Dave Stewart’s Misguided Comments on Market Value
Over the weekend, the Diamondbacks made a pretty controversial trade, selling Touki Toussaint to the Braves in exchange for $10 million in salary relief. I wrote up my thoughts on the deal on Monday, noting that while it’s certainly possible that the Diamondbacks have more information about Toussaint than other teams, it still seems like they simply misread the market value of a prospect in making this deal.
If you didn’t think that’s what happened a few days ago, you can be sure of it now, because in Ken Rosenthal’s latest column, Stewart says some things that, for a baseball executive to say publicly in 2015, are absolutely remarkable. And should scare the crap out of Diamondback fans.
Per Rosenthal’s column, here’s the entire text of what Stewart said in regards to trading Toussaint.
“The truth is we did not know what Touki’s value would be if we shopped him. There is a lot of speculation on that. People are assuming it would have been better, but we don’t know.”
“There was an opportunity to make a deal that gave us more flexibility today as well as next year. We took that opportunity. It’s tough to say we could have gotten more. He was drafted at No. 16, given ($2.7) million. In my opinion, that’s his value.
“To this point, he has pitched OK, he has pitched well. But guys are mentioning that he throws 96 mph. He hasn’t thrown 96 mph since he’s been here. We haven’t seen 96 once. There is some inflation of what people think Touki is.
“We think he’ll be a major-league pitcher. We don’t see it happening in the next three or four years. Maybe five or six years down the road, he’ll show up and be a major-league pitcher. But that is a long ways down the road.”
There is so much to unpack there. Let’s recap the critical points.
1. The D’Backs did not test the market to find out if other teams would have offered more.
No, teams don’t take the time to let every person in the league know before they trade a player, and this isn’t the first time a deal has been made where a player wasn’t shopped extensively. Sometimes, GMs just target a certain player that they happen to really like, and they don’t necessarily care whether another team could make an offer that would be perceived to be better; they want that certain guy, and they figure out how to get him.
But that isn’t the case here, because the D’Backs were selling Toussaint for cash, so there was no room for evaluation differences on the return. This isn’t a case where Atlanta just happened to have the guy who caught Arizona’s eye; they were offering the exact same asset any other team could have offered, and the D’Backs didn’t even bother to find out if another team would have outbid the Braves cash offer. If the market’s valuation of similar prospects held up with Toussaint, they should have been able to use him to dump Aaron Hill instead of Bronson Arroyo. Maybe no one in baseball would have taken the ~$18 million remaining on Hill’s deal just to get Toussaint, but they’ll never know, because the D’Backs front office didn’t even try to find out.
2. Dave Stewart apparently believes that the slot-value of a draft pick is equivalent to that player’s market value.
This is the one I couldn’t believe I was actually reading, because it’s so obviously wrong in ways that should be clear to absolutely anyone working in baseball, much less an executive in charge of making significant decisions. To claim that Toussaint’s market value is $2.7 million because that’s what he signed for in a closed-market system with constrained spending is so ridiculous that I can only hope Stewart was just making an off-hand comment to a reporter and didn’t think about about the ramifications of what he was saying.
Because if he actually believes that a player’s trade value is equivalent to their signing bonus, then he’s simply unqualified for his job. It should be glaringly obvious that the slot values assigned to draft picks are a tiny fraction of what the player’s open-market value actually is. The implosion of MLB’s recommended pools for international free agents — which are essentially soft-caps, given that the penalties for exceeding the limits are not as severe as they are for exceeding your pool in the draft — should have made that clear, and it’s not like the D’Backs are unaware of the inflation of international prospect bonuses; they signed Yoan Lopez for $8 million and paid an $8 million tax on that signing just a few months ago.
But even if things like Yoan Moncada costing the Red Sox $63 million didn’t convince Stewart that there’s a huge difference between open-market prospect values and the slot-values that draft picks are constrained by, he simply needed to look at the Dodgers purchase of a draft pick from the Orioles back in April. By taking Ryan Webb (and then immediately releasing him), Los Angeles paid $2.7 million for the 74th pick in the draft, which had a slot value of just $827,000. And they’ll have to pay the signing bonus to get Josh Sborz in their organization, so he’ll cost them $3.5 million when all is said and done.
Even if the D’Backs are down on Toussaint — and they are, obviously — there is no rational way to argue that he’s worth less than the 74th pick in the most recent draft, and that pick was traded for a cash savings equivalent to what Stewart is claiming Toussaint’s value is. This isn’t a matter of interpretation or an area where reasonable people can disagree; Stewart’s comment is just out-and-out wrong. If he actually believes it, and is going to continue to value the team’s prospects at the same level of their signing bonus, he should be fired before he gets around to swapping Dansby Swanson for a middle reliever this winter.
3. The D’Backs think Toussaint is being overrated.
This is the part where I’m somewhat inclined to defer to the organization. That isn’t to say that they are definitely right about Toussaint, but there is a history of draft scouting reports having too large of a role in prospect analysis even after a player has begun to demonstrate a different set of skills. And I have no reason to doubt Stewart that Toussaint’s stuff isn’t as lively as has been reported; the very mediocre numbers he’s putting up in A-ball suggest that he’s not exactly throwing unhittable pitches down there.
But if you think everyone is overrating your prospect, your goal shouldn’t be to help them understand why they’re wrong; you should be taking advantage of that information asymmetry before they realize their mistake. The D’Backs weren’t under any obligation to tell other teams that Toussaint’s stuff might be ticking down a bit as a professional, which is totally normal, by the way. If other teams hadn’t yet noticed that he was throwing more 94 than 96, and they still wanted to trade for him like he was the same arm he was coming out of the draft, then the D’Backs should have let those teams pay the price for his perceived value based on older scouting reports.
But, this gets back to the first point; other teams weren’t given a chance to do that. Instead, the Braves essentially won the lottery by being the first (and maybe only) team to realize that the D’Backs just didn’t really want Toussaint anymore, and they got Arizona to take an offer that was consistent with their internal valuation of him rather than what an external market valuation might have been.
As I said on Monday, the most likely outcome of this trade — by far — is that Toussaint never develops into anything and the D’Backs end up winning the deal in retrospect. The bust-rate on prospects like Toussaint is in the 80% to 90% range, and so this deal probably won’t come back to haunt the the team long-term. The actual cost to the organization of this trade is likely not going to do anything to the team’s future, given Toussaint’s high-risk status, but if I was a Diamondbacks fan, the process that led to this trade would scare the crap out of me.
You don’t have to think much of Touki Toussaint — I think he’s the kind of prospect that is most often overrated, and I might have been inclined to trade him if I was in Stewart’s position too — to see this trade as a huge red flag about how the D’Backs value assets. Understanding market value, or at least trying to ascertain the market value of your own players before you trade them, should be a requirement of running a front office in 2015.
This trade raised real questions over whether the D’Backs understood Toussaint’s value to the other 29 teams. Based on Stewart’s comments to Rosenthal, it’s not clear whether the Diamondbacks front office actually knows how to value players at all.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
The Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics would make a better GM.
Sweet trades are made of this.
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for prospects
Some execs want to use you
Some execs want to get used by you.
I love the internet.
Some prospects want to abuse you.
Some prospects want to be abused.
This has just blown away the previous G.O.A.T.
http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/i-see-a-little-arrieta-of-a-man/
Cue every front office rushing to make offers on Goldschmidt. You’re only paying him $25MM the next 3 years, he can’t be that good!
All you’d have to do is offer any 2 for 1 deal for Goldschmidt. After hours of breaking down the numbers, Stewart’s crack staff would be to confirm that 2 is better than 1.
I think it would actually be harder to make that trade in the video game world, which is saying something.
You mean like this one…
http://sports-kings.com/readingbetweentheseams/paul-goldschmidt-to-the-pittsburgh-pirates/
If you were able to get transcripts of trade talks between Dave Stewart and say….Ruben Amaro Jr, you’d probably have material to write about for the next 3 years.
My thought, too, when I read this.
Can you imagine the hilarity of a Dave Stewart – Ruben Amaro Jr. trade? The commissioner’s office might have to veto it.
Commenters: can we turn this into a comical Stewart/Amaro/Preller/etc. trade speculation thread?
Stewart offer Goldschmidt for Papelbon, Amaro declines unless Stewart throws in Oliver Perez. Deal-breaker.
At some point we need to stop ridiculing Amaro for the Papelbon deal. 3.5 years into the contract, Papelbon has stayed healthy, put up a 2.38 ERA / 2.82 FIP with the Phillies, and is still going strong. Obviously, it was a terrible idea to give $50M/4 (or $63M/5) to a reliever, and contracts should not be judged in hindsight. But (unlike the Howard deal) the Papelbon deal hasn’t been the disaster we all predicted.
So the Papelbon deal broke as well for Philly as it possibly could have, and they’ve gotten ~5 WAR for ~$42M so far.
That’s exactly why the contract was so terrible. Things have gone as well as they possibly could have, and the Phillies have STILL gotten a below-market return.
So let’s go ahead and keep ridiculing Amaro for the Papelbon deal.
Many people, myself included, would say that WAR is a poor tool for evaluating the value of relief pitchers. Furthermore, Papelbon was brought into to anchor the “4 aces”, so it made sense at least in broad terms. The city knew it was expensive, but if that’s what it took to win, so be it.
The real issue is that Papelbon is still pitching for the Phillies.
Yeah, I prefer rWAR for relievers, and he’s put up gotten 7 so far.
Assuming he puts up another win over the rest of the season, they’ll have gotten 8 WAR for $42m, which is pretty much exactly market value. The real question is the vesting option.
The problem with the Papelbon deal wasn’t the contract itself. It was that Amaro set the market with it. The next best reliever on the market at the time (Madson) took a one-year deal when all was said and done. There was simply no need to rush out and spend all that money AND give away a first round pick to sign any reliever. It’s very similar to Stewart’s current situation. The end result isn’t really unjustifiable, but the process that led to it was atrocious.
I also think the ridicule has shifted recently away from the contract to Amaro’s asking for the moon when trying to deal Papelbon.
After a full calendar year of wrangling:
– The DBacks send the Phillies Aaron Hill, Curt Schilling’s remaining debt to Rhode Island, an Omar Daal uniform, and the rights to Mookie Betts should they ever acquire him.
– The Phillie send the DBacks Jeff Francoeur, Curt Schilling’s remaining debt to Rhode Island, an Omar Daal uniform, and the transfer of Free_AEC to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s custody.
*Phillies
Get on it, Cardinals!
Although, I will say that I don’t think Preller belongs anywhere near that discussion yet. The Padres are a vastly different team if Kemp stops sucking, and the defense hasn’t hurt their pitching staff nearly as much as people suddenly learning to hit homers in Petco has.
The Cardinals probably don’t need to hack the DBacks computers in order to fleece them!
As for AJ Preller, has anyone heard that guy in an interview? I think he broke the record for the number of “um”s and “you know”s in a single sentence, with something like 23. Damn he was brutal to listen to. If that’s any sign of his intellect, then that should scare the crap out of Padre fans too.
I’m a Dback fan, by the way, and their management really does scare the crap out of me. It’s hard enough to compete with the big market teams, particularly the Dodgers, when you’re a mid-market team, so we don’t need any more competitive disadvantages.
I doubt speechisms say much abut intellect. He got into an ivy league school somehow.
I actually thought “Dave Cameron’s head is going to explode” when I read that article this morning.
When he read those quotes, Cameron was so shocked and exasperated that he blinked. Twice.
Hey, Dave Sterwart at least understands the market value of a transvestite
At least the street value.
I wonder what her/his “slot value” is…
They project as having a loose number 2
Obviously Stewart is just using an unconventional method to drive up the price on Goldschmidt. Now teams know he’ll cost their entire farm system, so who’s willing to pay?
Evil genius stuff, that.
“We want Goldschmidt.”
“Okay, but if you want Goldschmidt, you have to take three of our top prospects, too.”
“Uggghhh fine. Deal.” [click] “Hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
I’m sure the Tigers, Angels, and Giants would trade their entire Top 10 prospects for Goldschmidt. Get Stewart on the horn.
http://sports-kings.com/readingbetweentheseams/paul-goldschmidt-to-the-pittsburgh-pirates/
If one is feeling charitable, one might suggest that when Stewart says “He was drafted at No. 16, given ($2.7) million. In my opinion, that’s his value,” what is said is that he values Toussaint, specifically, at that level, not every prospect at their slot level.
One might not necessarily feel charitable when interpreting statements from Arizona’s front office, however.
The weirdest part was the “clearing salary” thing, because they already paid $2.7M on this guy, so they aren’t even getting back all of Arroyo’s money, its Arroyo-2.7M.
Also, to be charitable, he sort of has to say something not like that, although preferably not so stupid sounding. If he said, “well we signed him for $2.7 million, but in a free market he would have gone for $10 million” that is the kind of quote that could come back to haunt MLB the next time the draft is challenged
If Stewart felt the need to speak out, it was to placate his own fans, not necessarily those who frequent fangraphs where a $ value is well thought out and placed on everything. $10mm minus 2.7mm looks like a profit and that’s the way he chose to explain the deal, it most likely isn’t the way he actually analyzed this transaction. I really think this was more of an off hand comment than the actual way Arizona goes about its business.
It’s a fascinating deal, one that is more difficult to analyze than just using reasonable estimations of Touki’s market value because at the heart of it is the unseen forces of team finances. Who really knows how much influence ownership/team presidents/CEO’s have in regards to authorization to move/receive millions of present and short term financial obligations?
How many teams are actively looking to add $10mm in obligations for a back end prospect? One would assume Arizona didn’t bother checking with divisional rival Los Angeles. The Yankee bean counters would not approve this deal. The Red Sox maybe? Very tough to say.
Guessing here but a team like the Cubs has shown plenty of willingness to eat contracts in order to increase prospect returns….have to imagine they would have been interested.
I think any of the big-spending analytics-based front offices (LAD, NYY, Boston, Toronto) would gladly throw millions at a low-level prospect so long as they were paying below market price. Because of the draft slotting system and the international bonus pool system, there’s not a lot of opportunities to simply buy a prospect these days. That’s why the Cuban market has exploded.
Meant to include the Cubs on that list too.
I’m sure Brian Cashman would have loved to be able to make this deal, but my point is there are people in these organizations away from the baseball operations side of things who can easily get in the way of this. Basically what happened with NYY and Moncada. $10mm is a lot of money, regardless of whether it’s “below market” value, and the people in charge of cutting checks can veto things with a wave of a hand.
Touki is a “back-end” top 100 prospect, not a back-end prospect. He would be top 5 in most organizations. That is akin to getting an extra mid range 1st round pick for an awfully cheap cost considering you dont have to sign the player too.
Say some chatter that Stewart could get in trouble for publicly devaluing another team’s asset, is this true?
Technically, this could be construed as tampering, so he could get a fine I suppose.
Regarding the “overrated” idea, I just googled mock drafts from 2014 and
Baseball America, CBS, had Toussaint going #11
Bleacher Report had him #9
MLB.com & Sporting News had him #13
SBN Daily Dish had him #16
So its not like they took a weird flyer on him and were wrong, he was a consensus top end of 1st round guy.
I am pretty sure this deal went down by Dave Stewart opening a Major League Baseball GM’s directory organized alphabetically by team location.
The first entry was for the Arizona Diamondbacks, he called the number, repeatedly got a busy signal and decided he would never do business with their GM again.
The second entry was Atlanta and a deal was done.
In that case, as a Braves fan, I’m glad the Anaheim Angels changed their name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
I assume Dave would’ve been using a GM directory from 1995. Arizona wasn’t listed, and Atlanta was first on the list. He would’ve gotten around to calling the California Angels after Baltimore and Boston.
What are the odds he dialed his own office’s number and hearing his secretary’s voice before realizing to call the first team on the list he doesn’t work for?
Nah he would have assumed that his assistant just sold her to another front office in order to save some cash.
I wonder what would happen if he worked his way down the list to Florida. I mean, who do you call to make a deal with them? Do the other GM’s know who’s in charge?
He’d actually try calling Dave Dombrowski and end up trading everything to Detroit without realizing it.
He should be glad that Washington are last on the list. Rizzo would get everything and salary relief too.
Now we will never see if he could trade away Aaron Hill for Addison Reed. I think that trade would be a nice change of scenery trade for both Arizona and the Diamondbacks.
Comment of the year?
Stupid is as stupid does.
Yeah, I was wondering what my buddy Dave was doing too. I’m glad he didn’t throw me under the bus for all the analysts out there. At least the Cardinals didn’t hack our database-even if they knew my password from those glory years. Otherwise everyone would have known what bust Toussaint was turning into.
During this transaction I get the feeling Tony La Russa was asleep at the wheel (at a green light).
Ugh. This type of “I’m so much smarter than everyone!” thing is why the mainstream thinks statheads should go suck it. I say that as a FanGraphs true believer.
The 16th pick, $2.7 million, that’s his value quote seems like a throwaway to me. I don’t read that as Stewart saying he’s worth $2.7 million on the open market at all. More like: “he’s a mid first round pick, he signed for a decent sized bonus, so yes he’s got some value but we’re not talking about a top 3, $6+ million bonus guy who is a slam dunk to be a contributing major leaguer.”
Also, I am curious about whether teams actually shop players when they have a deal they like in the works. As an A’s fan I was especially curious about this when the Donaldson trade went down. On the one hand you might say there’s no harm in checking, but what would it do to your rapport with a GM if in the middle of talks you say, “hold on, I need to check with other teams first to see if I can drive the price up on you”? I think it’s very possible that GMs see value in perceived integrity and being easy to work with, but then again I know nothing about negotiating.
It would be very reasonable to say the following:
“Okay Alex – thanks for the offer on Donaldson. Give me an hour to talk to my owner and clear a couple things up, I’ll get back to you shortly.”
That’s how most negotiations go…
I imagine someone would get a reputation for calling around the league saying “hey I have so and so offering me XYZ for my guy, can you beat that?” and it being something of a turnoff
It seems like it would be different when you’re actively shopping a guy to begin with, versus something like Donaldson where a GM calls you asking what it would take, you throw out some names, and a negotiation begins. If you like what you’re getting do you risk scuttling the deal by shopping?
I understand that GMs generally want to get the best deal they can, but my impression is that in good-faith negotiation you need to have some trust on both sides that you’re not wasting your time.
I would think its something more like calling a team and saying, “Hey, Donaldson is getting a little pricier for our budget and I am talking to teams to see what sort of interest is there” and then just starting with very broad base-line proposals. From those you can tell which teams are the most serious and willing to give you the best return and you keep going back and forth with all of them to see which one you end up liking the most.
As long as the GM doesn’t misrepresent himself during the negotiations and imply that there is some sort of exclusive bargaining with the other team, I don’t see how any one could get upset by that.
Now, if you’re taking the actual offers from one team and making it explicitly known to others, I can see why that would upset other GMs in a negotiation, if they didn’t want it getting out they were shopping certain prospects or the like. But I think you can do this without that. Instead of saying, “they’re offering me XYZ, can you beat that” I would imagine its more general and saying, “Hey I’ve got another team willing to give us two prospects we really like and that’s where we are leaning now, is there anything else you can throw in to put your offer over the top? If not we’re going to go in another direction”.
Any GM that gets mad that you are negotiating with someone else is probably just trying to strong arm you away from other teams to give you as little leverage as possible
Yeah, agam. You can play teams off of each other to get the best deal without pulling bullshit like Jack Z. did with the Cliff Lee trade.
Someone would get a rep for doing his job? You dont have to say beat this package, just say im about to a deal unless you blow me away.
“On the one hand you might say there’s no harm in checking, but what would it do to your rapport with a GM if in the middle of talks you say, “hold on, I need to check with other teams first to see if I can drive the price up on you”?”
You don’t check with other teams necessarily to drive up the price with the first team, you do it to maybe get a better deal with one of the other teams. Every team understands that (except maybe Arizona), so no GM would have his reputation suffer if he shopped a trade piece around. They don’t promise exclusive negotiating rights to each other – it wouldn’t make sense to do so.
The issue isn’t whether he will perform as a major league, it’s that Stewart seems not to comprehend the actual market value of that pick – it isn’t simply the bonus amount.
Allow a little context for what he said instead of reading the words literally. People say all kinds of things in an interview that, when read and parsed literally, might sound silly. I think he meant that’s his value in the context of the draft.
Why would he be talked about his value in the context of the draft withing days of trading him? ‘It’s tough to say we could have gotten more…in my opinion, that’s his value.’ I’m not really sure what context I’m missing here.
“he signed for a decent sized bonus, so yes he’s got some value but we’re not talking about a top 3, $6+ million bonus guy . . .”
the point is that those guys are worth a hell of a lot more than $6MM. Touki is certainly worth more than $2.7MM.
Yes, I read the article. My point was that taking his quote as him believing Toussaint’s market value is $2.7 million is ridiculously literal. I would read it as meaning that’s his value in context: decent, but not a blue chipper like guys who go in the top slots and get the massive bonuses.
It would help to explain some things he said later. He said that they saw this opportunity and took it. If someone offers you $10 million for something you think is worth $2.7 million, there’s not much need to look for other offers. You take it. Interpreting his statement literally in this case makes some of his other statements make more sense, though of course that’s still not very concrete.
I agree, that in general, it would be bad form to call every GM and ask them to beat a competing offer. In the Donaldson trade it was pretty clear that Beane was targeting Lawrie. I doubt he had more than a handful of other teams that would be considered viable trading partners.
In this case though it is much more like an auction. I have this first round pick. I want to know how much you will pay for him in terms of taking back a bad contract. In that scenario you don’t care what team it is. All you care about is clearing as much payroll as possible for this asset you no longer value highly.
The Doug Fister trade from Detroit to Washington comes to mind. There were probably 28 teams who would have bid more than what Washington did to get Fister.
Matt-
I think your point is certainly a fair one, and perhaps even the most likely scenario. However, it’s much more fun to take it literally and assume Stewart is a dipshit. So that’s what we’re going to do.
Don’t forget his comments that he also made the deal because Bronson Arroyo is a veteran who deserves the chance to pitch in a big league rotation this year and it wasn’t going to happen in Arizona. Toussaint was needed to facilitate this opportunity for Bronson.
*please gouge my eyes out now*
Obviously this isn’t going to be popular on a website like this, but there are more ways than one to run a baseball team. Dave Stewart didn’t like Touki Toussaint as a baseball player so he got rid of him in exchange for financial relief for the organization. He didn’t worry about getting “full market value” for Toussaint, because looking for market inefficiencies and extracting the most value possible isn’t how he runs the organization. He is simply trying to acquire as many talented players as possible.
He got Phil Gosselin in return. I don’t really count him as a talented player.
“looking for market inefficiencies and extracting the most value possible isn’t how he runs the organization.”
Hence, the ridicule.
If he is trying to acquire as many talented baseball players as possible, then he’s going to pretty quickly run into budget constraints in the process if he’s not considering things like market value.
The point is you have to at least make other calls. He was an agent, he should know you dont have to deal with just one team
Shocking that people think 3 of the worst GM’s are minorities
We shall overcome!
Are you saying they’re not minorities?
I am officially dumber for having read this for multiple reasons. Thanks.
OK, I got Stewart and RAJ, but who’s the third unfairly criticized minority GM?
Billy T. Marlin is the first and only piscine executive in baseball. At least I assume he’s the current GM in Miami.
Minaya, maybe? I’m trying to think charitably about what the commenter might mean, and I think there’s a case to be made that Omar gets a bit of a harder time from the FG crowd than he deserves (though I certainly still think he deserves one), though I think it’s pretty obviously not for non-baseball reasons but rather because the things he’s actually good at (scouting) are not as highly valued among this crowd as the things he’s bad at (valuation).
Oh, no, wait, they have to be thinking of Kenny Williams.
Not even true, Dodgers have Zaidi, who I imagine is pretty well regarded around here.
misread the question, but I can think of plenty of poorly regarded GMs who are white also.
I mean, it’s not like Dayton Moore is cut a lot of slack around here.
Is there any position in baseball that causes an observer to think *less* about the race of the person than GM? I have no idea what Ruben Amaro Jr. looks like – I just know that he’s a terrible GM, because he makes terrible baseball moves and says stupid things on a regular basis. Just like Allard Baird, and countless others of indeterminate race in my mind’s eye.
Is Italian still considered a minority?
I think the fact that he’s a former (recent) player leads to much stronger bias against his GM abilities than his race, at least on FG.
But, of course, there is ample objective evidence that he is a terrible GM.
I think it’s also worth highlighting the “we think he’ll be a major league pitcher” quote. Some in the comments are trying to give Stewart the benefit of the doubt for the slot value comment, but when you see that Stewart thinks Toussaint is a future MLB pitcher, it should be manifestly clear that he just doesn’t understand player valuation. Slot value aside, a prospect who is going to perform for you at the major league level is incredibly valuable, even if he’s not going to do it for five or six years. If you really think Toussaint is that guy, you have no business selling him for ten million dollars.
Honestly, that was the biggest “wow” quote for me. All the things Dave says about how much of a risk Toussaint is are unquestionably true. But here you’ve got Stewart openly saying that he believes Toussaint is a future major leaguer. He must think that type of prospect grows on trees or something.
This hits the nail on the head. With stats leaning toward “bust” for prospects, the fact that he think he will be a major leaguer is reason enough to keep him, and that he will be worth far more than his slot bonus, or even $10MM.
i think he was paying lip service, about a player who they had a hand in devoloping, he prob doesnt know this or care (now). i think he sold very low, but in 6 years if touki is not in the mlb, will anybody care
Dave Stewart acted like the kid who was given a $80 video game from mom & dad for Christmas. He looked at the cover and determined it wasn’t as good as he thought (without playing it) so he sells it at parent’s yard sale for $2..
Then says – well I made $2 profit on this deal
Do we all really think that Dave Stewart made this deal without running it past LaRussa first? All the heat is being put on Stewart, and he certainly threw himself under the bus (like he has multiple times already) with his public comments, but there is no way he just up and made a call/trade by himself right??? So why aren’t we also ridiculing LaRussa? Does he get a pass because of his time in St. Louis?
Is it possible that Tony was passed out drunk in his car and Dave couldn’t reach him? I’ve had that happen more than I’d like to remember.
Who do we usually ridicule for bad trades, GMs or Team Presidents?
I feel like this situation is a bit different than the normal GM/President situation. I assume many GMs are working without close oversight by the team President, but in Arizona’s case, I feel like the general consensus is that LaRussa runs the show and Stewart checks in with him right? Stewart has never done any of this before and LaRussa seems like he is the figurehead in AZ.
Hay, that’s why it’s best for the GM and president to be the same.
is theo epstein a president? he seems to get all the credit/hate
I’m really glad Dave Stewart isn’t the Phillies’ GM.
There must be something in the water that makes Arizona GMs say stupid shit.
Let’s look at the totality of his work. How many people had the Dbacks sitting at just one game under at this point in time?
Stewart has made a lot of good moves since taking over especially considering all the bad moves KT made that he had to clean up. He traded Wade Miley just as he was getting expensive for cost controlled Rubby De Laros and Allen Webster. He traded Martin Prado and his entire contract for Peter O’Brien who is raking in AAA and turned 3B over to Jame Lamb. He traded Didi Gregorius for Robby Ray and inserted Nick Ahmed at short who has become arguably the best defensive short stop not named Andrelton in the NL. He somehow got Atlanta to pay 1/2 the money remaining on his contract. He brought in Yasmany Tomas who is raking and playing much better defensively in OF than expected. He brought in Jeremy Hellickson, who after a rough start, has delivered six straight quality starts for 2 prospects that didn’t crack their top 20. He got the Cubs to take on the entirety of Miguel Montero’s large contract. While he can still hit was not a fit for pitching staff who from Trevor Bauer to Brandon McCarthy complained of working with him. He unloaded Mark Trumbo and his entire contract for a much needed catcher in Wellington Castillo and 3 prospects. Finally, he just dumped the remainder of Bronson Arroyo’s contract leaving only Aaron Hill’s 12M next year as the only bad remaining contract.
Given where they were and where they sit today you could actually consider Dave Stewart for executive of the year. With only 26M on books for 2016, Paul Goldschmidt under best contract in MLB, emerging young position players like Pollack, Peralta, Ahmed and Incierte under team control at very good values, a stable of good young MLB starters under control, Corbin on his way back and good young pitching prospects like Shipley, Blair and Lopez on way the future is very bright in the desert.
He has done a great job. I wanted goldschmidt too but he wanted another utility guy.
Much needed catcher in castillo after you mention trading montero. Montero has been worth his contract and would have them in the playoff hunt.
lol
Nobody thinks Peter O’Brien is a good prospect; he didn’t draft or develop Lamb; Robby Ray still doesn’t project well into the future; he didn’t draft or develop Nick Ahmed; Yasmany Thomas has an awful combination of 4.5 BB%, 21.6 K%, .116 ISO, and he is relying on a .413 babip to boost his still unimpressive 121 wRC+ for his grand total of .4 WAR over 199 PAs; Jeremy Hellickson isn’t very good; and he traded away a potential Top 100 prospect to save $10 million.
The Miley trade was solid. The Miguel Montero trade is okay at best if you buy into the “he’s not a fit” narrative. If you don’t, it was stupid.
To sum up, he’s an awful GM.
I think you gloss over unloading the entire contracts of Prado, Arroyo and Trumbo and miraculously getting Hart to take 1/2 of Cahill’s contract. All problems he inherited. I think you also under appreciate Robby Ray and Yasmany Tomas but time will tell. They also just completed their first draft so we’ll see how it pans out. Everyone on this site predicted the Dbacks would be a disaster this year which hasn’t been the case coming into June 25th one game under .500 with a negative 3 run differential. As I mentioned above they are now positioned well for future with good young talent and tons of payroll flexibility.
While we’re talking about moves lets evaluate the genius Friedmans moves in LA. The Kemp deal was good but anyone can fleece AJ Preller and they’re still going to have to pay SD close to 30M for Kemp to play for them. Then he sends Haren and the very good and cost controlled Dee Gordon to Miami. He also pays both their 2015 salaries to play in South Beach just to get a prospect back to get an over the hill and inferior 2B and pays him 10M. Then he takes the best prospect he got in the Kemp deal and sends him with another good pitching prospect to get a 50 year old shortstop and pays him 10M for his -.1 WAR. Then throws a total of 58M at perennially injured Brett Anderson and Brandon McCarthy only to see McCarthy break down (shocking) and Anderson to barely pitch better than Haren who they’re paying 10M to pitch in South Beach. Friedman’s brilliant!!!!! Good thing their 270M payroll has them 4 games in front of the Dbacks while they’re rebuilding.
You seem to be under be under the impression being mediocre is a good thing. They would be better off where the projections were to get a better draft pick. But yeah they have played over their heads so far. Ray has a better walk rate than he ever had in the minors, unsustainable babip, strand rate and hr/fb.
I meant 1/2 the remaining g Tr er Cahill contract
Mr. Stewart, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Regarding the comments made (by a GM of a MLB team), I am attempting to convince myself they were said with the intention of eliminating the perception of acting and thinking strategically while acting and thinking strategically.
I feel so proud to be a D Backs fan right now. It’s really heightening my sense of self worth.
So you decide to buy a TV. Market rate for a typical TV is 1000 bucks with great reliability, 10+ years. The model you choose has a bust rate of 80-90% within 5 years but after the warranty expires . Still plunk down 1000 for it?
If a SP’er prospect becomes a number 3 starter in 5 years, one would expect a surplus value of approximately 60 million. But there is only a 1/5-1/10 chance of that happening, so his value is 6-12 million.
My tv has the floor of a closer though!
So who is the reliable TV in this scenario?
Agree with this math for the most part. If you consider 60mil 5 years from now and the probability of bust, the value is even lower.
Also, this is actually a great trade. Why the bashing I don’t get. Nobody expected Arizona to be this competitive and its Stewart’s moves that helped make this team this good this year.
Next year Dave can go sign a high end free agent starter.
He didnt include any relief projection or say AAAA swingman type. While also leaving out a dollar value on future trade value. Therefore his math is at the least incomplete.
This is very disappointing for me. I really adored Dave Stewart as a player and was happy to see him having a successful post-playing career. I still love ya Stew, but the comments are inexcusable.
Same here. Loved “Smoke” from the late 80s A’s. Best big-game pitcher of his era.
But, this, lawlz, what a blunder. And the guy was prepping himself for a GM job for decades now yet unleashes some nonsense like this?
Am I the only one who A) never heard of Toussaint before this deal and 2) just refuses to get worked up about A-ball pitching prospects outside the top 50?
I really, really don’t understand the level of rancor about this one. You are talking about a 19 year old *pitching* prospect in A-ball with a profile that tends to be severely overrated. How is everyone getting so worked up about this?
The Vernon Wells trade was terrible. This is just meh. It’s not even the worst trade of the last month.
Yeah, maybe I’m the only one. Carry on speaking the truth and telling GMs how much smarter you are.
It’s about process. They seem backwards.
And the whole “they’re smarter” is silly. At least to anyone who has worked where supposed smart people aren’t. Actions are what matters. Also, these are old school baseball guys. Most seem dumb to me. Sorry.
If you didn’t hear about Touissant, you weren’t paying enough attention.
1st round picks usually garner sufficient enough media coverage to warrant some sort of analysis from even the most armchair fan.
I came here to make a cutting, smartass remark in order to poke fun at Stewart.
I’m sad to report that I have failed in this mission. There is quite literally nothing I could write that would add to this story. It is flawless comedy all on its own. Well done, Dave Stewart. You surely have succeeded in your goal to become MLB’s preeminent parody act.
RAJ still is employed.
didi gregorious will be an mvp in 3 years. just watch
Parsing a comment made for a specific purpose is such a fangraphs circle jerk activity. “I am sooo much smarter than this guy who is actually in charge of a multi-million dollar enterprise” It’s no different than the casual fan who second guesses every move a manager makes in the game. You folks just try to justify it using models you have created that work in the aggregate but may not be relevant to the specific.
If you look at this another way, not knowing all of the information which is available to Dave Stewart, a 90% bust ratio for this guy, and a 10% chance of some level of value in the range of 10-40 million. vs a 100% chance of 10 million today from a purely financial POV doesn’t sound off to me. From an opportunity stand-point since there are finite available resources there could be an argument, but still the most likely outcome (90% chance) is THIS IS A GOOD DEAL FOR ARIZONA.
Let me remind all you Fangraphs smartees of a different type trade – but one that nearly all were universally wrong on- Will Myers. But each of you know better than Dave Stewart.
I disagree that if Touki busts then the DBacks “win” this trade. The whole point here is that they absolutely could have gotten more value in return for him if they had just, you know, tried. They lost this trade the minute they made it. What Touki does is irrelevant. Bad process and bad result, IMO.
I understand what you are saying, but I think it denies the reality of what happened. People are taking a hypothetical “better offer” vs the one they got. We assume that Dave Stewart is showing all his cards or his process- perhaps he isn’t. We also assume there is any market at all for Touki which matches this one by saying “wouldn’t xxx team have made a better deal ?” perhaps the risk of not doing this deal – right now- was greater than the potential extra benefit of shopping for a slight increase in hypothetical value.
My point? by saying something is comically bad- almost universally – moments after the trade- just makes me more certain that it isn’t.
If Will Farrell ever chose to create a new baseball movie, Dave Stewart’s “character” as AZ GM would be a likely place to start to build a Ron Burgundy-esque MLB exec.
Based on what Dave’s said before about bringing “baseball man” type talk/decision back to his organization is like when Justin Timberlake decided to title an album, ‘SexyBack’ (as if sexy was on vacation somewhere), both technically did and didn’t do either but got noticed for seeming to try.
I think Dave’s rhetorical audience is more baseball players than us saber fans.
Dave Stewart may actually be as he appears, but I find it hard to believe, mainly because there must also be an exponent of ignorance by the rest of AZ’s organization involved in interviewing & then hiring him that makes it impossible for me to believe if represented himself in his interview in a fashion consistent with this article.
I choose to (very loosely) believe his “old school”, “baseball man”, rhetoric; rather than 1-something he truly believes in, and 2-trying seriously to re-popularize via his persona, 3-was not something he did in his interview 4-and the AZ organization basically said, “Why not?” and hired him anyway. If we’re going to be serious, only Ruben Amaro Jr. could have done this, alone, and he doesn’t work in Arizona.
The “real” Dave Stewart we see in interview quotes is more for his organization’s players, other players AZ will attempt to get in free agency, and agents of free agents on his team and otherwise, he wishes to appeal to as an “old school” GM who makes decisions (way beyond trades here) with the old point of view. Why? Because many players and agents don’t like saber style exec talk. There are many in baseball having a nostalgic love with “baseball men” as some of us normal people do with the show “Mad Men”.
I’d say the Stewart we’re reading is more likely a caricature for players and their agents that wish the business side of MLB were simpler and catered to their personal point of view as a player at a job (if my .avg is higher than this other guy, I should get more playing time or if you’re Gary Sheffield, a contract extension) than those decisions now are to the execs that make them.
The rhetoric somewhat placates the mindset of players that are emotionally hostile to baseball talk without their specific first person point of view in it. Like other humans, some of them are sensitive and need to be encouraged and treated, “special”. Fame a lot of money and yes people around you in a stress cooker of a business that can be cold as ice to those who suddenly have no bat speed or a fastball. Until every human is perfect, we will have “Dave’s” at least trying to exploit rhetoric for some market advantage on player recruitment that he can manage to get any advantage with.
It was a blatant sal-dump on a fresh 1st rounder that didn’t warrant a dump, and certainly didn’t warrant some ridiculously uninformed and damned-near incompetent commentary from the GM post-trade.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Arizona.
To me the last part of the article shows the lack of sophistication of the author. Doing bad deals with other teams is suicide if you ever want to deal with that team again. And if word gets out that you’re hiding info on players, you’re doubly screwed in the future. Bad business is bad business and eventually torches the practitioner.
You can fault them for big shopping around but that’s about it.
So a 7 million dollar profit on a guy with an *80%* bust rate who (a) is four years away from mlb, and (b) cannot actually throw 96 mph after all, is a bad deal? Expressed as a gamble, discounted to present value Touki has to have his three non-arb team control years be worth something north for 12 million each for this to be neutral ev (obviously I am simplifying).
Stewart may be an *idiot*, but someone in the DBacks organization can do enough math to figure out that as the bust rate increases, the 7 mil looks better and better. If Stewart actually thought Touki’s market value was 2.7 mil, he’d have sold him for 2.7 mil. That did not happen.
Why not just evaluate the trade in dollars and say how much it was off, how much Stewart left on the table. One assumes that Stweart used Lopez as a comp, said Touki is not even close to half as good, let’s make this deal.
I believe when stripped of random rhetoric, what Stewart was saying was a simple “we did not like the guy and 10 million was so much more than what we thought he was worth we snapped it up and said ‘thank you’.”
Stewart’s comments may be gibberish, but the actual transaction seems pretty close to par.