Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 485: Trading Within the Division

Episode Date: July 4, 2014

Ben and Russell discuss whether trading David Price (or anyone else) to another team in the same division makes sense.

What's the beef, boys? So I'm trading. Everybody here is trading. So maybe I trade a little sharper. Does that make me a collaborator? A lot sharper, Sefton. I'd like to have some of that loot you got in those foot lockers. Oh, you would, would you?

Listen, Stoop, the first week I was in this joint, somebody stole my Red Cross package, my blanket, and my left shoe. Well, since then, I've wised up. This ain't no Salvation Army. This is everybody for himself. Dog eat dog. You stink, Stoop. Don't come off it!

You can be the heroes. The guys with. You stink, Simpson. Don't come off it! You can be the heroes, the guys with fruit salad on your chest. Me, I'm staying put. I'm going to make myself as comfortable as I can. And if it takes a little trading with the enemy to get me some food or a better mattress, that's okay by Sefton. Good morning and welcome to episode 485 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg. My regular co-host Sam Miller is quite sensibly taking the day off, enjoying the national holiday and the long weekend. So I'm joined again by Russell Carlton, who joined me yesterday. Hello, Russell. You just can't get rid of me. I should mention that this was not my idea.

I am totally on board with this idea. But you volunteered to do this special holiday edition of Effectively Wild because you know what it means to me to end the week on a multiple of five. And this holiday jeopardized that run. Well, Ben, I used to be a therapist and I just couldn't stand the thought of you sitting there going, it has to end on a five. So I, yes, I bravely volunteered just so that you could sleep well at night. Yes. Thank you for sparing me that strain.

so that you could sleep well at night. Yes, thank you for sparing me that strain. So we want to talk about something that Russell and I had discussed over email earlier this week, just out of interest in the topic, not planning to do a podcast about it, but this is how things worked out. We want to talk about the wisdom or the folly of trading within the division. And this is something that

I was thinking about because we recently did our trading David Price exercise, which was something you suggested actually. And Sam and I talked about it last week. And one thing that sort of struck me as I was pretending to be Andrew Friedman and fielding offers from other BP authors who were pretending to be other general managers was that the raised market or a good portion of the raised market is potentially within its own division. You could certainly imagine the Yankees being interested in David Price. You could imagine the Orioles, the Blue Jays, all of these teams interested in David Price. You could imagine the Orioles, the Blue Jays, all of these teams interested in David Price.

And we are recording this on Wednesday night. For all we know, by the time you heard this, Price will have been traded somewhere. So we won't make this all about Price. It applies to any player, any trade. But there is a stigma surrounding this idea of trading within the division. There's a sense that certain teams are

unwilling to do it or that it would take an exorbitant price for them to do it. And I wonder whether that makes sense. Does it make sense that teams should not be willing to trade within the division? Well, I mean, you think about it, the big thing that everyone talks about is the PR disaster that goes with, you know, let's say that, again, David Price, if you traded him to Toronto or New York or something like that, he's going to come back to Tropicana Field and he's going to come back, you know, what, you'll see him three times in a year and then, you know, a couple other games when they play on the road. And, you know, he's, he's going to beat your team and there's that, that optics of it. And I think that people

kind of get carried away in that. We just, you know, we just gave our guy to this, to the other team in our division. How could we possibly do that? But I, for, for, for me, I think that's a little overblown. I mean, there's something to it, but I think that people blow it a little out of proportion. I mean, you think about it, if you want to take Jeff Samarja, who's been highly rumored, let's say that the Cardinals come in and say, hey, we want, we want to make a run for it. And here, Cubs, we'll give you, you know, a couple of our blue chippers here. And, you know, that's the best offer. To my mind, I think I sit there and I think, you know, well, why, why turn it down just because, you know, they're your next door neighbors geographically?

Yeah. So I looked into the recent history of intro division trades, or I should say Rob McEwen did, one of our sequel stars at Baseball Prospectus, looked up transactions, trades within the division from 2010 to 2014. And there were more than I expected. There have been 24 of them in that fairly limited time period. Of course, a lot of those are insignificant moves. The most recent from this April was Player to be Named Later for Hector Noesi, which is not really a blockbuster. There are a lot of those, you know, Coy Hill for player to be named later, Gorky Hernandez for cash.

So these are, these are, yeah, so it's, you know, the White Sox weren't worried that, that cash was going to come back to haunt them, that he was going to become a star with the Royals and, and plague them in the division for the next several years. However, there are some notable intra-division trades that have been made lately and maybe not surprisingly lots of them involve billy bean lots of them involve the a's uh so there was the one over this past winter the the craig gentry michael choice trade between the a's and the rangers there was the jed lowry trade the previous offseason just as the Astros were moving to the AL West the the something that I still I continuously forget that they I still think of them as a

National League team yes I have my lapses but yes there was the there's that one that you know Chris Carter and Jed Lowry and and a few other players and and there was going further back. I mean, there've been a few three-way trades that the A's have been involved in, like the, the John Jaso, AJ Cole, Michael Morse trade between the Nationals and A's and Mariners and, and going even further back the, the Justin Smoke trade, which, which, you know, the, the Mariners and, and the Rangers were involved in and, and the Angels, you know, and the Mariners traded the Rangers were involved in, and the Angels and the Mariners traded Jason Vargas and Kendris Morales. So it happens. Maybe not a ton of trades of the import of a David Price trade,

but of course there aren't a lot of those trades, period. So maybe the media reports about so- so and so who doesn't want to trade within the division maybe that's overblown maybe billy bean is doing this more often than other general managers to take advantage of some some stigma that doesn't deserve to be there um but it's it's possible that that this is a thing that happens more often than we think. Can I just call that the new money ball so everybody can take their shot? Yes, market inefficiency. So, yeah, I mean, we had an email exchange about this earlier.

And you kind of, I mean, you get it. You don't, particularly if there's a rivalry between teams you don't want your you don't want to send david price to the team that maybe you will be competing for a playoff spot against next year the rays certainly don't consider themselves out of it for 2015 and if they were to trade him to someone else in the al east they might face him several times next year they might get beaten by him several times next year maybe that doesn't look so good when you have your fans watching a guy that you essentially salary dumped in a sense coming back to to beat you and so you can see why they would be reluctant but at the same time you are if you are trading within the division it's because you think you are getting the best

deal from the team in your division and if that if that means obtaining prospects from that team then then presumably you are robbing that team of of production from those prospects down the road which maybe would would benefit you in the long term well yeah and i guess the other thing is guess the other thing is that if you're a team that's looking to do – and usually – I mean here we're talking about the classic July, your future for my present type of trade. And it's the veteran that's – in Price's case, I mean he's still got a year left on that contract. But usually it's a veteran that's in the last year of his contract.

You know, the reason that you're trading him is that, you know, you don't have him pass this year and you consider this year a waste. And so at this point, he's just kind of a toxic asset and you might as well dump him and get what you can for him. So yeah, I mean in the sense of he might come back and maybe he does sign long term with the team that you traded him to. But he could have done that anyway after the year was up. Price is kind of an interesting case because he's got the extra year. He's an ARB3 next year. So technically he's going to go to arbitration. And that's going to be an interesting arbitration case because, you know, you think of the comps that he would have. I think the closest one that I can think of off the top of my head would be somebody like Tim Lincecum, who, you know, he's he's got a Cy Young award.

He's, you know, broadly considered to be one of the better pitchers in the league. And, and, you know, Lincecum, I think in his third RB year, he got, I think he 20 million, he, they, I think the Giants and he just agreed to sign before they actually went to, went into the hearing room. But, you know, he's, David Price probably brings that up. And so he probably gets, you know, at the low end, he gets $18 million, and maybe he gets, at the high end, maybe he gets $22. I don't know. So, I mean, it's not exactly that he's kind of a freebie there. And in our email exchange that we'll now let everyone in on, this is what Ben and I do all day. We just email back and forth and he sends me story ideas. What the Rays have is that they basically have a one-year option on David Price that they can be fairly sure is going to be something in the neighborhood of $20 million. Now, they can exercise that option or they can trade him to somebody else.

But realistically, let's say they trade him to the Yankees or the Blue Jays or something like that. the Blue Jays or something like that, you know, what they're really doing is that they're facilitating the Blue Jays kind of spending their free agent money earlier than the offseason because he's going to get paid $20 million next year. So if the Blue Jays are going to trade for him, they have to be comfortable with the fact that they have a $20 million slot in their payroll structure next year. You kind of have to start there. $20 million for a one-year contract with David Price is probably a good deal or at least a risk worth taking. I could imagine a number of teams that would say, yeah, we'd like to do that. And then the raise would

be collecting prospects as kind of a broker's fee for enabling them to sign what's essentially a slightly below market deal for a free agent that they otherwise would have to go out and get. But the other piece of that is that, you know, let that is that let's say that the Blue Jays had an interest in Price, but then they don't get him. They're kind of saying, well, we think we need a pitcher. We think we have $20 million to spend on somebody next year, but we didn't get Price. So in the offseason, what they're going to do is they're going to go out and they're going to go uh shopping and maybe take some of that money and spend it on i don't know like a justin masterson or something like that and they would

so they're you know it's trading them price yeah it gives them david price but um by not doing that it's not like the the other team is just going to stand pat. They're going to go out and they're going to do something else. So yeah, it's not, you know, David Price is coming back to us instead of, you know, some random fifth starter that is replacement level. It's next year we're facing David Price instead of facing somebody that we picked up off free agency. Yeah. So yeah. So it's not that you're making your rival better by a factor of David Price necessarily. If they want to trade for David Price, that means that they think that they need a pitcher and it means they have enough money to pay David Price,

which means that if you didn't give them David Price, then they would go out and trade for or sign someone else and you would still have to face that person who maybe would be equivalent or close to equivalent to David Price, but you wouldn't get anything out of it. Yeah. And so, you know, you're getting, you're making, I mean, in terms of trading within the division, you are making the other team a little better. They get to be a little bit more efficient than they otherwise would have been through their free agent signings or whatever, however you want to set that one up.

But you can see that the factor isn't that huge. And as you mentioned, if the Rays may take a look at their chances next year and kind of go, no, no, no, it's not going to work next year either. And at that point, if they consider next year a lost cause, well, then why not? I mean, then at that point, he's – yeah, he becomes a free agent, but I mean you have no claim to him beyond that point. You have no claim to him beyond that point. And so that's one of those decisions that you might as well get something for him. And then hopefully those prospects come up three, five years down the road and that team that you just traded them to, who you're now competing against, has fewer prospects, fewer guys to call up, and you have them. And so you were writing those years off anyway, so you might as well do it that way.

And you kind of – it's kind of a twofer and you've weakened your enemy and you've strengthened yourself. yourself. And so it actually turns out that you can make a case for it's actually the better deal to deal within your division. And maybe there are some risks associated with this. So if you are the Rays, say you trade him within the division and he is the piece that that team needed to put it over the top and it goes on to to win the world series and david price pitches game seven and he wins and and not only do they win the world series but price is so happy there that he signs a below market extension and he's he's there for the next decade beating you and the team is getting the revenue and and selling all the extra t-shirts and tickets and season tickets because they won the World Series and they get that playoff bonus.

Then conceivably that would be bad. That could backfire. It could. I mean we know that one of the biggest drivers of teams' revenue is whether or not they make the playoffs. of teams' revenue is whether or not they make the playoffs. And that's why you see teams that are on the very fringes of our playoff odds calculator, they're still being listed as buyers because we might break our chances up to getting into the coin flip game. And yeah, most likely we'll probably get nailed 3-1 in the division series.

But there's a chance that we could do that. And you start hearing them make noises about making these moves that otherwise would not make sense because the road when you're competing for some unrelated free agent, they might prefer the team that has, you know, the quote unquote winning culture or that, you know, they've got a better chance to put these things, to put everything together so that I can finally win a championship and retire and, um, and, uh, um, and say that, Hey, I was on a world series team. Um, and you know, you, you kind of, uh, you're kind of run that risk that, you know, maybe you're, you're bolstering their image. Um, I don't know how much bolstering of an image the Yankees and Red Sox need, but, um, but, uh, that's, uh, uh, but you, you do kind of run that harder to quantify risk there of how much benefit are you giving the other team there. And I suppose that's something that if we did enough gory math, maybe we could put a

numerical value on, but it's a little bit elusive as to how much that would really factor into things. And best case scenario, you're taking away top prospects from that team who will go on to be a cornerstone of your franchise for the next decade, and then that team will have to watch those players succeed against them. And so maybe that's the part of this that we're giving short shrift here, is that maybe it's not so much that a team is unwilling to trade the veteran for the prospects. Maybe it's the other way around, that teams are unwilling to trade the prospects for the veteran to a team within its own division.

to trade the prospects for the veteran to a team within its own division. Because, of course, people get attached to their prospects that they draft and sign and develop. And maybe there's an emotional, psychological tie there, and they don't want to watch those guys succeed within the division and succeed in their face over the next several years. I suppose there's that, but there is a certain amount of this business where you kind of have to – I mean I understand there is that human element and I know for a fact that's something that does happen where even general managers will say, hey, we've known this kid since he was 17 and now we're dealing him. But there has to be a certain cold- the three guys that you, uh, you traded away end up being the ones that, uh, um, that, that, uh, that sink your team in three years.

Um, you know, that's, it plays your games and you take your chances, uh, but you got to take the best chances that you have available. There has to come a point where you say, you know what, this is our best chance to put a World Series trophy in our trophy case. And sometimes you got to do that. And it doesn't feel nice to do, you're going to take less than optimal chances. And it's just so you can feel a little bit better. And you know what? You just basically what you need instead is someone to pat you on the head. Spoken like a true stat head, trying to take all the emotions out of the game. Remember, I'm a former therapist, Ben, and I'm doing this because I didn't want you to not sleep at night. And so the other thing, I mean, theoretically, if you are at least willing to seriously entertain offers from teams within your division,

then you're expanding the potential pool of destinations and you maybe can conduct the bidding war a little more effectively. If you get legitimate offers from teams within your division, then you can go back to another team that's not in your division and say, we got this offer from this team and maybe drive up the price a little bit more. So there are definitely advantages just in terms of getting the best package of players back. I kind of wonder how much of it is when there are GMs in this situation where they're kind of sitting there going, boy, I hope the team in the other league,

if it's the National American League, whatever, I hope that team in the other league that's interested, the Dodgers or the Cardinals in the case of the Rays, um, I hope they come back and they beat the offer and that they're, they're the best ones so that this decision's kind of made for me. And, you know, I wonder how much of that, uh, um, that kind of hope, uh, uh, takes over and, and, uh, uh, is, is, is playing in people's heads around this time of year. So if you were a general manager and you were weighing a couple offers and one was from a team within your division and, and one was from a team outside of your division, what would the differential have to be for you? Let's say you,

let's say you estimate your, your expected wins above replacement player from, from the prospects in the package over their first six years of service time, let's say? And how much higher would the number have to be in terms of expected wins for you to opt for the intra-division offer as opposed to the inter-division offer? Well, first off, Ben, who the hell would make me a general manager? offer? Well, first off, Ben, who the hell would make me a general manager? But second, there probably is, and I hear, I've heard the term tax or penalty or something like that for intra-division trades. And probably the correct answer is there should be some tax or something

like that where you say, you know what, because there are, and there really are, real costs that are there. I think they're a little bit overblown. But, you know, I would say that it probably shouldn't be all that much. It probably should be kind of the fact that, you know, we're dealing with such unknown quantities when we're dealing with prospects. And, you know, we think of all the can't-miss prospects that do miss and the where-did-that-guy-come-from prospects that turn into superstars, probably the amount that would be the proper amount to tax for the intra-division trade is probably going to be so overwhelmed by the noise of the process that I don't know how much, how much

time and energy I would sit around and think about, um, well, you know, maybe it, should it be two and a half wins? Should it be 2.4 wins? And trying to modulate it like that. I, um, in, in my head, I would just kind of say, you know what, here, the two packages. This one's better than this one. We're going with that one. And that's how I'd approach the question. And in Nick Cofarto's Sunday column at the Boston Globe, he wrote about the price trading process. And he noted, let's see, I will quote, it's no secret that American League teams, New York, Baltimore, and Toronto, are not backing down in their pursuit, going against the perception

that you don't trade a top player within your division. All indications are that the Rays have invited one and all to bid. And then he has a quote from Brewers GM Doug Melvin, who says, I was also on the other end of the spectrum when I traded Zach Granke to the Angels. I had teams within the division asking for him. And my approach to that is I had no problem doing it, but I had to get a little extra if I was going to do it.

And that's what I told them. So that's essentially what we're setting here. I wonder, though, if that little extra was the, uh, uh, was a little negotiating tactic to, you know, I, I, I wonder how much of that would have been, uh, ah, you know, Hey, if you throw in this, uh, this other guy, he was a little bit better, you know, maybe we can get that done. And how much of that was just trying to pry as much as they could out of, out of their hands. But I, I, I see what they're saying there. If they had any trade talks with the Astros at the time, maybe we will find out.

Oh, boy, that's all out there, isn't it? Yeah, I suppose. Okay, well, have we covered this subject thoroughly enough? Yeah, you know, I think as people are watching things explode or doing whatever they're doing on the 4th. Grilling, that seems like a popular activity. Grilling, we're celebrating America's independence by grilling food that's bad for us and eating it in way too big amounts and blowing things up. So it's a beautiful thing, what can I say? Okay, so trading within the division, not as scary as it sounds. So it's a beautiful thing. What can I say? Okay.

So trading within the division, not as scary as it sounds. And it's American because it's all American or something. Okay. So that is effectively wild for this week. We are ending on a multiple of five. I am satisfied. Thank you. I guess I'll be up for what Thanksgiving and,

uh, yeah, I'll just call you in or you can, you can volunteer again to save me the trouble, save me the embarrassment of having to ask someone to come in. All right. The designated holiday co-host. See, this is is this is my contribution to the bp employee assistance program so okay so please support our sponsor baseball reference go to baseball reference.com subscribe to the play index using the coupon code bp to get the one year subscription at a discounted price of 30 please join the facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Russell is a member of the Facebook group, unlike my regular co-host. Oh, yeah, that's true.

We'll eventually shame him into it. I hope so. Russell and 1,550 other listeners of Effectively Wild who are talking about baseball at all hours of the day and night. It's a good time in there. Please rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes so that we can continue to recruit new listeners. And please send us emails for next

week's listener email show at podcast at baseballprospectus.com I will be back with Sam with a new episode on Monday. Thank you, Russell. Hey, thanks for having me. And have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Oh, okay. I'm going to get a cup of tea.

Okay. I will be right back. I'm going to go pee. Okay. That probably got recorded. It did.