Trades

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February 21, 2011

Trying to figure out the Vernon Wells trade

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Last month the Blue Jays dealt Vernon Wells to the Angels for catcher Mike Napoli and outfielder Juan Rivera. Looking at it strictly on paper in terms of talent, the deal looks great for the Angels, but it’s Wells ridiculous contract that is the key.

Wells is in the middle of a 7-year, $126 million contract that will pay him more than $26 million this season and $20+ million until 2014. Meanwhile in return the Jays get a serviceable offensive catcher in Napoli and a 31-year-old former prospect that really never lived up to expectations (only posted a WAR above 2 once in 10 major league seasons). Obviously, this is a straight salary dump for Toronto.

When the Jays signed Wells to the seven-year deal in 2007, he was 27 years old, in his prime and they had Roy Halladay to give them a chance to contend. Things have changed drastically in four years after the Jays struggled to keep up with the big boys of the AL East. Halladay was traded for prospects after the ’09 season and with Wells getting up their in age and the team giving the young prospects a chance to play, the Jays were ready to dump Wells.

The surprising thing is that they found a suitor to take his contract on. Insert the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of Orange County of California. Here’s a team that tried and failed to sign Carl Crawford and Adrian Beltre this offseason, losing Beltre to a division rival in the Rangers. The Angels obviously took some heat publicly for not signing either free agent and had some extra money to spend, but $23M? They could have spent less than that and still gave more money to Beltre than Texas did.

Let’s look at Wells to see if he’s worth that kind of money. His best seasons were 2003 and 2006, the latter when he hit 32 home runs and a slash line of .303/.357/.542. Following the 2006 season, he slumped the next three years producing a three-year slash line of .265/.317/.426. Which was right after he signed the long-term deal. Did he get complacent? That’s definitely a possibility.

At any rate, Wells rebounded last year with 31 homers, his highest since ’06, and a slash line of .273/.331/.515. But he’ll be 32 this summer, and he’s already shown signs of diminishing skills so I’m not sure what the Angels can expect from him the next couple of years. But I do not see how the Angels will get $23 million dollars worth out of him this year. Wells is one of the top five paid players in all of baseball, but he’s not one of the top five players out there.

The bottom line is the Angels panicked and searched for a deal that could bring in a name. They lost out on Crawford and Beltre while seeing Adrian Gonzalez go to Boston and Cliff Lee to Philadelphia, and they suddenly didn’t have anything to show for this offseason so they looked for a quick desperate deal. Did their team get better on the field? Yes, but at what cost and for how long?

On the other hand, the Jays will miss Wells production from 2010 but with the $75+ million they saved over the next four years, they can better spend the money to keep prospects like Travis Snider, Ricky Romero, Kyle Drabek among others around. Then again they could just dump that money into Jose Bautista for the next five years and pray last year wasn’t a fluke, but that’s another topic for another day.

 

July 31, 2010

Trade Links

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MLB fans, GMs and players can now breathe again—the trading deadline has officially passed. Need a recap on everything went down? Here are some trade links to do just that…

MLB Trade Rumors is the authority on the trading deadline, and the folks over there put together a nice rundown of all the trades from the past couple of days.

MLB.com also runs down the plethora of trades today.

Jayson Stark of ESPN gives his winners and losers of the trading deadline.

Big League Stew of Yahoo! ranks the top 10 notable trades from this July.

I had to get my hometown Pirates in here as they were busy as usual on the deadline. Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recaps the three trades the Buccos made today. From my viewpoint, the Pirates made some low-risk free agent pickups in the offseason and flipped most of them for some decent, young talent today. Not bad in my book.

Am I the only one who didn’t like the Jake Westbrook deal for the Cardinals? I mean parting with young hitter Ryan Ludwick for Westbrook when they also went after Oswalt and Lilly and end up with Westbrook. Seems like they panicked to me and settled for the lesser of three pitchers. I could see Westbrook find his groove against NL hitters, but it’s still a downgrade after losing out on Oswalt and Lilly.

Speaking of the Indians, they found a taker for Kerry Wood!?! The Tribe sent the struggling closer to the Yankees for a player to be named later or 500k. Uh, I’m pretty sure that cash will work just fine. I could see the Indians going to the Yankees in the offseason and say, “You know what, don’t bother sending anyone for the deal. We’re good.”

FanGraphs breaks down the Octavio Dotel trade to the Dodgers and wonders, along with many, what the Dodgers are doing giving up too much for bullpen arms, including a top prospect in Andrew Lambo now with Pittsburgh.

Also, the Reds stood pat and made zero moves. Interesting. After trading for Yunel Escobar earlier this month, the Blue Jays also were quiet at the deadline along with the Tigers, Mets, A’s (Billy Beane must have been sick), Brewers (they’re in contention though, that’s it), Red Sox and Rockies.

Well the non-waiver trade deadline gone, tomorrow is August 1 and back to our regularly scheduled program of baseball while teams battle for pennants the last two months of the season.

 

July 31, 2010

Catching up on Friday trades

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There were numerous deals throughout the league on Friday. Let’s recap in the order that they were announced:

White Sox Acquire Edwin Jackson from Arizona
The Diamondbacks fire sale continues and believe it or not, but they may have picked up a better return for Edwin Jackson than they did for Dan Haren.I’m not sure what the D-Backs franchise plan is at the moment, but they seem to love trading for mid-rotation starters and then trading them away.

Jackson was traded for the fourth time of his career for pitcher Dan Hudson (No. 66 top prospect according to Baseball America) and low-level minor leaguer David Holmberg. Hudson is a great pickup for Arizona, but I’m not certain that they didn’t have more with Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth when they traded the two of them to Detroit last December for Jackson. I still think they should have held onto Scherzer. Despite throwing a no-hitter earlier this year with about 45 walks, Jackson isn’t having a very good season with a 5.16 ERA, 7.0 K/9 and a 4.0 BB/9. Forgetting about the deal last year, this stand alone deal was a good one for Arizona. Jackson will provide the White Sox some rotation depth with the loss of Jake Peavy as they battle the Twins for the AL Central title, but I can’t help thinking they gave up way too much in this deal. Though there’s also rumors going around that their plan is to flip Jackson around to the Nationals for maybe Adam Dunn? Crazy shit going down right here.

Rangers pick up Jorge Cantu and Cristian Guzman
Yesterday, the Rangers dealt for Marlins first baseman Jorge Cantu for two Double-A pitcher (Evan Reed and Omar Poveda) and today they added speedy infielder Cristian Guzman. Texas will send another couple of Double-A pitchers in Ryan Tatusko and Tanner Roark, which begs the question of who’s left at Double-A Frisco?

Guzman could have waived his 10-and-5 rights, but agreed to the trade. Guzman is hitting .282/.327/.361 while playing shortstop, second base and right field. Cantu has 10 home runs, 54 RBI and a slash line of .262/.310/.409 in 97 games. The Marlins may also not be done dealing as it looks like Cody Ross is also available. Neither of these guys (Cantu and Guzman) are going to single-handily win a division title for the Rangers, but they provide the team depth, experience and someone to play first base.

Yankees Bring Berkman to the Bronx
First the Yankees acquired Austin Kearns for a player to be named later from Cleveland. They like his right-handed bat. Ah, whatever. The next deal will make headlines. The Yankees continued to wheel and deal, trading for long-time Astros slugger Lance Berkman. In exchange, the Astros got reliever Mark Melancon and low-level minor league infielder Jimmy Paredes. Apparently after years and years of thinking they were still in the hunt, the Astros have finally given up the fight and are selling, selling, selling.

For some reason the Astros are sending about $4MM to cover part of Berkman’s salary for this year. Isn’t one of the prominent reasons to trade with the Yankees is that they have no payroll and will pay anyone and anything to play for them?

This trade will make big headlines in New York, but it would have been great had it been two years ago when Berkman was hitting like Lance Berkman. He’s currently in mist of a disappointing season with 13 home runs, 49 RBI and a slash line of .245/.372/.436 through 85 games. And I swear most of those home runs and runs batted in were against the Pirates this season. He’ll play DH for the Yankees and is an obvious upgrade over Colin Curtis, who has been playing there. Plus, the big guy still gets on base with 60 walks in 85 games for a .372 OBP. Berkman has the 10-and-5 rights, but waived his no trade clause in this deal, which he did when the White Sox attempted to get him.

There are the deals that went down today with possibly another one on the way with twitter blowing up right now on how the Dodgers are close to acquiring Ted Lilly from Chicago. Now does Paul Maholm go anywhere or Adam Dunn or Jose Bautista? Ah, the trade deadline. Don’t you just love it?

 

July 29, 2010

Breaking down the Roy Oswalt trade to Philadelphia

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Well if you haven’t heard about it by now, the Phillies ended the numerous Roy Oswalt rumors and acquired him from the Astros.

So let’s go back to last December in the offseason and play a little timeline game. The Phillies trade a couple prospects away to get Roy Halladay in a deal on Dec. 16, 2009. Almost immediately following that trade, the Phillies turn around and deal Cliff Lee to Seattle for a couple of prospects. Fast forward to July 29, 2010 when the Phillies trade a couple prospects away and a ML pitcher in J.A. Happ to Houston for Oswalt.

Why didn’t they just keep Lee originally like everyone was wondering last December? A rotation with Halladay and Lee for a full year in light years better than a rotation with Roy and Roy for a half season. Oswalt is a nice pickup, but he’s not Cliff Lee at this time of his career. Oswalt currently has a WAR of 2.7 while Lee’s is significantly higher at 4.9. Lee has been dominant this year and is now helping Texas run away with the AL West.

At any rate, the Phils now have Oswalt to provide a great 1-2 punch in hopes of getting ahead of Atlanta in the last two months of the season. They traded Happ and minor league prospects Anthony Gose and Jonathan Villar. The Astros immediately turned around and dealt Gose to Toronto for key prospect Brett Wallace. Speaking of Wallace, if he’s such a great prospect that everyone raves about his power, why is this the fourth trade he’s been involved in about a year?

Wallace could eventually be the Astros long-term answer to Lance Berkman at first base as they are now discussing deals to send Berkman out of Houston. Anyway, getting back to Happ, who went 12-4 with a 2.93 ERA last year to finish second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting. He only pitched in three games in April for Philadelphia before a forearm injury has sidelined him since then. I’m just confused to what the Phillies were doing last offseason when they could have had Halladay, Lee and Happ all under contract. Instead, Lee and Happ are gone and Oswalt is the pitcher coming in.

Oswalt should be fine for the Phillies, but he won’t do what Lee did for them last year in the playoffs. It also will be interesting to see how Oswalt will react to pitching for a new team that isn’t the Astros for the first time in his career. The Astros probably could have landed better prospects for Oswalt, but with the money involved and Roy’s willingness to have his 2012 option picked up probably derailed better deals. The fact that they were able to get Villar, a young raw shortstop who could have a high ceiling, and a former first round pick with power that is probably ML ready in Wallace is a decent enough return for a pitcher that wanted out and wouldn’t be leading the Astros into the playoffs in the next two years.

Of course if you go over to FanGraphs or some other baseball site, they will probably tell you the Astros totally lost out on the deal. Anytime you’re trading for prospects with some of them in the low-level of the minors, you have to wait and see how these players develop before fully dissecting the trade. If Villar, Wallace and Happ end up having decent major league careers (even only two of them), doesn’t that outweigh a half season of Oswalt’s 32-year-old arm?

 

July 28, 2010

Trades!

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Finally some real trades to discuss on Warmup Wednesday.

Let’s start with the first one that went down Wednesday afternoon—the Tigers acquired Jhonny Peralta from Cleveland for minor league pitcher Giovanni Soto (Yeah, different Soto from the Cubs catcher). Detroit has been decimated by injuries the past month and Peralta will fill in at third base in Brandon Inge‘s stead. This deal doesn’t exactly thrill me for the Tigers. Peralta is in his eighth major league season with his best year coming in 2005 when he belted 24 homers with a slash line of .292/.366/.520, but has progressively declined each year since then. Get it? Progressively declined…Progressive Field in Cleveland. Ah, forget it. Anyway, this year Peralta has just seven homers, 43 RBI and a line of .246/.308/.389. On the other hand, it’s better than throwing a rookie out there which is what the Tigers have been doing, and while Soto is enjoying a nice season at low-A ball, he’s only 19 years old and is years away from the majors. The Indians also sent cash to Detroit to most likely cover the rest of Jhonny’s contract, plus the Tigers will hold a $7.5MM option for 2011, which barring some dramatic improvement from Peralta, I don’t see the Tigers picking up. This deal doesn’t change the fact that I think the Tigers are done. Losing Zumaya and now Ordonez is just too much for this team to overcome.

The other trade on Wednesday involved the Dodgers acquiring Scott Podsednik from the Royals for two minor leaguers (Lucas May—Triple-A catcher and Elisaul Pimentel—right-handed pitcher in Low-A). Podsednik is in his 10th season and will join his sixth team of his career. Podsednik is having a nice season, hitting .309/.352/.400 with 30 steals, eight doubles, six triples and five homers. He really became the Royals only appealing trade piece once David DeJesus was lost for the season due to injury. This trade will give the Dodgers some outfield depth with Manny Ramirez on the DL, but this is another deal that isn’t going to change the NL West landscape.

So three days from the deadline, Wednesday was a nice warmup to the big deals that are sure to be just a few days away.

 

July 26, 2010

Angels acquire Dan Haren

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Dan Haren, who was coveted by many teams this month, found himself a new member of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in a trade that came about Sunday afternoon. So much for all those rumors about how he was going to be a Yankee. See why trade rumors are dumb?

The Angels literally came out of left field to make this deal happen and are sending a message to Texas that they are ready to concede the division title to them just yet. Though after another loss to the Ranges today, it’s looking very bleak for the Halos.

The Diamondbacks picked up major league starter Joe Saunders, Rafael Rodriguez and young prospect Patrick Corbin. This is a great deal for the Angels because even if they can’t make up the 7.0 game difference in the division this year, they set themselves up nicely for next season by holding the rights to Haren for 2011 and 2012. Saunders is the most notable pickup for the D-Backs, but the lefty owns a 4.62 ERA this season.

With so many other teams interested in Haren (Yankees, Dodgers, Tigers, Phillies, Cardinals), I have a hard time believing this was the best deal they could find for him. There wasn’t a major prospect sitting in Double-A/Triple-A they could have acquired? Arizona has made some suspect deals in the past couple of seasons that I may get into in a separate post, but this deal has me scratching my head from the D-Backs viewpoint.

While this deal obviously makes the Angels a better team, does it make them better than Cliff Lee and the Rangers? Probably not, but it does send a message to its fan and to the Rangers that they plan to stick around in the hunt this year and the recent future.

 

July 22, 2010

Oswalt, Haren or Lilly? That is the question.

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As I wrote earlier, instead of going through countless rumors about these three pitchers (speaking of which, see what I mean?), let’s do something a little different. If you were a GM in the majors right now and forget about ballpark and league switches, no-trade clauses or what prospects you would have to give up, which pitcher would you want for the remainder of the season to try to shore up the rotation for a playoff run—Roy Oswalt, Dan Haren or Ted Lilly?

It may not be as clear-cut as you think, but let’s break down the numbers…

Haren (29 yrs old) is having a down year by his standards with a 4.60 ERA in 141 ip, one complete game and 9.0 K/9, 1.9 BB/9 with a 2.6 WAR. His strikeout/walk ratio is still very good, but he’s giving up home runs at a crazy pace already allowing 23 home runs. Haren’s ERA is most likely a bit unlucky though as he BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is high at .350.

Oswalt (32 yrs old) has made 19 starts in 2010, posting a 3.12 ERA in 124 innings with one complete game as well. He has an 8.5 K/9 and 2.4 BB/9 while 11 home runs. Despite a much lower ERA than Haren, Oswalt’s WAR is 2.9, just 0.3 better than Haren, which is an indication that Haren has pitched better than his ERA shows this year.

Last by not least is Cubs starter Ted Lilly. Lilly (34 yrs old) sports a 3.88 ERA through 17 starts in 111.1 IP. He does not own a complete game this year and has a 6.5 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9 while serving up 19 long balls. Lilly’s WAR value is just 1.0, significantly lower than Haren and Oswalt, but Lilly’s last two starts have been stellar with a 2.51 ERA, including 10 strikeouts on July 21 to possible raise his trade value.

Oswalt has had the better overall career to this point, there’s no denying that, but his health history isn’t the greatest and you never know when his back problems will creep up. Moreover, at 29 years of age Haren is younger than both Oswalt and Lilly. Therefore I rank the pitchers I would want in this order: Haren, Oswalt and Lilly. I think Haren has more to offer at this time and when he’s on, he can be one of the top pitchers in the game. His BAPIP indicates that he’s been unlucky, so I think he poised to have a sterling second half and suddenly pitching in a pennant race may just be what he needs to turn it up a notch.

Haren is also slightly cheaper than Roy. Haren is owed $12.75MM in 2011 and 2012 while Oswalt gets $16MM next year with a club option for 2012. Lilly ($13MM this year) would be more of a rent-a-player since he will become a free agent next year. Haren or Oswalt could give you a couple of years of top of the rotation stuff.

Out of the three, who would you want to help pitch your team into the playoffs?

 

July 22, 2010

Breaking news: Many pitchers wanted by many teams

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With a little over a week until the July 31st deadline, Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt and D-Backs pitcher Dan Haren are drawing interest from the following teams: Phillies, White Sox, Yankees, Twins, Giants, Dodgers, Cardinals, Packers, Steelers, Maple Leafs, Heat, Lakers, the Buzz, Gas-House Gorillas and the Tune Squad from Space Jam…

Hey, that Tune Squad team led by Bugs Bunny is tough.

All kidding aside, I’m not a fan of trade rumors very much. They reach a point of ridiculousness every year with about a week until the deadline. When you start quoting “sources from outside the organization” that can pretty much be anybody. Hell, I could be considered a reliable source outside the Pirates organization because I’m outside the organization and own a URL domain.

This is why you won’t find me talking about many trade rumors throughout the pages of Caught Looking. I enjoy writing about the trades that actually happen, not the ones where 14 teams have called the Brewers asking about Corey Hart. I’m sure each general manager talks to about 20 GM’s, if not more, in the last week of the deadline just to hear what each team wants for certain players, so they can gauge what interest is out there for those players and their own. Fans, and this is helped big time by the media, seem to believe every single report they hear and then flip out when it does not happen. Blah.

Instead, my next post (later day or tomorrow) will focus on three pitchers and who I would want on my team for the second half of this season—Oswalt, Haren or Ted Lilly.

Have a good day and remember, don’t believe everything you hear.

 

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