Darvish & Caratini to the Padres for Zach Davies & 4 Rookie Ball Prospects

[Bertz]

I do generally expect the team to reinvest Darvish's salary. For any negatives you can lay at Jed and Theo's feet, it's been rare that they've flatly lied to us.

 

So when Jed says this deal wasn't about money, while I don't think that's 100% true, I do think that means they didn't *need* to make this deal just for money. I'd guess that PTR's payroll allowance is at least nominally higher than the ~$170M payroll was at prior to the trade. That leaves enough room for a mid level guy (an outfielder probably), plus a few flyers for the bench and rotation.

 

I think that's why we're seeing smoke about a KB trade being imminent. If you wanted to maximize return, now's not really the right time. You wait until later in the offseason when Ozuna and Springer are off the board, or maybe even til the deadline. But if you move KB now? You have time/funds to do 3 mid level guys in FA rather than just one. An outfielder, and infielder, and a SP?

 

That or you're tearing it down to the studs.

[CubinNY]

I get the profits point, but you can show a profit and have poor cash flow. My guess is the cash flow hasn't been great because of all the investment they have done in the area.

 

The investments they've made in the area were not done by the Cubs, but a separate entity. They are using the Cubs to subsidize all their other ventures. You can not care about it, but it's what caused the trade. The Ricketts are acting like vulture capitalists right now with the Cubs. It matters a lot.

[Bertz]

So I was thinking about this trade some more, and given that the prospects are all *so* far away, what does the trade look like if we consider the guys we got back more like draft picks than prospects? I found a FG article from about two years ago talking about how to value draft picks:

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/

 

Additionally, in Eric Longenhagen's write-up of the trade, he equates a few of the IFA guys to what they'd be as draft picks:

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/scouting-the-cubs-return-for-yu-darvish/

 

- Preciado is the jewel of the trade, an immediate top 100 guy. Typically only the top ~10 picks in a draft immediately make the top 100. So let's value Reggie as if he's the #10 pick in the draft. Via the above article, that's $23.3M in surplus value

 

- Longenhagen explicitly said that Yeisson Santana would go in the back of the 1st round in the draft. To be conservative, let's say he would have been pick #30. That's another $10.1M

 

- Based on where draft picks fall off from 45s to 40s, Ismael Mena would be a top half of the second round guy. Again to be conservative, let's call him pick #45. $6.7M

 

- Owen Caissie is an easy one. He was the 45th pick in the most recent draft, though his bonus was commensurate with #59. We'll go with the latter, though the difference isn't huge at this point. That's $4.8M

 

Add it all up, and you get $44.9M in surplus value. Plus any value you ascribe to Davies. That's...a lot. Longenhagen is probably higher on the three Latin kids than I've seen anyone else, BUT he's also the only national guy to see them in person since March. He also seems to be lower than consensus on Caissie, so it's not all roses.

 

You start to see why the Cubs made this specific trade. You're probably not getting $45M in prospects and Zach Davies if those prospects have already hit AA. If the options are maximizing value or proximity, this is probably a good version of leaning hard towards the former. Still though, I think this does/should push Jed more towards proximity in a subsequent Willson trade. We're literally at a point where there's not enough places to play all our fun teenage shortstops. Let's grab a few guys who make Iowa and Tenn less sad on the position player side.

[Tryptamine]

I was never disappointed in the value of the return, in fact I think it's pretty good, I was disappointed it likely meant a tear down rather than a reload.

[Post Count Padder]

If any of those guys have a big impact in like 5 years we can say it's all partly thanks to James Russell and Emilio Bonifacio.