Dave Dombrowski Has Been Good at Trading Prospects
Know this — Dave Dombrowski likes to make trades. He was first named a general manager back on July 5, 1988, assuming the title of “youngest GM in the game” back before it was cool with the Montreal Expos. He made his first trade on July 13. His aggressive nature was sometimes just off center stage, as the teams he had previously helmed — the Expos, Marlins and Tigers — have rarely been media darlings. But now he is running the Red Sox, and they get plenty of coverage. While that level of coverage might not be fair or warranted, his deals are being scrutinized hard these days. Is he gutting the farm system? Or does Dombrowski know how to pick ’em? I thought I’d take an objective stab at his trade record.
Let’s start with just how many top prospects Dombrowski has been in charge of. The exact number will depend on how you define his transitions from one team to the next, but it is in the neighborhood of 100 top prospect years. I have it at 107. I have the actual number of players at 79, since many of these players were top prospects in more than one season. He’s traded 26 of them.
It’s this part where I thought we would dive in and look at those player’s expected WAR versus actual WAR. How would we derive expected WAR? Well, if you read The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2016, you probably are familiar with the trade value calculator that Jeff Zimmerman constructed for the book. He took all of the prospects ranked by Baseball America from 1995-2002 and put a WAR and Surplus WAR figure to everyone ranked in the BA Top 100 in those years. We can use that here. Except there’s one tiny issue.
The issue is that Dombrowski didn’t make all 26 of these trades when these players were still prospects. In many cases, they were full blown major leaguers. Curtis Granderson is a good example. He ranked 57th on BA’s 2005 Top 100 list, and was a full-time player by 2006. But Dombrowski and the Tigers didn’t trade him until following the 2009 season, which makes his trade a different kind of trade than dealing away a prospect like Anderson Espinoza before he graduates from the minors.
Let’s take a look at those that are more in the vein of the Craig Kimbrel and Drew Pomeranz trades.
| Player | Pos | Team | Year | Rank | Year 2 | Rank 2 | Year 3 | Rank 3 | Expected WAR | Actual WAR |
| Carl Everett | of | Marlins | 1993 | 69 | 1994 | 52 | 3.8 | 16.5 | ||
| Jose Martinez | rhp | Marlins | 1993 | 68 | 3.4 | -0.1 | ||||
| Julio Ramirez | of | Marlins | 1998 | 57 | 1999 | 48 | 2000 | 60 | 3.6 | -0.4 |
| Cameron Maybin | of | Tigers | 2006 | 31 | 2007 | 6 | 10.7 | 8.2 | ||
| Andrew Miller | lhp | Tigers | 2007 | 10 | 8.4 | 2.6 | ||||
| Jacob Turner | rhp | Tigers | 2010 | 26 | 2011 | 21 | 2012 | 22 | 5.8 | 1.0* |
| Avisail Garcia | of | Tigers | 2013 | 74 | 3.2 | -1.1* | ||||
| Devon Travis | 2b | Tigers | 2014 | 84 | 3.0 | 3.1* | ||||
| Manuel Margot | of | Red Sox | 2015 | 72 | 2016 | 56 | 3.7 | N/A* | ||
| Anderson Espinoza | rhp | Red Sox | 2016 | 19 | 6.2 | N/A* |
Actual WAR = First six years after trade
* = Haven’t reached the end of their six years yet
As you can see, we’re left with eight trades out of 26 that more closely align with the Kimbrel and Pomeranz moves. For the most part, you’d have to say Dombrowski did very well for himself. The first instance where he didn’t — at least on paper — was the Carl Everett trade. How you feel about Everett’s off-field demeanor will likely color your evaluation of that trade. I don’t know of any incidents from his time in the Florida organization, but if it was similar to his tenure in Boston, one might forgive Dombrowski for underperforming there. Devon Travis also looks to get past his billing, though he hasn’t been as good this year as he was in his debut last year.
The other instance where Dombrowski didn’t do so hot doesn’t actually show up in the table. I’m talking the Jose Martinez trade. From Baseball-Reference, here is the entire line item of that deal:
- June 24, 1993: Traded by the Florida Marlins with Andres Berumen and Trevor Hoffman to the San Diego Padres for Rich Rodriguez and Gary Sheffield.
You see the name as surely as I do — Trevor Hoffman. Famously, Hoffman — who was an 11th-round pick out of the University of Arizona — was never a top prospect. It probably had something to do with his ERA ballooning to 4.27 when he was promoted to Triple-A in 1992. Still, the Marlins saw enough from him to promote him in 1993, and he was a league average pitcher for them in his time there before the trade. You wouldn’t have looked at his stat line at that time and said “oh he’ll become one of the greatest relievers of all time,” but that’s not exactly my point.
My point is simply that solely using top 100 propsects as a barometer leads to an incomplete picture. If I had more time to play, I would try to pull every trade Dombrowski has ever made, but I don’t have such time and my guess is that there probably aren’t too many Hoffman-type mistakes on Dombrowski’s ledger. But I can’t say that with 100% certainty.
Dombrowski has made a history of making big trades, and is not afraid to trade away a top prospect. But for the most part, him dealing away high value top 100 prospects is a recent thing. From 1990-2005, he had 55 BA Top 100 prospects, and only traded three of them when they were still in their prospect stages. From 2006 to the present, he’s dealt seven of 26. The feeling here is that Dombrowski is changing with the times. The game is demanding younger players in trade deals, and so Dombrowski offers them up, because he’s a person who knows how to get a deal done.
That doesn’t mean that he’s just trading away his best players willy-nilly. He didn’t trade Josh Beckett or Adrian Gonzalez or A.J. Burnett. He didn’t ship off Miguel Cabrera or Rondell White or Larry Walker. He didn’t deal Marquis Grissom or Derrek Lee or Justin Verlander. But most of the top prospects he has traded away didn’t live up to their billing.
He’s not perfect, none of us are, and there’s still a very good chance that Manuel Margot or Anderson Espinoza will make Dave Dombrowski look foolish. But history has shown that Dombrowski is pretty good at picking who to trade and who to keep.
Paul Swydan used to be the managing editor of The Hardball Times, a writer and editor for FanGraphs and a writer for Boston.com and The Boston Globe. Now, he owns The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Acton, Mass. Follow him on Twitter @Swydan. Follow the store @SilUnicornActon.
The Red Sox/Dombrowski match is probably one of luck — they were looking for a veteran front office leader with some cachet and he got fired at the right time in Detroit — but it really is a good match.
The capital that matters in the game is no longer free agency dollars, at least not the way it has been for the past couple decades. Because of the pre-arb extensions for star players and growing ability for small market teams to spend, the Yankees and Red Sox’s of the world can’t sign free agents to fill all their needs. They can still leverage their financial might to build deep and talented front offices, they can spend wildly internationally and afford to take the best strategic tack in the draft. All the resources going to player development leads to a bit of a prospect log-jam, sometimes, and then it’s a question of making deals to fill needs.
Dombrowski hasn’t been shy about dealing prospects. He’s avoided dealing from the top shelf though. One has to assume there is a probability that the players he has parted with are players the organization doesn’t see highly. I believe they valued Espinoza greatly, but a slight 18 year old pitcher is not without his risks.
It certainly seems that more contending teams are opening the season with “incomplete” rosters. Find me a team without some pretty obvious holes. If they do well in the first half and have the prospects, they can address those needs with a much deeper pool of players than they can in December on the costly free agent market.
Although I hate Espinoza for Pomeranz from a long-term perspective, with the Sox in a win-now mode they can’t be too fussy. Their biggest roster hole is starting pitching, and the dropoff from Hill/Teheran/Pomeranz to the other starters on selling teams is pretty severe. So we have to look at the context of the very moment of the deal to better appreciate the tradeoff that was made.
Considering the amount of young talent the Red Sox have, both on the roster. And in the minors, why are they in win-now mode? Aside from Steve Wright, a patient team can tear the rest of their rotation apart. The Green Monster can really prey on the minds and ERAs of young lefties like Drew, too.
A fan should prefer they spend money and leave the prospects alone. If they had taken Matt Kemp off their hands, they probably could have kept the prospect.
> He’s avoided dealing from the top shelf though.
This is simply not true. Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller were elite, can’t-miss prospects who even many casual fans knew of. Maybin was ranked in BA’s Top 10 in three consecutive seasons and Miller was ranked in BA’s Top 10 once.
Espinoza isn’t slight… he’s a solid guy. He’s just not tall.
I don’t know if he qualifies as a Hoffman-like guy as you set it up, but shouldn’t Randy Johnson’s name be mentioned somewhere in here? Not an elite prospect, but he had only 54 MLB innings under his belt when DD traded him (along with Brian Holman, about 130 innings into his MLB career) to the Mariners in 1989 for a partial season of Mark Langston. Langston was good for the Mariners that year, but the value DD gave up in young players/prospects ended up being pretty massive.
The thing is that even the M’s treaded Johnson, I think he falls into the “lots of talent but can’t put it together” pool until obviously he did put it together. Johnson should be more of a Miller-like guy
Even casual fans knew trading RJ was likely to backfire. An obvious stumble.
Johnson had put it together for the Ms, they traded Johnson because he was about to get a huge (for the time) $52M contract, and they got 34 WAR back in that trade from Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillen and John Halama and those players cost them only $25M in salary and Garcia/Guillen were later traded for more value.
As a Mariner fan at the time i really wished they kept the Big Unit, but that trade turned out about as well as possible for the Mariners, despite RJ getting even better after he left.
Fun Fact: Gene Harris was the “Top Prospect” coming to the Mariners in that trade. Then Holman. The Big Unit was a 6’10” flier. As a lifelong M’s fan the development of RJ from thrower to what he became is one in a Nolan Ryan plus control.
I know Dombrowski has this good track record…but I really feel apprehensive about having traded away Espinoza. He has a real chance at being an ace, and in today’s MLB market where mid-market teams can lock up free agency years like never before, it’s more important than ever to develop your own aces.
As a Red Sox, I also dislike this trade beyond the analytics. Espinoza is an electric young talent whose development I’ve loved to follow. I really was looking forward to following him through the minors and excitement surrounding his eventual debut, first full season, all star status (if he so developed), etc…and it feels really disappointing to be robbed of that for Drew Pomeranz.
The Red Sox are among the few teams (Cubs, Dodgers, Yankees, Angels) who are uniquely positioned to be able to acquire ace level pitchers almost every time they become available. If you’re the Twins, yeah, you can’t trade away a guy with that potential and think “I’ll just sign the next David Price”, but it’s less of a concern as your budget goes up.
He can have all the natural talent in the world, but between health & development obstacles Espinoza is still a lottery ticket. The AL East is there for the taking, there is no clear front runner in the AL in general, you have one of the best offenses in baseball, and you have great depth in the minors even after the trade. There is no guarantee that all those stars align the same way whenever Espinoza is ready, if he ever is. The only way you regret this is if Pomeranz stinks or his arm explodes before he can meaningfully contribute to the team, and even that is outcome bias.
We can definitely still acquire an ace through free agency, so I agree with you there. But look at the difference in value between a David Price or Max Scherzer vs a Bumgarner or Carrasco.
But they don’t hand out a $/WAR trophy. The Red Sox are a team that can say “fuck it” and get a David Price without worrying about the “value.”
It takes a lot of Anderson Espinozas to get one Carlos Carrasco – let alone a Madison Bumgarner.
The sox can hold on to every prospect they get and possibly miss the playoffs waiting for them to develop.
Let’s say Espinoza goes full Scherzer and is an ace. It’s 2019 by then, their current roster is very different. They have new holes to fill. To fill them, they have to…trade the next Anderson Espinoza.
Or keep him! And miss the playoffs again waiting for *that* Espinoza to develop. While the current Espinoza wastes his prime.
Your team currently has Espinozas: Bogaerts, Betts, Bradley, all in their prime. It’s time to push. That means filling holes. That means trading assets. You can’t have it both ways.
You know who has a better chance of being an ace than Espinoza? Pomeranz. It’s not like he’s some random guy that came out of nowhere. He was a highly touted college pitcher who immediately came in and dominated the minors, getting a cup of coffee his first year and a more extended look his 2nd year. His performance in Coors was not great but that happens to a lot of pitchers. The idea that Pomeranz would be an All-Star and potential ace pitcher by his age 27 season wouldn’t have really been seen as very shocking by most people back in 2011 or 2012.
At the risk of sounding like a BoSox homer, I feel like we’re all overlooking the possibility that Pomeranz is the next Arrieta. Post-hype pitcher, finally figures things out later in his career. If I’m not mistaken, he’s still under team control for another 2 years, no? While it’s certainly possible that we look at this as another Anderson for Bagwell trade in 5 years, I think it’s also quite probable that we might look back and say that the Pads sold low on Pomeranz, who is showing some clear trend lines towards becoming the next stud pitcher.
Paul, this would be more informative if you systematically compare the prospects Dombrowski did trade to those he didn’t. The distribution of success of the retained prospects is what you want to test against to determine whether he has done a good job of dealing the pieces he has had control over.
That’s a good and fair point. I may do just that next week.
Am I the only one who would rather have Gary Sheffield than Trevor Hoffman?
Probably most everyone would rather have Sheffield than Hoffman, however an interesting question is whether the Marlins could have had both. Most prospects do not turn into anything. A good GM trades away the ones that won’t and keeps the ones that will. Could Dombrowski have thrown in someone other than Hoffman and still have gotten Sheffield?
This.
Probably the most egregious example is the Red Sox acquiring a (great) half-season of Larry Andersen down the stretch in 1990. Lou Gorman wasn’t willing to part with stud LHPs Kevin Morton or Dave Owen, so he traded away a AA third baseman who was blocked by future two-time All-Star Scott Cooper.
In other words, it would have been quite possible to have both Larry Andersen AND Jeff Bagwell.
At the time of the trade, Jeff Bagwell had hit 6 HR in his 800 PA minor league career, and just finished a 133 game season with 30 errors at third. And it would have been hard to substitute John Valentine given he was hitting .218 in AA.
Even with hindsight, I don’t think the trade was that bad.
They did get Piazza in his prime for Sheffield, which would’ve made this an easy win if they kept Piazza.
Eh, all Sheffield did was hit .320/.520/.540 in the 1997 postseason en route to Dombrowski’s only ring.
(Although, Hoffman actually came surprisingly close to equaling Sheffield’s Marlins production during his team control with the Padres).
I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the decision to trade Espinoza coincided with signing Jason Groome. The Red Sox clearly feel comfortable paying a lot to get the players they want in part because they have an embarrassment of prospect riches to deal from (one of the things Ben Cherington did very well). That’s a reasonable use of a surplus up to a point. The veteran players acquired need to produce the value expected (which is a significant question mark in Pomeranz’s case), and the organization needs to replenish the depleted stock. I believe this was a fantastic trade for the Padres, but it will also work for the Red Sox if those two things occur.
Trading prospects you feel aren’t as good as their hype is easily one of the best market inefficiencies to exploit.
Trading a top prospect that turns into a mediocre mlber down the road is never really a bad idea, even if pure war analysis might end up telling you that you “lost” the deal.
You just gotta make damn sure not to trade the ones that become stars. That’ll kill your franchise right quick.
Or, if you’re going to trade those future decent players, don’t trade them for one year of garbage, like Jeff Samardzija.
This argument would be more compelling if your reason for insisting that Espinoza is overrated wasn’t your hatred of the Red Sox.
nope. it’s the numbers. like with devers.
stat scouting an 18 year old in Low-A (Espinoza – youngest in his league) or a 19 year old in High-A (Devers – 2nd youngest in his league) isn’t a good way to evaluate talent. Factoring in scouting reports would give you a more comprehensive view (unless you’re one of those who believe that Klaw and all the scouting outlets are in bed with the Red Sox).
even if you were just to scout the statline, Espinoza had the 6th lowest FIP in his league despite being the youngest player (interestingly, the 2nd youngest prospect in the league is also a Red Sox prospect, and he has the 4th best FIP), so his numbers are impressive in that context.
Yeah, Espinoza’s a really, really good prospect (I’m not sure about Devers’ body at 3B longterm, and his bat’s not special at first).
If there’s a criticism, and I think it’s a fair one, it’s that he’s small, and hasn’t ever pitched in the sixth.
solid stats, but not excelling.
back before the sox system became chronically overrated, an 18yr old xander put up a similar solid but not spectacular line in A+, and that snuck him in the backend of the top 100.
his performance isn’t as good as what t.walker and m.perez did at the same point, yet he’s ranked higher than them.
a guy like Thor demolished A+ at 18/19 and barely snuck into the top 100.
and these are guys with raw tools as loud or louder than espinoza’s, and arguably less downside.
meanwhile, even perez and walker with their better performance are still probably good examples of overranked kids.
at the moment, espinoza and devers are the only low minors 18yr olds getting ranked far above their current performance level.
and remember, bias has nothing to do with being in bed with a team. bias is subconscious.
Having the 6th best FIP in a league where everyone else is older than you is certainly excelling, he’s exceeded expectations this year.
Bogaerts actually ranked 8th on BA’s list after his age-18 season in High-A, he was even ranked 58th the year before that. Are you thinking of somebody else?
Like I said in previous comment, you’re not getting a complete picture by only looking at numbers. Roniel Raudes, the Red Sox pitcher I mentioned who is the 2nd youngest prospect in Espinoza’s league, had an even better FIP, but he won’t sniff a top 100 prospect because he doesn’t have a top prospect’s tools unlike Espinoza. The rankings are more than just numbers.
As for the Red Sox having the only highly rated teenagers, Victor Robles was 13th on BA’s list, he is Devers age and hitting .235/.329/.368 after being promoted to the league Devers has been in all year. Jorge Mateo, ranked 19th, isn’t even a teenager, but he’s hitting the same as Devers at the same league. Same goes for Gleyber Torres, ranked 27th, or Kyle Tucker, ranked 35th (and not even at High-A yet). Players that scout well will rank well, even if they don’t have numbers that are >50% better than their league averages
“6th best fip” is intentionally misleading, and you know it. Using qualified rank in the minors is always misleading, due to the better players’ promotions. Especially since Espinoza barely qualifies himself. Including all the SP in the league drops his fip down to good but clearly not great – which we know a 3.09fip is anyways. And of course, fip while a great stat is the only one he even looks above average in. His raw K and BB rates are pedestrian, and of course he’s getting hit and scored on at a pretty high rate.
He has a solid line for his league, but not excelling.
As for Xander, I erred by puttint that + in there. Obviously, Bogaerts was an 18yr old in A just like espinoza this year. He had a very good but not dominant year, and was ranked 58th. And of course his raw tools were as loud or louder than espinozas, with fewer risk factors to boot.
And again, I am not just looking at numbers. The prospects I have compared him too all had comparable or better raw tools,. He doesn’t have an edge on them there. And it’s not as if Anderson’s tools are that dominant as of yet either – his fastball seems legit (though apparently has been surprisingly hittable this year), but his 2 offspeed pitches at this point only flash plus, and aren’t consistently there yet. His command also is apparently still a work in progress. This isn’t the kind of raw tools package that justifes this high a rank all by itself imo.
Not only has Victor Robles demolished every single level so far offensively while young for every level, but he projects as a plus defensive CF and plus baserunner. The fact that he has only put up league average production in his first 80pa in A+ thanks to an uncharacteristically low babip likely doesn’t move the needle much, especially since a normal babip would have him crushing the level as usual. Torres is a plus defensive SS with plus speed who has been a well.above average bat at every level despite being 2yrs young each time.
Devers, an all bat prospect with negligible defensive or baserunning value, can’t even hit as well as these 2 speed and defense prospects (outside of his short gcl stint). There is literally no justification for him being anywhere near them on a list.
Tucker I actually agree is likely being overrated – though that depends on how you viewnhis defense. His speed, size, and hit tool combo is pretty rare though, and he has the potential to be a CF, so that kind of projection I kinda get though don’t agree with.
But Devers, though? He’s an all bat prospect who has never hit very much, and doesn’t even have the size that scouts usually drool over when looking at a bat’s upside. His high rank really makes no sense.
He neither mentions Espinoza nor the Red Sox in this comment.
I’m old enough to remember when Jesse Foppert and Jerome Williams were going to be the next ace pitchers, so perhaps this informs my view, but I think this is actually a pretty nice market inefficiency that DD has found. Most (almost all?) highly touted young pitchers don’t reach their ceiling, but they’re super valuable as trade currency. At best, Espinoza is a lottery ticket. Small chance of being an ace, slightly larger chance of being a rotation mainstay, and a very large chance of being a fringe MLBer or worse. Super high variance. To actually reach their ceilings, young pitchers like Espinoza have to stay healthy, continue to develop, not develop a case of the yips, and refine their control and approach to the game. That’s a very difficult path (as Pomeranz’s own career shows), and more often than not, injuries or attrition or non-development will win out.
I mean at this point, Espinoza is a guy who’s basically an average A ball pitcher. He’s obviously super young and has great stuff by all accounts, but it’s a long and treacherous road to reach his potential, and most pitchers don’t make it there (and some take a long and winding path, like Pomeranz or Arrieta).
His recent track record hasn’t been so hot. Traded for Robbie Ray as a key piece of the Fister deal, so he saw the talent, but then sold low on him to Arizona. I feel like there’s another recent move that was poor. The Devon Travis deal looks worse and worse, with Travis posting a 200 ISO since June and impressive numbers last year (And Gose fighting with the manager in AAA). Then there was the Kimbrel overpay, and now this.
Historically DD has been excellent when it comes to trading prospects, lately I’m not so sure.
The Robby Ray with the 3.90 FIP this year (and 3.86 career FIP)? Shane Green has a 2.54 FIP this year. I’m not sure I’d score this trade quite yet.
“But most of the top prospects he has traded away didn’t live up to their billing.”
But given that most prospects don’t pan out, couldn’t that be true of most GMs? Or is my premise wrong? It seems to me like trading prospects for major leaguers would usually be a good bet as long as you were valuing the major leaguers correctly, and has less to do with being especially good at evaluating prospects.
In other words, if I am confident in my ability to value major leaguers, I should always trade away prospects, simply because I know that on average most prospects bust.
Prospects cost less in payroll and come with more team control.
But if Mike Ilitch is your owner, who cares?
That’s pretty much Dombrowski’s approach, which I find really interesting (despite being a prospect hugger myself).
Prospects are assets used to improve the MLB team. That can involve trading them just as much as it does developing them.
So 29.8 WAR instead instead of the expected 41.9, I’m guessing that’s well within the “normal variance” parameters. Plus Travis will hopefully close that gap further.
Dombrowski should be evaluated in comparison to his peers, not just to himself. I suspect prospects in aggregate tend not to live up to the hype. With deep pocket owners, why does he even bother trading away prospects?
And why does he get a free pass on trading away Randy Johnson? Surely missing out on a HOFer tips the scales aa bit.
Johnson only learned how to throw strikes in the sixth season of team control, haha.
Also, deep pocketed ownership is exactly why he can afford to take advantage of prospects’ uncertainty, because he can afford to trade away a star.
I would love to see a similar analysis for Brian Sabean. He’s made a ton of prospects-for-immediate-help trades over the years, and the Giants have come out ahead most of the time. (Ugh, except for the damn Pierzynski trade.)
Agree with the post from dkmin regarding trade currency. Different valuations for different org’s dependent upon where they are in the standings, not to mention their respective farm systems. The risk/reward runs in both directions obviously and with young pitching it’s as extreme as it gets inside baseball. Spot on in my opinion.
This is similar to a point others are making, but it’s worth comparing Dombrowski to other GM’s. My prior would be that all teams have better information about their own players than about other teams’ players. So in general, a prospect that a team is willing to trade should almost always turn out worse than a prospect the same team wasn’t willing to trade. It’s not surprising to me that Dombrowski would be right more often than not. But I’d be really interested to see if he’s right more than other GMs are.