of Wells and Napoli (i.e. even if you had psychic knowledge that Wells would 100% revert to a 130 OPS+ Gold-Glove CF, and Napoli would hit his 25%-ile projections) it was still awful b/c Reagins misread the market by ~$30M.
That wasn't a legit trade. It was an arrangement between the Giants and Reds owners to swindle a minor league owner out of some cash.
Um, what?
AA and his staff before the call to Reagins:
"We really need to get out from under this Wells contract. I hear the Angels might be interested."
"Let's ask for Mike Napoli and offer to pay 50% of the remaining money, but I'd settle for Jeff Mathis and 75%"
"OK, everyone agree? Good."
"Tony, Al here. We really like the looks of Mike Napoli, and we're prepared to offer Vernon Wells an..."
"I'LL TAKE IT!"
I would love to have heard the discussion of that trade during Hoyer's interview for the Cubs' GM job. "We were very, very impressed with the way you gave us one of the best players in baseball for four guys we didn't need."
"Sure, but this time it will only require 2 players."
Speaking of that trade, what the hell are the Cubs doing with Rizzo? He hit .331/.404/.652 in AAA last year, and he's at .338/.407/.638 so far this year. Yeah, LaHair is tearing it up so far, but he's no reason to keep Rizzo down.
Money. It's always about the money.
And OPS'd .523 in 153 PAs in the majors. And is 22. And had never hit anywhere near as well at any level as he did in the 413 PCL PA's that you referenced. I don't think it's a given that he's getting more time in AAA due solely to arb concerns.
Maybe they said, "Hey, you did a great job getting Rizzo in that trade. Come work for us and let's try to get that guy again."
#### it, the Cardinals really are blessed and nothing bad happens to them.
"I know the first time, you gave up one of the best players in baseball for him, but this time we should be able to get him for a guy who projects as a middle reliever."
Prospect Ratings by Baseball America:
Pre-2010: Rated #24 Prospect
Pre-2011: Rated #31 Prospect
Pre-2012: Rated #76 Prospect
Way to go, Hoyer.
And, yeah, the Rizzo thing is -- well, not sure "money" is quite the right term, it's one extra year of control. Bring him up now and he'll have one year of service time at the end of this year and be FA after 2017. Keep him down for another month or so and he's not an FA until after 2018. This isn't playing games around a super-2 deadline where you might save a few million over a few arb years; this is about waiting one month to get an entire extra season of a guy before deciding if you want to guarantee him millions in his 30s. It's a no-brainer really.
Yikes, clicked through and that looks like a pretty awful argument. First, he argues that Blake for Santana was OK since the Dodgers won the division -- and that's an OK place to start the argument. But he then says the trade only looks bad in retrospect but not at the time which is revisionist history. Everybody wailed about it at the time except maybe the Plasckes of the world.
But then, if you're using the "at the time" perspective, McDonald for Dotel was trading a fallen prospect for a top reliever. McDonald for Dotel only looks bad in retrospect ... and still only because McDonald is off to an awesome start. Before then, he'd given the Pirates 230 innings of league average starting.
But to top it all off, the writer says it's the worst one he can remember and "I'm not going through every one, so I could be wrong." Seriously, I put more effort into my posts here.
EDIT: And I don't think he's arguing it's the worst trade for the Dodgers, I think he's arguing it's the worst trade. He specifically says it's sort of a perfect storm of bad ideas: "live-arm prospect" for middle reliever while 5 games out of the WC.
Either that, or Dave Duncan really is the superstar pitching coach his reputation suggests. Considering that Duncan pulled these one-year - sometimes longer - miracles about once a season, I'm voting for him. Don't know what he did to Dotel, but his normal is to get his pitchers to give up on the 4-seam fastball, which hits the radar gun about 2 mph harder than the 2-seamer, but rises, not sinks. With a veteran like Dotel, you wouldn't think that would be the issue, but, well, Duncan does have a record. The 2-seam fastball conversion, BTW, seems to be just about all of what Duncan means when he talks about "pitching to contact." The only other thing he talks about is fixing a pitcher's mechanics, which is what all pitching coaches talk about. - Brock Hanke
Not to parse an informative post too closely, but isn't a rising fastball a physical impossibility? Or do you mean it rises in that it doesn't drop as much as the 2-seamer? I was always taught the 4-seamer is faster but straighter.
Was McDonald a "live-arm" prospect? He was 25. He was drafted in 2002 and traded in 2010. Solid k rate, lousy bb rate. Guys like this are every bit as fungible as a middle reliever -- most of them become middle relievers if they're lucky. At the time of the trade, more folks seem to think getting Andrew Lambo was the coup (at least as I recall it).
It's certainly a fair point that acquiring a solid middle reliever for 2 months when you're 5 games out is silly. But worrying about trading away a 25-year-old "live arm prospect" is also silly.
The White Sox got a 23-year-old Frank Francisco and another pitcher for Bob Howry. He was then part of a deal for the end of Carl Everett's productive career. Francisco was later traded for Mike Napoli.
The grossly overpriced and problematic K-Rod was traded for the live-armed 21-year-old Adrian Rosario (>11 K/9 ages 20-22) and the McDonald-esque Danny Herrera. Rafael Betancourt was traded for Connor Graham, a 23-year-old live arm.
These trades are a dime-a-dozen.
The only way you bring Rizzo up is if you switch Lahair to LF right now. And maybe they're worried that he needs a lot of work out there and/or a position change will mess with his hitting mojo. The Cubs are going nowhere fast, and it's cost effective to let Rizzo play every day in Iowa. Both Lahair and Rizzo need their four at-bats a day. As a Cubs fan, I'm fine with waiting on Rizzo until 2013.
While I was off celebrating the glorious 2011 World Series, featuring a non-entity prospect David Freese and sucks-everywhere-else Octavio Dotel, did they change the FA clock? There's no way Rizzo can get 6+ years of service time before 2018.
This is exactly the problem the Cubs wanted to have. Now they have to handle it right. Keeping Rizzo down for a month or so (however long it takes to not tick the clock) is still a no-brainer but they shouldn't wait a day longer than that and he might "force" the issue.
Perhaps the Cubs are afraid to move LaHair to the outfield because it might mess with his hot start and tradeability. He's not exactly young and his best position is one of the few areas where the Cubs have a genuine prospect.
Greenback were you just too anxious to make bad jokes to read the post above yours? He said FA after 2017. If Rizzo was called up today, he'd have 6 full seasons from last year's time + the rest of this year, then 5 more years from '13-'17.
I enjoy when people who don't read me at all comment on my articles. It helps me see things through different eyes. There was a flippancy to that line that probably didn't help the article. I had a kernel of an idea -- that McDonald for Dotel made less sense than any trade of the past five years -- and riffed on it, hoping to inspire debates and discussion. It's not scholarly. So, no, I wasn't going to pore over the transaction logs for the last five years. I can assure you that I put plenty of effort into my articles, though.
Not for a few months, at least.
I guess I can see your point. There was some kind of sound reasoning behind the Gonzalez trade, and even the Tex trade to Atlanta (although I would argue there was none behind the worse trade to LAA that everyone forgets about). So your saying the point isn't that its the worst trade by value lost or gained, its the most non-sensicle? I can get behind the idea that these kinds of trades make the least sense.
Especially since Lee had a year and a half left on his contract.
The Padres gave up one year of Gonzalez where he would have given them about $25 million worth of production while being paid $6 million. Then they would have offered arbitration and received two draft picks when he signed somewhere else.
Is the prospect package they got worth $19 million more than what they could have had through the comp picks? Maybe, maybe not, but there's a limit to the damage this trade can be blamed for on the Padres.
Probably only the 2nd worst Cliff Lee trade in the last 5 years. And 3rd worst alltime with the Bartolo Colon for 3 megaprospects the big one.
The Padres gave up one year of Gonzalez where he would have given them about $25 million worth of production while being paid $6 million. Then they would have offered arbitration and received two draft picks when he signed somewhere else.
Is the prospect package they got worth $19 million more than what they could have had through the comp picks? Maybe, maybe not, but there's a limit to the damage this trade can be blamed for on the Padres.
Or, given what we now know about the economics of MLB, they could have given him the same deal Boston did, and been very happy with that.
everyone fretted about the cc trade and thanks to fate laporta has been a disappointment and brantley is just a guy
hardcore fans griped about the linebrink trade but other than thatcher being a solid reliever nothing has gone blam in doug's face
nelson cruz is still in texas and doing well but the brewers got some good relief and draft picks out of that one. so that one isn't so hot but it's not a train wreck
doug has had more winners than losers in the trade area
i still chuckle over the sox fans thinking kenny had flimflammed doug in the lee trade. that was great stuff.
The families of Darryl Kile and Josh Hancock probably disagree with this statement.
It's not that the Brewers lost anything of great value--Thatcher, well, could have gone either way in the Brewers system--it's just that the trade was pointless. The bullpen was crappy but not that crappy that one guy could have helped much.
nah. lots of folks were insistent that inman was all that and a bag of chips including the resident griper rubieq
The Morris trade makes a ton of sense. You people just aren't thinking about it correctly.
Dave Littlefield was fielding some uncomfortable questions from the new majority owner, and was desperate to try and save his job, so he made a bunch of eat-the-seed-corn type decisions to try and nudge the Pirates over 80 wins and give himself superficial evidence of "progress" that year. It failed, because he's a moron who wouldn't recognize a ballplayer if one walked up and bit him on the ass, and instead the deal helped get him fired.
Simple enough, no?
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