Jerry Dipoto’s Trade Activity, in Context
I recently took a vacation, which meant I recently missed some Mariners trades. The trades weren’t conditional upon me being somewhere else; they were conditional upon the passage of some amount of time. The Mariners subtracted from the pitching staff to add to the outfield. They then subtracted from the outfield to add to the pitching staff. Later, they subtracted from the minors to add Mallex Smith, then they subtracted from Mallex Smith to add Drew Smyly. I was asked last Friday why the latest pair of moves didn’t go down as a three-team maneuver. I don’t know, but, this way, Jerry Dipoto gets to double-add to his tally.
In general, baseball fans are mostly preoccupied with the goings-on surrounding their own favorite teams. Plain and simple, it can be hard to know much about everything else that’s taking place. Dipoto, though, is transcending that, developing an active trader reputation that fewer and fewer can ignore. It’s become a punchline, Dipoto sometimes resembling a caricature of himself. It’s tempting to compare Dipoto to a hummingbird, but as luck would have it, a hummingbird has recently taken up temporary residence outside our bedroom window. A picture:
Even a hummingbird can sometimes be seen sitting still.
It’s easy to say, “okay, Jerry Dipoto seems to trade a lot.” It’s one of those feel things, and it’s definitely accurate. You don’t need to know much to know that Dipoto’s level of activity is unusual. Infrequently, however, are people given context. How often are there trades? Any kinds of trades. What’s normal for a team? What’s the spread?
Good news! As with so many other things, Baseball-Reference makes this easy. Wikipedia tells me that the Mariners hired Dipoto on September 28, 2015. This Baseball-Reference Mariners transaction log goes back to October 1, 2015. Conveniently, that’s almost perfect overlap, and it’s not like Dipoto made any moves in his first day or two in office. Within that log, then, we see 35 trades. Not all big, not all small, but all trades, requiring discussions with other teams. This will be our Mariners data point.
From there, it’s a matter of gathering the other data points. Then we can have the whole landscape. So I examined every single team’s Baseball-Reference transaction log, going back to 10/1/15. Here is a plot of observed trade activity, with no effort made to distinguish between various types of trades. This is only as complete as the information available at Baseball-Reference, but, if that’s not complete enough for you, I don’t know how to help. Spoiler alert: Dipoto wins!
(And how.)
As mentioned, the Mariners lead the pack, responsible for 35 talent swaps. The Braves are in a fairly distant second place, with 23 trades to their name. The gap there of 12 trades — there’s a three-way tie for ninth place, at 12 trades. The difference between first and second place would itself rank in the top 10 in terms of greatest activity. Jerry Dipoto and the Mariners have, indeed, been behaving like crazy people.
The overall average is about 11 trades per team, with a median of 9.5. Where you’d expect an average team to be involved in roughly 7% of all trades, the Mariners have been involved in nearly a quarter. To put this in context in one more way: Mariners, 35 trades alone. The Twins, Mets, Giants, Cardinals, Indians, Reds, and Rockies: 33 trades, combined. Over the past 15 or 16 months, the Mariners have made more trades than all the bottom seven teams put together.
The biggest gap has been about two and a half months. On January 12, 2016, the Mariners dealt for Joe Wieland. On March 30, they dealt for Nick Vincent. I told you they’re not all big. In fact, they’re mostly all small, with the Jean Segura/Taijuan Walker trade standing out as a particular exception. Dipoto’s moves have mostly been more like tweaks, and every front office makes tweaks, but Dipoto has most strongly preferred to go the trade route. That’s the route that might be most tricky, given competing priorities and negotiating strategies, but, maybe Dipoto’s a charmer. Maybe he makes it feel like any and every conversation could be fruitful. Clearly, there’s something about him.
It’s a tremendous contrast between first and last. I mean, it’s a tremendous contrast here between first and anybody, but bringing up the rear, we have the Reds and Rockies, who’ve made just three trades in the window examined. The Reds didn’t do anything between selling Aroldis Chapman and selling Jay Bruce. And the Rockies have been quiet, at least in this way, for quite a while. In November 2015, they traded Tommy Kahnle. The next day, they traded Rex Brothers. Last January 28, they traded Corey Dickerson and a prospect for Jake McGee and change. And that’s it. No trades since, despite any number of rumors. The Rockies are less than two weeks shy of going an entire year without making any kind of recorded trade. Maybe they should call Jerry Dipoto. Or maybe they just hate talking on the phone.
I don’t know how much there is to really read into. So much of this depends on the situation, and Dipoto was just taking over an organization with a mediocre big-league product, and an empty farm. He’s tried to repeatedly trade up, borrowing often from the lower minors for safer or closer pieces. I would imagine he’ll calm down now for a while. The present roster is good enough. So I don’t know to what extent this reflects Dipoto loving trades, or the Rockies avoiding them. A certain percentage of this is all about circumstances. But there’s no denying what’s already taken place — Dipoto has, indeed, been swinging trades like a relative madman. And when you talk to him, it’s probably helpful to know he loves to just reach an agreement. His predecessor made such conversations a lot more unpleasant. At some point, then, the trades will resume. Dipoto’s too smooth, and maybe too addicted, to stop.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Is Dipoto Chris Traeger from Parks and Recreation? I mean, seriously…
This is LITERALLY…the best comment in the history of the internet
Depending on how you look at it, the good/bad part is what you’ve referred to as the situation. Most, if not all, of his transactions seem to fit with what he has said he values from a roster construction standpoint considering the core players and stadium playability. I don’t think he’ll reach Rockies levels but I think the trades will taper down as the roster fits more into his plan from top to bottom. If nothing else, it makes Mariners fandom a little more interesting in the short term.
As an M’s fan, I find Jerry’s (hyper) activity very refreshing. We knew this team was only barely good enough to kinda “hang around” just from the core he inherited. Aside from the Walker/Segura trade he’s mostly just been trying to fill the holes with non-zero role players. As Jeff once wrote about, it’s important to have good players, but it’s even more important to not have *bad* players.
I feel like he’s kind of the dark world (light world?) AJ Preller. I think you could have probably written an article not unlike this one shortly after Preller was first hired. However, I think what Preller did is closer to the opposite of what you say here, in that he mostly traded for names and in doing so ended up actually trading away more value than he got. I consider it a hallmark of “smarter” teams to value depth, to the limited extent which teams distinguish themselves nowadays in that regard.
When you look at the Mariners roster, key non-40 players, and who’s left at each level in the minors, it’s tough to find fault with what he’s done. In just over one full year with the organization, he’s put them in a position to contend now with a sufficient supply of youth to keep them knockin’ on the door while they reload the farm–which still has at least something at each level.
He made trades because there was reason to make trades. The Mariners had plenty of room for upgrades. Probably a safe bet to assume we’ll see more trades when there’s a need for upgrades.
That shouldn’t be any time soon.
I think that need will be soon, and that’s not a knock on Dipoto. Player value can fluctuate rapidly over time. It would not reflect well on Dipoto, in my opinion, if he goes out and gets a bunch of “his guys” and then stands pat and hopes they all turn out. If he’s good, he will frequently and easily adjust to the team’s ever-changing needs.
You think he won’t give each of these new guys a fair amount of time to assess their value? Have you seen the depth charts?
You have to show some degree of patience and give them a chance to settle in. Injuries can change things quick, but that goes without saying.
Of course he will. I’m saying he won’t do the opposite: some execs seem to show an irrational loyalty to the guys they like, and end up sticking with them too long. You said the M’s won’t need upgrades any time soon. I say, of course they will. A good GM knows his original plan will have points of failure and addresses them as they come up.
You have a different interpretation of what “soon” means. I’m saying the same thing, but the season doesn’t start til April, and that window doesn’t start until then.
It’s a good thing to avoid being static and overvaluing one’s own players, but the moves he made last off-season weren’t inspiring. He turned Trumbo into Lind at 1B, Brad Miller and his 30 HR into Nate Karns’ 5.44 ERA, gave away a young power reliever (Smith, albeit who blow his arm out) for a below-average starter (Miley), acquired Joaquin Benoit, got nothing out of him, then dumped him after half a year to Toronto where he produced. Adding Martin and Cishek was just about the only things he got right last off-season. I do think he’s had a much better 2016 off-season.
And, as I’ve mentioned before, upon leaving the Angels, remaining was one of the worst minor league systems in the history of baseball. Accordingly, it is hard to give him the benefit of the doubt until he produces some actual results on the field.
You can’t slam one trade for process and another trade for result in the same sentence. Choose either Trumbo-Lind or Smith-Miley to hate, but you can’t have both.
The process of either didn’t make a ton of sense. The Trumbo-Lind swap exemplifies Dipoto’s desire just to make changes. Trumbo was 2 years younger than Lind, right-handed and traded for significantly less than the latter (3 young arms is better than a career minor leaguer). Lind is also a worse defender.
Coming off a 107 wRC+ and a 90 wRC+ the past two years.
But Trumbo was never traded for Lind. Trumbo was traded for Clevenger (who also fizzled). The reasoning towards trading trumbo wasn’t “just to make changes” either. Trumbo is historically injury prone, didn’t have a stellar 2015, performed even worse when he went to then M’s until the last month of the year and was set to earn almost 10m. The player he got (Clevenger) was a lot cheaper and looked like a backup stop gap behind the plate, a position the M’s had just experienced record breaking failure at.
So yeah, the end results weren’t good but you’re completely ignoring the logic behind the trade.
Not to mention, Trumbo rarely topped a .300 OBP and Lind was FAR more selective at the plate…….An attribute Dipoto favored.
Obviously, it was not a literal swap and you didn’t mention the three young arms that were traded for Lind (sure, they might be pure lottery tickets, but better than a fringe backup catcher). This was 1 of many swaps last off-season I mentioned; for example, trading for Benoit and DFA’ing him halfway through seems like a fantasy baseball move.
Can you remember those 3 young arms without looking?
To be fair, Trumbo had a horrific June in Seattle, but was excellent the rest of the way. Salary, along with all the question marks you mentioned, certainly weighed into his departure, though.
Everything collectively put into context, as you suggested, absolutely makes that move understandable.
The Trumbo trade made sense. They prioritized re-signing Iwakuma who had yet to strike a deal with the Dodgers. It was a salary dump. The money for Lind became available only after Iwakuma appeared lost to LA and the M’s had acquired Miley.
You shouldn’t pretend to think that the M’s overpaid for Lind, either.
He traded Benoit for Storen, and I would argue that had salvaged the initial trade. Miller was hardly a win for the Rays as he couldn’t handle SS or the outfield. There was no need for two platoon LHB’s here, so I certainly don’t fault Dipoto for moving Miller, and Karns was turned into Dyson. Miley resulted in Miranda, so it’s not like nothing came out of Smith.
The Aoki signing didn’t work out, which was notable, but of these moves that didn’t fly, there were no long-term commitments. Damage was restricted. That’s important to remember. Then there’s the deals that did work out and where the roster is now.
Sorry for this, but I am driving myself crazy looking for the hummingbird.
I see a sparrow, or chickadee, centered in the photo, fat and happy. Have I misidentified this bird? Is there another bird in the photo? Is there no hummingbird at all?
Sorry again.
I only see the fat sparrow, too, Ted.
I promise it is really a hummingbird. It’s been there several times and we’ve looked at it closely. There’s teal on it! It flies like a hummingbird flies! It’s just an unflattering fat picture. The camera adds ten pounds.
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the beak is quite long and slender. That very well cold be an Anna’s Hummingbird; they’re resident all winter as far north as the Alaska Panhandle. When it’s cold (as it has been in the PNW the last few weeks) they often sit with their feathers poofed out like fuzzy golf balls. I have a feeder on my deck in Seattle and there’s one who has been sitting next to it, guarding it, for long stretches every day for the past couple of weeks.
The one pictured may be so dull colored because it’s a female, or just because of the lighting — note that the sun is coming from behind the bird. If you see one with the sun at your back, the males suddenly flash emerald with startling pink heads (during mating flights the males are careful to keep the female between them and the sun for just this effect). But when the sun isn’t reflecting off their feathers, they’re dull little finch-looking things. Except for the beak.
BTW, Jeff, you might want to put a feeder out. They’re very territorial and have the ferocity of a much, much larger animal. I’ve witness some fights over my feeder that go on for many minutes full of astonishing feats of aerobatics.
Good luck with Dipoto. As an Angels fan, I was excited by his initial presentation and philosophy, but the overall result was terrible: the Angels organization was in far worse shape when he left then when he arrived. The farm was even more depleted, the team was saddled with a couple of albatross contracts, and he even managed to screw up international signings by blowing his wad on Roberto Baldoquin.
Now it would be unfair to entirely blame “JeDi” for all Angelic woes. From what I understand, it was Angels owner Arte Moreno who wanted Pujols and Hamilton. And no one predicted that Albert would decline in an almost historically unprecedented way. But I would also argue that it’s a GM’s job to pull the owner away from the brink of oblivion, and he failed to do that with Hamilton. It is also the GM’s job to do the deep analysis that would have given a better projection as to how Pujols would perform in his 30s.
Anyhow, the weird thing about Dipoto is that I kind of liked most of his trades when they happened, but they almost invariably ended being worse than they initially seemed and that, at the end of the day–or his tenure as the Angels GM–the sum was worse than the parts.
I agree with everything you said, except the unlikelihood of a steep Pujols’ decline. Pujols was signed for his age 32-41 seasons after a year that saw his numbers decline significantly from the previous 10. Even worse, there was a chance his real age was even older.
Additionally, in the Trumbo 3-team deal with Arizona and Chicago, he essentially got Skaggs and Adam Eaton in return, yet flipped Eaton to Chicago for Hector Santiago.
Obviously, this is revisionist perspective, but if a GM takes significantly more L’s than W’s in individual moves in a span of 3-4 years, it’s fair to say he is not getting the job done.
Well, he did the Angels a heck of a service with Trout’s extension. But I’m not concerned about what happened in LA. We all know he was at least somewhat restricted with what he could do. What we know now, is that he has far more control.
So far, so good. The Mariners roster is pretty thick. Even the non-40 depth is considerably better than it was from just a year ago.
If you look at Pujols’ comparable players in terms of overall value through age 31, and then look at their performance after, Pujols is among the worst – I think along with Eddie Mathews and Ken Griffey Jr. So while I think decline should have been expected, Pujols basically took the worst possible path.
I think a more reasonable expectation would have been that he settled into a groove similar to 2011 for a few years, then dropped a half-step to 2012 level for a few years. But instead 2012 ended up being his best year as an Angel. I don’t think anyone would have expected that when the contract was signed.
But I think your last sentence there is exactly right: the end result has been overall negative for the Angels, in some ways devastatingly so.
Well, if Dipoto didn’t want to sign Hamilton or Pujols (or possibly even Wilson), maybe he was concerned about decline as much as he was with the salary commitment?
I won’t pretend to think I know that much about the Angels farm system at the time, but if the financial flexibility to get who he wanted wasn’t there after those deals, there was little choice than to trade from the farm.
One of the most impressive things for me with Dipoto in Seattle has been the turn-around of the Mariners’ developmental system. Dipoto brought in Andy McKay to implement a completely new approach to development. I have no idea what LA’s developmental issues might have been, other than a lack of talent, but I can’t help but wonder if there was more going on behind the scenes in that area as well.
Are you saying that the M’s farm system is in better shape than it was 2 yrs ago? From the outside it doesn’t really seem that way.
Nope. But by the time Dipoto took over at the end of the 2015 season, all of the M’s vaunted position prospects (Ackley, Montero, Smoak, Franklin, etc.) had already blown their chances to translate that performance to the majors, and Zunino/Miller weren’t looking great, either. 2015 was a black swan terrible year for the entire M’s minor league system. Dipoto hasn’t even been here for the decline. Whether or not the bounceback of 2016 (based largely on positivity and consistency) will translate into any minor league talent flowing up to the M’s remains to be seen, of course.
Two years ago, multiple top-ranked prospects took steps backwards. So yes, I do think the system is in better shape now.
Obviously Dipoto moved a lot of lower level talent, but he brought in upper-level talent as well as the major leaguers.
“…then they subtracted from Mallex Smith to add Drew Smyly.” Hahahaha–vintage Jeff!
Dipoto with LAA: 35 trades in 43 months
Dipoto with SEA: 35 trades in 16 months
If he keeps this up, by the time Dipoto’s on his fourth team he’ll be completing trades every other day.
Being cognizant of some mumblings about him denuding the Angels farm system, as expected I saw some reference to him doing the same to the Mariners. I had to think about that a bit because he has moved a fair amount of our farm talent, especially arms, which is an area of need for the organization. However he has brought a lot of pitching prospects, as well as MLB ready and experienced arms into the club so I’m not buying into he’s selling out our future for the present. There are some unrecognized pitching prospects left and a group not much talked about is his first draft players who have some good looking position players included. He’s created better depth among potential rotation and bullpen pieces, which is needed because we know the 5 initial starters are not all going stay that way all through the season. I love our bullpen; it was good last year and looks better for the coming campaign. Our defense has to be a top 10 group and our base runners are going to command some respect for the first time in too long a time.
It seems likely he believes the league as a whole is overvaluing prospects right now. Is he right? Can he figure out how to hold on to the right few who will actually enhance the major league team for cheap? Grade is definitely incomplete. It is interesting to note that, Cubs notwithstanding, pennant winning teams tend to be older than average. They aren’t normally dominated by young superstars at every position.
So in number of trades, how does Dipoto stack up against Trader Lane or some others from years past?