Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 7/21/17

Dave Cameron: Happy Friday, everyone. Jeff and I switched days this week because he wanted to go climb something this weekend. I fully expect there to be 20 trades in the next 24 hours since he’s gone.

Charles the Cat: If the Cubs are to get one more starter, who do you think they get?

Dave Cameron: The rumor of the morning put them on Darvish, but there are diminishing returns on adding another guy at that level. You’re starting Lester/Quintana/Arrieta in the postseason, so if you pick up Darvish, one of those guys makes just one start in a seven game series.

Dave Cameron: So I’d think it would be more like an Estrada type, a guy who could potentially be a buy low and would give them depth if Hendricks has more problems, then could maybe be a reliever in October.

MK: With everyone focused on Nats bullpen issues, is adding a starter or left fielder the main priority now?

Dave Cameron: I don’t think they need a starter. They basically have a playoff spot locked up, and Scherzer/Strasburg/Gio/Roark is fine for the postseason.

Marky Mark: What is the logic behind lineup protection not existing? I know the numbers don’t bear it out but how does the logic work?

Dave Cameron: The theory is that hitters perform better because pitchers are scared of pitching to the guy on deck with a runner on base. But if hitters actually performed better, than pitchers would be pitching to the on-deck batter with a man on *more often*.

Dave Cameron: So pitchers aren’t going to pitch in a way that creates the result they are trying to avoid.

Dookie Howser, MD: What kind of return are the Braves looking at for Jaime if (a) acquiring club takes on his full contract or (b) if Braves kick in significant cash

Dave Cameron: If someone takes the whole $4.5M, I doubt they get anything real in return. If they pay down all of it, maybe they get a decent 45 FV guy.

MC: Are the Dodgers the best fit for Darvish, given that their top three starters are left-handed?

Dave Cameron: The best fit for Darvish would be someone who needed to use him to get to the postseason. Paying the price he’d require just to get a few upgrade postseason starts isn’t worth it.

Dave Cameron: The Yankees, for instance, could really use Darvish.

the sad song: There’s been a lot of discussion about your use of KATOH and KATOH+ to determine which prospects are “risky”. But KATOH+ projects almost all prospects on BA’s Top 100 list to be worth more than KATOH. So are you saying that the White Sox should have targeted players who weren’t on BA’s Top 100 list? With only a handful of exceptions, no one the White Sox could have targeted on BA’s Top 100 list would satisfy you given the method you chose.

Dave Cameron: Jimenez, Rutherford, Moncada, and Giolito have four of the largest differences between their prospect ranking and what their actual performances suggest of any prospects in the majors. I’m suggesting that by targeting those three guys as the primary pieces in their four trades, they are betting that minor league performance doesn’t matter that much.

Dave Cameron: If you think most of the prospects on BA’s Top 100 have the divergence between their ranking and their performance that those guys have, you’re just wrong.

DB: Why hasn’t Ian Kinsler been mentioned in trade conversations?

Dave Cameron: Has a no-trade clause, hasn’t shown much interest in waiving yet. Used it last year, I believe.

Dan: Darvish & Sonny Gray are names that have been linked in Cubs rumors.  I don’t see how the Cubs pull either of those deals off without a top 50 prospect?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, the obvious trade chip that they still have is Candelario, who has no future in Chicago.

Dave Cameron: He doesn’t get you either of those two.

Rb: What kind of return could rick Hahn get for Jose Abreu?

Dave Cameron: Not a good enough one to move him. Not a lot of teams looking for RH bat-only guys right now. See J.D. Martinez trade.

Ricky: Hey Dave – how much does a GM’s ability to negotiate play into the trade market? Or are there so many cooks in the kitchen advising on trades for it not to matter?

Dave Cameron: It depends on what you think of as negotiating. No GM is going to sit there and talk another GM into making a bad trade based on the eloquence of his speech. But there’s definitely a skill in anticipating what others might do, and being able to read the market. A GM who can tell when someone is willing to extend further or is serious about walking away can create real value.

Zihuatenejo: Any opinion on the Stanton/Yelich-to-Phillies rumor?  If the Marlins make that trade (or one substantially like it), is that the last straw for Loria?

Dave Cameron: Don’t see it happening.

Dave Cameron: Feels like one of those things that got kicked around as a “should we call them and see if they’re interested?” conversation.

Sean P: Say the Cubs wanted to trade for Verlander. How much of his contract would the Tigers have to pay down and what sort of prospects would the Cubs have to give up to make it work for both sides?

Dave Cameron: The prospects depend entirely on the cash in the deal. Without any cash, he’s worthless; I think he’s an August trade candidate because I’m pretty sure he’d clear waivers. So then it comes down to how much Detroit is willing to kick in to effectively buy prospects.

Dave Cameron: But the same deal here applies as Darvish; why take on that money or give up a real prospect just to get a marginally better #4 starter?

Dave Cameron: There’s an argument that a healthy Hendricks is still better than Verlander, after all.

JV: What team is Yonder Alonso playing for on August 1st?

Dave Cameron: I’ll go with the Yankees.

JV: What do you believe will be the biggest trade between now and the non-tender deadline?

Dave Cameron: I was pretty sure Cutch was going to move a month ago, but the Pirates have played him off the market.

Dave Cameron: So now it might be Gray.

Kosch: How is Aoki (-0.3 WAR, 81 wRC+) still on the MLB roster when Fisher is ready?  I am not saying Fisher > Trout or anything ridiculous, but he’s gotta be an easy upgrade right…or am I just nuts?

Dave Cameron: ZIPS/Steamer project FIsher for an 89 wRC+ rest of season.

Dave Cameron: So, no.

Jack: If Devers projects for a 91 wRC+ right now, is it even worth trying to trade to get…roughly that same production? Or is it just a question of risk/safety? Thanks!

Dave Cameron: I would just promote Devers.

Dave Cameron: Some RH corner guy who could platoon with him and Moreland would be useful too.

Zonk: The Brewers lead is suddenly 1 game, radically changing their playoff odds.  Does that also change their trade deadline calculus, in your opinion?

Dave Cameron: Yeah, they can’t expect to win the division any more, so now you’re looking at what would help you in a potential Wild Card game.

Dave Cameron: That’s probably relievers.

Kevin: Just how impressive is this White Sox stable of prospects? I don’t remember the Cubs/twins/Red Sox/Yankees or any other farm system recently having this crop of top 100 (and top 30) guys

Dave Cameron: I wrote about this yesterday, but I think a good chunk of the White Sox new acquisitions are overhyped. This is a good system, but it’s not historically special. The Braves, Padres, and Dodgers have similar or better systems right now.

Dom: Would you say that knowledge of Spanish is an important skill to have to enter the baseball ops department from the data side?  Similarly, would it be a barrier to enter the industry?

Dave Cameron: Being bilingual will absolutely help you land a job in baseball.

Dave Cameron: Even if you’re going for an analyst position, sometimes those guys get sent to the airport to pick up a guy and drive him somewhere, and being able to communicate with the Latin players in the organization will be seen as a plus.

Ed in Iowa: Who will bring a greater return: Zach Britton or Sonny Gray, and is it close?

Dave Cameron: Gray by a mile. All this talk about monster returns for Britton ignores the fact that he does not look healthy. Has 4/3 K/BB since coming off DL for second time. I don’t think I’d trade for him right now.

BartolosChin: Everyone is focusing on the Indians nabbing a potential SP at the deadline, but wouldn’t they be best served going all out for Britton or someone of the like? Hard to imagine getting past 6/7/8/9 from Shaw, Allen, Miller, Britton

Dave Cameron: Allen has quietly been terrible since May. Yeah, I think they need another arm down there.

Doug the Dog: What do you think Justin Wilson returns for the Tigers?

Dave Cameron: He’ll bring back a lot. Maybe not a top 50 guy, but a 51-100 guy and some stuff.

JTT: Do you think Verlander gets moved, in any capacity?

Dave Cameron: In August, maybe.

Dave Cameron: I could see him getting moved to whatever contender doesn’t land an SP at the deadline in August, especially if Detroit offers to kick in $20 or $30 million.

Cody: do you think the Mariners trade for a starter? who do you think they’d target?

Dave Cameron: Could see Dipoto going after Estrada

Dave Cameron: Fits the type of SP he’s acquired a lot of

sufjan stevens: Has the price on relievers gone down since last season? 3 months of Chapman went for Gleyber Torres last year, and the returns we’ve seen for (worse) but still very good relievers like Doolittle/Madson and Kahnle/Robertson don’t seem quite as substantial.

Dave Cameron: The Chapman deal was the outlier.

Dave Cameron: Miller deal was perfectly reasonable, and lots of other normal-priced RP deals last year.

Dave Cameron: Cubs just massively overpaid for Chapman.

Kevin: I said last year that I think Jake Arrieta would be absolutely filthy in the Andrew Miller playoff role but that we’d probably never see it. If the Cubs add another starter (maybe Darvish?), is it possibly we could actually see it?

Dave Cameron: Can’t imagine Arrieta lets team move him to the bullpen right before he becomes a free agent.

Neutral Observer: Why wouldn’t the Tigers just eat Verlander’s entire contract in a trade? They have to pay him anyway, may as well get a better return in exchange.

Dave Cameron: Ownership wants to cut payroll.

VanExelent: Would it make sense for LA to call up Buehler this year as late season/postseason bullpen arm?

Dave Cameron: Think that’s the plan, but he was awful in his Triple-A debut yesterday.

Kershaw’s Left Arm: After seeing McCarthy struggle last night, are the Dodgers more motivated to trade for a right handed starter to fit in a postseason rotation with Kershaw, Wood, and Hill?

Dave Cameron: Maeda is fine.

Jack: What do you make of Pat Neshek’s trade value? Not your prototypical relief ace, but a solid K-BB% and a long history of inducing weak contact.

Dave Cameron: Don’t think he’ll bring back a haul. Not a stuff guy, and people are always wary of these lower velocity guys in the postseason.

Moltar: Should the Dodgers be in on Darvish or another playoff-calibre starter? I know they are world beaters right now, but their rotation is still Kershaw and a lot of question marks (Wood is great right now but might not sustain, Hill is an injury risk, the rest are a shrug emoji). We’ve seen in countless postseasons the Dodgers try to run Kershaw out there on short rest, and I think they should do everything possible for that to not happen again.

Dave Cameron: Wood is one of the best pitchers in baseball, and has been basically every time he’s ever been healthy, which he certainly looks like right now. Hill is no riskier than most teams #3 starters. Maeda is a good #4. They’re fine.

Timmy G: Lately, Orioles fans are either lukewarm to Wade Miley’s club option of 12 million or downright against it. With the poor SP depth in Baltimore, the one year commitment, and guys like Cashner getting 10 million last year…should the Orioles pick up his option for 2018?

Dave Cameron: I would not pay him $12 million next year.

RK: I asked Jeff Wed, but would like your answer as well: what’s the biggest obstacle to creating a simplified, productionalized, continuously updating trade value rankings of every player if you had a comprehensive contract database and trusted a given projection system?

Dave Cameron: You could create an automated surplus value system pretty easily, but there are a lot of variables in trade value that aren’t easily quantified.

Eckstein123: Isn’t it possible that the White Sox got those guys without specifically targeting them? It could be that they very much consider minor league performance, but still decided these were the best packages, right?

Dave Cameron: Sure. But the fact that those guys were available should tell us something. The Nationals were getting out of the Giolito game as fast as possible. The Yankees sold Rutherford before the draft shine wore off and people realized he’s playing like a busted prospect. The idea that these guys are as valuable as they were thought to be a few years ago, which is mostly what their prospect rankings reflect, is probably not true.

Dave Cameron: As one friend in the game put it, if Eloy Jimenez turns into Domingo Santana, that’s a pretty good outcome for this skillset. But are White Sox fans going to be happy with that, given the hype? Nope.

Will: Would a package including Albies, Soroka, and Wentz be enough to land the braves Sonny Gray?

Dave Cameron: Yes, but I don’t think ATL would do that.

Willie: Dave, how much does a poor couple months impact player value at the MLB level vs 3 years of good production. Donaldson hasn’t been Donaldson. Would his stock drop quite a bit

Dave Cameron: I think his stock would be down because it’s not just a slump; he’s on a year or so of battling leg issues, and the power drop is probably related.

Dave Cameron: You don’t care that he’s not hitting; you care that he might not be healthy, which might be why he’s not hitting, which means he won’t hit until he is healthy, and who knows when that will be.

VanExelent: Do you think the Dodgers will be one of those teams offering a $300-400 million contract to Harper or Machado in a year?

Dave Cameron: Anyone offering Harper $300 million isn’t really trying to sign him.

Dave Cameron: But yes, I expect they’ll be in on the big free agents, and they’ll be one of the reasons Harper ends up over $400M and maybe pushes $500M.

Richard: Devers and Donaldson both received honorable mention on your trade value list.  Could that be a reasonable swap for both sides?

Dave Cameron: Nah, BOS isn’t doing that.

Roger: Did Adam Duvall get any consideration in the trade value rankings? 4.7 WAR over the last year and a half, and he’s under team control for the next four seasons.

Dave Cameron: Not a lot. He’s older and a decent chunk of his value comes from D.

Ryan: Would Devers for Machado or Donaldson make sense if the teams involved weren’t in the same division?

Dave Cameron: No. Devers is too valuable to give up for a 1.5 year guy.

Guest: If the DBacks are serious about making a run they can’t stay status quo with that pen. Do they have enough prospects to get a front line reliever?

Dave Cameron: Well, they didn’t give up anything to get Martinez, so they still have their whole farm system left. But yeah, I could see them making a big move for an Osuna type.

Charlie: You wrote about how the White Sox are seemingly taking on riskier prospects in all their trades, which I agree with, but my question is, whats the alternative? Say they traded Sale for Benintendi+, Q for Schwarber+, and Eaton for a near MLB ready prospect as well, and the Yankees package was centered around Miguel Andujar and Dustin Fowler or something. Whats the point of having all these young controllable MLB guys right now? They aren’t going to be good in 2018 and 2019 with the Sale-Eaton-Q-Abreu etc core, so why spend two years of all those guys service clocks being bad? Isn’t having guys like Eloy, Rutherford, Kopech and co. better since they will be “hopefully” grooming in A, AA and AAA these next two years while the Sox bottom out for top picks to eventually join them? I just didn’t see the alternative to trading for who they did.

Dave Cameron: The piece wasn’t a criticism of the decisions. I said multiple times in the piece that Hahn has done well and the team is in better shape than they were before the trades.

Dave Cameron: But the hype on these guys is not commensurate with how these players are actually playing. When you have people calling this “obviously the top farm system in baseball now”, a little dose of reality is called for.

Chris: How convinced are you Sonny Gray actually moves before the deadline?

Dave Cameron: 100% convinced

Juri Duty: Does Jurickson Profar start 2018 as anyone’s Opening Day shortstop? Does he end up having a decent career?

Dave Cameron: He’s done nothing to show he should start on a big league team.

John: You think the Dodgers have a better farm system than a team with Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez and Michael Kopech?

Dave Cameron: Yup.

Charlie: Do you think Rick Hahn should have been the guy to oversee the White Sox rebuild, seeing as he’s the guy who couldn’t build a winner around a cheap Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Adam Eaton and Jose Abreu? (To be fair, he negoiated all those contracts)

Dave Cameron: Hahn wasn’t really in charge until about a year ago.

EccentricChemist: While Shark be moved by the Giants? How much value would they even get in return since he seems to be in a similar contract situation as Verlander.

Dave Cameron: I could see Houston or Milwaukee or one of these teams that sometimes has trouble landing FAs trading for him.

Jumbotron: Am I wrong, in reading the responses on Darvish, that you seem low on him? For a long time I thought he was considered top of the rotation material. I’ll take my answer off the air

Dave Cameron: Oh, yeah, he’s really good. When I talked about upgrading the Cubs #4 starter, I mean that’s effectively the position getting swapped out, since you have to move one of Lester/Quintana/Arrieta to that spot and only give them one playoff spot.

Dave Cameron: Darvish is an ace.

LegallyEagle: If/when Darvish becomes a FA this offseason, what kind of contract is he looking at. Likewise, with that dollar amount in mind, how many teams realistically are in the chase for him?

Dave Cameron: Seems like the Strasburg deal is going to be the obvious comp. Young high K pitcher with recent-ish TJ.

Dave Cameron: And we have a trade.

Dave Cameron: Mariners send Tyler O’Neill to STL for Marco Gonzales

Dave Cameron: Jerry Dipoto continues to stock up on soft-tossing back-end starters.

CaptainPeanutbutter: Even after mentioning the “all prospects are risky” argument in your post about the White Sox, the first post starts with, “All prospects are risky, and I think looking for the elite level talents is just as safe as looking for high floor/low ceiling players.” Do things like that make you wonder if people even read what you write?

Dave Cameron: People just want to defend anything they see as remotely criticism of their team’s players.

Dave Cameron: Doesn’t matter if there is logic or fact behind it. “My guy is awesome and don’t tell me otherwise” is 90% of the responses.

Nic: I read you article the other day about the white sox prospects. Why do you say Rutheford is playing like a busted prospect. I know the lack of HR’s is as problem, but otherwise he’s been solid with a .280 ba and a .340 obp. Scouts still say he has power so isnt it just that he is young and hasnt accesed all of his power and that minor league pitchers dont throw striks, thats the problem. Similar to judge who never hit for a high average or power in the minors, but once he saw more strikes in the majors, started acssesing said power.

Dave Cameron: He’s a 20 year old future corner outfielder putting a league average batting line in low-A ball.

Dave Cameron: That’s bad.

Dave Cameron: Legit bat-first players don’t usually run .109 ISOs in the low minors.

Dave Cameron: In low-A ball, Judge ran a 167 wRC+.

Hunky Dory: Marco Gonzales for Tyler O’Neill?  What the hell?!

Dave Cameron: Tyler O’Neill isn’t anything special.

Dave Cameron: Gonzales isn’t either, of course, but this is a trade of guys who probably have middling MLB careers.

Joe Douglas: 23 trades to go until Jeff returns

Dave Cameron: At some point I’ll just tell him to stay up on his mountain.

Dave Cameron: Alright, off to go do some writing.

Dave Cameron: Thanks for hanging out everyone.