Should MLB Create a Trade Exemption?
Last week, Garrett Richards blew out his knee, and will be out for the rest of the season. Richards was probably the Angels best starter, and because of the timing of the injury, they’re running low on quality options to replace him. As Paul Swydan noted on Friday, there’s Bartolo Colon, Scott Feldman, and, well, not a lot of else.
This is the nature of players getting hurt late in the season; once past the July 31st trade deadline, talent is difficult to acquire. I’ve argued for moving the trade deadline back, though that idea does not necessarily have wide appeal. So what about a more minor change that could keep teams from getting sunk due to a late-season injury: a trade exemption for teams that lose a player from their active roster and place him on the 60-day disabled list after August 1st?
We could even limit the exemption to the same position as the player lost, so that a team couldn’t disable a middle reliever in order to acquire an ace. For a team like the Angels, their situation has changed enough since July 31st to alter their calculations. Maybe now, without Richards, they’d make the Phillies a great offer for Cole Hamels, even including taking the remainder of Ryan Howard’s albatross contract? Or maybe they regret not meeting the Padres asking price for Ian Kennedy?
The intent of having a trade deadline is to stop teams from loading up on mercenaries and forcing a team’s postseason roster to somewhat resemble its regular season roster. But should we really be interested in punishing teams for losing players to unpredictable injuries towards the end of the year, simply because they had the poor fortune of losing a key contributor in August instead of July? Shouldn’t we be interested in letting contending teams maximize their chances of winning? And don’t we want rebuilding teams to be able to extract absurdly high prices from desperate buyers, thus shortening their path back to being a winning team?
Giving a team like the Angels a trade exemption to try to get a starting pitcher to replace Garrett Richards would make the AL West even more exciting, and potentially, lead to an even better postseason experience for the viewers. Even if the Angels overcome this injury and make the division series, is anyone really excited to tune in and watch Hector Santiago pitch a playoff game?
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
So you want to punish me for being smart enough to stockpile depth?
I completely agree with this sentiment. The reward for being a team that builds the best roster “One through Twenty-Five” is that you’ve got depth for situations like late-season pitching injuries.
I’ve talked about this in the last few seasons that we don’t even see the team as 25 guys. We look at around 30 guys as being “the team” because we know injuries will happen.
Can I get a cease and desist on you pretending to be me Bill?
If you just stop now, I’ll use my connections to see if Brad Pitt will play you in YOUR autobiography. Would that be good enough?
The E was the PTBNL in the Samardzija trade.
Billy, will you marry me?
Then you could be Billy Bean-King.
If you are going to pretend to be the Oakland General Manager, don’t misspell the name to be the MLB Ambassador for Inclusion. Those are two different people.
It’s basically impossible to have decent MLB ready starting pitchers hanging out in the minor leagues waiting for someone to get hurt. The A’s tried it with Tom Milone, and he got frustrated with the situation and asked to be traded. Even if you do a great job of developing pitching prospects, most of them are reaching their innings limits by this time of the year anyway.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t have traded Milone if Crisp and Gentry weren’t injured and he would still be grumpy in AAA, but possibly coming up for a spot start. Furthermore, I still have Chavez and Pomeranz, so it is possible to stockpile “decent MLB ready” pitching.
Also, “decent MLB ready” is subjective. Hammel floats in and out of that airspace.
Basically, you’d be letting teams rework their roster at anytime. If that’s the case, then you may as well get rid of the trade deadline all together.
Gotta hand it to the Mariners- while unintentional, they certainly have managed to accumulate upper minors pitching depth for this season.
The Angels situation is tough, with Skaggs literally pitching his final game of 2014 on July 31st and Richards getting in late August, but such situations shouldn’t warrant a special trade market.
And it’s not as though the SP staff behind Richards and Skaggs looked great through the first half of the year.
That’s not entirely accurate, Dave. The A’s also have Josh Lindblom, Drew Pomeranz, Philip Humber, and even Joe Blanton. And they still have Jesse Chavez, which allowed them to trade Milone (and Straily) from their depth.
I’m also confused by the Milone comment. Teams are not forced to trade frustrated players, so that’s not really a good argument for why the Angels didn’t address their SP depth.
LMAO. The majors and AAA are full of borderline ML-capable pitchers. Of course team don’t stockpile “decent MLB ready” starting pitchers….because there aren’t enough “decent MLB ready” starting pitchers to fill spots 1-4 of the 30 MLB teams.
The point is…teams that have depth of pitching talent would be punished by this suggestion and teams that don’t would be rewarded.
Also, are ALL teams eligible to trade with the team with the injured player? Or only teams that are clearly out of the playoffs? It gets very complicated very quickly.
But Cameron….damn.
Why does the best team in baseball need a trade exemption?