The Dodgers have an apparently endless supply of cash, and are using it to run the largest payroll in baseball this year, so naturally, any time a prominent and expensive player is rumored to be trade bait, LA is one of the first teams mentioned. They’ve been linked to Cole Hamels all year. More recently, they’ve been tied to David Price. They needed pitching, they had the money to afford those guys, and so the fit seemed to make sense.

But we should perhaps note that, since Andrew Friedman took over the reigns of the Dodgers baseball operations department, that’s not really how the Dodgers have used their resources. They haven’t been at all shy about throwing money around, but they haven’t yet shown any willingness to spend big money on Major League veterans. Despite a roster that they wanted to completely turnover, they only signed two prominent MLB free agents over the winter, and both Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson were more mid-level value plays than the buy-stars-with-cash approach.

When they needed a catcher, they traded for Yasmani Grandal, who they saw as an undervalued player they could acquire at a good price, and managed to dump a lot of Matt Kemp’s overpriced contract in the deal. They wanted a new middle infield, but targeted production-over-flash with Howie Kendrick and Jimmy Rollins, solid role players on short-term commitments who could provide value while waiting for the team’s up-and-coming prospects to develop. They needed better relievers to get them to Kenley Jansen, so they traded for Juan Nicasio and Chris Hatcher, then went with a bunch of youngsters after guys like Yimi Garcia dominated spring training. The Dodgers have had plenty of opportunities to use their ample payroll to acquire marquis players, and at every chance, they’ve gone another direction.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that, when it came time to replace McCarthy and Hyun-Jin Ryu in the rotation, they looked for alternatives to the go-get-the-most-expensive-guy plan. That isn’t to say that they won’t still end up with Price– we’d be fools to ever assume the Dodgers are done working on things, given the number of moves they’ve made in the last year — or some other big name player before Friday’s deadline, but today’s move is probably the most Dodgers transaction we’ve seen since Friedman and Farhan Zaidi were given unlimited funds and told to do what they do best.

The deal, as we understand it at this point.

Dodgers Acquire:

LHP Alex Wood
RHP Mat Latos
RHP Jim Johnson
LHP Luis Avilan
2B/OF Jose Peraza
1B Michael Morse

Braves Acquire:

2B/3B Hector Olivera
LHP Paco Rodriguez
RHP Zach Bird
Competitive Balance Pick (#35 overall, currently)

Marlins Acquire:

RHP Jeff Brigham
RHP Victor Araujo
RHP Kevin Guzman
Corporate Profits

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We’ve all been there. Our buddy down the street is somehow beating us at “RBI Baseball,” even though we own this game. We always beat him! What is going on today? Well, no matter, we’ll just press the reset button and start over. That’ll teach him. This is my house.

That might not be precisely what the Detroit Tigers have been thinking this season, but it’s not far off. The Royals are good again? Exactly how are the Twins winning games? Detroit kept sinking further and further this year until they were far closer to last place than they were to first. And with their rest of season’s projection not that rosy anymore, the Tigers are bowing out. From Jayson Stark’s report yesterday: Read the rest of this entry »

What a time to be alive. In a span of hours, Carlos Gomez was almost traded to the Mets; Wilmer Flores cried on the field; and the Dodgers, Braves and Marlins all but completed a deal that seemingly involves dozens of players. But most exciting of all, Cole Hamels is heading to the Rangers in an eight-player deal that also includes Jake Diekman, Matt Harrison, Nick Williams, Jorge Alfaro, Jake Thompson, Jerad Eickhoff and Alec Asher. Here’s what my fancy computer math has to say about the five prospects headed to Philly in the trade. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we took a look at each AL and NL club’s arsenal of minor-league prospects, with which they could pursue coveted established big leaguers at the deadline. A number of transactions have been made since then, so an update would be useful in advance of the anticipated storm of moves likely to take place before the sands run out of the hourglass on Friday. Which teams are best positioned to acquire the remaining plums on the market?

As we did last week, we’ll rank the 30 minor-league systems based upon my midseason position-player and starting-pitcher rankings. If you aren’t familiar with my minor-league lists, here is a brief refresher. They aren’t pure top-prospect lists; they basically serve as follow lists, after which traditional scouting methods are used to tweak the order. Qualification for my lists are based upon a combination of performance and age relative to league/level. The younger a prospect is at each level, the less production is required to get him onto the list. At level-specific “optimal ages” (22 at AAA, 21 at AA, 20 at High-A, 19 at Low-A), a player qualifies regardless of performance. At level-specific, much older ages (26 at AAA, 25 at AA, 24 at High-A, 23 at Low-A), you can’t qualify for the list no matter how loud your performance. Only full-season league prospects are considered.

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The headline isn’t the way the Marlins would put it. It’s not the only way to interpret Wednesday’s trade — it’s just one way to do so. The Dodgers, who’ve been in the market for rotation help, convinced the Marlins to sell them Mat Latos. The price for Los Angeles: accepting, along with Latos, Michael Morse. To soften that blow, the Marlins have thrown in a competitive-balance draft pick, to be made after the end of the first round. Now, technically, the Dodgers are sending the Marlins three minor-league pitchers. So it’s not a pure sale, and we don’t know who those players are, so maybe a conclusion shouldn’t be jumped to, but this one feels pretty safe. Those pitchers are presumably the equivalent of nothing. They won’t be as valuable as the player that draft pick turns into. The Marlins sold an asset at the deadline, and they’re the ones effectively losing the best prospect.

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The market has moved forward as we approach the trading deadline, but its shape is still difficult to make out, especially in terms of hitters. We have seen the mega-deal, with franchise cornerstone Troy Tulowitzki moving from the Colorado Rockies to the Toronto Blue Jays. We have seen the rental, with Ben Zobrist helping the already strong Kansas City Royals. There appear to be solid outfielders remaining on the market, including Justin Upton, Yoenis Cespedes, and Gerardo Parra all available as rentals. Even so, it still looks to be a sellers’ market on the hitting side. The Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies are in a decent position to move two hitters, neither of whom are rentals nor franchise cornerstones. Jay Bruce and Carlos Gonzalez are remarkably similar players and both could provide a jolt of offense for a team needing help this season and in the future.

Both Bruce and Gonzalez were called up to majors in 2008, and while Gonzalez has played some center field, both are good-hitting corner outfielders. Both are left-handed hitters with platoon splits that make them just good enough to hit everyday. Both have contracts lasting potentially through 2017, with Bruce carrying a reasonable $13 million team option in 2017 after a $12.5 million salary in 2016 and Gonzalez owed $37 million over the next two years. In addition to being cheaper, Bruce is also slightly younger, at 28, compared to the 29-year-old Gonzalez. In Gonzalez’s favor is slightly better production over the course of their respective careers. Their career lines are below.

Even factoring in Coors Field, Gonzalez has been the better hitter than Bruce, who plays in a decent hitters’ park himself. The pair have both been adequate on defense while losing some overall value due to the negative positional adjustment produced by a corner-outfield spot. Gonzalez has been the better runner, as well, but Bruce has closed the gap in overall value by staying healthy and recording nearly 1,000 more plate appearances than Gonzalez. They have accumulated their WAR in a very similar manner, though, both breaking out in 2010 and having very good years in 2013 before experiencing major struggles last season. Their cumulative WAR chart below is remarkable for the singular progression between the two players.

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This is the second installment in an occasional series examining baseball’s antitrust exemption. The first piece in the series looked at the historical evolution of the exemption, and in particular the U.S. Supreme Court’s evolving justification for baseball’s antitrust immunity. A future, final post will consider the practical impact that the exemption has had on Major League Baseball’s operations.

While many fans are aware that baseball is generally exempt from antitrust law, fewer realize that courts have adopted widely divergent views regarding the extent to which MLB’s operations are actually shielded from the law. For instance, just because MLB is generally immune from antitrust law does not mean that a court would necessarily give the league free reign to engage in anti-competitive practices in areas completely unrelated to professional baseball (such as if, for example, MLB Advanced Media — the league’s digital content distribution company — were to enter into a price-fixing scheme with other non-sports-related, Internet-streaming-video service providers).

Courts have traditionally disagreed regarding where to draw the line between MLB’s exempt and non-exempt conduct, and thus are deeply divided over the extent to which they will allow antitrust lawsuits to proceed against MLB. As a practical matter, then, anyone wishing to sue MLB under antitrust law may be able to do so – despite the league’s antitrust exemption – so long as they file their case in the right court.

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If you look at the movement charts on Drew Hutchison’s slider, it seems obvious: the Blue Jays’ righty starter had more drop late last year, when he was going well. This year, the pitch is harder and firmer, and he’s not going well. So he’s missing that slider he had, right?

Well, maybe not. We had Craig Edwards point out that Hutch might actually need his best fastball to succeed. And then we have the pitcher himself telling us that no, he hasn’t done anything to change his slider. “Every time I throw my slider I try to get good depth on it,” he told me before a game with the Athletics this week.

But the pitcher said this just moments before he admitted to using the slider differently. Which might actually have something to do with his struggles this year. Funny how that works.

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In case you missed it, I’ve broken down the prospects in the Tyler Clippard (A’s to Mets) deal and the Troy Tulowitzki (Rockies to Blue Jays) trade. I’ll catch up here on yesterday’s deals, breaking down the prospects involved in the Ben Zobrist (A’s to Royals), Jonathan Papelbon (Phillies to Nationals), David DeJesus (Rays to Angels), and David Murphy (Indians to Angels) trades.

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