Similar to my post earlier in the summer on what a beautifully morbid season Cliff Lee was having, I tend to have a fascination with the way baseball sometimes refuses to be fair. I blame Tom Paciorek.

When I was 5 years old, I wrote Paciorek and asked him if he had any advice about how to get to the big leagues. After checking my mail obsessively over the next four months, I got an envelope with a Seattle Mariner trident on it. I tore it open. “Tom Paciorek! Tom Paciorek! Tom Paciorek!” I hollered, sprinting through through the house, waving the letter in the air.

And what sage advice did I receive? “Kid,” Paciorek wrote, “in baseball, you’re either the hero or the goat. – Tom.”

From those few words, my passion was born.

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Armed with a new measure for offensive volatility (VOL), I wanted to revisit research I conducted  last year about the value of a consistent offense.

In general, the literature has suggested if you’re comparing two similar offenses, the more consistent offense is preferable throughout the season. The reason has to do with the potential advantages a team can gain when they don’t “waste runs” in blow-out victories. The more evenly a team can distribute their runs, the better than chances of winning more games.

I decided to take my new volatility (VOL) metric and apply it to team-level offense to see if it conformed to this general consensus*.

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Why isn’t there more interest in Michael Bourn? A six-win center fielder is on the market, and our most recent article on the subject is whether or not his agent has waited too long to get him a deal. We don’t know what his asking price is, but the idea that a player coming off a career year and four straight seasons with more than four wins now needs a pillow contract seems to suggest that either there’s a reason to doubt Bourn’s work, or there’s a lack of demand for his services in the market place.

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I had abbreviated looks at two more Blue Jays hitters with big, recent international bonuses and am tossing in the one pitcher with some prospect standing from the game I saw of the Red Sox. All three of these players have big bonuses, tools and expectations, but little experience in organized minor league games.

Two of the highest recent bonuses from the July 2 market have been handed out to hitters but the Blue Jays in 2B/CF Franklin Barreto (2012) and SS Dawel Lugo (2011). Barreto signed for $1.45 million, one of the top bonuses in the first year of fixed international bonus pools while Lugo signed for $1.3 million last season under the old rules.

Barreto won’t be 17 until spring training, is the equivalent of a high school junior and is actually younger than most of the top prep prospects for the 2014 draft. I point that out so you realize how much more projection is necessary to see what he’ll become and I’m guessing his age is a reason that Barreto barely even played in instructs. He obviously has plenty of instruction to absorb and I only saw him in part of one game.

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For the next installment in the instructs series, I’ll run down some thoughts on the two top hitters I saw (and quick notes on one pitcher). Keep in mind as I’ve mentioned before that these are limited looks with no more than a game or two look and no batting practice, so this doesn’t constitute a full standard scouting report from a multi-game look during the minor league season.

While I saw what amounted to basically one game of Wuilmer Becerra, he seems like the most relevant prospect to lead the article off with since he was included in the R.A. Dickey deal just a few days ago. Becerra is a real prospect in his own right, signing for $1.3 million on July 2nd, 2011 and that means youth is still on his side, as he turned 18 during instructs this year. His minor league debut was cut short after 36 plate appearances in the GCL this season after he broke his jaw from an errant in-game fastball.

Becerra has a long frame, listed at 6’4, 190 but he isn’t the typical super-slender projectable tools monsters of July 2, as there’s already some thickness to his frame and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is or will soon be well over 200 pounds. He runs well for his size and I didn’t get a great time but Becerra looked to be a below average runner, a far cry from when he had put up above average times in amateur workouts. His arm wasn’t overly impressive and my read was a left field profile, which is where he played exclusively in instructs.

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It’s not often that a club has the opportunity to acquire the reigning Cy Young award winner but the Toronto Blue Jays did just that when they acquired R.A. Dickey from the New York Mets on Monday. Understandably, the Blue Jays paid a steep price for the veteran knuckleballer. Along with the top prospect in their system — Travis d’Arnaud, whom I wrote about earlier — the Jays also flipped prospects Noah Syndergaard and Wuilmer Becerra to their National League trading partners.

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Episode 289
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron analyzes all baseball — and, in particular, the part of baseball concerning the trade of R.A. Dickey to the Blue Jays from the Mets for prospects. Also: how the Angels’ signing of Josh Hamilton doesn’t particularly represent a huge payroll spike for them. Also-also: the Phillies spend more on a relief than starting pitcher — why that might be.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 31 min play time.)

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The Mets got involved in contract extension negotiations with R.A. Dickey, and Dickey’s requested price seemed to be reasonable, but for whatever reason, the Mets didn’t want to pay it. Possibly because they don’t trust Dickey in the longer term, possibly because they don’t think they’re ready to win, possibly because of a blend of those reasons, or for neither of those reasons. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, are happy to pay it, as they’ve agreed to give Dickey a two-year extension. So Dickey is just about officially a member of the Blue Jays, at the cost of some of their top prospects.

The Blue Jays might trust Dickey more, and based on their offseason, they certainly think they’re more ready to win. From the looks of things, they’re the current American League East favorites. There are those major differences between this trade and the Royals’ James Shields trade — the Blue Jays are better than the Royals are, and the Blue Jays didn’t trade someone who could’ve been of immediate use. Yet, because the Blue Jays aren’t proven and because people love top prospects, there’s a sentiment that the Jays might’ve overpaid. This depends on the weight you put on trying to win in the short term, but when looking at the Dickey deal, it makes sense to look at similar previous deals.

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With news of the R.A. Dickey trade coming to fruition, the New York Mets organization will reportedly acquire the best catching prospect in baseball (narrowly edging Seattle’s Mike Zunino). Prior to the 2012 season, I ranked d’Arnaud as the 37th best prospect in baseball on FanGraphs’ Top 100 Prospects list — behind fellow catchers Jesus Montero (13th overall, and term used loosely) and Devin Mesoraco (17th), and just ahead of Yasmani Grandal (40th). All three of those catchers graduated to the majors in 2012; d’Arnaud definitely will be moving up on the Top 100 list that will be coming out this March, even after missing most of the second half of the season thanks to a torn posterior cruciate ligament in his knee.

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A week ago, I was one of many who criticized the Royals decision to trade a package of young talent — including Wil Myers, one of the best offensive prospects in the game — for James Shields, even though I’m a big fan of his and I think he’s likely to provide a significant upgrade to Kansas City’s rotation. The argument against making the trade essentially went something like this; the Royals aren’t likely to be a playoff team in 2013 even with Shields, while Myers himself could have served as a valuable upgrade over the ineffective incumbent.

Today, it seems likely that the Toronto Blue Jays are about to make a very similar trade. According to Joel Sherman, the current incarnation of the big rumored trade is a seven player deal that would ship R.A. Dickey (and stuff) to Toronto for Travis D’Arnaud, Noah Syndergaard, and stuff.

The deal isn’t done, and we don’t even know the names of the secondary prospects going each direction, but it’s probably safe to assume that the structure of this deal is going to be similar to the just-completed Shields trade. In this case, D’Arnaud is Myers, Syndergaard is Odorizzi, and the rest of the stuff is probably going to be some offsetting combination of near term value versus long term potential. While that trade wasn’t Myers-for-Shields, and this trade won’t be D’Arnaud-for-Dickey, both deals are centered around an elite-prospect-for-front-line starter swap.

The 2012 Royals were 72-90 and were outscored by 70 runs. The 2012 Blue Jays were 73-89 and were outscored by 68 runs. The talent exchanges are similar. The cost and team control of the acquired pitchers will be similar, assuming Dickey signs an extension with Toronto, which seems like a pretty strong bet. So, if we ripped the Royals for the Shields trade, how can we not rip the Blue Jays for making a similar trade?

In this case, the prior moves make all the difference in the world.

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