A Manny Machado Trade Would Be Historic

The Orioles have seemingly come to their senses about their place on the win curve and, as such, are open to trading Manny Machado. On the other hand, it’s been nearly a week since that news broke, and we haven’t heard many concrete trade offers out for Baltimore’s All-Star infielder. Perhaps the news was overblown. Perhaps not. One thing we can say with certainty is that, if Machado were traded, it would be fairly historic.

Players get traded all the time, but usually they haven’t accomplished as much as Machado has. Here’s the top-30 WAR leaderboard for position players by the end of their age-24 season. You’ll find Machado toward the bottom.

Of the 30 players here, you find few who changed teams before reaching age 25. Shoeless Joe Jackson was acquired by the Cleveland Naps as a player to be named later in a trade they had made with the Philadelphia Athletics. That has to be one of the most monumental PTBNL’s in baseball history. At the time, Jackson had 41 plate appearances and -0.5 WAR to his name. It’s safe to say that Philly didn’t know he was going to become one of the greatest players of all time. He was also traded in his age-25 season, from Cleveland to the Chicago White Sox. It’s safe to say, at that point, that Cleveland knew who he was.

Jimmy Sheckard also appears here, a relatively obscure player who had some real succes both before and after his age-24 season. Let’s take a look at his transaction log over at B-Ref.

This happened even earlier in time than the Jackson deal — so long ago, in fact, that we don’t have exact dates for most of the transactions. But odds are that both Brooklyn and Baltimore knew how good he was. In 1899, he led the league in stolen bases. In 1901, he led the league in triples and slugging percentage.

Other than that, there are only two data points of note here. First is Alex Rodriguez, who left the Mariners for the Rangers as a free agent following his age-24 season. The other is Rickey Henderson, who traded in the midst of his age-25 season. That’s still a possibility for Machado. There’s no law dictating that Machado has to be traded before the season starts. Dan Duquette & Co. might decide that it’d be better to ransom him off in the run up to the trade deadline.

So, you can see how a Machado trade would be historic. It’s not often that a guy who is that good at such a young age is moved. And if it weren’t for the time he missed in 2014, he’d probably be a little higher up that leaderboard.

But you know what? Maybe it’s not fair to be comparing Machado to players who played in the time before free agency. These days, teams have to plan things out a little more. Let’s take a look at that leaderboard again, but beginning with 1975, the dawn of free agency.

So, OK, there are a couple of comps here. Let’s separate them out a little. The Roberto Alomar and Hanley Ramirez trades were big deals, but neither of those players quite reached his potential yet. Ramirez only had two PAs to his name with the Red Sox, while Alomar had recorded a couple of decent seasons with the Padres. Willie Randolph’s trade isn’t quite as famous, but it was certainly a big deal at the time. After just 70 PA with the Pirates, he was shipped off with Ken Brett and Dock Ellis to the Yankees for Doc Medich. Those three trades aren’t truly comparable to Machado’s situation, but there are a couple that are.

Miguel Cabrera, Jason Heyward, and Justin Upton were all traded in the offseason following their age-24 seasons. Of the three, Heyward’s situation was the most similar. Like Machado, Upton debuted at age 19, but thanks to a six-year extension he signed in 2010, he had two years of control left when he was traded from Arizona to Atlanta. Cabrera, who debuted at age 20, was in his second trip through arbitration during the offseason in which Florida traded him to Detroit. He would sign an extension shortly after going through arbitration and never reached free agency at the tender young age he could have.

But Heyward and Machado have the same situation. Heyward was a year from free agency and fresh off his age-24 season when Atlanta traded him to St. Louis. But while they occupy consecutive positions on that 1975-2017 leaderboard, you can see that Machado has been 4.4 WAR better than Heyward had been to that point in his career. So one might expect him to fetch a little more than Heyward did.

There are a lot of great young players in the game right now. As such, it can dull the significance of the situation in which Machado and the Orioles find themselves. It wouldn’t be completely unprecedented for Baltimore to ship off their superstar, but there aren’t exactly a ton of comparisons, either. Trading Machado may indeed be the right move for Baltimore’s front office, but given how infrequently players of his caliber have been traded at this stage of their careers (and some of the players who were traded weren’t quite up to Machado’s caliber), it wouldn’t be a surprise if Baltimore ultimately kept him.