SB Nation Arizona Editor's Pick

The Dan Haren Trade of Yesteryear

by Wailord on Aug 21, 2010 11:43 PM EDT

So I've been spending most of my night looking at baseball stastics, something I've been trying to "get better at", though, I guess the appropriate terminology would be getting "more familiar" with them. The GDT was a bit slow, and as Carlos Gonzalez stepped in to pinch-hit, it got me thinking. I've been a big fan of his in Colorado, mostly (hey, I'm not gonna lie) because he's having a career year, though an unsustainable one at that. Regardless, Schulte piqued my interest when he reminded me that the 25-year-old Venezuelan was part of the haul that the Atheltics received when they sent former Diamondback ace Dan Haren over to help carry us to glory with ~~The Injury~~ Brandon Webb. Well, that worked out well.

Anyway, it got me thinking - now that both of the players we acquired have finished their stay with us, I think we can get a good idea of how the trade really turned out (ie, no "well maybe next year he'll prove it was a good deal"). So, I took a journey over to Fangraphs (a fantastic website, to those poor souls not familiar with it) and Baseball-Reference (another information goldmine) and decided to take a gander at the stats.

Just how did the trade turn out, when looked at objectively through the use of statistics? I'm actually typing this introduction out before doing the actual research so as to not sway what my previous stance would have been (wow, that sentence sucked). With the success of both Cargo and Brett Anderson, I have little doubt that we will end up losers in the trade, despite Haren being money during his tenure with the Snakes. Now, what do the numbers say?

I'll be looking at WAR for my stats, something that I love for its simplicity and friendliness when used with other stats. If you want an in-depth primer on the stat, you can check out b-r's wiki piece on it here, something I'd suggest doing if you aren't familiar with the stat. It's only bound to increase in popularity. If you're of a "geez, dude, I'm already reading your crappy writing, I don't need to go and read something else" sorta guy, then WAR basically describes how effective a player is overall, looking at the player's batting, baserunning, and fielding, as well as what position they play (as, let's say, a catcher is worth more to a team than a designated hitter). For pitchers, there's an entire slew of things taken into account, including ballpark, strength of opponent, and the defense behind him. The player's "WAR", or Wins Above Replacement, essentially tells you how many wins that player provided the team over the worst possible player that could still pass as serviceable. A player with a 5 WAR means that without him, theoretically, the team would have lost five more games.

(Note: all of the numbers I give are from the time the player was trade onwards)

***
What we gave up:

OF Carlos Gonzalez, COL: 6.4 WAR Losing Cargo is probably what hurts the most at this point. As I said earlier, he's going crazy in Coors (sure, it's Coors, but seriously, he's been ridiculous regardless), hitting for a slash line of .318 / .349 / .562 as well as an OPS+ of 132. He's got 25 homers to go along with it, though his 19 steals show he's got quite the skill set. What's that, IHSB? I don't know what this "BABIP" is that you speak of... ok, maybe I do. Carlos has been crazy lucky, so his average is nearly a lock to drop next year, but Cargo is still something special and has performed the best of anyone we gave up.

SP Brett Anderson, OAK: 3.2 WAR After a very fine rookie season (ERA+ of 108, went 11-11 with a 4.04ERA and finished sixth in RotY voting), Anderson performed extremely well this season before being hit with an elbow injury in early June that sidelined him for bit. Regardless, he's back now, and through ten games in 2010, Anderson is 3-4 (as one Tony Capo quits reading) with a 2.89ERA and an ERA+ of 142. He's a valuable lefty, and yet another guy I wish we still had.

SP Greg Smith, COL: 2.0 WAR Smith has been pretty awful this year (ERA+ of 72) with Colorado, where he's currently sporting a 6.23 ERA through eight starts, bad enough to give him a nice vacation in AAA Colorado Springs. His only year of note was his 2008 bout in Oakland, but even then he was nothing more than average (though, he *did* put up a WAR of 2.0 during the season). He went 7-16 with an ERA+ of 100 (exactly average), and was actually shipped along with Cargo and Huston Street to Colorado in the Matt Holliday blockbuster of 2008.

SP Dana Eveland, PIT: 0.8 WAR Eveland's really never had a good season. The best ERA+ he ever posted was his inaugural one in Oakland, even if it was a below-average 96 that went along with an uninspiring ERA of 4.34. He's been progressively worse since, and after posting a 6.45ERA in Toronto this year, he was shipped to Pittsburgh, where he's pitched in three games and acquired a Quallsy 8.38 ERA.

OF Aaron Cunningham, SDP: -0.1 WAR Cunningham is someone that could probably be better elaborated on by one of the resident minors experts that hang around here than myself; all I can really tell you is that after a mediocre 2008 and awful 2009 in Oakland, Cunningham seems to have found his stride in San Diego this year with the division-leading Padres. Though it's a small sample size (only 85 PA), he's rocking a line of .312 / .337 / .494 with an OPS+ of 134. He's also just 24 years old, so it's possible he'll blossom into something solid, though, as I said, he's best left to IHSB or Zephon.

OF Chris Carter, OAK: -0.5 WAR I'd ignore this WAR right now - Carter has just six games under his Major League belt, having been called up to The Show not even two weeks ago (and was optioned back shortly after). He's currently the #1 prospect in the Athletics system (from what I can tell - feel free to correct me if you believe otherwise!) Carter's got a nice chunk of power, but it remains to be seen if that translates into Major League production. Methinks that he'll join both Anderson and Gonzalez as the "ones who got away"...

TOTAL WINS GIVEN UP: 11.8

***

What we got:

Dan Haren: 10.8 WAR Yeah, he wasn't just good with us: he was great. His most notable season during his Diamondback campaign would probably be the his 2009 (ah, how much one can change in just a season...). Rocking an 8.8K/9, he posted an ERA+ of 146 last year, but his most notable statistic was probably the 1.003 WHIP he put up, though his 5.15 K:BB wasn't exactly something to shake a stick at (unless you're name is Cliff Lee, in which case, hello, Cliff). He shoulda started the 2009 All-Star Game as well, but hey, I don't feel like crying myself to sleep again. Moving on... his 2010, unfortunately (and as we all know, was incredibly disappointing. For the first time in his career, his K/9 actually showed a decline form the previous year, and Danny seemed to play as if it was the second half of the season all year. He - yes, the guy that absolutely destroyed opposing batters in the first half of the previous year - was actually a below-average pitcher, posting an ERA+ of just 97. I don't think there's much debating that we sold at the worst time we could have, but we did what we had to do. Even with the brutal season had/is having, I don't think anyone will deny that he pretty much performed as well as we expected (if not better) for the majority of the time he was here.

Connor Robertson: 0.0 WAR Not sure how much you wanna know about a guy who is currently chilling in the Free Agent pool, has nine career innings pitched, or has eight earned runs in those nine innings. Will that suffice? At least he netted us Scott Schoeneweis, even if Scotty did post a negative WAR with us.

TOTAL WINS GAINED: 10.8 WINS

***

So, them there's the numbers. We gave up 11.8 wins and gained just 10.8 in return - now, I may not have a high school degree (as all non-Pitters immediately close this page), but I'm pretty sure that shows a net loss overall. It's not that drastic, this is true: however, with the haul we gave up so young and just brimming with potential talent, I think it's pretty much a lock that this differential continues to grow and gets added to the Unmentionable List along with Carlos Quentin, though it seems that Chris Carter's results will help sway this either way, whether from "poor" to "horrific".

So, what are everyone else's thoughts on this? If you have a different set of numbers you prefer to use and think that we came out on top in this deal, please feel free to post it. With our recent shipping of Haren off to the Good LA looking somewhat similar - a boatload of young talent in exchange for Danny - we can only hope that our haul plays beyond expectations and some poor soul over at HalosHeaven can write up one of these someday ("I can't believe we gave up perennial Cy Young-contender Patrick Corbin for a pitcher on the decline..."). I guess only time will tell, eh?

Thanks for reading, everybody. I'm glad I have a place where I can put things up and get honest criticisms that ultimately help me improve my writing. Everyone's been real good at reading the few things I've put up over the last few months, and I'm much appreciative of it. So, yeah, a majority of this is nonsensical and there's not a whole bunch you can gather from this. WailFAIL?

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The Padres have debunked what ever credibility that WAR previously had

by txzona on Aug 21, 2010 11:51 PM EDT reply actions

With the trade of Haren

The measurement going forward would surely be the players we got back, against the players traded away. Given where the former are currently playing, you probably need to revisit this one again in about 2016. :-)

Nice write-up though. Rec’d and FP’d.

"It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand." -- Brian Stimpson

by Jim McLennan on Aug 21, 2010 11:58 PM EDT reply actions

Yeah.

The optimism in me says if we got so many players for Haren that at least one of them has to be at least “pretty good”. Both Skaggs and Corbin look promising, and if Haren continues his decline, I believe the odds are pretty good that we win the trade with LA… it’ll take some nice production, though, to come out as overall winners (in which Danny was just the middleman). Thanks for the frontpage! I originally started writing it in the GDT, but it grew too long so I just gave it its own post.

My value over a replacement poster is approximately 10.5 runs.

by Wailord on Aug 22, 2010 12:20 AM EDT up reply actions

it's also not that simple

because you can’t just look at WAR straight up, you also have to look at cost (mainly, opportunity cost as in the money we spent on Haren could have been spent on something else) as well as time discounts

for instance, if you read through some of the fangraphs articles they will talk about surplus value. let’s look at carlos gonzalez’s example. this year he’s generated 3.6 WAR for a market value of $14.3 million, but he’s only being paid $0.4 million, which means he’s generated a surplus value of $13.9 million THIS YEAR ALONE! using a similar calculation, anderson has generated a surplus value of $22.8 million in the last two years.

so what about dan haren? between 2008-2010 he has generated 15.1 WAR for a market value of $66.9 million. we paid him, over the course of this time, $16.8 million (i prorated this year for 21 out of 33 starts). That means he generated an obscene, $50 million in surplus value!

in other words, you can think of our “haren assets” as being worth $50 million dollars and surplus value patrick corbin, tyler skaggs, rafael rodriguez, and joe saunders.

our “haren liabilities” are the surplus values of cargo, anderson, smith, eveland, cunningham, carter.

but that also doesn’t take into account discounting the future, which gets to be a lot more complicated because we don’t know how much we want to discount

if cargo/anderson continue to put up extreme surplus values, we’re definitely going to regret this. as arbitration starts kicking in for anderson/cargo, their surplus value is going to be lower. but still, with chris carter still in the wings, this looks like we overpaid significantly in the haren deal.

by blue bulldog on Aug 22, 2010 12:35 AM EDT reply actions

I thought about this shortly after posting

that I neglected the cost side of things. I guess I took the casual fan’s approach in just looking at “players x and y for players a and b, who wins”… my mistake. I appreciate the response, though. At least we came to the same conclusion, though, to an extent. I wasn’t a hardcore fan in 2007 – did we trade thinking it was a fair deal, or was it the type of thing where we were simply gunning for a championship while the window was there?

My value over a replacement poster is approximately 10.5 runs.

by Wailord on Aug 22, 2010 12:48 AM EDT up reply actions

lol

i only started following baseball after the trade occurred…so i don’t really know either…

and yeah, the problem is with the discounting of the future. like…what would you rather have? $80 million in surplus value spread out of the next eight years but almost all of it in the last four years? or $50 million in surplus value spread out in the next eight years but almost all of it occurring in the first two years?

going for the championship now can lead to EXTREMELY skewed discounts. of course, then you have to start debating about whether you should even discount the future…..like….is having stable surplus value every year the best strategy (because some years due to probability fluctuation you’ll just outperform your value and win?) or is tanking every few years and then going broke every few years the best strategy?

who knows?

anyway, you also shouldn’t discredit yourself….a casual fan wouldn’t even care to try to analyze this trade and use WAR

by blue bulldog on Aug 22, 2010 12:58 AM EDT up reply actions

well speaking old school

here’s my take….

Arizona won a pennant and a world series with Schilling and Johnson….the twin hurlers of doom. Arizona had started to fully realise that they had wandered into the good fortune of having another Cy Young winner develop on the staff in the previously monikered Brandon ’The Injury" Webb. They had the assets in place to implement a similar plan, a two headed pitching monster that could compete with ANYONE with having Webb and Haren back to back in any postgame series and thus the possibility of additional championships dancing in their heads and full crowds and merchandising revenue out the proverbial wazoo.

Then before the game plan could get off the ground, “The Injury” completely tanked those plans of potential short term dominance and chasing a pennant for the now and sacrificing a potential could be future. Was it the right thing to do? Would you rather root for a team that patiently hopes to fashion a winning ballclub or one that sees an opportunity to get themselves an edge and take advantage of a window of opportunity?

I could see why they made the move, Jackson, Drew, Upton, Reynolds, Young were all coming along nicely as a nucleus, the pitching was a bit iffy behind the projected Haren and Webb but still, those guys would serve as a foundation, other players within or without the system could be employed to fill the gaps. The core was in place, the opportunity was there for the taking yet… well we all know what happened. It’s easy to sit back in hindsight and see what happened, just as easy as it is to play what if the injury had never taken place. What would the mental makeup of the team had been with two solid starters in front to trot out that could dominate opposing teams? We’ll never know.

Was it the “right” move? I dunno, but I do applaud the FO at the time for having the chutzpah to pull the trigger and try. I’ve followed teams that never try, its frustrating and its like being the eighth dog in the sled team, the scenery never changes and it never smells that good either.

I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused....

by piratedan7 on Aug 22, 2010 1:51 AM EDT reply actions

i think

the fact that we didn’t make it the year we had healthy webb and haren really hurt us. we probably overvalued how good our offense was, coupled with the fact that some of our offensive core underperformed in 2008, and that cost us.

the funny thing is, if you look back, trading haren could have REALLY hurt us, even more than we think it might hurt us now. haren was coming off a career year in oakland. also, going from a pitcher’s paradise to chase doesn’t usually bode well. then there’s the fact that his peripherals, in his best year with the A’s in 2007, while good at the time (7.76 K/9 and 2.22 BB/9) aren’t even as good as what he gave us. you could argue that we actually lucked out in getting haren’s best years career-wise, when what we actually did was buy high on a guy who could conceivably had just been lucky for one year.

i know we look at giving up anderson and cargo as unfortunate now, but just think how angry we would be if haren ended up putting up numbers more like his 2005/2006 years in oakland, rather than get better and better as he went through his late 20s

by blue bulldog on Aug 22, 2010 2:30 AM EDT up reply actions

I think it's also worth factoring in...

The WAR values of those positional players/pitchers that Anderson and Cargo et all would have replaced. For example, how do our left fielders figure over the period (not well I’d imagine) same for number 3/4 starters etc etc.

Time for another drink then?

http://www.wimbles.wordpress.com

by Wimb on Aug 22, 2010 3:02 AM EDT reply actions

Oh but generally

Great analysis :) good read!

Time for another drink then?

http://www.wimbles.wordpress.com

by Wimb on Aug 22, 2010 3:02 AM EDT up reply actions

Nice piece, but I have a few nitpicks

- Are you taking surplus value into account? (I think somebody already mentioned it)

- Dan Haren is no longer a Diamondback, so he can’t help us anymore, while the guys we gave would have. Their production would most likely exceed that of Haren in his 2.5 years in Arizona. Remember, this isn’t Haren’s 2.5 years as a D-back vs 2.5 years for both of Anderson and CarGo not playing for us, but rather 2.5 years of Haren vs at least six years for CarGo and Anderson, as well as Carter (not mentioning the rest of the guys we gave up since I doubt they’ll amount to much)

- What about the players that would have played in place of CarGo, Anderson? I don’t think it’s fair to assume they’d all be replacement level.

So as of now, it may look like a slight win, but there’s four more seasons for Anderson, three for Gonzalez, and six for Carter still left to play out. Quite a bad deal in the long run.

by CaptainCanuck on Aug 22, 2010 3:45 AM EDT reply actions

It's difficult to say how valuable they'll be in the future

for obvious reasons. That’s why it seems fairly obvious the gap will only widen as time wears on (and I assume most agree). I figured that with Haren gone, we can sit back and say “ok, we gave up xxxx for two and a half years of Haren, so how much was it really worth”. But, yeah, the ultimate value of CarGo and Anderson will exceed Haren’s alone soon enough.

As for the players that played in place, that’s probably something I can figure out and add in another note later on tonight. Though, with the vortex of suck that has been our leftfielders, it’ll be interesting to see how worthy they’ve been.

My value over a replacement poster is approximately 10.5 runs.

by Wailord on Aug 22, 2010 1:16 PM EDT up reply actions

Rec'd.

Although since CarGo’s BABIP is .365… his xBABIP is at .342. So he won’t be doing a whole lot of regressing. .295/.327 is his adjusted average/OBP line with normalized luck. And that’s if CarGo’s patience stays crappy, which I don’t think it will.

I wish we could’ve had CY in left, TJU in center, and CarGo in right. We’d have the best outfield in baseball… T_T

Leads/ties blown by the Diamondbacks bullpen in '10: 36

by Jdub220 on Aug 22, 2010 1:37 PM EDT reply actions

I was trying to figure out his xBABIP

and I did something wrong with my math, so in my infinite laziness I blew it off. An outfield of those three would be so awesome. :( Though, we’d probably be looking at this much differently had Webb not been injured. We’d have been a lot more successful if he had continued his dominance, and coupled with Haren, this would be easier to swallow…

My value over a replacement poster is approximately 10.5 runs.

by Wailord on Aug 22, 2010 1:42 PM EDT up reply actions

You forget, dear sir,

that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Meaning that Danny’s WARP at the time they occurred are more valuable than WARP produced later. I don’t believe that’s factored into this.

If it’s a question of 1 WARP now vs. 1 WARP produced later, I think anyone would take the WARP now. Especially after just garnering more wins than anyone else in the league.

We lost this trade, but we knew what we were getting into. If Danny had meant that we’d won the WS in 2008, nobody would be questioning.

Mr. Science Boy

by DbacksSkins on Aug 23, 2010 5:47 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs

+1

Leads/ties blown by the Diamondbacks bullpen in '10: 36

by Jdub220 on Aug 23, 2010 7:24 AM EDT up reply actions

Completely

As (I think) bulldog said above, we lucked out with just _how_ good Danny was with us. It's a shame that nothing became of it, because he was truly lights-out. It really makes the Webb injury all that much worse, because I'm pretty sure that both last year and this year we still thought we'd make the playoffs (or at least had a fighting chance). Now we're looking at 2011 or 2012, and we can only wonder how much different it would have been with a healthy Webb... it doesn't make sense that a single player should make us go from a playoff team to a Pirate-level team, but maybe it screwed with everyone else's confidence.

My value over a replacement poster is approximately 10.5 runs.

by Wailord on Aug 23, 2010 11:08 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

+1

for the ‘Pirate-level’ remark!

I got nothin'.

by Bcawz on Aug 23, 2010 12:42 PM EDT up reply actions

one player can't make a difference?

well if you liken “The Injury” to a star QB, and in this case, I believe it’s an apt analogy when you have someone who is a Cy Young winner/contender over his previous two seasons and is now coupled with a star “running back/Dan Haren” your team would feel that with those two you’re going to be very tough to beat. Haren is a very good pitcher, but as its proven out, he’s not enough on his own. Then that QB/Ace goes down and where does that leave the team? Would the same factor apply to the Cardinals if they lost Pujols? Ask the Mets and Twins about Santana? The Red Sox without Pedro? Some teams are teams and others have that special mojo when you have a player who has been a difference maker, Webb was ~~quickly becoming~~ that guy for us and that trade was all about giving him just the right amount of help to make us serious contenders for that two/three year period.

I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused....

by piratedan7 on Aug 23, 2010 2:49 PM EDT up reply actions

I perfectly understand what you're saying

and I’m not saying one guy can’t make a massive difference, because they certainly can – it’s just how dramatic it’s been. We were the favorites to win the division in 2008, we lose Webb, and just two years later we’re looking at a 100-loss season (not quite, I think we’re on pace for 98 or 99 losses). Though, I can assume that some of that can be attributed to last year being so awful that we already saw we weren’t going to make it this year, but even then, a fair amount of analysts had us winning the division. We also made some changes in the offseason that we assumed would help us contend that really took us nowhere.

My value over a replacement poster is approximately 10.5 runs.

by Wailord on Aug 23, 2010 3:04 PM EDT up reply actions

Webb's injury was huge, yes

But I don’t know that it actually made that much of a difference. I mean, even if we had a full strength Webb last season and this, we’d still have the bullpen being awful.

"It's a fez. I'm wearing a fez now. Fezes are cool."

by kishi on Aug 23, 2010 6:03 PM EDT up reply actions

it could be

but who knows, its like the ripple effect, once the first stone is dropped, the waves go out from all directions. The hard part was that the injury happened at a time where all the decisions had been made for that season and they’ve (the FO) had been unable to make any adjustment to that new reality since.

I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused....

by piratedan7 on Aug 23, 2010 6:12 PM EDT up reply actions

i think it's kind of difficult

to assume that we would have been able to make the playoffs with webb healthy. after all, we DID have webb healthy and haren pitching really well for one whole year, and we didn’t make the playoffs…

by blue bulldog on Aug 23, 2010 8:47 PM EDT up reply actions

by two games*

Nice strikeout!

by justin1985 on Aug 23, 2010 9:01 PM EDT up reply actions

Yeah

But our bullpen and offense were better in 2008 than 2009 or 2010.

"It's a fez. I'm wearing a fez now. Fezes are cool."

by kishi on Aug 23, 2010 9:05 PM EDT up reply actions

Total WAR is not the goal

I like the analysis, and I agree that we gave up a bunch to get Haren, and then didn’t even go to the playoffs. So you have to call this trade (in retrospect) a loser right now.
However, I do have a small quibble with the assumption in this analysis that if you give up more WAR than you receive that the trade was a loser. The goal – especially for a small market team – is to collect as much WAR in a single year that it carries you to a championship. This will virtually ALWAYS required you to give up more WAR (long term) than you receive (many youngsters for one established star to fill in a team hole) in the years when you compete for the championship.

by Craig from Az on Aug 23, 2010 10:43 AM EDT reply actions

Net value

Not to critique too much (I can tell you put a lot of effort in this) but I don’t think you just add up and check the bottom line. If I give you 3 pitchers that will 8 games each and 100 k and I get back one pitcher who wins 20 and has 260k? If you look at straight stats you are giving up more wins and Ks but I think most people would one 1 P vs the 3 P. Thanks for the info though, it is interesting to look at it.

by Spaghetti_Monster on Aug 26, 2010 10:45 AM EDT reply actions

Yeah

sorta realized that the idea was flawed at the roots shortly after putting it up (and it took the more intelligent ones here much less time to figure that out). I was going to just do away with the post, but figured I’d leave it up just ’cause.

My value over a replacement poster is approximately 10.5 runs.

by Wailord on Aug 26, 2010 1:22 PM EDT up reply actions

Thanks for writing it up

I think it brought up a some good discussion on trades in general and how hard it to quantify them and/ore rate them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I apreciate the effort and I know I’ve learned a bunch reading all the comments.

by Spaghetti_Monster on Aug 27, 2010 12:39 PM EDT up reply actions

'Skins kind of touched upon this earlier

But we were supposed to get fleeced in terms of raw WAR here. It has nothing to do with us making a bad move, or us maximizing the value of our individual roster spots a la what Spaghetti Monster was saying (though what he said was also a valid point), but contenders always find themselves trading away their future for a chance at a playoff push. And considering the Pythag of that ’07 team, it was obviously dubious.

But if you’re going to look at this one in terms of WAR on either side, we also need to realize that in five years we could be looking at the newest Haren trade this way, as well. According to Cot’s, we traded three years of Dan Haren @ $41MM for six years (three minimum and three arb) of a trio of players who project as a #2 starter, a #4 starter, and a middle reliever.

Haren’s salary automatically handicaps his ability to create excess WAR value. In three years, he needs to create 10.25 WAR just for the Angels to get their money’s worth. And, with his xFIP looking somewhere between his ‘08-’09 D-backs and ‘05-’07 A’s days, let’s say he lands between the 6 WAR he averaged per year for Arizona in those two seasons and the 4 WAR he averaged for Oakland in those three seasons – so 5 WAR per season. That means he creates 5 WAR of excess value in three years.

Those young players’ non-existent salaries gives them a chance to provide incredible value. If just Corbin or especially just Skaggs pans out as hoped/projected, we make up the excess value easily. As a #4 starter, Corbin needs to be just a shade over a 1.5 WAR pitcher per year in those first three years and merely live up to his arbitration salaries to make the deal a wash in terms of raw WAR. And, frankly, we’re going to get a lot more value that that.

It’s things like this that demonstrate just how horrible of deals some teams have made in the past. The package that the Phils got for Curt Schilling, for example, is horrifyingly terrible. And while everyone points to the Bartolo Colon package as an absurd haul, it can be forgotten it was supposed to be absurd.

Though that Bartolo Colon package was an ABSURD haul.

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=343580&title=spoiler-alert-human-centipede - Warning: NSFW... sorta

by Dan Strittmatter on Aug 27, 2010 12:27 PM EDT reply actions

yeah

the hardball times had a good article evaluating what they think haren’s surplus value is plus what we got back

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/did-the-diamondbacks-get-enough-for-dan-haren/

i think the conclusion they came to is that we probably gave up more in surplus value than we got back, but it isn’t as big of a difference as some people might have imagined. reading that analysis has made me feel slightly better about the deal. my problem with our haren trade though, is primarily that i think we could have gotten more, and if that assumption is false, i just don’t think it’s necessary to trade him at all. a rotation of haren, hudson, enright, kennedy, rando (with parker as a midseason callup) can make the playoffs IMO.

on a side note, i think an interesting debate is whether discounting the future is a good long-term strategy for GMs. what i mean is, it is common belief i think that contending teams get fleeced in terms of raw WAR by trading away the future for a playoff push. but is that really the right strategy? maybe it is better to try to aim for around 38-40 WAR as a team year in and year out (in order to average 83-85 wins a year) and natural deviation will make us worse some years, and make us playoff teams in others. one implication of this would be that we should try to avoid big blockbuster trades in winter (a la the first dan haren mold). probability of success volatility is way too high at the beginning of the year, and it might not be worth it because of the high risk (giving up the future) for the benefit of attempting to compete now. blockbuster trades near the trade deadline, when the playoff picture is clearer, is less volatile but still probably isn’t worth it, if you really believe in building an average team year in and year out. it’s probably better to shop for bargain bin trades (like the ludwick to padres one this year) than to go for a blockbuster hitter/pitcher.

anyway, i don’t really have any statistics to back me up on whether this strategy makes sense, but seeing the padres succeed this year, despite the roster being considered so weak preseason, has made me wonder if giving up lots of future talent to compete now is ever a good idea period.

by blue bulldog on Aug 27, 2010 2:25 PM EDT up reply actions

They also used prospect rankings from before the 2010 season.

Both Corbin and Skaggs have immensely improved their prospect status in 2010, particularly Corbin, who breezed through Low-A, and has dominated Hi-A such that the team won’t hesitate to promote him from Double-A to Triple-A early in 2011 if he dominates there. He’s got to be considered a B- prospect at this point, IMHO. And Skaggs could be an A- if you’re generous.

Further, I feel like Joe Saunders is a strong 2011 trade candidate. Jarrod Parker will start in the minors, but he’ll need a rotation slot at some point, as well as, perhaps, Wade Miley. If we can manage to stave off injuries, that means a slot or two will need to open up alongside IPK, Hudson, and Enright. We’ll likely sign a back-end filler guy to start the season in the #5 slot, and it’s always nice to have depth in the system. If we’re willing to eat a little bit of salary, there is always a team who needs a solid mid-to-back end starter. That means we could end up with 3 B- or better prospects in this package. Solid return.

I don’t really think we could have gotten more because Haren’s production wasn’t great and his contract isn’t as exceptional as people seemed to hype it up as.

That’s a completely valid point as to whether or not it’s worth it. I suppose it’s a matter of whether or not the playoff revenue will make up for the cost of the team losing prospects. Further, depending on simultaneous WAR fluctuations can be a deadly business.

Ludwick shouldn’t have been a bargain bin buy. But that’s the type of season the Pads are having. They get Ryan Ludwick for a spare MiLB arm…

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=343580&title=spoiler-alert-human-centipede - Warning: NSFW... sorta

by Dan Strittmatter on Aug 27, 2010 4:58 PM EDT up reply actions