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It’s been quite a few days since the biggest trade of the offseason to date was consummated, but the Nelson Cruz signing intervened, preventing me from getting around to it until now. The move of Josh Donaldson from Oakland to Toronto in exchange for a significant package headed by Brett Lawrie and hotshot shortstop prospect Franklin Barreto is not only large in scope, it is complex both on and underneath the surface. Is it the Brinks Job that some pundits assert, another example of Billy Beane zigging while everyone else zags, or something altogether different? Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a current story, that Ken Rosenthal has reported and written about. Bryce Harper and the Nationals are butting heads, trying to figure out the specifics of Harper’s arbitration eligibility. At stake are several millions of dollars, now and down the road, and it seems like a situation that could cause there to be bitterness between the player and the team. But, probably, the business side will be separated from the baseball side, and they’ll go on to get along fine. People thought there might be an issue with Mike Trout, too, when the Angels renewed his contract that one time near the league minimum. It seemed like the wrong thing to do to a superstar, and then later on Trout signed maybe the most team-friendly contract extension ever. Sometimes there are feelings, and often those feelings pass.

And then, sometimes, they don’t. At the end of the year, Mariners officials made some pointed remarks about Michael Saunders‘ preparedness and durability. They were unusually specific, and they hadn’t bothered to talk to Saunders first, and so Saunders’ side shot back. There was a rift, and while there was a chance things could be patched over, it seemed likely that the Mariners would send Saunders away so he could try to thrive somewhere else. Jerry Crasnick had reported that Saunders was being shopped at the GM meetings, and, at last, Saunders has been traded, from a team that didn’t value him to a team that could badly use him.

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There’s not a contract agreement yet or even an indication that one is close, but one thing seems clear about this particular baseball offseason: There might not be a larger gap between our perception and the conversations we’re hearing in the real world than in those regarding Nick Markakis. A few weeks ago, it seemed like the Orioles were ready to retain him for the next four years, but that hasn’t quite happened yet, and the latest rumors have the Braves, Blue Jays, Giants, O’s, and potentially others all showing interest.

Earlier this week, ESPN’s Jim Bowden — who’s really very good at this sort of thing — suggested Markakis could get four years and $52 million. MLB Trade Rumors said 4/$48M in October. FanGraphs readers were a little more conservative, coming up with an average of 3.4 years and $39.8M, but we also know that the FanGraphs crowd tends to underestimate free agent contracts somewhat.

Just by those numbers, one would think that Markakis is a desirable player to have, but you probably already know that most of the FanGraphs staff doesn’t really see it that way. A month ago, Dave compared Markakis to Nori Aoki, who clearly isn’t getting a four-year deal. Steamer pegs him for a 103 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR in his age-31 season, and that’s with the benefit of a projected 679 plate appearances. Using Steamer/600 on our Free Agent Tracker, he’s tied for the 15th-best unsigned hitter out there. (The usual “don’t overthink the decimal point” caveat applies.) You’ve probably seen many of us mention how down we are on him via tweets or in chats, as well. He’s not young. He’s not improving. He’s not even a source of righty power, this year’s trendy “must-have.”

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On Friday night, when the A’s announced they traded Josh Donaldson for Brett Lawrie and three prospects, the public reaction was swift and harsh. How could Billy Beane trade one of the best players in baseball for so little in return? Did he not even bother calling other teams to let them know that Donaldson was available, since they obviously would have made better offers than this? Why even bother trading Donaldson if this was the best they could do? Even as I made the case for the deal being a reasonable one for the A’s, the popular consensus was that the A’s screwed up.

It all felt very similar. As I read through the reactions, I couldn’t help but feel like we just had this conversation four months ago, when the Rays traded David Price to Detroit for Drew Smyly and Nick Franklin. Price was a true ace, traded for players who were labeled a back-end starter and a utility infielder. Where was the upside? Why was this the best the Rays could do? Had they overplayed their hand, or were they just not smart enough to take a better deal that returned pieces with star potential? Like the Donaldson trade, I felt the deal was reasonable for the Rays, but the public sentiment strongly disagreed.

If we go back a year, the Doug Fister trade elicited the same kind of responses, though I shared in the shock at how little Detroit got back in that trade for a quality pitcher. But our reactions were basically the same, wondering how the Tigers turned a highly valuable asset into a collection of lower-upside role players. Wouldn’t other teams have bid more? How was this the best offer?

Two years ago, it was the Justin Upton trade that caused the public to scratch their heads. Martin Prado and some lesser prospects was not the haul that people were expecting, and even as I thought it made some sense for Arizona, the consensus was that this deal was a debacle for the Diamondbacks. A 25 year old slugger headed into his prime should bring back far more than in return than an above average player and prospects with limited ceilings, right?

Maybe not. As trades of this nature pile up, perhaps we need to consider that it’s not the teams selling the star players who are reading the markets incorrectly, but the public that expects returns above what teams are consistently getting. After all, is it more likely that our perception of a player’s trade value is incorrect, or that Billy Beane, Andrew Friedman, Dave Dombrowski, and Kevin Towers all decided to take inferior offers to what other teams were making?

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On Monday, one of the more anticipated transactions of the past two off-seasons finally came to pass: Nelson Cruz finally signed with the Mariners. Seattle’s interest in him dates back to at least last winter, but for various reasons, he ended up settling for a one year, $8 million deal with the Orioles for 2014 in order to re-establish his value. 40 home runs later, and Cruz is finally cashing in, landing a $58 million deal that will carry him through his age-37 season.

Now, however, his movable force will meet the irresistible object that is Safeco Field, the most pitcher-friendly park — especially for right-handed hitters — in the game. How might his new home treat him over the duration of his contract? Read the rest of this entry »

The winner’s curse can often be used to describe the free-agent market. Generally speaking, a free agent will sign with the team that offers the most, and the team that offers the most will generally be the team that most overrates the given free agent. After Pablo Sandoval signed with the Red Sox, I found myself wondering whether the winner’s curse would apply, since according to reports, the Giants and Padres more or less made the same offer. Sandoval didn’t necessarily go to the high bidder. Nelson Cruz? Nelson Cruz went to the high bidder.

That high bidder being the Seattle Mariners, who are giving Cruz four years and $57 million. The Orioles wanted Cruz back, but they weren’t willing to match the Mariners’ aggressiveness. The Orioles didn’t want to go from three to four years, and the Orioles are reportedly interested in giving four years to Nick Markakis. It’s the Mariners who most highly valued Cruz, making for a pretty significant immediate overpay. It’s never really fun to analyze contract terms, but that’s the natural starting point, as Cruz has landed the contract he’s wanted for more than a year.

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As you by now are well aware, Josh Donaldson was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays over the weekend in a blockbuster deal that sent Brett Lawrie back to Oakland. The Blue Jays gave up Lawrie and a few prospects to immediately get better, because Josh Donaldson is a guy that immediately makes any team better. Over the last two years, only Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen have a higher WAR than Donaldson, and Donaldson’s been three wins better than the next-best third baseman. Donaldson can hit, he runs pretty well for a third baseman, and he’s good with the glove. Add those up and you’ve got a hell of a player.

But there’s something to that last point — that he’s good with the glove — that’s been on my mind for awhile. It’s something I was going to write about when the Gold Glove winners were announced, but then Donaldson didn’t win, so I saved it for another day. Now that Donaldson is back in the news, today is that day.
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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Atlanta Braves. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Although it hasn’t been published here yet, one assumes that Jason Heyward’s projection (when it is available) will be one of the best among Atlanta’s collection of field players. Heyward, of course, won’t be playing for the club in 2015, having recently been traded to St. Louis in exchange for Shelby Miller et al. What that means, immediately, for the Atlantans is a more playing time for Evan Gattis in left field, at which position he made zero appearances in 2014 after starting there 47 times in 2013.

Expected to inherent Gattis’s catching role from 2014 is Christian Bethancourt, who enters just his age-23 season. Despite having recorded just a 54 wRC+ and -0.2 WAR over 117 plate appearances last year in what was effectively his debut (he appeared in a single game in 2013), Bethancourt is expected to produce enough offensively to render himself a league-average player.

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Four months ago, the A’s made the biggest splash of the summer, trading elite prospect Addison Russell in a package that landed them both Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel. It was a clear go-for-it trade, giving up a player rated as one of the 5-10 best prospects in baseball in exchange for a short-term upgrade, as they were renting just a few months of Hammel’s services, and only getting another year and change from Samardzija. It was the kind of deal that the team would likely regret if they didn’t have a deep playoff run in either 2014 or 2015. They followed up on that aggressive stance by trading Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester, moving even more of their assets into the present at the expense of the future.

We know what happened to finish out 2014; the A’s played very poorly down the stretch, lost out in the division race to the Angels, and then saw the Royals literally outrun them in Game 163. The window that the team worked so hard to open slammed shut in their face. Lester and Hammel are both going to pitch elsewhere next year, and Jed Lowrie and Luke Gregerson are almost certainly going to find new homes this winter as well. Next year’s A’s were simply never going to look like last year’s version, and the A’s just made extra sure of that by trading away their best player, third baseman Josh Donaldson.

On the surface, it’s easy to look at this move and think that it suggests the A’s are switching back into a build-for-the-future mode. Beane’s post-trade comments even suggest that this is perhaps the right interpretation of this trade. From MLB.com’s Jane Lee:

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After the 2011 season, it seemed improbable that the Blue Jays would ever trade Brett Lawrie. He was the native son who exploded onto the scene, bounding his way into the hearts of baseball fans from Victoria to Corner Brook. Always a great hitter in the minor leagues, Lawrie hit .293/.373/.580 with 9 home runs in a 40-game big league tease that set completely unrealistic expectations .

Three injury-ravaged and underwhelming seasons later, Lawrie and three prospects are gone and Josh Donaldson is the new starting third baseman in Toronto as the Blue Jays try to accomplish one goal: reach the playoffs for the first time in a generation. No passport or sentiment will stand in their way as they try to end a long streak without playoff baseball.

Adding Donaldson is a significant upgrade for the Jays, as any team would expect when they pick up one of the premier players in baseball. Conservatively, switching out Donaldson for Lawrie is about a two win upgrade on talent alone. Lawrie’s spotty injury history and inability to translate his minor league offense at the big league level suggest it might be an even bigger gulf.

With two top-ten MVP finishes and 53 total home runs in the last two years, the Jays get a star – a star moving from an offensive sinkhole to a very friendly space for right-handed power hitters. Donaldson is an older player, heading into arbitration for the first time (he’s a Super Two) as well as his age-29 season. Unlike the A’s side of the deal, the four years of control that come with Toronto’s new third baseman is purely secondary to his ability to help them win in 2015.

The Jays wanted an upgrade and, according to Alex Anthopoulos, it was the inclusion of Lawrie in the talks that brought this deal to life. They sell low on Lawrie, who always hit before struggling (mightily at times) at the big league level. He’s as talented a player as there is, one Oakland hopes they can reshape into a more well-rounded big leaguer.

His talent is undeniable, Lawrie is perhaps the defensive equal of Donaldson at third base, and like Oakland’s Fielding Bible Award winner, Lawrie is a former catcher. Perhaps Oakland can get the countless moving parts of his swing in order and awaken the one tool that brought him to the big leagues at 21.

Toronto also gives up a very promising international free agent in Franklin Barreto, a shortstop at 18 with his stock on the rise, fast-rising pitcher in Kendall Graveman, and slightly stalled prospect in Sean Nolin. In terms of bulk control years, the Jays give up a lot. But that future surplus value finishes a distant second to the chance the Jays are building the best team in their division.

Some might look at the Jays rotation and wonder if they have the talent to win a championship. To that I say: look around. The state of the game swung so heavily in favor of pitchers, adding Donaldson’s bat to the likes of Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista — to say nothing of Russell Martin — suggests the Jays believe the road to the postseason is paved with extra base hits.

Like the Red Sox, the Jays seem focused on piling more offense on top of their already-deep pool of sluggers. In Donaldson the Blue Jays add another home run threat who actually strikes out at a below-league average rate. As the league heads in one direction, it appears Toronto is headed in another.

It is easy to search for additional meaning in this trade and the Blue Jays interest in Josh Donaldson. Simply put, they targeted a great player they thought could help their team win a division title and more. They added a player who saved more than 30 runs with his glove since 2012 while putting up a 125 wRC+. His 14 WAR over the last two years trails only Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen. Rather than hope their third baseman realized his potential, Toronto acquired one of the best in the game.

It also signals Toronto is serious about overhauling their clubhouse culture, though there is no better cure for a divided clubhouse than a whole pile of wins. Any team that boasts Reyes-Martin-Bautista-Encarnacion-Donaldson at the top of their batting order figures to give pitchers fits, though another left-handed bat in that mix (Reyes switch hits, the rest are all righties) must be a priority.

There is still work to do in Toronto, as huge questions loom in left field as well as second base. Their presumed starting center fielder is 43 big league plate appearances into his career (barely 200 PA above A-ball for Dalton Pompey, another Canadian.) They might not be done yet, but adding an elite ballplayer for the second time in two weeks is a nice way to head into the Winter Meetings.

Deals like this are how teams climb from the 80-85 win treadmill to the 90-win tier of World Series favorites. As they did with Russell Martin, the Blue Jays looked at a decent (and affordable) spot on their roster and thought they could improve it. They gave up a chunk of their identity and whole lot of prospect capital to do it, but it looks like these aren’t your older brother’s Toronto Blue Jays – though I’ve said that before.