Boog on the trade deadline and value in general

[CubinNY]

https://awfulannouncing.com/mlb/boog-sciambi-trade-deadline-conservative-front-offices.html

He has a point here and it's one that I've talked about to much consternation of many. The FV stuff is at best, a rough estimate and should not be tied to anything and more specifically mythical money. MLB is not a commodities market. It should be about winning baseball games. 

A lot of the stuff that people parrot from Fangraphs and other places is a house of cards built on faulty assumptions and taken as fact. Baseball is about tangible outcomes. 

Edited August 22, 2024 by CubinNY

[Cuzi]

Even the best rated prospects only succeed at even an average level of play at like a 15% rate. That's why I could not care less if the Cubs traded really any of their prospects. The only ones I would be leery about would be truly generational talent like if we had a Vlad Jr, but we dont. We dont have anything close to that.

It makes even less sense for the Cubs to hang on to all of these guys because the MLB roster is pretty well locked down besides DH/RF and catcher. I've always had a chuckle at the discussions that end with people not wanting under any circumstance to trade guys like Alcantara, even though he only has 1 option year left and no position to play on the MLB team. It's almost like people dont want to improve the team.

[Eeyore]

1 hour ago, Cuzi said:

Even the best rated prospects only succeed at even an average level of play at like a 15% rate. That's why I could not care less if the Cubs traded really any of their prospects. The only ones I would be leery about would be truly generational talent like if we had a Vlad Jr, but we dont. We dont have anything close to that.

It makes even less sense for the Cubs to hang on to all of these guys because the MLB roster is pretty well locked down besides DH/RF and catcher. I've always had a chuckle at the discussions that end with people not wanting under any circumstance to trade guys like Alcantara, even though he only has 1 option year left and no position to play on the MLB team. It's almost like people dont want to improve the team.

People are hoping that the prospects can be better than what is on the major league team. Even if they're equal, it should help with financial flexibility. 

[Cuzi]

3 hours ago, Eeyore said:

People are hoping that the prospects can be better than what is on the major league team. Even if they're equal, it should help with financial flexibility. 

Hope is fine and all, but there's really no prospect in the system that projects to be any better than what's on the team currently. More importantly, what is on the team is largely immovable because of NTC's and contract vs performance ratios. Other guys that dont fit in that bubble, like Busch, just aren't going to be traded.

So why hold on to something that has significant value but no current use for at least another 2-3 years? It's just stupid. Ballesteros is legitimately the only position player prospect with a path to a starting role on the team. The Cubs could open one up for Shaw but it would require trading Nico Hoerner, which would take a damn big haul in return for them to do.

[CubinNY]

On 8/23/2024 at 2:55 PM, Cuzi said:

Hope is fine and all, but there's really no prospect in the system that projects to be any better than what's on the team currently. More importantly, what is on the team is largely immovable because of NTC's and contract vs performance ratios. Other guys that dont fit in that bubble, like Busch, just aren't going to be traded.

So why hold on to something that has significant value but no current use for at least another 2-3 years? It's just stupid. Ballesteros is legitimately the only position player prospect with a path to a starting role on the team. The Cubs could open one up for Shaw but it would require trading Nico Hoerner, which would take a damn big haul in return for them to do.

On the flip side who are they going to trade for? The Cubs are cemented in mediocrity for the time being. Best they can hope for is that Bellinger opts out. They have cheap and useful players at the corners. Amaya is starting to hit. Happ and Swanson aren’t getting moved. Seiya is the best slugger. PCA may become a difference maker. That leave Nico as the most likely trade choice. 
 

They need pitching but so does every other team. 
 

Jed built a mid 80s win juggernaut unless they show more creativity than they’ve ever shown. 

[Rcal10]

37 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

On the flip side who are they going to trade for? The Cubs are cemented in mediocrity for the time being. Best they can hope for is that Bellinger opts out. They have cheap and useful players at the corners. Amaya is starting to hit. Happ and Swanson aren’t getting moved. Seiya is the best slugger. PCA may become a difference maker. That leave Nico as the most likely trade choice. 
 

They need pitching but so does every other team. 
 

Jed built a mid 80s win juggernaut unless they show more creativity than they’ve ever shown. 

You trade for Vlad and figure out the line up every day. 10 guys for 9 positions. Injuries will play a part in this as well. With guys like Busch, Paredes, Bellinger, and Nico you can gives guys a day off and fill in with someone. I think I even saw Vlad at 3rd for the Jays the other day. Trade for Vlad. Maybe trade for a catcher(or go with Amaya). Then sign a TOR starter and I guess a pen arm. Might only need to be Lopez again. That isn’t a mid 80’s win team. That is a 90+ win team, IMO.(assuming PCA and Amaya are better next year). I am all for trading prospects for proven talent. There is no place for them. 

[Cuzi]

1 hour ago, CubinNY said:

On the flip side who are they going to trade for?

Catcher, RF/DH, pitching.

Vlad and Tucker are the obvious bats to target. There's a number of catchers they could target that make more sense than Amaya as a starter, because regardless of where Amaya's bat may end up, he's still really bad behind the plate. And take your pick of pitcher, either starting, reliever, or closer.

There is no flipside, because not trading some of these prospects is a waste of value. If PCA turns into something at the plate, a guy like Alcantara is not going to make the 26 man roster before he HAS to be put there or DFA'd.

We've wasted enough time on this 3 year window Jed carved out with the majority of this roster he's built as it is already. I'm tired of these guys acting like every single one of these prospects is going to be successful when they have successful players at those positions. It's beyond time to start moving some of them to supplement the MLB roster. No one cares if you are winning the minor league season.

Edited August 25, 2024 by Cuzi

[squally1313]

Having this discussion about dumping the farm for established players right in the middle of PCA and Amaya establishing themselves as legitimate pieces is certainly something. 

[Bertz]

The reason like 27-28 teams behave as a monolith is that the math is pretty clear cut.  The math says to hug your prospects so unless you're a guy like Dombrowski whose resume is so good you could cut it in half and he'd still be a HOFer,  it's hard to zag against all the zigging.

We'll see what happens but if it's going to happen this will be the winter Jed dips into the farm.  This winter the team needs catcher help and it needs bullpen help.  Amaya and Hodge are making it so that you don't *have* to go hunting for impact at either spot.

Being able to go into an offseason hunting for wins while being relatively agnostic about where you add them is how you make one of Jed's patented "good deals".  And with the farm where it's at, you could reasonably deal away something like Caissie, Alcantara, and Wicks and still open next year with Top 100 prospects at Iowa able to cover every position on the diamond.  I suspect that's a level of depth that will make even famously conservative Jed comfortable being aggressive.

[Rcal10]

9 minutes ago, Bertz said:

The reason like 27-28 teams behave as a monolith is that the math is pretty clear cut.  The math says to hug your prospects so unless you're a guy like Dombrowski whose resume is so good you could cut it in half and he'd still be a HOFer,  it's hard to zag against all the zigging.

We'll see what happens but if it's going to happen this will be the winter Jed dips into the farm.  This winter the team needs catcher help and it needs bullpen help.  Amaya and Hodge are making it so that you don't *have* to go hunting for impact at either spot.

Being able to go into an offseason hunting for wins while being relatively agnostic about where you add them is how you make one of Jed's patented "good deals".  And with the farm where it's at, you could reasonably deal away something like Caissie, Alcantara, and Wicks and still open next year with Top 100 prospects at Iowa able to cover every position on the diamond.  I suspect that's a level of depth that will make even famously conservative Jed comfortable being aggressive.

This, exactly. They have enough to deal prospects and still have solid guys in the minors. This is exactly why Jed should be aggressive this year. Oh, also if they suck next year he may be gone. So there is that reason too. 

[CubinNY]

22 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Having this discussion about dumping the farm for established players right in the middle of PCA and Amaya establishing themselves as legitimate pieces is certainly something. 

I'm so glad you are always here to tell us what to think. As per your usual, you miss the point but hit the snark. 

Edited August 26, 2024 by CubinNY

[squally1313]

24 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I'm so glad you are always here to tell us what to think. As per your usual, you miss the point but hit the snark. 

What was the point? You called out those that 'parrot' Fangraphs, which is a statistics based website where multiple substantial contributors have ended up in MLB front offices, and your counter is that of a paid team employee/announcer. 

I'll try to summarize my thoughts on this as succinctly and without snark as possible, but with a couple caveats. Caveats: I wish the rules were different, I wish the teams were ran as public investments (a la the Phillies owners comments) vs ROI for billionaires, Ricketts and other owners should spend more than they do (and/or make games way more affordable), etc along those lines. Having said that: the reason teams hoard prospects so much is that the 5-6 years of team control at league minimum or severely depressed salaries is so uniquely advantageous in terms of team building in a quasi-salary cap era, especially when young players are showing up the majors as finished products (and hitting the downward slope of the aging curve) more frequently than ever. Yes, prospects fail more often than not. But even the slim likelihood of getting significant contributions from a guy making $650k (for multiple years) opens up so many options.

I maintain that the reason the Cubs are seemingly capped at this slightly above mediocre level isn't because of missed elite FA signings or Hoyer being too cowardly in the trading market, but because for years (roughly 2017-2022) we produced very few legitimate contributors that you could plug into your lineup without taking out a serious chunk of your budget. The team is loaded with $15m-$25m/year guys, largely giving us the type of contribution you'd expect from players getting those salaries on the open market. In an era where 85 wins gets you fighting for a playoff spot through September, it makes some sense to pay the $20ish m/year premium to go from a 0 WAR homegrown kid to someone like Taillon or Bellinger or whatever. But if you're capping out at $250m a year, you can only do that so many times. And so you value prospects, ideally a bunch of them (because they generally fail), in the hopes that three or four of them turn into regular starters (and that's putting aside the slim chance they turn into stars) for 1/20th of what you'd pay for them on the open market. As mentioned at the top, it's a dumb system, but ignoring the realities doesn't do any good.

[CubinNY]

The point that Boog was making, and I was observing is that trades are made on a star/prospect (buy/sell) basis when they could be made on just swapping two to good players from teams who have needs in different areas, and those trades are not made. Boog said that teams are getting caught up in cheap labor markets that never materialize because the cheap labor doesn't produce. Without casting too big a net, people seem to be happy with that as long as the payer is "cost controlled". Cost controlled doesn't mean a damn thing when it's hampering the team's ability to win. Now I know the argument is that having cost controlled players enables a team to spend more money on a star or established player. That's fine, but the name of the game is winning not efficiency.  

The Cubs are caught on the wrong side of both ledgers and are in a bad position unless they get creative. 

Edited August 26, 2024 by CubinNY

[squally1313]

3 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

The point that Boog was making, and I was observing is that trades are made on a star/prospect (buy/sell) basis when they could be made on just swapping two to good players from teams who have needs in different areas, and those trades are not made.

Fair point, don't disagree on this one. Think baseball is a tough sport for that because it's pretty unlikely outside of an injury situation that a team knowingly has like, two very solid second baseman because there's only so many ABs to go around and if one guy is producing he's going to maintain the majority of the ABs. But agree when those situations pop up it would be nice to see those trades materialize.

 

6 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

Boog said that teams are getting caught up in cheap labor markets that never materialize because the cheap labor doesn't produce. Without casting too big a net, people seem to be happy with that as long as the payer is "cost controlled". Cost controlled doesn't mean a damn thing when it's hampering the team's ability to win. Now I know the argument is that having cost controlled players enables a team to spend more money on a star or established player. That's fine, but the name of the game is winning not efficiency.  

Disagree on 'cheap labor doesn't produce'. 5 of the top 10 offensive fWAR producers (Witt Jr, Soto, Henderson, Duran, De La Cruz) are still in their team controlled years. Skubal, Christopher Sanchez, Ragans, Kirby, Cease, Hunter Greene on the pitching side makes up 6 of the top 10. And those are just the stars. Cubs best pitcher this year makes $4m, Michael Busch and PCA have combined to give you more production for $1.2m than any other single player on the roster. 

If you need a (insert position) these days and you don't have a prospect ready to fill that slot, you're spending at least $10m a year to fill it if you have any post season aspirations. Spending $30m/year (and committing multiple years) on projected for 2.8 fWAR Cody Bellinger seems pretty dumb right now when PCA has equaled his performance in 150 less PAs and whatever chance we have on signing Soto probably hinges on Bellinger's option decision. 

 

[Rob]

2 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Fair point, don't disagree on this one. Think baseball is a tough sport for that because it's pretty unlikely outside of an injury situation that a team knowingly has like, two very solid second baseman because there's only so many ABs to go around and if one guy is producing he's going to maintain the majority of the ABs. But agree when those situations pop up it would be nice to see those trades materialize.

Honestly, I wonder if the universal DH has something to do with that.

Back in the day, if you had two good players at a position, it was time to cut bait on one. The Phillies had Jim Thome and Ryan Howard, and no way to play both of them. So it was time for Thome to go. Now you'd see them both splitting time in the field and at DH.

The universal adoption of the DH and the popular method of rotating players at that spot rather than having a set DH may be a significant reason why we don't see so many of those trades anymore.

[Tim]

Didn't we just make a trade like this with Morel for Paredes?

[imb]

we have this conversation all the time and it's so overwrought.

a good prospect carries some inherent value, but his real value is determined by either what production he provides you, or what someone is willing to give you for him. every single guy in the minors is, at the end of the day, measured in opportunity cost. can he help the team today? Might he in the future? Might we get something for him today in a trade in exchange for someone betting on his future?

it's easy to go "we don't need all these OF prospects" or whatever, but if your options are call them up but they don't play, leave them in the minors, or trade them for less than you value them either now or potentially in the future, there's risk with every option. It's not "prospect hoarding" to leave a mid-tier OF prospect in AAA because you can't find a valid trade partner and he's not ready for the majors. It's value hoarding. And there's a risk that the prospect stagnates and loses all value and you get nothing out of him. But that's not inherently more risky than trading him for less than you value him just because he's blocked.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

The reason you don't see "good player for good player" trades is because MLB players are super fungible and every team has the same needs: hitting, pitching and defense.  You can shift guys around on the defensive spectrum a bit to fit in everyone easily. 

Runs are runs, there's no inherent value in balance.  10 runs prevented is the same value as 5 runs scored and 5 runs prevented.  

So there's not going to be very many situations where a player's value in present-day wins varies noticeably when switching teams.  

The only major differences will be in how much teams value present-day wins.