2014 Trade Reaction Roundup
Well, that’s about the most active trade deadline I can remember, though it might not feel that way if you live in Philadelphia, Colorado, or Toronto. Still, some big deals happened, some small deals happened, and a bunch of players are changing uniforms. We’ve written about most of the deals, with multiple angles on all the big ones. To make them easy to find, here’s one big post to find all our reactions in one spot. As we add more write-ups, we’ll add them here as well.
Thanks for hanging out and breaking all kinds of FanGraphs traffic records, everyone.
The Jon Lester Trade
Jon Lester and the A’s Fascinating Big Bet on 2014
Dave Cameron
Red Sox Focus on 2015 in Jon Lester Trade
Paul Swydan
Sam Fuld and Completing the A’s
Jeff Sullivan
The New and Improved Jon Lester
Tony Blenigno
The David Price Trade
Tigers See the A’s Jon Lester, Raise Them David Price
Dave Cameron
In Austin Jackson, Mariners Land Decent Player and Massive Upgrade
Jeff Sullivan
Don’t Write Off the Rays End of the David Price Trade Just Yet
Tony Blengino
The John Lackey Trade
Cardinals Improve by Adding Lackey, Subtracting Craig
Mike Petriello
Second Red Sox Trade Affirms 2015 Focus
Dave Cameron
The Asdrubal Cabrera Trade
Nationals Take Small Risk in Dealing Risky Prospect
Eno Sarris
Five Versions of Cleveland’s New Prospect, Zach Walters
Carson Cistulli
The Andrew Miller Trade
Orioles Land Andrew Miller From Busy Red Sox
Paul Swydan
The Gerardo Parra Trade
Brewers Bet on a Different Sort of Regression
Jeff Sullivan
The Chris Denorfia Trade
Chris Denorfia: Improvement by Being Not Endy Chavez
Dave Cameron
The Martin Prado and Stephen Drew Trades
Yankees Gain Flexibility in Landing Prado, Drew
Paul Swydan
The Chat
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
No InstaGraph on the Bonifacio/Russell BLOCKBUSTER?
Is that sarcasm I detect? Emilio Bonafacio is a nice little player who can do a lot of things for you. He’s a nice little player. He’s a guy that is a real team guy. He’ll play all over the diamond. If you need him to bunt a guy over he’ll do that. He’ll steal a base for you. Do a little hit and run. Nice slap hitter. He and Josh Harrison are some of the more valuable players.
Not enough RBI’s though.
Alexei! Buerhle! Beckham! Konerko! hYes!
Not fair to Harrison to mention him with Bonifacio, Harrison acutally has decent power and much better wOBA.
Harrison .295/.333/.473 .350 wOBA
Bonifacio .279/.318/.373 .305 wOBA
I guess your little, sarcasm detector, ain’t working because, I don’t care who you are, okay?, if you don’t have chemistry, then all of the talent in the world ain’t gonna help you.
Chemistry, the will to win, making the routine play, hYes!
Brock Holt! Brock Holt! Brock Holt!
Astros/Marlins trade goign to get any play?
I’ll get some play before that blockbuster does.
Colin Moran/Jake Marisnick/competitive balance pick isn’t really much worse than what TB got back for David Price. I don’t feel that’s hyperbolic either.
Easy. Easy. Watch and learn! Smiley, while he might not ever be Price could see something close to him. Franklin was a top prospect at his position what a year ago? Adames might be something special. Do you think an organization like the Rays never scouted all these guys in-depth? The Rays will prove you wrong on this trade.
Smyly’s mediocre at best. He’s done even worse vs RH hitters this year to the tune of .306/.366/.522. He just gave up 11 hits in 5 innings to the White Sox and wasn’t close to fooling anyone.
This is a horrible trade for the Rays.
Franklin has a boatload of upside.
I’m hoping so, too. Astros shafted the Fish there, it seems to me.
Cosart has the raw stuff to be a better pitcher. He needs to learn how to get there. Sometimes these types of pitchers get there. Sometimes inability to change or injuries get in the way.
The problem with his raw stuff is that as good as it is, it’s only 2 pitches. Very hard to be an effective starter with only 2 pitches unless they are both plus-plus material. I think he will need to develop his change or sinker into a decent offering if he is going to stick in the rotation
Thanks for the round up. But doesn’t the fact that it’s necessary to publish one highlight the fact that the front page of Fangraphs could benefit from better organization? One of the most irritating thing about this site (aside from Carson :)) is that the layout and overall organization of the main page seems suboptimal for a 2014 website. Just my $0.02.
They’ve been told, but like it as is. We learn to live with it . . . .
Out of curiosity, what would you like it to look like?
I’d just like to say that I appreciate fangraphs for not looking like *every* *other* *website* these days, and find it both easy to read and navigate. It beats the hell out of acres of whitespace and awkwardly (un)moving frames. The new homogeneity in webdesign is boring as hell, and definitely worth the time that would be otherwise spent adding new features and functionality to the stats end of things.
^this
Huzzah!
i kinda agree it could use something akin to macro topics to find frequent topics, say a drop down to find only chats, etc., but overall i like the simplicity. if you look at the new SI website, it’s @#$@#$3 awful. ignoring the SI issue, it’s just terrible. Slate did the same “everyone uses a tablet and i touch like a primate punching the glass” optimization.
i travel to places with crap bandwidth and i am grateful Fan Graphs always loads due to its design.
Please, please, Fangraphs keep the site design as is. I am pleading with you. I have yet to see a redesign in the last few years that has been an improvement, even if the technology is impressive. Just because you can cram technological novelties into a site doesn’t mean you should. You guys are doing the right thing.
My local ESPN LA 710 AM radio personalities keep complaining that the Dodgers and Angels “did nothing.” People’s thoughts?
They did nothing.
Angels had done something.
Dodgers didn’t need to do anything.
Rich kids cry more than poor kids.
1,000 better stories in the naked city.
They can still do “something.”
You listen to sports talk radio?
Ugh!
The Angels did something. It wasn’t very much, but it was something.
Bigger question: why on earth do you listen to sports radio? Your IQ takes a permanent hit every time you do that.
We should crowdsource the worst local radio sports talk takes.
I live in Springfield, MO. The hacks here this morning were saying “what kind of message does the Jon Lackey trade send to the other young cardinals pitchers?”
I’m proud that I didn’t make a trade.
… And cliff Lee just walked off the mound while pointing to his elbow. Won’t even be a waiver deal now. Just a completely missed opportunity.
Do you mean Amaro missed the opportunity to trade him in the offseason? I should think it would be extremely difficult to trade a 35-year-old pitcher with that contract who’s been on the DL for two months with an elbow injury. Lee pitched terribly in his rehab stint and first start back.
Lee left his start tonight, apparently re-injuring his elbow.
I’m well aware of that. My point was simply that the “missed opportunity” to trade Lee had to be in the off-season. He went on the DL in May for two months with an elbow injury, and he looked awful after coming back from the injury. I don’t think there was much of a market for him – and there wasn’t going to be a market unless he demonstrated that he was healthy and effective coming off the elbow injury. Especially when we’re dealing with a pitcher who will soon turn 36, and he is owed a minimum of $37.5 million over the next two years, plus his pro-rated salary this season, which would be more than $8 milion.
No thoughts on the Yankees acquiring Martin Prado and the right to sign him to an extension?
equal return for justin upton, i put it thought my $/war surplus calculator
/alone on my island forever
Martin Prado? An extension?
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…
Even Fangraphs is ignoring my Astros now ;_;
You know what’s really funny. Fangraphs projects the Red Sox as the 7th best team after all these trades have been completed. What happened the first four months of the season?????
Looking forward to 2015.
Now that’s funny.
I wonder where this leaves Mookie Betts now? They acquired two OF’s. Victorino is back to the DL. Middlebrooks is getting called up. So Holt, Nava, Cespedes, Bradley Jr., and Craig.
For fantasy purposes, time to cut Betts loose if it is not dynasty?
You should absolutely cut Betts.
LOL
Mookie Betts CF 3 2 1 0 0 1 2 2 0 .321
That was supposed to show his game at Pawtucket yesturday. Homer, 2 Ribs, 2 walks.
He’s batting .321 there. Hit his fifth homer. And, not to mention he hasn’t been in AAA all that long.
Betts should be playing in Boston right now.
Betts is better than Craig, Bradley, Holt, and maybe Nava.
If youve held onto him this long, dont you think maybe you should hold a bit longer to see what the sox are going to do with him?
Anyway, I dont know why you brought up your fantasy team here.
I’ve heard surprisingly few (aka zero) mentions about how maybe the Tigers wouldn’t have had to trade their center fielder and Smyly for an ace if they hadn’t given away an ace last offseason. Maybe they wouldn’t have had to ship a bunch of stuff over for a reliever either, if they had Smyly working out of the bullpen.
Your fingers type true words.
Adames might end up being a huge loss too. Obviously, we won’t know that for a few years though at the earliest. So a center fielder, a SP of the future in Smiley, and a possible SS/3B of the future in Adames.
The Fister decision was brought up in the Tigers’ coverage of the Price trade, but please do not ever refer to him as “an ace.” He’s a solid, valuable pitcher but probably had no bearing on the decision of whether or not to get David Price.
Might want to pull up a few leaderboards from the past 4 seasons
Exactly, since 2010, Price has 21.1 WAR (5th overall), Fister has 16.8 (14th overall). Price’s ERA-, FIP-, and xFIP- are 79(13th)/82(15th)/81(10th), Fister’s are 86(27th)/85(19th)/90(25th), which is No. 1/2 starter territory on most teams. Fister is one of the most underrated SP’s in the game and gives you ~80% of what Price does.
If they had Fister and he was pitching the way he has this year and since he has been in the bigs, I would say there is a zero percent chance they would have traded for Price.
Now they have a staff full of flyball pitchers and subtracted they best defender from what was already one of the worst outfield defenses in the league (27th in DRS, 28th in UZR/150). It’s a big splash and definitely improves the team from what it actually was this year, but are they better than they would have been with Fister in the rotation, Smyly in the pen, and Jackson in the OF? I’m not so sure.
I agree, a lot of people (and I’m surprised people on here are doing it too) are overhyping Price’s added value.
If you trade two dimes for a quarter and a nickel, you aren’t up a nickel and a quarter, you’re up a dime. (In this crude analogy, Price=Quarter, Jackson/Smyly=Dime, Davis=Nickel).