Grading the Trades

Royals prospect Daniel Cortes at his finest. The future of the Royals looks bright.

I think we just went through our first series of serious trades. You know, trades that weren’t done because some of us were too stupid to realize that he/she did not draft a LEFT FIELDERRRRRRRR or because people were still trying to figure out their teams or too busy dropping David Wright and Barry Zito.

SO, here were the first series of trades:

300 traded Ben Sheets, Mil SP to Royals/Cubs
300 traded Cole Hamels, Phi SP to Royals/Cubs
300 traded Dan Uggla, Fla 2B to Royals/Cubs
CRAP traded Kelly Johnson, Atl LF to 300
CRAP traded Jeff Suppan, Mil SP to 300
CRAP traded Ian Snell, Pit SP to 300

Dan Uggla was latter dropped for Brandon Phillips.

THEN…

CRAP dropped Bengie Molina, SF C to Waivers
300 traded Jermaine Dye, CWS RF to Royals/Cubs
300 traded Carlos Zambrano, ChC SP to Royals/Cubs
CRAP traded Dontrelle Willis, Fla SP to 300

It should be noted that Jermaine Dye was later dropped by the Royals/Cubs and then added by 300 who later dropped him for OF Josh Hamilton who had just recently been dropped by Royals/Cubs. It has now been noted.

300 traded David Ortiz, Bos DH to Royals/Cubs
300 traded Roy Oswalt, Hou SP to Royals/Cubs
300 traded Bobby Abreu, NYY RF to Royals/Cubs
300 traded Brett Myers, Phi SP to Royals/Cubs
CRAP traded Jason Giambi, NYY 1B to 300
CRAP traded Joe Blanton, Oak SP to 300
CRAP traded Albert Pujols, StL 1B to 300

Bobby Abreu was later dropped for Luke Hochevar who was then dropped for Jon Garland.

THE GRADE

The obvious winner here is the Royals/Cubs.

300 essentially traded all of his consistent veteran pitchers for a young, inconsistent, unproven pitcher (Snell) and two mediocre guys (Blanton and Suppan). Honestly, would you trade Oswalt, Sheets, Hamels and Myers for Suppan, Blanton and Snell? No, you wouldn’t. That would be THREE points for R-C.

The Dontrelle Willis – Carlos Zambrano deal is a wash.

Now here is where it gets interesting. When taken into account who has been added and dropped along with the trade, the following occurred:

300 got: Albert Pujols, Jason Giambi., Josh Hamilton and Kelly Johnson R-C got: David Ortiz, Brandon Phillips, Shane Victorino and started Prince Fielder in place of Pujols

R-C got the better end of this deal. Here is why:

First, aside from the fact that Pujols is cursed, he is also going to have a down season (by his standards) then next couple of years. Rolen is old, Edmonds is old, Eckstein is old, Duncan can only hit when he is batting in front of Pujols and there is virtually NOTHING coming up through the minor leagues to help him. On top of this, the word in Gay Louis is that the owner is in the process of becoming more stingy with his money, which is why they did not work to keep Suppan and seek additional pitching help. In other words, Pujols is going to hit 30+ homers, but nobody is going to be on base.

Meanwhile…Prince Fielder is going nuts with the Milwaukee offense. The team is young and on its way to talking hold of the NL Central for the next couple of years. Fielder is only 22 years old and, in terms of keeper value, is a mere 28th round (or lowest pick) choice since he was not drafted. He also has people he can drive in because people actually get on base in Milwaukee.

Second is the acquisition of David Ortiz. Ortiz was, essentially, traded for Pujols. Ortiz will walk more, hit more home runs and drive in more runs this year than Pujols will. Ortiz is already out scoring him in Fantasy (as is Fielder by the way). Giambi, who will replace Ortiz for 300, strikes out a lot and hits in a position where he will lose most of his RBIs to AROD and Abreu (when he decides to start hitting again).

Finally, 300 downgraded at more positions than he upgraded. 300 upgraded at first base and second base, while downgrading in starting and relief pitching (losing Meyers and not replacing him) and also DH. He remained neutral in the outfield. R-C meanwhile slightly upgraded at first base, upgraded at DH, upgraded in starting pitching, upgraded in relief pitching, the outfield with Victorino, and, arguably, at minimum, maintained value at second base with Phillips.

SO, 300 gets TWO points for getting better on offense and R-C gets FIVE points for upgrading at three positions on offense and two points for not losing value at any position.

Final score: R-C 8, 300 2. Final grade: R-C A, 300 C-.

NEXT TRADE

COL traded Alfonso Soriano, ChC LF to Zou
COL traded Justin Verlander, Det SP to Zou
COL traded Paul Konerko, CWS 1B to Zou
Zou traded Justin Morneau, Min 1B to Schilbies
Zou traded Carlos Lee, Hou LF to Schilbies
Zou traded Mike Mussina, NYY SP to Schilbies

This was an interesting trade. It is a trade that, I think, will end up being a better one for the Shilbies…barely.

This whole deal depends on how much Soriano improves over the next month and how much Sabathia and Maine continue to dominate.

The Paul Konerko – Justin Morneau trade, to me, is a wash. They will both put up equal numbers by the end of the season.

The Justin Verlander – Mike Mussina trade, this season anyway, will also be a wash. Both will win their share of games and strike out their fair share of batters. The difference here will be whether or not Johnson decides to keep Verlander and if Verlander continues to be dominate. If that happens, the Zou got a steal here, but only if he is kept and continues to succeed.

Now the interesting part and this is the part where trading pitching could come back to bite the Zou.

Lee is going to do very well for the Schilbies and will probably produce more than Soriano in the long run. So I can only applaud this upgrade.

The Zou had an obvious overload of left fielders (something the Smurfs does not have) and could handle trading the likes of Lee. The deal is that Soriano is both struggling and old. He is 31 and plays the same position as Grady Siezmore who could easily be more productive over the course of this year than Soriano. The other position Soriano plays is left field, which does not help because the Zou has Carl Crawford there who is a much younger, more productive player (this season) than Soriano.

The Zou made this deal to do two things: upgrade his lineup and boost the trade value of either Siezmore or Soriano to make a bigger splash for his lineup.

Here is where my problem is with this deal: there is a lot of risk and a lot of assumption. First, you are banking not wasting Siezmore at bats for a slumping Soriano. Then you must assume that someone is going to be willing to give up something of value for Soriano to upgrade your lineup. You are then also assuming that your pitching is going to hold up. Consider the following:

Sabathia, since going 17-5 his rookie season, has never lost fewer than nine games since. Remember that coming into this season, he was not even considered their Ace anymore, Cliff Lee was (not that I’m saying I agree with this, I’m just saying that is what was being said in Cleveland).

Sabathia has pitched over 200 innings once in his career, has had an ERA bellow 4 only twice and has a career ERA+ of 111, which is not a dominate number. Here are a few other things to consider: he plays in the AL Central, he plays in the AL, he plays in the AL Central and he plays in the AL. As an overview: he plays in the AL Central and he plays in the AL.

The same AL Central where every team is over .500 except the Royals. The same AL that has nine of its 14 teams over .500 (with one of the five sub .500 teams being the Yankees). The same AL Central that has four legit contenders to get to the playoffs. The same AL that lost the World Series to the Cardinals. Wait…

ANYWAY, the point is that the American League is rough. To have consistent dominance for the entire season there is going to be tough, especially when you have never been consistently dominate before. This began to show Friday when Sabathia got lit up by OAKLAND. Yeah the team that can hit absolutely nobody else except the Royals, hit two bombs, scored six runs and knocked out nine hits to give Sabathia his first loss.

To me, that is a bit of a risk.

Then there is John Maine. What Maine has going for him is that he plays for the Mets, which means he gets to pitch in Shea Stadium when he has to face Atlanta, Florida and Philadelphia. He also gets to pitch against Washington. Lucky.

But here is the deal on Maine, he has NEVER pitched more than 90 innings in the big leagues. NEVER. Yeah his numbers are AMAZING but he is also half way up to his career high in innings pitched. At some point Maine is going to fall and he is going to fall hard.

Then Johnson goes out and trades for Verlander, which is nice, but can he be relied upon in only his second season as a big leaguer? While he did pitch twice as much as Maine did last season, plus the postseason, Verlander is still only 24 and has to be on the verge of some kind of slump.

I say this because Verlander’s K/9 ratio and BB/K ratio has dropped since last season.
He is also walking people more frequently. And, as I said about Sabathia, he plays in the AL Central.

At least with Mussina, you have a battle-tested guy who is old enough to understand how to deal with AL East hitters. He also does not have to face the Yankees. And when you figure Clemens will be ahead of him in the rotation, Mussina will be going up against less superior starting pitchers.

OR, he could suck, Sabathia, Maine and Verlander will go off all season and the Zou will destroy us all. You just don’t know.

That is why I give Schilb a B for the trade and the Zou a flux D- to B+.

THE FINAL TRADE was as follows:

COL traded Mark Buehrle, CWS SP to Royals/Cubs
COL traded Eric Byrnes, Ari CF to Royals/Cubs
COL traded Kelvim Escobar, LAA SP to Royals/Cubs
CRAP traded Matt Cain, SF SP to Schilbies
CRAP traded David Wright, NYM 3B to Schilbies
CRAP traded Johnny Damon, NYY CF to Schilbies
CRAP traded Chris Young, SD SP to Schilbies

Here is my warning to Schilb – enjoy the rollercoaster ride of having one REALLY good start from Young and then one REALLY bad start from Young and so on. Same for Cain.

Young and Cain (who also walks a ton of guys) are inconsistent – Mark Buehrle and Kelvim Escobar (he also pitched a shut out for me his first time out) are not.

Eric Byrnes is in the top 5 in outfield production – Johnny Damon just got dropped by Schilb.

David Wright is the interesting part of this trade in that R-C never actually deserved to have him. He was just sitting there for no reason on the free agent market. For what I got in return for him, I’m satisfied.

Wright could end up being a huge upgrade for Schilb, but trying to break out of a slump in Shea Stadium is tough. Plus, you know the New York fans are not the most patient in the world. Still, Wright’s potential keeper ability salvages this trade for the Schilbies.

R-C gets a B+ Schibies gets a D+