FG on Fox: Making a Deal Between the Reds and Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox goal this offseason is pretty simple: upgrade the rotation. After trading away every member of their Opening Day rotation besides Clay Buchholz, Boston is in need of several quality starting pitchers. Undoubtedly, they’ll be talking with several of the best free agent hurlers on the market, and given how much money they have to spend, it’d probably be an upset if they didn’t grab one of the Max Scherzer/Jon Lester/James Shields trio, with most of the speculation centering around Shields, given the organization’s distaste for long-term contracts.
But given the poor history of throwing big money at players whose previous employers deemed them replaceable, the Red Sox probably shouldn’t try to rebuild their entire rotation through the free agent market. Especially because their in-season pitching selloff netted them a surplus of hitters, especially in the outfield. The Red Sox have set themselves up perfectly to trade a bat for an arm, or at least, a deal centered around those principles. And do I have just the suggested partner for them.
Last year, Cincinnati left fielders — mostly Ryan Ludwick, along with a sprinkling of Chris Heissey and Skip Schumaker — combined for a remarkably poor .233/.288/.339 batting line, one of the primary reasons why the Reds scuffled to a fourth place finish. Ludwick was so bad that the Reds decided to pay him $4.5 million to not play for them in 2015, and now they’re in the market for a new left fielder.
Meanwhile, nearly the entire Reds rotation will qualify for free agency at the end of the 2015 season, and with significant money already committed to Joey Votto, Homer Bailey, and Brandon Phillips, the mid-market Reds are simply not going to be able to keep this group of starting pitchers together. And that means that they should probably trade Johnny Cueto this winter.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
It makes a ton of sense for both teams, nice analysis Dave!
What makes Cespedes more likely to sign with CIN long term? I don’t see it, and there is no argument set forth in the article to support that claim.
I don’t think the article makes that claim.
“The Reds, unlikely to enter a full rebuild with a veteran roster and a bunch of pieces that would be hard to move, get to take one more shot at winning with what they have, and perhaps land a player who they can retain beyond 2015.”
Not more likely to sign with the Reds as opposed to the Red Sox, but more likely to sign than Cueto is, which I find reasonable.
My mistake, I didn’t notice that.
I’m still confused. In the text you quoted, it says only that perhaps the Reds can retain Cespedes beyond 2015. Nowhere does it say they are more likely to sign him than Boston or anyone else?
“I can’t read.”
Sox fan here. I was about to say this looked much too favorable to the Sox, and then I noticed that Steamer has Cueto and Cespedes surprisingly close in 2014 (4.1 to 3.4) and Cespedes actually ahead in its 2015 forecast (3.1 to 2.7). These may be low on Cueto, who’s been heralded as a FIP-beater for years, but then again, the Reds’ defense has been top-3 in UZR over the past 3 years, partly thanks to an IF of Cozart, Phillips, and Frazier. So it’s tough to split, but I’d still mentally bump up Cueto to at least a 3.3 WAR, and I’d question Cespedes’ projection on the basis that it derives a lot from his 2012 year, before the league adjusted. If we say that Cespedes is closer to 2.5 WAR, there’s still less than 1 WAR difference even after some ham-fisted adjusting. If we buy this equivalence, throwing in Webster and having the Sox take a salary dump seems fair.
If we don’t buy Steamer, however, I think this deal seems off. The Reds probably feel that their 2.25 ERA, 240-IP ace deserves more in return than a guy with a .300 OBP and some guys who haven’t proven anything in the Majors. I don’t think this is necessarily a fair analysis, but I think it’s likely that at least one team will have a better offer, or the Reds will stay pat. If they traded Cueto for topline future talent, that would be one thing, but Webster and Ranaudo are not top-100 prospects or anything.
Again, I think this is a fair-ish deal, and I would love to see it made, but I don’t think it’ll ever happen.
It’s not a complete steal for the Red Sox or anything, but it doesn’t make sense from the reds perspective. If you think you are a contender this year, you would be better off keeping Cueto and signing a short term replacement for left until Winker is ready. If you don’t believe you are a contender this year why would you trade one of your best trade assets for an outfielder that would walk after the end of the year? The only long term asset they get would be a pitching prospect who seems pretty mediocre to me. The reds have a bunch of middle to back of the rotation type pitching prospects, and I would say that they have at least six or seven pitching prospects who are more interesting than those two.
As a reds fan, I think they should be shopping around to see what they can get for Cueto. But I would want them to get some young talent with team control. Trading Cueto for a one year rental and a mediocre pitching prospect doesn’t make sense to me. A Latos for Cespedes deal would make more sense if the Sox thought he was healthy and due to bounce back.
I agree with the both of yous, mainly because I think there’s a pretty big trade-value gap between Cueto and Cespedes. If the Reds are going to trade Cueto, I would think that they’d want an elite major-league ready prospect in return. Two months of Samardzija netted a terrific SS prospect. His salary was lower than Cueto’s, but I would think that every team would consider Cueto the better pitcher.
Thinking about it another way, if Cueto was traded for a top-10 or top-20 prospect, I wouldn’t necessary think it’s a great deal for the other team but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised either. If Cespedes was traded for that caliber prospect, I’d wonder how the other GM ever landed the job.
If Cueto got traded for a top-10 MLB prospect, it’d be a bad deal. That’s talking about the likes of Russell, Bryant, Lindor, Buxton, Sano, etc. Cueto is not worth someone like that..
Actually I forgot that Samardzija is under contract for 2015 as well, so they traded Russell for over a year of him (plus Hammel, I think). So yeah, Russell for a year of Cueto would raise some eyebrows.
But whatever level prospect seems fair for Cueto, it would be a vast overpay for Cespedes.
Midseason deals have an vastly different definition of value than do offseason trades. Samardzija doesn’t get Russell in the offseason because at that point OAK’s level of need is nowhere near as great. You simply can’t use that as a basis for judging a potential Cueto trade.
Yeah I agree. For the reasons you mentioned, I can’t see why the Reds would make that deal. They are basically in no man’s land. They probably don’t have talent to compete for the central title but aren’t so bad that competing for a wild card is farfetched. They have good cheap producers like Chapman, Hamilton and Frazier but at the same time, they have so much money tied into the massive, unmovable contracts that are attached to guys like Bailey, Votto, Bruce, and Phillips. So they probably don’t have money to make meaningful upgrades but at the same time, they aren’t in an obvious rebuild situation either. Trading for a guy like Cespedes just muddles things further.
If you’re Cincy, you want Cueto heading your rotation ESPECIALLY in 2015, because the NLC looks to be hella competitive top to bottom no exceptions every team mashed into a writhing ball of snake-mate/meat with no way to forecast who limps out of it as victor(s).
And if you’re Cincy, you got this great big sinkhole in LF which the other NLC teams are bound to set their fangs into and suck out your very life essence, which is certainly most easily and possibly best addressed by being willing to move Cueto.
Don’ DO IT, Cincy: it’s freakin’ LEFT FIELD for &%#!@’s sake *$@#& out loud with a spoon!
Do as the Giants: get one of those free agent uni-dimensional blinkered-eye meat pounding Dr. Strangeglove robots, and platoon it with a home-harvested human mittipede.
Heck, they could get Morse for the first slot. And Endy Chavez types always seem to be floating around.
I think Steamer is way off on Cueto’s ability to beat his FIP. While Cueto has likely been helped by his infield defense, it doesn’t fully explain his ERA-FIP difference.
Over the past 3 years, the Reds have a combined .291 team babip which is only 9th best in the majors over that span. While Cueto does get more groundballs than the Reds’ team overall to take advantage of the infield defense, it wouldn’t fully explain a .264 babip.
In addition, Cueto is able to beat his FIP through his fielding; he has 16 DRS over the past 3 years, which is the best DRS rate in the majors.
Finally, Cueto is great at inhibited opposing base running. I can’t find the numbers for 2014, but Retrosheet lists him as allowing only 4 stolen bases from ’11-’13 while 15 were thrown out. In addition, he picked off 11 runners.
All of this combined makes me think that he can definitely beat his FIP by quite a bit. Even if we give 2/3’s weight to his ERA and 1/3 weight to his FIP, he has produced 13.4 WAR over 521.1 IP over the past 3 years. That’s an average of 5.1 WAR per 200 innings.
I still think the match for the Red Sox is the Mets. The Mets have every variety of pitching. If the Sox want a veteran inning eater type, there’s Colon and Gee. If the want a mid-rotation type on a cheap deal there’s Niese. If they want want a young cost controlled guy with ace potential there’s Wheeler, deGrom and Syndergaard. The Sox need a third baseman and the Mets have Murphy, who played there in the minors and filled in there when Wright was injured. They even have a guy like Flores who might be an attractive throw in a larger deal. The Mets desperately need a corner outfielder, a shortstop and salary relief. The Sox have the ability to help them with all three.
Both teams have the pieces to make a small deal involving older veterans or a blockbuster involving their young players with star potential.
You listed every variety of pitcher …. except the one the Sox need the most: the Scherzer/Lester/Cueto/Hamels ace type.
The Mets won’t trade him, but they do have that caliber of pitcher in Harvey.
Just like the Sox won’t trade a SS to the Mets (maybe Deven Marrero, if the Mets think he’d be an upgrade)
Still, I don’t think the Sox would take Murphy at 3B vs. overpaying for Panda (everyone’s favorite rumor), or teaching Betts 3B so he can play every day (since I assume they didn’t pay Castillo almost $70 million not to play CF everyday).
I could see Boston doing something like Cespedes and Holt for Colon and Gee, especially if the bidding on the FA starting pitchers goes insane. jpg is right that, unless they’re secretly just gonna rebuild in 2015, the Sox need at least a couple of legitimate mid-rotation starters to join Buchholz and/or Kelly.
Well the Sox need at least three, maybe even four pitchers. Unless you think they are going sign/trade for three or four aces, then the Mets have a bunch of pitchers who might fit what the Sox are looking for.
Yes, you are right that the Mets might be a good matchup for the Sox for an additional SP. I didn’t mean to dispute your original post, I just noticed the glaring absence of the pitcher type everyone is predicting the Red Sox to go after.
That being said, the Sox don’t need to add 3 SP’s. If they add 2 (let’s say Scherzer and deGrom), they will use a combination of Buccholz, Kelly, De La Rosa, Owens, Barnes, Webster, and Ranaudo et al for the other rotation spots.
Was messing around with a 3-way trade earlier today in OOTP. I landed on:
Cespedes to the Mets; Latos, Gee to the Sox; Craig, Mejia to the Reds
And why would the Reds make that trade? They don’t need a closer.
Cespedes isn’t that good of an idea. As remarked above, if the Reds think they’re in contention now, trading Cueto is a bad idea, and if they don’t trading for Cespedes is pointless. They also have enough OBP-challeneged power, what they need is to have someone on base when Bruce et al come up. Specifically, they need a left fielder who can be on base. The marginal value of power decreases the more of it that you have. (Because they end up only hitting solo home runs.) Choo of earlier yeras would really have made an ideal left fielder for the Reds, though it looks like they dodged a bullet there.
Also, even if Cespedes is more likely to sign a long term contract, that really isn’t any extra value. They’d need to pay market price for him, so there’s no reason to want a better chance to get him.
When did Jim Bowden join Fangraphs?
How about a mike leake for Daniel Nava and Allen Webster? That way the sox can get their ace in FA and have a strong #2 behind him. That would make more sense for both teams.
Rating strong #2’s : Morning BM > Leake.
I’m not seeing how it could possibly require Cueto to land Cespedes. Nor does a B+ prospect and some salary relief from Marshall’s $6.5M make up the difference.
Something along the lines of Leake for Cespedes strikes me as considerably more plausible given that it’s an open secret that Boston is eager to move Cespedes.