This post has been updated to once again acknowledge Bill Simmons as the originator for this series, which I adapted for MLB beginning in 2005. Credit has been given to him in every year since, but was unfortunately left out of this introduction at the time it was published. All credit for the idea goes to Bill.

They say time flies when you’re having fun, so the last year must have been a blast, because I can’t believe it’s been 12 months since I was getting lampooned for leaving Pablo Sandoval off the 2009 Trade Value series. So far, I’m okay with that decision, but it is time for us to re-evaluate and do it all over again. And so, over the next week, we’ll take a look at which 50 players in baseball have the most value to franchises besides their own. The criteria, as I stated last year, is as follows:

Essentially, the idea is to take all the information that goes into encapsulating a player’s value to an organization – his present skills, his future potential, how long he’s under club control, the expected cost of paying him over that time, and the risks involved with projecting his future performances – and figure out which players currently have the most trade value in baseball. The #1 guy wouldn’t get traded, straight up, for any other player in baseball. The #10 guy is someone who his organization would call untouchable, but if one of the nine guys above him was made available, they’d rethink that stance. You get the idea.

You can find the entire list from last summer here, and the trade value category has all of the individual posts, where we summarize the thoughts on five players at a time. We’ll follow the same format this year, running the series all week and wrapping it up next Monday with the top five.

Again, I want to emphasize that this is a post about trade value, not a ranking of player performance. How well they do on the field is obviously a significant factor, but teams don’t simply make deals based on how good a guy is right now. There are numerous factors, of which contract status is perhaps the most important. There’s a reason Cliff Lee has been traded three times in the last year, and it’s not because teams don’t want him. So, just because a player is not on this list does not mean I don’t think highly of his abilities (or that I hate the team he plays for). In fact, there are some tremendous players who didn’t make the cut. Here’s a few of the guys who just didn’t make it and a quick explanation as to why.

Carlos Gonzalez, CF, Colorado – There aren’t many guys who can play a legit center field and hit the baseball a long way, but Gonzalez brings both skills to the table. Unfortunately, the rest of the game isn’t quite as refined, and his approach at the plate is a problem. His aggressiveness can and will be used against him, and when pitchers adjust, he’ll need to as well.

Jaime Garcia, SP, St. Louis – The young LHP is having a tremendous rookie year for the Cardinals, but after posting a 70 percent ground ball rate in April, he’s become far more ordinary since. Since he doesn’t rack up that many strikeouts, he needs to either improve his command or lead the league in GB% in order to sustain his present results, and we haven’t seen that he can do either just yet. If he has another few months like his first one of the year, he’ll be on this list next year, but we need to see more.

Adrian Gonzalez, 1B, San Diego – There’s nothing wrong with Gonzalez’s skillset, but he’s a case where contracts come into play. He’s a bargain for 2011 at just $4.5 million in salary, but then he’s a free agent and he’s looking for a huge, huge paycheck. The Padres could get a lot for one year of Gonzalez, but I don’t think any of the teams who have guys on this list would swap them for the time that is left on his contract.

Joe Mauer, C, Minnesota – Another great player done in by his contract. I think he’ll end up being worth the big deal he signed with the Twins, but the fact is that there are only a couple of teams in baseball that can absorb the risk that comes along with a contract like that, and those teams wouldn’t create enough demand to drive up the price in talent to give the Twins a premium return for their star. He’s a tremendously valuable player, but he’s an expensive one, and it’s hard to see any team giving up a high quality, cheap young player while also taking on that kind of financial commitment.

Brett Anderson, SP, Oakland – As Bryan Smith will tell you, I am an Anderson fanboy. He is pretty much everything I love in a pitcher, as a lefty with good command of terrific stuff who gets both groundballs and strikeouts. The only he thing he doesn’t have is health. He’s on the DL for the second time this year with arm problems, and that is a huge red flag for any young pitcher. A healthy Anderson ranks very highly on this list, but unfortunately, a healthy Anderson doesn’t exist right now.

Who did make the cut? Come back at 5 pm for the guys who make up the #50 to #46 spots, and then we’ll do two posts a day for the rest of the week to get us up to #6. You can then have all weekend to speculate on the top 5, which will be revealed next Monday.

On Wednesday, I wrote this on Twitter: “When Jack Z was scouting director, he had consistent interests in big power, big velocity, and up-the-middle athletes. Lee suitors, start there.” Power was certainly the calling card behind the Yankees and the Rangers offers, as both Montero and Justin Smoak appealed to Zduriencik’s tendencies. But while I’ll talk about those centerpieces tomorrow, I do want to offer some thoughts on the newest members of the Mariners farm system.

Blake Beavan was once a big velocity guy, probably the type that Zduriencik liked when he was the Brewers scouting director. But of the three preferences listed above, velocity is probably the one that carried over the least when Jack Z made his move to Seattle. This is because of Jarrod Washburn and Jason Vargas, Doug Fister and Ryan Franklin. It’s because Zduriencik and his front office realize that pitchers don’t really need Jeremy Jeffress-like velocity to succeed in Safeco Field. They just need to not give up free passes to first base.

And this type of player, the strike thrower, is what Blake Beavan has become. He’s in the low-90s again, but velocity isn’t really important, because he’s not blowing fastballs by people. He’s just trying to paint the corners. In some sense, with his curveball and change-up and build, he’s Doug Fister without the rarely-used slider. And Fister has thrown strikes with “just” 64.7% of his pitches this year; Beavan was at 69.7% in his 110 innings at Double-A.

The change-up is better than the curveball for Beavan, which is a good thing, because getting out left-handed hitters is the more important task in Safeco. Still, the Mariners need to improve both those offerings. If Fister’s K/9 went from 6.6 in the minors to 4.6 with the Mariners, Beavan’s 5.2 career K/9 in the minor leagues could go to some ugly places if his curveball doesn’t improve.

If Beavan is the Fister in this deal, then Josh Lueke is the Mark Lowe. Granted, Lowe would be insulted to be compared to Lueke given the former’s rap sheet, but we’re talking baseball only here. And Lowe is a guy who has averaged 95.4 miles per hour with his fastball in the big leagues, and posted a 7.9 K/9 thanks in no small part to a knockout slider. And that’s the arsenal that has Lueke succeeding this year – to the tune of a 14.6 K/9. Lueke is 25 years old, so he’s close to being as good as he’s going to get. The Mariners, however, are certainly more likely to get something out of him than their 2008 first-round pick.

The final piece of the Mariners haul, the true throw-in, is second baseman Matt Lawson. While the drop-off from David Adams (in the proposed Yankees deal) to Lawson is significant, it would be unfair to think of things that way. Lawson, like Beavan and Lueke, is a good bet to be a small piece to a Major League team. Seattle will likely work on his versatility straight-away, because Lawson is ticketed to a Double-A team that has a stalwart at second base.

This is good news for Lawson, who will need versatility to hold down a Major League career as a bench player. He’ll also need to continue this trend of crushing left-handed pitching, as he went from a reverse platoon split last year to smacking around southpaws to the tune of .351/.413/.640 this year in 126 plate appearances. Lauded for his glove and patient at the plate, he certainly fits this new Mariner regime well.

Ultimately, that’s what is so unsurprising about this deal: it’s filled with players that make a ton of sense, given either Zduriencik’s prior interests or the qualities that tend to succeed in this organization. If the focus of the Mariners has shifted towards success when Justin Smoak and Michael Saunders peak, then this deal may have found the fourth starter, seventh-inning reliever and 24th man for those teams.

I have a strange affinity for the Home Run Derby. It spawns from watching re-runs of the old school Home Run Derby TV series, originally aired in 1960. The rules were different back then — two hitters went head-to-head, squaring off in a nine-inning “game” in which each batter got three outs per inning. If a player didn’t swing at a pitch in the zone, it counted as an out. Between turns, a batter would kick back and chat with host Mark Scott. The winner got a check for two grand and the chance to defend his title the next week against a new opponent. The list of those who competed — Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle among them — is a who’s who of all-time greats.

It’s true, the current form of the Home Run Derby doesn’t compare to its progenitor. The field of contestants doesn’t always include a cavalcade of stars. Sometimes, it seems like hitters take 20 pitches right down the middle before letting ‘er rip. And, the broadcast of the event really should come with a public service announcement imploring viewers to turn down the volume, lest they be haunted in their sleep by shrieks of “backbackbackback.”

Yet, despite its flaws, I watch intently. There’s something enthralling about those majestic moon shots. This year, the list of derby contestants includes Miguel Cabrera, David Ortiz, Nick Swisher and Vernon Wells from the American League, and Corey Hart, Matt Holliday, Hanley Ramirez and Chris Young from the National League. While I don’t claim this will have any predictive value — having a BP coach lobbing mid-60’s fastballs down the pike is quite another thing from game conditions — I thought it would be fun to take a closer look at tonight’s contestants. Where do they hit their homers, how hard are they hit, and how far do those taters travel?

Here’s a chart showing where the HR derby competitors have gone yard this season. I listed switch-hitter Swisher’s numbers from both sides of the plate:

Not surprisingly, most of the contestants’ home run power comes to the pull side of the field. Cabrera is crushing the ball both to the pull side and the opposite field — his home run per fly ball percentage to the pull side is 65 (27.2% MLB average for RHB), and it’s 14% to the opposite side (2.8% MLB average for RHB). Hart and Ramirez have also gone to the opposite field more than most, while Ortiz and Swisher have hit a decent number of homers to center.

Courtesy of Greg Rybarczyk’s Hit Tracker Online, here’s how the HR Derby contestants rank in terms of speed off the bat on those homers. The MLB average, for comparison’s sake, is 103.4 MPH:

Wells (106.8 MPH) leads the pack, followed by Holliday (106.1), Cabrera (105.2), Ortiz (104.2), Ramirez (104.1), Young (102.7), Swisher (102.3) and Hart (101.9).

Who’s hitting the longest homers? Hit Tracker measures the “Standard Distance” for home runs hit. From the site, here’s the definition:

The estimated distance in feet the home run would have traveled if it flew uninterrupted all the way down to field level, and if the home run had been hit with no wind, in 70 degree air at sea level. Standard distance factors out the influence of wind, temperature and altitude, and is thus the best way of comparing home runs hit under a variety of different conditions.

Here’s how the derby hopefuls rank in terms of Standard Distance homers. The MLB average is 393.8 feet:

Wells (406.5 Feet) and Holliday (406.1) again rank first and second. Ramirez (400.2), Ortiz (398.8), Cabrera (396.8), Swisher (396.4) and Young (394.5) all best the big league average, while Hart (392.5) comes in below that mark. Hart is tied for the major league lead in “Just Enough” homers, with 10. Just Enough’s, per Hit Tracker, clear “the fence by less than 10 vertical feet,” or land “less than one fence height past the fence.”

And finally, to pre-empt against any cries of “the derby screwed up his swing!,” here are the contestants’ current wOBA totals, as well as their projected rest-of-season wOBA figures from ZiPS. In other words, here’s what they have done so far, and here’s what we can reasonably expect in the second half:

Six out of eight project to hit worse in the second half. Some of these guys have greatly exceeded their previously established level of performance. Even accounting for the spike in production (ZiPS incorporates data from the current season), they figure to regress somewhat when games resume Thursday. If Hart doesn’t continue hitting bombs at a prodigious rate, it’s not because of some HR derby hex — it’s the product of regression to the mean.

Overview

The Reds were a sort of sexy surprise pick entering the 2010 season, but I don’t think too many people around baseball predicted they would be in this good of a position at the break. Cincinnati currently holds a one game lead on the St. Louis Cardinals and at least eight games on the rest of the division. Not only that, but it has all come without Edinson Volquez, who has missed the entire season due to Tommy John but should return sometime soon after the All-Star Game.

That said, there are still some questions about the Reds. They have a solid +45 run differential, but their 49-40 record entering the final day of the first half was over three games better than their 45.9-43.1 3rd order mark. The Cardinals are probably a more talented team right now, but the Reds have talented pieces of their own with a promising future. Right now, however, we focus on the present.

Buy or Sell?

Not only are the Reds locked in a battle for the NL Central, but the Wild Card race also figures to include them if the Cardinals take the NL Central. The Reds are in a position to make the playoffs for the first time since 1995 – a playoff appearance would do wonders for the city and the franchise. Any team in the position of the Reds has to go for it, especially given the fact that the Cardinals are probably a superior team if the Reds stand pat.

Then, the question becomes, what to go after. The two glaring weaknesses of this team are the lack of a shortstop and the lack of a top-flight starting pitcher. Orlando Cabrera has been terrible – a .278 wOBA has him at roughly replacement level so far this season. The Reds have gotten good pitching performances thus far from Jonny Cueto and Mike Leake, but, as a whole, the staff FIP is .33 runs higher than the staff ERA, and the staff xFIP is .48 runs higher than the ERA. At 4.44, the Reds starting rotation has a below-average FIP, meaning that perhaps the easiest way to add wins would be through a high level starting pitcher, even with the imminent return of Volquez.

At SS, one potential target would be Diamondbacks shortstop Stephen Drew, whose name has been mentioned quite a few times this season. The difference in fielding ability is probably negligible at this point, and Drew is a much better hitter, projected for a .338 wOBA for the rest of the season, a big improvement over the projected .314 wOBA of Cabrera and the .295 projected for Paul Janish, which could be a difference of about half a win for Cincinnati down the stretch.

For a player that could have a much larger impact on the Reds, look no further than Drew’s teammate Dan Haren. Haren is under contract until 2012 with an option for 2013, meaning the acquisition wouldn’t be limited to a rising team’s first season in contention. Haren is also simply one of the best pitchers in the league. His 4.8 K/BB ranks in the top 5 in the league and his 4.36 ERA this season is a product of bad luck, in the form of a .346 BABIP with a 70% strand rate. Haren would probably cost Yonder Alonso and one or two other significant pieces, but with Joey Votto looking like a superstar at 1B, Alonso would be blocked. If Haren could be had for that kind of a package – not a certainty – that would be a fantastic move for the Reds, both short term and long term.

On the Farm

The aforementioned Alonso is only one of the big prospects in the Reds farm system. There’s Cuban sensation Aroldis Chapman, of course, who is among the most intriguing prospects all across baseball. INF Todd Frazier isn’t a big time bat but has a good glove and enough of a bat to be a very good prospect, and we can’t forget about Carson Cistulli All-Star Juan Francisco. The Reds, however, have been graduating a significant amount of talent recently, such as Mike Leake, Chris Heisey, Travis Wood, and Matt Maloney. The Reds added catcher Yasmani Grandal in the first round of the 2010 draft.

Budget

Money could be an issue for Cincinnati. They do have about $20 million coming off the books after 2010, but Votto, Volquez, Cueto, and Jay Bruce will all hit arbitration next season. That could be expensive for Cincinnati, and may preclude an addition like Haren who would come with a significant price tag. The Reds haven’t had an opening day payroll over $80 million since 2004. The Reds had $76.1 million in player salaries on opening day this year, and so ownership would likely have to approve any significant buy on the Reds part, which, unfortunately for their fans, might mean that the Reds will have to ride it out with what they have.

The Cubs are all but out of the race and should be selling heading into the deadline. Ted Lilly is a 34 year old southpaw who will soon reach free agency. His contract calls for something like $6 million to be paid from now on out. In the midst of posting his worst fielding independent pitching numbers since his 2004-2006 days as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Cubs face an interesting dilemma.

Eddie Bajek’s replication of the Elias Rankings have Lilly qualifying for Type-A status; meaning if the Cubs were to offer arbitration to Lilly, and he were to decline (hence testing free agency), they would receive two draft picks with location depending on 1) the signing team’s record among the league, and 2) the signing team’s other moves. Type-A status carries with it a projected value of $5 million thanks to those draft picks, which suggests Lilly all but pays for himself with that compensation ranking.

The problem is that Lilly isn’t guaranteed Type-A status. Bajek has done yeoman’s work and his rankings suggest that Lilly is only a borderline Type-A. The rankings weigh stats like wins, win percentage, and ERA, three things Lilly doesn’t have going for him, particularly the wins metric. You see, as Joe Posnanski pointed out here, to qualify for a win the pitcher needs to exit with the lead, which is a problem when your team never scores while you’re in the game, and that’s the case for Lilly.

Among all qualified starting pitchers Lilly has the lowest run support at a tick more than 2.40. Only three other starters have RS/9 less than 3; those being Dallas Braden (2.59), Roy Oswalt (2.70), and Felipe Paulino (2.93). (For those curious, the flipside includes Phil Hughes (8.29), Nick Blackburn (7.14), and Kevin Correia (6.73).) Lilly’s ERA sits at 4.08, suggesting that he’s not going to be able to win many games and he’s going to lose a fair share. Naturally, Lilly is 3-8 after 15 starts. In his three other seasons with the Cubs he took the loss 8, 9, and 9 times. He’s going to blow those totals away this year at this pace.

The discrepancy seems unlikely to change since the Cubs will soon shift from surrounding Lilly with their 24 other players who present the best collective chance at victory to the other 24 players who have a future in Chicago with value to the Cubs being higher than value to the rest of the league. Presumably the teams have a better grasp on the rankings game than we do, so if Lilly’s moved, don’t be shocked. If he’s kept, don’t be too shocked either.

Last week, I looked at which teams were most likely to have players thrown out while running the bases (e.g caught stealing, picked-off, throw out while trying to take extra base, etc). In the comments of the article, it was discussed that the more aggressive base running teams are more likely to be thrown out on the bases. I am working toward a better solution for those base running numbers, but in the meantime I found some nice information on players getting picked-off.

The more aggressive a team is at attempting a stolen base, the more likely they are of getting picked-off. It seems like common sense to me, but I have had too many incorrect ideas to leave it only to instinct. The following graph looks at the attempted steals versus pick-offs for all teams from 2005 to 2009:

As it can be seen, the more aggressive a team is attempting to steal, the more likely they are of getting picked-off. Using the equation of the best fit line, it can be determined that for every 12.5 stolen base a team attempts, one player is likely to get picked off (12.5 attempts * 0.080 = 1).

Note: The relationship between the two values, doesn’t mean that one directly caused the other. There could be other factors at work on the two values.

I took this examination one step further and compared the times caught stealing versus time picked-off. I was looking to see if teams that were bad at stealing bases were also bad at getting picked-off:

My hunch was correct in that the r-squared (how closed one set of values correlates to another sets of values) is a bit higher (0.37 vs 0.32) for the caught stealing data. Using the values from the equation, it can be shown that for every 3 times a player is caught stealing, they are likely to be picked-off once (0.32 * 3 = ~1).

So far this season the numbers are similar to the previous 5 seasons as seen in the following two graphs:

Aggressive base stealing teams are more likely to be picked-off thereby removing a base runner. Rich Lederer proposed back in 2006 that the caught stealing value should include both caught stealing and picked-off numbers. I am not sure how the baseball community would accept that change, but if someone does include picked-off outs into caught stealing values, I could understand the reason why. For now it seems that teams looking to get an extra jump for a stolen base seem get thrown before they have the chance than those that are less likely to attempt the steal in the first place.

The Futures Game was – as far as a competition – just what we thought it would be: a one-sided affair thanks to a stale structure and unfortunate roster choices. However, as an opportunity to see the people I write about (a rare opportunity for this Chicagoan), it was also a lot of fun. In that vein, I’m turning to a straight-old notes format here, starting with the five best tools I saw in Anaheim:

The U.S. Team Speed. One look at the roster and this was obvious; any team with Desmond Jennings, Dee Gordon, Mike Trout, and Ben Revere can obviously fly. But this game gave the opportunity to see them fly. Trout reached base on two errors that his speed effected, logged an infield single (Keith Law tweeted “Trout’s run time to first matched the fastest I’ve ever gotten from a right handed hitter.”), and turned a routine single into a double. Gordon, who is the skinniest highly-ranked prospect I have ever seen, can certainly get down the line in a hurry. Jennings stole second with ease, and Revere made a bang-bang play out of a routine grounder. Speed is the tool with the least transference to actual baseball, but it might be the most fun to see live.

Fastballs, plural. If speed is a hitter’s most easily displayed tool, the fastball is its pitching equivalent. We saw a lot of fastballs today – something north of 80%, without question – and here is who stuck out, in order of appearance.

Bryan Smith will take a more specific look at some of the prospects and how they performed in the Futures Game in a subsequent post, and so instead of trying to add to what he’s already done, I’m going to take a different tact. Here are my somewhat random observations from being at the game.

Bryan touched on this in the last podcast, but MLB has to do away with the US vs World format. There is no reason to separate the teams that way, and it leads to a ridiculous imbalance that gives us a game that is far less than what it could be. In talking to baseball people at the game, it was pretty much unanimous that this year’s World Team was as bad as any in recent year, and watching them take BP was almost painful. Realistically, Brett Lawrie was the only guy who started for the World Team who could have cracked the US line-up, and he was followed in the World batting order by eight guys who probably didn’t deserve to even be at the game.

Just throw this format away, go to an AL/NL match-up, and give those of us who enjoy this event the game that it should be. I get that there are extenuating circumstances that keep this from being a true showcase of the 40 or 50 best guys in the minors each summer, but we don’t need to compound those unavoidable issues with a format that forces guys with no major league future to take a spot from far more interesting players. Any format that makes you feature Wilkin Ramirez is irreparably broken. Let’s just get rid of this US vs World theme and start over.

Moving on to guys who belonged here, Mike Trout. Almost all of my pre-game discussions inevitably drifted to how good he was, and that was before he put on a show in both BP and the game itself. Sometimes, the hype train runs out of control on guys like this, but with him, it’s deserved. If he’s not the best prospect in the game right now, he’s close to it, and he doesn’t turn 19 until next month. Crazy good.

You know what’s not crazy good though? Between innings “entertainment” consisting of big screen pong, complete with ridiculously annoying sound effects and no explanation of why we were getting tortured by this randomness. Donkey Kong wasn’t much better. Whichever person in the Angels organization gave that idea the green light deserves a sentence of having to watch every Scott Kazmir outing from now to infinity.

Anyway, I would say a good time was had by all, but I think a few people trying to arrive early for the Legends/Celebrity softball game weren’t so amused to find an actual game being played by kids they’d never heard of still in progress. Besides those folks, however, the game was generally successful, though could obviously be improved upon. Getting to watch the game with Bryan, as well as Rich and Joe Lederer (both good folks), made it even more enjoyable. I look forward to attending more of these in person, and can’t wait for next year’s AL/NL version – right, MLB?

Another Edit: Some comments, like this one, have asked about the author of the script. The universally positive feedback for this goes to Justin Swift.

Edit: Commenter CJett pointed out that this script can be readily installed on Google’s Chrome browser as well as FireFox. I’ve edited the post slightly to reflect this addition.

Disclaimer 1: This has nothing to do with my previous post on the Yahoo Fantasy Sports API.

Disclaimer 2: You must be using FireFox or Chrome to enjoy the script described in this post.

Disclaimer 3: I didn’t write the script, so I won’t take credit or blame for it (though it deserves the former).

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get on with business.

Greasemonkey is a FireFox browser extension that allows users to manipulate web pages after loading them. Why is that cool? Because it lets you add a link to FanGraph’s beside each player’s name on Yahoo’s Fantasy Baseball page, like this:

Here’s how to give it a try:

0. If you’re on FireFox, proceed to step 1. If you’re using Chrome, skip ahead to step 2.

1. Install the Greasemonkey plug-in into FireFox. If you don’t have FireFox, I recommend checking it out; it’s a free, high-quality browser. Once you have FireFox, installing Greasemonkey is a one click process, but it does require a browser restart.

2. Install the FanGraphs link script. Before doing so, please be sure to read the userscripts.org disclaimer. If you’re cool with the disclaimer and terms of service, head over to the link script’s page. Click the “install” button and you’re all set. If you’re so inclined, you can check out the script’s source code.

3. Head over to Yahoo Fantasy Baseball, and try clicking the small FanGraphs icon that should now appear beside each player’s name. It should open a link to the player’s FanGraphs page in a new browser tab or window.

4. If you ever want to remove this script from your browser, perform the following steps: on your browsers menu bar, choose Tools > Greasemonkey > Manage User Scripts; highlight Yahoo Fantasy – FanGraphs Link in the list of scripts; and click the uninstall button.

Another disclaimer: I tried this script on two computers, one Windows and one Linux, and it seems to work fine and the source code looks safe to me. But as a rule of thumb, be careful with what you install on your browser. If you aren’t sure if something is safe to install or not, my recommendation is not to install it.

How’s it work?

In a nutshell, after you load a web page in your browser, you have a full html document loaded on your computer for the browser to display. Greasemonkey uses this premise to provide a means to customize the html in your browser. The script that we just installed works because of Yahoo’s good html design. Each player’s name is placed in a container called a <div> which is further defined as “name” (<div class=”name”>). So the script looks for the player names identified in the html, grabs the name from inside the <div> container, generates a link to FanGraphs, and appends it to the original <div> container.

Everybody thought earlier today that Cliff Lee would be on his way out of Seattle. They were right. Instead of heading to the visitor’s clubhouse in Seattle to join the New York Yankees, however, he joins the division rival Texas Rangers, along with RP Mark Lowe. Coming back to Seattle will be Justin Smoak and three others according to this Joel Sherman tweet. This deal has also been confirmed by Ken Rosenthal, who adds that the Mariners will be sending cash to the Rangers to help cover the $4M that Lee is owed over the rest of the season.

Earlier today, some thought that Jesus Montero was a solid haul for Lee, along with the rest of the package. In that case, the return of Justin Smoak has to be seen as an absolute steal. Smoak had an .885 OPS between three different leagues in 2009. Smoak then posted a 1.010 OPS in 15 games with AAA Oklahoma City before receiving a call-up to the big leagues. His power hasn’t really materialized at the big league level (.145 ISO), but a 13.8% walk rate in 275 PAs is incredibly encouraging, and his .238 BABIP is bound to see a boost.

Smoak was the #13 prospect by Baseball America entering the season, ranking below Montero’s rank as #4. However, Smoak is obviously closer to the big leagues and his position is clear; I feel that Montero’s #4 rank may be influenced by an unrealistic projection of him as a catcher. Smoak is probably better than Matt LaPorta was at the time of the Brewers acquisition of CC Sabathia in 2008, the gold standard of pitcher rental deals. Given that Smoak is already in the big leagues and carries tons of promise with him, the Mariners have to be exceptionally happy with this deal. The deal also includes RHP Blake Beavan, RHP Josh Lueke, and 2B Matt Lawson going to Seattle.

For the Rangers, they pick up the man who has obviously been the best pitcher in the American League. It’s a large boost for a rotation with a meager 4.54 FIP and 4.66 xFIP. Cliff Lee gives them the legitimate ace that just isn’t there with Rich Harden, Scott Feldman, Colby Lewis, C.J. Wilson, Tommy Hunter, Derek Holland, and the others that have inhabited the Rangers rotation this season. Lee could ostensibly be a three win gain for this team down the stretch – likely unnecessary for making the playoffs, as I don’t think the Angels would’ve been able to make up 7.5 games, but this is another nail in the Angels’ coffin. Still, Lee has to increase the Rangers’ chances of making a deep run in the postseason, as he showed he can put his mark on a series last season.

This trade also has the interesting dynamic of being an intradivisional trade. Picking up Lee means certainly avoiding him in the remaining games that Texas has against Seattle. At the same time, though, the Rangers traded an exceptional hitting talent to a team that they play 20 times a season for the next six years. My initial reaction is that this trade is a dangerous proposition for the Rangers. With Lee only on their team for the next three months, the Rangers have to hope for instant gratification, in the sense of a World Series victory, as this trade has the potential to bite them for years to come.