JABO: MLB’s Hidden Cold Wars
When it comes to trading, almost every team plays favorites. Perhaps a former co-worker is now running another club, making conversations easy and player valuations similar. Or perhaps two GMs just happen to get along well, and when one needs to make a minor deal to round out his roster, he’s comfortable asking his friend for help before polling the rest of the league. There are plenty of reasons why some organizations just fit as better trade partners than others.
This goes the other direction as well. Many teams are hesitant to make trades with their division rivals, not wanting the player they gave up on to come back and haunt them for 19 games per season, or in the case of trading a young prospect, for years into the future. Shipping a player across the country, or even to the other league, minimizes the chances that your home town fans will be regularly reminded that not every trade works out in your favor.
Of course, for a few teams that share a large market, there is another franchise in the other league that happens to also be a challenging trade partner. If you want to avoid your fans seeing the traded player turn into a star, having him play for the in-town rival is probably the worst case scenario, which is why trades between market sharing teams are pretty rare. The Cubs and White Sox, for instance, haven’t made a trade since 2006 — the Neal Cotts for David Aardsma blockbuster — and hadn’t made a deal before that one since 1998. The A’s and Giants haven’t made a deal since 2004, when Oakland bought Adam Pettyjohn from the Giants for cash; they last made a deal with players going both directions back in 1990. The Mets and Yankees last swapped players in 2004, when they exchanged Mike Stanton for Felix Heredia.
But beyond those easily explainable barriers to making a deal, I was curious which other franchises have engaged in long cold wars. Whether for philosophical reasons or just because they haven’t ever matched up, which teams just don’t make trades? Thanks to the particularly nifty Trade Partner tool from Baseball-Reference, we can highlight the teams who seem least likely to make deals with each other, even without the in-division or in-market explanations.
Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
This is a great idea for an article, but it’s too bad the results are pretty boring.
It could be interesting to see if teams make fewer trades with each other after a really bad one. For instance, the Rays and Mets have only made one trade since Kazmir/Zambrano and that was the Mets getting Brian Stokes for cash.
The Mets and Yankees actually made a transaction together in December; The Mets traded pitcher Gonzalez Germen to the Yankees for cash considerations.
I think Germen’s been subsequently waived a few times and is now property of the Rangers.
On the Reds and Giants, might it be Walk Jocketty and Brian Sabean don’t get along? Both have been GMs since 1997 (Jocketty previously with the Cards), and they’ve only made one trade: Kevin Joseph for Jason Christiansen in 2001.
I think that’s as likely as the two of them evaluating players in a similar manner.
Braves/Giants and Reds/Giants might be partially due to the fact that they once were division rivals.
Great stuff, but… why did you use such a great title here, and not there?
Not necessarily the same editorial staffs. Maybe somebody else is writing the JABO headlines, or maybe they have a different house style.
Sorry to hijack, but comments on FG articles are way down, right? Captcha-caused? Do we have a regression?