The Gerrit Cole Trade Has a Perception Problem
I suppose what I should say is that the Gerrit Cole trade has two perception problems. One, it’s clearly just a bad look for Pittsburgh. It’s generally a bad look when a major-league team has to trade away an established major-league talent, and with Cole and then Andrew McCutchen going out the door, it’s a twin reminder of how the Pirates failed to build on a tremendous run of success. I don’t know how much more the Pirates reasonably could’ve done, but there’s forever that lingering question regarding ownership’s commitment to winning. This is nothing new. It’s a reopening of wounds that never healed.
There’s also, though, another aspect. The Pirates have been heavily criticized for the return package they got for Cole from the Astros. I have no interest in trying to figure out whether the Pirates got the best package possible. I don’t know what else was truly on the table. Maybe more would’ve been available in July; maybe Cole’s stock would’ve dropped. All we know is what the Pirates got. My read of the consensus is that the Pirates didn’t get enough. But my read is also that the Astros have a little something to do with that. Specifically because the Astros are unusually good and deep.
Back at the winter meetings, there was a conversation I didn’t expect to have as often as I did. It was a conversation that revolved around teams with bad farm systems. Every farm system gets ranked. Great farm systems get ranked. Awful farm systems get ranked. There are, in some places, rankings of all the farm systems together. But there are also regular farm-system rankings, rankings of the top 10 prospects or rankings of the top 25 or 30 prospects within a given organization. These lists are available all over, and a recurring theme in conversation was that the best prospects in bad systems probably end up overrated. It’s not really their fault, and it would be a tough thing to control for. But in even the worst system imaginable, there’s still a best prospect, and a next-best prospect. The human mind is drawn to any number-one ranking. It can be hard to evaluate them within proper contexts.
The idea, more simply: The best Mariners prospects are probably overrated. The best Marlins prospects are probably overrated. They’re the best prospects from bad prospect pools, but we still can’t help but focus on names at the tops of lists. Does this make sense? It’s all speculative and unproven, but I see how it would work. And if you’re following along, I’d like to now suggest something similar, or opposite.
From the Astros’ side, the Cole trade has been widely embraced. And why wouldn’t it be? Cole isn’t as good as he’s looked before, but he’s fairly young and highly talented, and he’s an impact addition to a club that will be trying to defend a championship. Everyone loves landing an All-Star player, but even beyond that, the return package doesn’t hurt. I’m sure you’ve read this reasoning in a number of places. The Astros got Gerrit Cole, and they did so without losing a top prospect, and without losing anything of significant value from the major-league roster. Isn’t that always the dream? It’s typically the impossible dream. It’s something Astros fans get to celebrate, and it’s something Pirates fans can’t ignore.
From a certain perspective, the Pirates dealt their ace to the Astros, and they couldn’t get anyone important. You always want to be able to land someone important. A headliner. Given how we usually think of trades, if something looks good for one side, it can’t look so good for the other. I just find that this is an unusual situation. To put it as clearly as I can, I think the return package looks worse than it is because the Astros have too many good players. Joe Musgrove, Colin Moran, Michael Feliz, Jason Martin — they’re all valuable, they’re all potentially useful big-leaguers, but they didn’t mean much to the Astros, because the Astros are too stocked.
Musgrove was likely to pitch out of the Astros bullpen. He already started doing that in 2017. He would’ve been a regular Astros reliever in 2018, too, but he wouldn’t have been the closer, nor would he have been the primary setup man. For sure, when Musgrove started in 2017, he wasn’t great, but this is mostly the result of circumstances. The Astros’ rotation is so good and deep that, right now, even Brad Peacock seems ticketed for relief. There are just too many starters. Musgrove wasn’t likely to get an extended shot.
Feliz was likely to pitch out of the Astros bullpen. He’s more of a true reliever than Musgrove is, but Feliz was going to be somewhere low on the depth chart. Might not have made the team out of camp. Too much talent. As for Moran, he wasn’t about to replace Alex Bregman at third base. He also wasn’t about to replace Yuli Gurriel at first base. Similar to Musgrove, Moran was blocked, waiting for some kind of injury or under-performance. And finally, Martin has consistently hit in the minors, and he’s only 22, but he’s not Kyle Tucker, and he’s not Forrest Whitley. He’s not Derek Fisher. Martin hasn’t been on a whole lot of radars, because there have been too many other players to follow.
In context, the Astros were able to acquire Gerrit Cole without meaningfully hurting themselves. Yet that’s only the Astros’ context. Now the Pirates have four new players, and they’re going to be in different situations. If you just concentrate on the four players as they are, and forget about where they were in Houston, you can see how Pittsburgh would’ve emerged from this pretty satisfied.
Forget, even, how Cole hasn’t pitched like he did in 2015. I’m not even worried about that right now. Let’s start with Musgrove first. Musgrove is 25, with five years of team control. Last year, he showed he’s already a quality big-league reliever. But he should probably get another chance to start. Musgrove was dominant in Double-A and Triple-A. In limited major-league time as a starter, he has a bad 129 ERA-, but that comes with a 100 xFIP-, and you know which one of those is more reliable. According to Steamer, Musgrove projects as something like Michael Fulmer. It’s far too soon to write him off as a starting option, given the high-minors track record, and given Musgrove’s ability to throw consistent strikes. It’s hardly out of the question that Musgrove is a roughly average starter today. Could be more than that. He’s a Pirate for a while.
Moving on to Feliz, his projection is almost identical to that of, say, Raisel Iglesias. Feliz is 24, with four years of team control. While his big-league ERA- is a lousy 125, his xFIP- is a promising 74, and, again, you know which one of those is more likely to hold up. As a reliever lately, Feliz has generated strikeouts and walks at rates similar to Brad Hand. The velocity is real, and against the best competition around, Feliz has never struggled to miss bats. He doesn’t even have much of a platoon split. Feliz has yet to consistently avoid major damage in the majors, but the indicators are all encouraging. Feliz ought to step in as a weapon.
Moran? I wrote about Moran yesterday. He’s 25, with six years of team control. He’s to be considered something of a post-hype prospect, but before getting hurt in 2017, Moran’s profile improved greatly after he folded in a swing change, designed to hit more balls in the air. It’s a change that’s been attempted by dozens, if not hundreds of hitters, and while it doesn’t always work, Moran showed what was by far his career-best power. It’s perfectly sensible to question how much it might keep up, but as an average defensive third baseman, Moran should be a big-leaguer for the bulk of the season ahead. He can play right away, and the swing change gives him legitimate upside.
Martin is a lot further away. He’s 22, and he’s likely to go to Double-A. I don’t think of Martin the way I think of Musgrove, Feliz, and Moran. He might never reach the majors. But he’s been a successful minor-league hitter at each stop, and he’s another guy who’s worked to hit a lot more balls in the air after debuting as a professional as more of a ground-ball hitter. Martin could help in the majors in 2019. As a fourth piece goes, he could have a real future.
It’s undeniably true that the Astros are simply too loaded to try to make the most of these four players. Maybe not so much Martin, but in some way or another, Musgrove, Feliz, and Moran were going to be blocked in 2018. That made them easier to part with. But the Astros’ context should mean nothing, as far as the Pirates are concerned. It doesn’t matter to the Pirates that these players weren’t among the Astros’ headliners. It doesn’t matter to the Pirates that Colin Moran isn’t Alex Bregman. Here’s what matters to the Pirates: They lost two years of a good starting pitcher. They brought in a guy who could be a fine starting pitcher. They brought in a guy who could be a fine relief pitcher. They brought in a guy who could be a fine third baseman. And they brought in a guy who could be a fine future corner outfielder. Three of the players are ready to help right away, and they’re not blocked by nearly as much talent. In Pittsburgh, they’ll get their opportunities. Whether they flourish, I couldn’t tell you, but they deserve the chance. Just because these players were expendable for Houston doesn’t make them any less valuable to another, less-fortunate club.
Again, I don’t know if Neal Huntington did as well as possible. I don’t and can’t know that. I do know that I like this trade more and more for Pittsburgh, the more that I look at it. You can argue whether they should’ve focused on players who are even younger, maybe players with higher ceilings. Ceilings, though, are subjective, and mostly unknowable. The Pirates exchanged one big-leaguer for three. I don’t think it’s the step back it’s been interpreted as. That’s just mostly the fault of how good the Astros are.
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.
A form of analysis I have seen sometimes but think these kind of trades would benefit from is the one where the prospect guy looks at the players and says “This person is now the Pirates #2 prospect”
Musgrove and Feliz are no longer prospect eligible, but Moran is, and placing him within the Pirates’ system makes him a look a lot better than where he places within the Astros completely loaded system.
To this point:
I think it would be helpful if Fangraphs moved from a pure “prospect” ranking to one that including a more comprehensive look at an organization’s young players, without knocking them off the list if they’ve graduated to the big leagues.
Best assets <24 years old, for example. (I think Kevin Goldstein used to do this at BP a long time ago).
Telling me that Triston McKenzie is the Indians 2nd best minor leaguer informs me much less about the future of the club that reminding me that Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez are still 3-4 years younger than the average AAA player.
Moran seems to be perceived as the 3rd piece of the trade here, and he's about the #5 Astros prospect. (Per MLB.com). So lets assume that if Musgrave and Feliz hadn't gotten promoted <2 years ago, they'd rank ahead of him. Do you think Pirates fans might feel differently about this deal if the headline was "3 of Astros top 10 prospects" for 2 years of Cole? I do. Perception indeed.
Better *still* would be to give each guy on each of these lists some absolute value – so, to your point precisely, we can see how the #10 guy in Houston compares to the #3 guy in Pittsburgh.
(And yes, this is assuredly a lot of work and yes, it's extremely easy for me to sit back and lob these requests in from my couch. If you'd like any more ideas for labor-intensive projects that I won't contribute any labor to, I'm sure I can drum some up.)
BP still ends every organizational prospect report with a ‘top 10 talents 25 or under’ that is super duper useful because it makes teams that just graduated talent look great instead of barren.
Another thing the BP prospect guys do that I wish the FG guys did sometimes is give every player 2 ratings: Overall Future Potential (OFP), the upside rating, and Likely rating. There’s a difference between an OFP 70/likely 50 prospect and an OFP 60/likely 55 prospect.
The Pirates have to be more interested in the second kind of player for a lot of reasons Kiley explained yesterday.
In fairness to the FG guys, BP just does organizational top 10s, whereas FG reviews every prospect viewed to have a MLB future (FV40 or higher), which is why we get things like “NY Yankees top 35 prospects”, putting two grades on every player is a ton of extra work because they are already doing so many more players.
Kiley also used to do 50th percentile/70th percentile triple slash lines.
The problem is non of these prospects are on the list Sullivan never mentioned…..the Top 100 list. That’s the list that matters. Some teams don’t have anyone on those lists while others have several.
I don’t remember the last time I looked at team lists to rate prospects in value. If they can’t make a Top 100 list then they aren’t much.
The two most important pieces in this trade are no longer prospect elligible, but almost certainly would be ranked if they were (SP3 upside/SP4 downside MLB ready is a lock to be in the top 100).
That they have held their own against MLB competition is an advantage, not a hindrance.
We can look at past top 100 lists (I just looked at 2014-2017) to get an idea how those not-prospects-anymore players were considered recently. Basically, it’s not good.
Musgrove was rated int he top 100 once, at 86th best in 2016 by BA. MLB, Fangraphs and BP never considered him a top 100 prospect.
Feliz was never considered a top 100 prospect by any of those 4.
So while neither are eligible to count on top prospect lists, it’s unlikely they would have been considered for them in the first place, as their performance in the minors wasn’t arousing the attention of scouts.
Musgrove is an odd example for prospect lists. He ended 2015 with 45 innings in AA. Then after 2016 he wasn’t eligible for prospect lists because he’d thrown over 50 innings in the majors.
Musgrove was #32 in BA’s 2016 mid-season top 100. Perhaps coincidentally, Clint Frazier reached #21 on that same list, which I believe was his highest prospect rank at BA. Not a big difference there in highest ranking, or the timeframe for when they reached it.
Musgrove made two mid season top 50s BA, and I think BP in 2016
What’s the differentiating factor between Musgrove and, say, Jordan Montgomery (who never made a Top 100), after his first AAA stint?
If no longer eligible prospects were eligible, then these two would be nowhere near that list. That list would be the top 100 overall players in MLB.
This is just dumb, 100 is a completely arbitrary number and many, many top players never were ranked.
For what it’s worth – Musgrove and Feliz both appeared in the Fringe 5 in 2015. Musgrove did so 3 times (and once in the ‘Next Five’). Feliz did so once (and once in the ‘Next Five.)
I love that column and it’s whole point is to identify players who aren’t raked in top 100 prospect lists that could potentially be useful in the majors.
Plenty of hits (some massive ones) and misses on those lists as well.
Seems relevant to this discussion.
Kiley actually included a “best under 25,” including FV, back in the day.
I don’t hate the trade as a Bucs fan, but Moran is slotting in according to most places as the 4th or 5th prospect in the Bucs system. The highest I saw him in the Astros system was also 5th. It’s not like the Bucs are bereft of talent- Meadows, Keller, and Hayes all are consensus higher-regarded than Moran, while the shortstops (Newman and Tucker rank similar or higher, depending on your source).
As far as the trade itself, I think Feliz will be an absolutely dominant reliever, and Musgrove will be a Fine starter. Plus with Crick coming over in the Cutch trade, the Bucs have one of the better bullpens in the NL. Unfortunately, I think (and especially if the trade Harrison) they’re not going to score enough to make that bullpen worthwhile. Josh Bell should breakout, but who knows if Marte is merely a PED product, if Polanco will give a crap, and if Moran can get to the roughly .825 OPS I’ve seen that’s now expected of him. They built a tremendous position of strength at the least valuable position.
This is a great point which is why so many Astros fans were upset with them giving away Teoscar Hernandez for Francisco Liriano. Don’t let the fact that he has no spot with you overshadow his value to other teams.
Likewise, with this trade, I have a hard time visualizing how Houston comes out ahead on cumulative surplus value. Possibly if you discount back to present value.
The bigger problem is that none of these players have any chance of becoming stars. The Pirates are settling for cheap mediocrities. They don’t want to be too bad, but they don’t want to spend enough to win. It’s like the drive for 75 all over again.
I have been downvoted for saying the exact thing. The article implies, I read could be three times, that the three players the Pirates received have to play at their 80th percentile to be anything more than second division fodder. These are the kind of deals that make 75 wins look like succcess.
Gerrit Cole also hasn’t been a star for a few years
Neither has McCutchen. Not coincidentally, the Pirates have been under .500 since they stopped being stars.
When the Pirates won 98 games they got 5 WAR from McCutchen, and 4.5 WAR from Cole. The need to find a couple of similarly good players to get back to the playoffs.
No team is ever successful by amassing a horde of 2 win players. Tha’s the recipe for perennial 75-80 win teams.
“The need to find a couple of similarly good players to get back to the playoffs.”
Uhm… why? Evidence suggests the exact opposite.
Re: https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/evaluating-talent-distribution-on-rosters/
The most reliable way to get 5 win talent on your roster is to do what the Cardinals did; deal from depth for Ozuna.
Stockpiling depth lets you do that. Having a bunch of 2 win players isn’t bad; its necessary to put yourself in a position where adding a star, or having someone break out into a star (Colin Moran could go all Chris Taylor with the swing change, for example) puts you over the line.
if you have a bunch of 0s in your lineup, it doens’t matter how good your stars are (see SFG). Posey and Bumgarner could have had 8 win seasons last year and they’d still have been a below-500 team due to the huge amount of zeros they rolled out there.
I really don’t think we can count on teams trading away 4-5 win players because they’ve mismanaged their team, and we especially can’t count on your team being the high bidder if all you can offer is an army of 2-win players.
Remember, the Cardinals didn’t trade any of their current 2 win players. They traded two toolsy, high-ceiling prospects. (And, I might add, we still ripped the Marlins for not getting enough.) If we’re taking any lesson out of the Ozuna trade, it is that those are the players you should amass if you want to trade for a 5-win player.
The Cardinals traded guys with no ceiling whatsoever. The Marlins got crap for Ozuna and that’s all St. Louis ever deals away.
If you believe that (which the Marlins clearly did not), then I’ll refer you to the “you can’t count on the Marlins to deal away good players for iffy prospects” part of the story.
I think the really bad assumption here is that we know a player’s ceiling with any certainty.
Look at current 4+ win players – many of them would have been dismissed as low-ceiling guys. Sometimes those guys just get better.
Alcantara is a “toolsy, high-ceiling prospect”, but he’s going to be a reliever. Yet, you dismiss Joe Musgrove as a “good reliever….”
Moran is just as valuable as Sierra, if not more.
And Ozuna is an ascending, young player coming off a superstar-caliber year, while Cole has been average to above average the last couple of years.
Yeah, but I’m not arguing the Pirates got a worse deal than the Marlins. They definitely did better. But that’s a pretty low bar to clear.
Furthermore, the reason why the Pirates cleared the “Marlins bar” is not because the Marlins had an unusual strategy. It is a very common strategy. If you want a top player, you trade high-ceiling prospects for them.
The reason why the Pirates cleared the “Marlins bar” is because the Marlins are bad at evaluating talent.
…you do understand that Cole and Ozuna are exactly the same age, right?
While they have chosen not to do so, the Cardinals talent consolidating for Donaldson was widely discussed (and arguably the Jays should have made that kind of move), similarly we frequently argue that the O’s should have made Machado more available for that kind of trade.
If anything, the lack of those kinds of players being available for these deals is evidence of their own teams mismanagement.
There will always be great players on teams that aren’t likely to be competitive with only a couple years of control left, and those are the players you can target with your depth.
It was not widely discussed, it was discussed here. And whatever the merits from the Blue Jays side, they did not agree to it. Why? Because generally teams do not trade a five win player for a couple of two win players. If they are rebuilding they want prospects, if they are contending they want to keep the five win guy.
If the Pirates want a five win player they will probably need to include a Mitch Keller type. A two win version of Colin Moran is not going to move the needle.
This is, by the way, not too relevant to whether the package the Pirates got was good. It does mean that Neal Huntington cannot count on trading two win guys for a star
If Bumgarner managed an 8 win season, 100 fewer innings would have been pitched by “zeroes.”
They won 65 games.
And most of their negative WAR and 0 WAR contributions were from position players. Bumgarner is better than the people who filled in for him, but they weren’t useless.
As Grant Brisbee is fond of pointing out, if you subtract Brandon Belt (which you should, because he spent most of his time at first base), the players the Giants played in all 3 outfield positions last year combined for -6.1 wins above replacement. -6.1!
Replacing all 3 of them with league average players is a TWELVE WIN swing. Add in 3B which was similarly awful and the swing is even larger.
This notion that 2 WAR types are not needed to build elite teams is absurd. Cubs just paid 28M a year for Chatwood, Morrow, and Duensing, whom collectively project to provide 3-3.3 WAR in 2018.
That doesn’t feel like a fair statement at all. From 2015-2017 Cole ranks 19th in FIP-. If you go by WAR, he ranks 16th among SP during that time. He had a pretty solid 2017, he was hurt in 2016 but was on pace for 3.8 WAR in 2016 had he not been injured, and had a great 2015.
Seems like there might be a flaw in the perception of how good Cole is.
And as for the trade, the issue might be that the Pirates didn’t get the prospects with the most upside. We know the Yanks offered Frazier, and if you believe he has the most upside compared to any of the guys the Pirates got, than the issue is one that the Pirates chose depth/quantity over upside.
Exactly.
People who prefer Frazier to Musgrove as the 55 FV anchor of a trade package don’t have a problem with “perception.”
They have a problem with the fundamental approach to the trade.
An even bigger problem, I think, is the utter lack of ability of fans, and even teams themselves, to accurately categorize prospects and young players as “high upside,” “high floor,” or “no chance of becoming a star.”
So many examples help show this is a meaningless distinction, from Matt Carpenter to Justin Turner to Jose Altuve to Jose Ramirez to Corey Kluber and on and on and on.
Moreover, it’s not even useful here. Joe Musgrove is 6’5″, touches 98, was a former 1st RD draft pick, and reached #32 on BA’s top 100 in the mid-season 2016 list. That’s not the definition of “lacking upside.” Colin Moran was a top ten 1st Rd pick, made a BA top 100, and has recently made a well-publicized approach and swing change to unlock power. Michael Feliz touches 100, and has a 13 K/9 and 74 xFIP- since being promoted in 2015.
It’s a lazy, uninformed narrative.
You forgot “in the bullpen” when talking about Musgrove’s velocity.
And “in Fresno, as a 25 year old” when talking about Moran’s power.
And you forgot that the regression involved in xFIP only considers Feliz’s 37% GB rate…not his 33.8% Hard Hit%.
I didn’t forget that. The context of my comment is “upside,” not what their overall risks are. Hell, for every purported “high upside” player in the minors, there’s significant risk they never even reach the majors, unlike Musgrove, Moran, and Feliz.
And my point is that using an entirely normal velocity uptick in one-inning relief as evidence of untapped physical “upside” is intellectually dishonest.
If Musgrove produces 5 WAR the next two years and Cole produces 6, do we call this a win for the Pirates since they got additional years and players? I do.
I think the biggest turn off for the public is the age of the prospects. Moran and Musgrove have some talent but they are old. Actually the two are older than bryce Harper, most 25 year old prospects are AAAA players.
However with the data driven player development we are seeing more late breakouts. Many late breakout players only have a few good years (like many of the cards guys) but some also become good for a long time like bautista.
Still of course ideally you want 22 year old prospects at AAA and not late bloomers.
Part of Jeff’s point is you have no idea if these guys are good enough to put up good results over a full MLB season because the Astros have so many already-great players they dont have to let them find out.
That certainly wasn’t the case for Feliz and Musgrove. It is possible that the Astros didn’t have the patience to let them work through their growing pains and maybe they’d do better on a team without eyes on the world series, but they were dying for rotation and bullpen help and they just weren’t getting it from those guys.
Yeah, you’re just flat wrong. Musgrove has a nearly identical set of projections to Cole, and Feliz’s FIP (which, as you know, is much more predictive than RA/9) was among the 30 best relief pitchers in baseball (74 FIP-)
If Feliz had had results that matched his peripherals he’d have been absolutely untouchable. The Pirates need to find their breakouts before they’ve broken; no one thought anything of Felipe Rivero, either, but he was immediately good and there were plenty of reasons in retrospect to explain why that happened.
There are two ways to trade up into talent: trade for tools that are 19 and haven’t translated to production, and hope, and trade for peripherals that haven’t yet been supported by results and trust the underlying skill. We know FIP is a more predictive statistic than RA/9, it is irrational to focus on Feliz’s results and not his underlying performance.
In fact, I lied: Musgrove’s projection is better than Cole’s, better enough to accumulate an extra 0.1 WAR despite a projected 20 less IP (projections probably haven’t been re-run for their new parks, either, which will help Musgrove and hurt Cole).
Steamer, by far the more heavily regressing of the two projection systems, projects Musgrove for a FIP under 4.00 as a starting pitcher.
“No one thought anything of Felipe Rivero”…
What? That’s not true at all.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-best-buys-of-the-trade-deadline/#!parentId=5130291
Cameron called him a quality young lefty RP.
At the time people didn’t like the return because the Cubs ridiculously overpaid for Chapman, which made this deal look light in comparison. But nobody thought Rivero was a poor player, or had limited upside. Which is different from the Cole trade, where there is a concern about the upside of the players received (as well as compared to the upside of players we know were actually offered by other teams).
I’d have to seriously question Steamer thinking Musgrove would have a sub 4 ERA as a SP given his massive splits between SP/RP this season.
The fact that the trade was called the second best trade of the trade deadline in favor of the Nationals says a lot about something, although I’m not sure exactly what.
As it stands, I expected the deal to break even for the Pirates by the end of year 1 at the time when it was made; turns out it broke even by May 1.
You are not remembering correctly. Musgrove failed as a starter. Feliz failed as a reliever. The Astros couldn’t wait for them to work through the growing pains. The projections are forward looking, not backward looking.
We have no idea if they are good enough over a full season, but not because the Astros couldn’t use them. It was because the Astros couldn’t wait for them to come around.
The Pirates will likely have more patience. They can give them a longer run, but let’s not erase the story of the Astros season. If they were ready to go at the ASG the Astros season would have been very different.
The issue with this argument, of course, is that no one should give a flying fuck about Steamer projections based on 135 career IP as a starter.
The Steamer projection is not based on just his 135 career IP as a starter in the majors; it’s based on his entire major and minor league record. And if you’re saying that Musgrove doesn’t have enough of a major league track record to make any projection of his future worth paying attention to, then we’re left to just throw up our hands and say that we have no idea what Pittsburgh got in the deal; it’s just four completely unknown quantities.
Oh. I’m saying that he doesn’t have enough of a major league track record to make any statistical projection of his future, using a model solely calibrated for players with MLB track records, worth paying attention to.
Luckily, we have a ton of info, and don’t have to pretend that a Steamer projection for someone with next to no MLB track record is somehow inviolate (or, for that matter, at all useful)!
If the projections are to be believed, why isn’t everyone calling this trade a massive overpay by Houston? If Musgrove is better than Cole right now and the Astros just traded 5 years of him, PLUS Feliz, PLUS Moran, PLUS Martin for 2 years of Cole, why hasn’t every article on Fangraphs about the trade been blasting Luhnow for making the most objectively terrible trade since the Shelby Miller deal?
The answer is that the projections are absolutely ludicrous. They are so ludicrous that Fangraphs writers do not even believe them. If Musgrove is better than Cole and comparable to Fulmer, and Feliz is as good Raisel Iglesias, then the Astros just made one of the worst trades on paper than anyone has ever seen. Common sense says that is not true.
Their age isnt particularly relevant, they all come with 5-6 years of control and it isn’t like the team is going to attempt to control them past that point (in fact, the team may not control them for that entire period)
It doesn’t matter if the player is 30 when his team control is up instead of 25 if you don’t intend for him to be on your team after those years are over anyway.
Agree in part, disagree in part.
If a guy has climbed to the top of the minors and is making his debut at age 22, there is a high likelihood he’s going to get even better, and by age 25 or 27 he’ll be a star, whereas if a guy is making his debut at 25, there’s something like a 1/3 chance he’s already peaked. Yes, either way you’re getting six years worth of player, but the former has more upside.
Yup. A 22 year old with the exact same track record as Musgrove would be a significantly better prospect.
It does matter if you are banking on improvement. Team control and slope of improvement are correlated because of age, but are not the same.
I think fans definitely feel the same, where they’d much rather take a slightly lesser prospect from a team that is at least dealing from the tippy top. I know I felt that way about the Yankees trades of Miller and Chapman in 2016. Miller had more value and seemed like the perfect fit trade-wise with the Cubs. But I was irritated that the Cubs wouldn’t deal Schwarber (back when he had more perceived value than Torres) and was happy with the way the deals went. Removing the fact that Chapman went for a great return to the Cubs, I felt like Frazier+Sheffield was fair from the Indians because you knew it hurt the Indians. That’s the real optics need – if you’re dealing a big chip you need (as a fan) to see the other side hurt as well.
“I think fans definitely feel the same, where they’d much rather take a slightly lesser prospect from a team that is at least dealing from the tippy top.”
1) As a practical matter, this is probably true.
2) Many fans are dumb. This is an example.
Good post and I agree that the Pirates got, at the very least, a decent package: four future major leaguers for a former ace with two more years of club control, who now looks like a #3. Not so bad. This gives the Pirates a lot of solid depth to work with, even if it doesn’t yield them a star.
But solid depth isn’t getting them to the playoffs. They need a couple of stars to replace McCutchen and Cole.
But the Astros and Giants aren’t going to give up stars with 6 years of control for stars with 2 and 1, respectively, years of control. Of course every team wants a star in return.
But they weren’t going to get “a couple stars”. Not with McCutchen and Cole as the trade pieces. With McCutchen, there is very little surplus value. He’s worth maybe $20MM for the year – so maybe $5M in surplus. That gets you next to nothing.
Cole’s surplus is probably somewhere between $25M and 30M over the next 2 years. That’s great but it’s not superstar great. Your talking about a 50 FV type talent. Could turn out to be something special but far from guaranteed.
I think the biggest issue with the perception is the RUMORED pieces. With the rumors, it felt like the Pirates might land a few top-flight prospects from strong farm systems. I’m sure Pirates fans got their hopes up only to see them dashed.
McCutchen and Cole are worth more than their current contracts suggest because they can both be expected to warrant qualifying offers – or not if things go south.
It’s also been confirmed that Frazier was on the table.
People who prefer a hypothetical Frazier/McKinney/Holder (or any of the Yanks’ future setup men in AAA) package aren’t doing so because of “perception.”
They just want at least one upside play to balance the probability guys in the package.
Things is the Pitates would have been far better off holding on to Cole and getting a Sonny Gray package at the TD. Give Cole half a season to redeem himself. Unless they felt there is a physical issue and his value could tank. There just was no compelling reason to accept a nothing package like that. It’s like rebuilding with hay or mud.
Musgrove, Moran and Feliz are all former top 100 prospects. It’s far from a nothing package.
But supposedly the Yankees were willing to offer Clint Frazier, Chance Adams, and Domingo Acevedo. That seems to me to be an objectively better package than what the Astros offered.
Yankees were willing to give up Frazier or Adams, but not both.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/01/more-reaction-fallout-to-the-gerrit-cole-trade.html
When was Feliz ever rated by anyone in the top 100 prospects?
With Musgrove, BA once rated him in the top 100 (#86) in his six seasons in the minors. BP, MLB.com and Fangraphs never did.
Neither of them can be considered former top 100 prospects.
Moran was highly regarded. But that was 4 years ago. That’s eons ago for a prospect.
1) Sonny Gray package. Who’s to say this isn’t a decent, if not almost as good, package?
2) This was far from a nothing package. Did you read the article?
This is definitely not as good a package as the Sonny Gray one. Although given how Gray was pitching, the fact that Gray was traded at the deadline, and that Cole was coming off his worst year, it’s possible to rationalize why there was a difference.
Gray also had an extra half of a year control, and offered 3 postseasons of control rather than 2.
And Fowler and Kaprelian were damaged goods, health-wise.
The latter probably mattered more than the former, but yes. That too.
A torn patellar tendon is bad, bad shit.
That’s what destroyed Victor Cruz’s career.
Literally every prospect evaluator “is to say” that a package of 3 high upside 50 FVs is better than this package.
Very good article, Jeff. If we’re willing to entertain the notion that Musgrove can carry his velocity bump (94mph) and 50% GB rate from the bullpen last year into a starting role this season, it’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that he could rival the same mid 3’s ERA and K/BB rates the Pirates might have expected out of Cole. Add in his 5 years of team control, along with the other useful players they got, and (contrary to popular belief) the Pirates might have done pretty okay here.
Very few pitchers can sustain the same velocity in the rotation as in the pen. That’s why it’s so relatively easy to pitch in relief.
Good point. Carrasco is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
If the projections are to be believed, then Jeff Luhnow just made one of the stupidest trades in recent memory. Yet no Fangraphs writers are willing to say that because it is so far removed from common sense that it discredits the projections used on their site. Five years of Michael Fulmer-level production, four years of Raisel Iglesias-level production, and twelve combined years of whatever Moran and Martin turn out to be for two years of Michael Fulmer-level production is a horribly, awfully, terribly one-sided trade in favor of Pittsburgh. So why isn’t anyone lambasting the Astros for making this trade? Because common sense says those steamer projections are just plain wrong.
I don’t think anybody on this site has been harder on the Pirates than I have been over these two trades. Comparing them with recent deals for proven major leaguers is embarrassing to the Pirates. Two months of Chapman for Gleybar Torres, the very valuable Adam Warren, Billy McKinney and another lottery ticket is the all-time heist, even if the Cubs won the WS. The Miller trade was fair but both Sheffield and Frazier were top-tier prospects. How did the Yankees get all those top tier prospects for similar players when the Pirates got a post-hype bust, a middling pitcher, a pitcher who posted a -0.5 bWAR in 2017 and a throw-in in one deal and another post-hype bust and another low-tier prospect in the other one. If two months of Chapman can return what the Yankees got, how can one year of a great player, not what he once was, but still very good, be worth so little. No wonder almost every Pirate fan is irate.
I am a Pirates fan who 1) is not irate but 2) is actually rather pleased with the return and 3) evaluates trades in a vacuum instead of compared to a specific deal that was considered an overpay at the time.
It’s a different marketplace now. Hard to compare trades without considering context.
If you truly want to compare trades (which you shouldn’t, not across positions and skill sets and time)…
Chapman and Miller were two of the top three or four relievers in baseball, right as teams began to deeply value good relievers. Plus, both were on great, cheap contracts relative to their production.
I might have missed it, but I don’t recall the Pirates trading a top four asset with an incredible contract at a position that is in high demand.
Also, Miller and Chapman were traded for when relievers are most valuable: at the trade deadline to high end playoff teams that needed what they could provide (and lo, both pitched in the World Series).
And further, both players were occupying the same niche and position in the same market where demand for their services was high, which is why they were overpaid for.
The Cubs almost certainly traded too much for Chapman. Expecting the Pirates to wait for that kind of deal means letting Cole walk in FA because the odds of another team making that kind of mistake are minimal.
Supposedly the Yankees offered Pittsburgh Clint Frazier, Chance Adams, and Domingo Acevedo. I just don’t see how the Astros’ package was superior to that.
There is no evidence anywhere that that was what was offered. To the contrary, MLBTR had a piece that emphasized that the Yankees were willing to part with EITHER Frazier or Adams, but not both, and not Andujar.
The market a year and a half ago =/= the market now.
You know who else is post-hype?
Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole.
You know who else is a middling pitcher?
Gerrit Cole.
The Chapman and Miller trades were insane, and you can’t expect people to keep making insane trades in your favor.
In the end this makes the only important point: if Cole and McCutchen were, in 2016 and 2017, what they were in 2015, these trades would look different, and probably wouldn’t have happened at all. It is true that the Pirates management is committed to spending less money than a fan would hope. It is also true that the Pirates underperformed in 2016 and 2017 – in 2016 this was significantly the responsibility of Cole and McCutchen in particular (yes I know Cole was injured), in 2017 less so, but either way if Cole wins/is close to Cy Young, McCutchen wins/is close to MVP, and anything at all breaks different with Kang, Marte, Polanco, hell Glasnow who great things were expected of, the Pirates win 88-90 both years, make the playoffs, maybe even compete with the 2017 version of the Cubs, and WE ARE NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION, maybe 2018 is even the year things roll just right for the Pirates. Cole and McCutchen are gone for good-not-great packages because they aren’t what we hoped they were, at least not these past two years, maybe not ever.
While Musgrove is a guy who might be as good as the “middling, post-hype” version of Cole…if everything goes well, and he manages to stick in the rotation.
I don’t know why you are falsely representing the Steamer forecast as being “if everything goes well”. That’s not how projections work.
Do you have some sort of evidence of a bias in the projection system?
It looks like the Steamer projection is forecasting rate performance based on last year’s bullpen stint but for a starting pitcher. This may not be what Steamer is basing this on but that is how it looks.
It may look that way, but I’d be shocked if that’s the case. Equating bullpen performance with starting performance would be an awfully elementary mistake for a professional, public projection system like Steamer to make.
Maybe they think, like that kid above, that Musgrove touching 98 as a one-inning reliever “represents” an uptick in stuff?
Remember, Steamer doesn’t actually have any statistically significant data to build its projection off of, currently.
There’s a reason no one takes its projections seriously until a player has enough of a sample size to establish a statistical baseline.
Oh, projections based on 135 career IP as a starter don’t “work” in general.
They straddle the line between “meaningless” and “actively misleading.”
Disagree. Since he’s debuted in 2013, he’s been in the top 30 pitchers in many rate stats. He’s a pretty good pitcher.
What the Chapman trade netted for two months of him was a huge outlier even for a trade deadline deal. It was badly panned as an overpay at the time by writers at this site and Dan Szymborski.
It was also panned as an overpay relative to the Miller return, since Miller came with 2.5 years of control.
That trade looks even worse for the Cubs now than it did at the time since (1) Torres, while a top prospect at the time, in 2017 promptly hit better as a 20 year old in AA ball than he ever had in A ball or A advanced ball and (2) Warren returned to form in 2017 after a half-season with the Cubs where he was below replacement level.
You’re going to be disappointed with almost all returns for an established player in an offseason trade if you compare them to the return that Miller got as a high-end reliever at a trade deadline where there was a robust market for relievers.
And you should probably just forget that the Chapman trade ever happened based on how lopsided it looks right now. The Cubs went 108 years between World Series victories, and it may be another 108 years before we ever see another baseball trade like that one.
If you look at Moran as the biggest feature, he adds approximately nothing to the 2018 team. He is taking at bats from David Freese, S Rod and Frazier. His improvement over these ok guys is almost certainly negligible and possibly negative. Since none of these players has any trade value, the most likely outcome is they are underutilized assets all year. Trading Harrison would still not fully clear the log jam – odds are he also has zero trade value and will still be on the team or his value to the Pirates is squandered in a giveaway to justify the Moran addition.
As to projections that Cole is only modestly better than Musgrove, one has to assume that the Astros are not morons and therefore have a very different opinion.
The Pirates do not have a shortage of decent major leaguers, they have a complete lack of excellent major leaguers. Trading their two borderline stars (possibly as a package to an NL West team) could have given them at least one possible future star, but for some reason this was not their focus.
Clearly the Pirates have players that would bring significantly more in talent than what they got for Cole and McCutchen; Felipe Rivero, Gregory Polanco, even Starling Marte and Jameson Taillon. Bell, Glasnow, and Keller could be huge trade assets by next off-season.
Are Rivero, Polanco, and Marte just decent? Do Bell, Taillon, Glasnow, and Keller not have the upside to be more than decent?
If the Pirates wanted to blow it up, they could, and they would get elite minor league talent in return.
Even with an optimistic view of the players you listed, the Pirates best hitter would be the…5th best hitter on the Cardinals and certainly no better than 3rd or 4th on the Cubs. They do not have a CMart or Quintana. This is a ton of ground to make up.
This key issue is they already have decent depth guys and do have several worthy prospects coming soon, so the marginal value of these added “depth guys” to the Pirates is extremely questionable, and on their own they will have almost no trade value to the Pirates when they end up blocking someone better.
It’s easy to dismiss 2-win players but they cost 12M-16M per year in free agency, so getting that production for the minimum is insanely valuable to a franchise fielding a 110-120M budget.
The Cubs have superstars, yet they also value 2-2.5 WAR players, the very guys you rail against. They just paid Chatwood, Morrow, and Duensing 30M a year combined. If the Pirates can get those types for 600k each, they’ve created a lot of value.
They are fine players. They can have value in some contexts. But they are not pivotal or even all that useful to the current Pirates. When they are traded away to a contender it is usually a salary dump.
A two win center fielder would clearly help the Giants. A two win catcher could help the Rockies. A two win swing man could help the Astros as an insurance starter and power reliever…which means they probably didn’t just trade one away. No two win player at any position is making a difference for the Pirates this year or next – they are not in the same boat.
Pirates…boat…good times.
The Pirates last year had only two position players exceed 2 WAR, and only two more were on a pace of 2 WAR per 600 PA. There are plenty of positions where a two win player would make a huge difference for the Pirates.
“Would have” seems like a more operative term, as they just traded away two of the guys who put them in a position for average players to make them relevant.
And they just traded one of them. So how’s that help today’s team that will stay in contention according to the GM?
“No two win player at any position is making a difference for the Pirates this year or next – they are not in the same boat.”
Even if that’s the case – and Parv makes a good case that it’s not – that’s why the Pirates traded for players with 4 to 6 remaining years of team control.
Yes, but they’re only useful if you have stars to go with it. A few four win players. Other than possibly Marte, anyone on the Pirates fit that bill?
My big problem is management seems to think they can contend by subtracting their best pitcher and hitter from a 75 win team. How’s that supposed to work exactly? Sure they should get some improvement with a full season of Marte and gains by Bell/JT. But counting on a healthy and productive Polanco is a poor plan. Counting on back end type starters like Williams and Kuhl to improve is over optimistic. And how can you count on Glasnow (to say nothing of FG’s laughably sunny projections for him after his nightmare 2017) at all?
In short, I don’t see this team as awful, but not contenders. Given Cole’s and Cutch’s downturns, I’ve accepted that guys like Whitley aren’t on the table. But dig deeper for higher upside into Houston’s system then, at the lower levels. Why not guys like Celestino and Nova? Small market teams need to hit on stars, and if big teams like the Astros won’t trade star prospects, then the Pirates need to find the low minors guys before they bust out. This return doesn’t do that. At all.
you underestimate Martin’s talent.
YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY POOWWWEERRRRRR
My rule of thumb, rightly or wrongly, is whether the headliner has the potential to be as good as the guy traded. With Jose Quintana – Eloy Jimenez the answer was certainly “YES”. Same with Sonny Gray – Dustin Fowler/Jorge Mateo. With only two years of control, a potential 4 Win high minors player may be unavailable. I’d rather have seen the Pirates get someone farther away and with more upside than guys like Moran, Musgrove and Feliz who are very likely to top out around 2 WAR, and, outside of Musgrove probably won’t get there. Guys like the ones they got should be available in July or even next winter. I didn’t see the great risk in holding out longer.
Also this “years of control” thing for Moran and Feliz seems overblown to me because I see a very low likelihood that they will actually be useful that long. You could have 100 years control over them, but they’re still probably only good for 2-3 years of 1-2 WAR production in an optimistic scenario.
Player A: 3.92 ERA/3.90 FIP/3.91 xFIP/3.1 fWAR
Player B:4.26/4.08/3.81/3.1
Player B was Cole
Player A was…
Mike Leake. I guaruntee you that Musgrove alone has the potential to be Mike Leake. Yes, I’m cherrypicking Cole’s worst season, but my point is that Cole isn’t a surefire stud.
Yes…if all goes well, Musgrove does have the potential to be as good as Cole was in the very worst season of his career!
…is that a selling point?
“My rule of thumb, rightly or wrongly, is whether the headliner has the potential to be as good as the guy traded.”
My answer to that is wrongly. That’s a silly way to evaluate trades without considering years of control and contract of the established player traded away, as well as distance to the majors (which in part means bust potential) of the headlining prospect acquired.
As for the risk of holding out longer: the risk with Cole, like almost any pitcher, is that he blows out his elbow sometime early in the season and needs TJ. At that point, with a year of recovery and rehab time and the expectation that a pitcher is less effective his first year back from TJ, Cole’s trade value craters to close to zero.
What’s the chance of Cole blowing out his elbow or suffering some other serious arm injury? It’s not a probability, but it’s not negligible, and I’d say that it’s better than the odds that the “farther away and with more upside” prospects potentially available for Cole now actually turn into more valuable major league players than guys like Moran, Musgrove, and Feliz.
Yeah, the main argument against this trade is that Frazier+Spare Parts>The Musgrove+Spare Parts package the Pirates opted for.
I mean sure, if you just characterize all the secondary pieces in both offers as “spare parts” and only look at Musgrove vs Frazier, they made a bad decision. But that’s not really how major league front offices evaluate trades.
We would have to (and won’t get to) see the full Yankees package to properly evaluate Huntington’s decision-making, here.
But I feel very comfortable calling a hard-throwing reliever who gives up a ton of hard-hit fly balls, a tweener 4th OF and a 25 year old 3B who became roughly equivalent to a 24 year old, pre-swing change Yonder Alonso after “unlocking his power,” as spare parts.
I think an equivalent Yankees assemblage of secondary pieces would look something like Holder, Solak/Cave and Billy McKinney.
But other teams have that risk too. What if they hang onto Cole, he rebounds, and some contenders’ rotation gets hammered by injury?
“This was a perfect storm of a trade for both sides. The players in this deal have the benefit of potentially gaining significant value in time, but only if they get to actually occupy a roster spot and play (the Pirates’ haul, that is).
The Astros did not really have the roster spots to invest in these players’ values going up and had incentive to consolidate their major-league ready talent into fewer roster spots, even if it meant giving up more value by the book than they would have to via minor league prospects (i.e.: Colin Moran has little actual on-field value to them)
In essence, the Pirates acted upon this by (1) having the necessary player that effectively consolidates the Astros’ talent on-hand and (2) the roster spots to invest in the exchanged players so that they can actually realize the benefit if they do increase in value later on.
That’s why I think this was just a great baseball trade executed by two high-level thinking front offices that valued things according to their own personal situation, not a universal standard.”
This is a copy and paste from yesterday that I wrote on Kiley’s post, but it suits this one perfectly. The Astros major league depth creates opportunities for franchises to get excess major league value when it tries to consolidate that depth.
Every team in baseball has the roster spots for Michael Fulmer and Raisel Iglesias. The fact that Houston traded five years of Musgrove and four years of Feliz for two years of Cole makes one of the following two assertions inevitable: Either (1) the Astros front office is incredibly stupid and Steamer projections are significantly more well-informed than the Astros’ internal player valuations, or (2) the Steamer projections for Musgrove and Feliz are ridiculously optimistic.
When I read that title I thought for a moment I was reading theringer for a second. I swear every other post on theringer has this headline.
On topic, speaking as an Astros fan who have regularly followed Astros prospects over the years, I can definitely sayI was at one points really excited for Moran, Musgrove, and Feliz who all were at some point highly touted in a legit top 3ish farm system.
I can’t say if their lack of immediate success in the big leagues (or in the case of Moran an unfortunate injury in his cup of tea up called up) were mostly because they were exposed or if it’s typical young players finding their ways. I know Musgrove was especially infuriating to watch this season as a starter, and one of many major concerns that led to Ludnow trading for Verlander. And he wasn’t really used much in the postseason either. So despite his limited success out of the pen in the regular season, Hinch clearly thought he had better options (and he did, so maybe again I’m falling into this trap of the Astros simply being too talented).
In some ways this is also kind of a buy low for the Pirates probably, because even Astros fans, and fans are generally much more hyped on their own prospects than others, are not really enamored with any of these guys.
I wrote about this Jeff, the return was solid, Musgrove projections look really good, there’s also a reason ehy the Yankees have been quick to pit Frazier in all trade talks, Hicks is good, but if they had Acuna it’d be a different conversation, some red flags with Clint
…are the “red flags” that he’s not a 19 year old stud who’s a consensus top 3 prospect in all of baseball?
Or are they that he’s not a CF, and therefore has nothing to do with Hicks, but is instead blocked by Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge?
Your own projection systems not only have Musgrove as the better pitcher in the future, they also think he is better in 2018.
He didn’t mention that because he knows better than to give any credence to computer projections of players with 135 career starting innings.
Than why did he even mention them? Those projections are absolutely ridiculous and if they are taken at face value this trade is probably even worse than the Shelby Miller deal.
I think the Pirate fans will be happy with this. These are good players. Just no room at the Astros. I really hope Musgrove becomes a TOR starter. Good guy.
I think it is possible that yes, fans see that the Astros gave up their 9th best prospect, a good bullpen for the Astros, a not-so-good bullpen piece for the Astros, and a guy who wasn’t protected in the Rule 5 and think the Pirates got a raw deal.
I also think it is possible that some people are willing to give Neal Huntington the benefit of the doubt because of the Melancon-Rivero trade last year. That trade was panned by just about everyone last year, but it turned out to be a great trade.
In fact, I would argue that both of them are true, and that it is playing out in various corners across the news media.
Now, when he trades Cole for Musgrove and Moran and Feliz it is easy to think “Well, if Musgrove works with Ray Searage and uses his height and command he could be a good groundball starter, as good as Cole was last year.” And then, “Moran broke out last year and could be a really good hitter.” And then, “Feliz is kind of like Rivero, maybe they could turn him into their setup guy.”
It is just way easier to take the glass-is-half full on all these guys because we think if Neal Huntington did it, there must be a good reason for it. I think that is potentially correct, since Neal Huntington is definitely a better GM than anyone I’ve seen comment on this trade.
But if we ignore Neal Huntington, we see a good reliever who couldn’t hack it as a starter despite the Astros desperately needing someone, a fringy reliever who might be out of the league before his arb years are up, and a post-hype prospect who did well at AAA when he was 25. All of these are plausible outcomes, and taking the over on every single one of the young guys doesn’t seem right either.
It seems plausible that a person’s overall attitude towards the Pirates front office would their evaluation of this trade. Huntington is a pretty polarizing GM right now…Pirate fans really don’t like him (and really hate this trade), but he’s still pretty well respected at sites like this.
Or, that person’s overall attitude towards certain Pirates fans.
I think Huntington is one of the best, and so I am much more willing to hedge my bets here.
The thing I like about this trade (which I haven’t talked about much because it everyone here has covered that angle pretty well) is that if either Moran or Musgrove hits the ceiling everyone is talking about the deal looks good because the other one is very likely to have a big league impact of some kind. I could very well see an outcome where one or the other is a 3 WAR guy, the other one is a 1-2 WAR guy, and Feliz is an adequate middle reliever. This deal hedges against risk of failure in all sorts of little ways.
I am skeptical that this really was the best they could do, but there is a decent chance this has a happy ending anyway.
I agree that these players have legitimate concerns, but I’ll take all the “fringy relievers” that I can find if those fringy relievers are 24 year olds who have pitched 121 major league innings with a 32.7% K rate and 9.1% walk rate.
As for Moran, I think the clear point is that he didn’t just do well at AAA when he was 25 but that we know why he did well and have seen this precise hitting profile change increase the production of several hitters in recent years.
Not just AAA, either.
He did well in the PCL as a 25 year old.
I’m not sure what you’re watching, but the Rivero trade is about the only thing NH has gotten right in the last two years. Three winning seasons in 10. He’s a decent GM. Pirates need a great one in their situation.
Like I said, I think a lot of us are letting our prior views of Huntington color the trade. I am pretty sure if Al Avila made a trade like this the Fangraphs commenters would pan it.
Avila was generally praised for the Verlander deal; he moved 40M of the 56M owed to him and got back some good talent, whereas initially no one even put a waiver claim in for the full 56M.
Assuming that other people are acting upon their biases is a bias in itself, plus its not like Neil Huntington has extraordinarily over-achieved as a GM.
Of course we are acting on our biases. We are human and we revert to them when we are faced with uncertainty.
For better or worse, we haven’t seen a ton of trades like this before, so there is a lot of uncertainty.
Well, yeah. Even bad GM’s make good moves sometimes. This isn’t one of them. And while I think NH is a decent GM, I don’t think he’s in the top 5 or maybe even 10 in the game.
Kang was great
Cole isn’t exactly a top tier pitcher. Let’s not forget that. He’s pitched <140IP in 3/5 seasons. He's had one great year. I think Esteban Loaiza and Ubaldo Jimenez had one of those before too.
The collection of talent that they received aren't world beaters but they're younger and cheaper, which is what the Pirates need. I've never been a Gerrit Cole fan, and I'm not sure he's more than a SP4 or 5 for Houston.
I don't think Cole is worth giving up top 100 prospects and unless teams think he'll be more durable for his latter years, they likely valued him the same way. I wouldn't want to be on the hook in 2019 for a 6 year-$200 million extension for a 29 year old starter who only pitches 60% of a season.
As I said above, since he’s debuted in 2013, he’s been a top 30 pitcher in baseball. To say he’d be the 4 or 5 on Houston is just…well, wrong. They should have gotten more.
Felix Hernandez has been a top 5 pitcher in baseball since he debuted in 2005. How much do you expect to get for him?
Holy ineffectual attempts at sophistry, Batman!
Attempts at sophistry? Do you realize what you’re saying? Close the thesaurus tab.
“Sophistry” isn’t a particularly Thesaurus-y word, kiddo.
In fact, it’s the most succinct term to describe the use of intellectually dishonest semantic games in an attempt to invalidate a point you can’t refute through either reason or empirical evidence.
As a point of curiosity…what word would I possibly have looked up in a Thesaurus to find the word “sophistry”?
I don’t know, I think I have a different view of the trade. I think the more damning aspect is that the Pirates are trading Cole at a low-point of his value, which feels a little like admitting they can’t fix him.
For the player Cole was last season with PIT, I think the package is a good package, but the general consensus seems to be that Cole could/should rebound with HOU…..so what does that say about PIT’s coaching staff? Its just always terrible to see your team pass on top tier talent that they can’t get the most out of….that’s endemic of an organizational problem that isn’t solved by changing the names on the lockers…
If HOU thinks they can get more out of Cole than what he has produced recently, than PIT should have been able to make HOU pay for Cole’s expected production rather than his past production.
I think what most Pirates fans have issue with is the fact that Huntington gambled, and lost, again. He needs to be held accountable for not having the foresight to avoid a situation like this where we receive less than market value for quality players. He knew this day was coming and he held his cards instead of folding earlier. That has to have repercussions. We are also tired of watching the primes of quality players wasted by inaction. We were told that when the time came, the FO would invest in this club. That time has come and gone and they never once made a push like we have seen from other small market clubs. It’s beyond frustrating and the faith I had in this ownership group has now dissipated.
On EW, Ben compared it to the kind of unreasonable 4-for-1 trade offers we have all made or received in fantasy baseball, where salaries and team control are (usually) irrelevant, roster space is limited, and a large pool of fungible talent is constantly available. The way we are conditioned to evaluate this trade as casual fans is at cross-purposes with the real-world utility.
Fantasy sports can be an instructive marketplace. The reason 3 for 1 fantasy trades are usually terrible is the free agent pool or a team’s reserve list is not full of zero-value players.
This is almost exactly the same reason such trades are usually terrible in MLB. Is Moran better than Freese? Maybe. Is Musgrove a better starter than Kuhl? Maybe.
Ever have someone offer you starting pitcher x for starting pitcher y in a 1 for 1 fantasy trade? Those offers are also usually terrible, which is why we should be pretty pessimistic about Musgrove.
Long time Bucs fan. I’m more than willing to consider that NH may have got about the best he could out of this deal; time will tell. Of course, my issue is what you reference in the first paragraph. Coming off a 98 win season, you could argue the Bucs had the most talented team and what almost any GM would have done is doubled down to win it all the next season. No, we get Jon Niese to replace AJ. Because Nutting and crew blew that offseason, just about anything they do now has a perception problem. Well deserved, I might add.
With any luck the Bucs will be better off by the time Cole’s deal winds down, and with a lot more to come (than Cole at the end) because of extended player control on the players/prospects they bought in the exchange. That’s the gambit of a re-build. I don’t fault them for the move and I don’t think it looks like a bad deal. Like all re-builds, only time will tell.
With the way the Pirates turned two months of a declining Mark Melancon into Felipe Rivero I thought I was alone in giving the Pirates the benefit of a doubt on this trade. I see from the metrics mentioned I was correct. Musgrove and Feliz will be two very good pitchers making this trade fair.
Those projections are borderline ridiculous. If Musgrove projects to be as good as Michael Fulmer in 2018, then why can’t the Astros find a spot for him in their rotation? No team in baseball is so good that Fulmer would be their #6 starter. Why would they trade him AND three other valuable players for Gerrit Cole, who is projected to be about the same or slightly worse than Fulmer/Musgrove in 2018? Similarly, if Feliz projects to be as good as Raisel Iglesias in 2018, then why didn’t the Astros keep him around as their potential 2018 closer or set-up man? No team in baseball is so good that Iglesias would be a middle reliever in their bullpen, with the possible exception of NYY. Why would the Astros trade 4-5 years of two players who project to be as good as Fulmer and Iglesias, PLUS two valuable minor leaguers, for two years of a starter who projects to be as good as Fulmer? They wouldn’t, obviously. Those projections are far, far too rosy.
I think the issue here is Cole’s numbers are similar and many ways better than Sonny Gray’s numbers. While Gray came with an extra half yr of control and that is another playoff run, Cole has clearly looked like the better pitcher over the last 4 years. The A’s landed three top prospects who were 22/23 at the time and while injuries to two of them may have lessened their value slightly, at the time the trade was praised that the A’s got a really nice return.
The Pirates on the other hand got a lot more certainty as they know they can and should get some MLB value from Musgrove, Feliz and Moran, but it could end up being pretty limited. Maybe Musgrove becomes a #3 caliber starter, Feliz ends up as a lights out set-up guy and Moran is an above-average to good starting 3B and this trade looks good. But it could also be that Musgrove is a 5th starter/long reliever, Feliz is a replaceable low leverage reliever, and Moran is basically a cheaper David Freese. In which case this trade doesn’t look like much.
I just think that given Cole’s production/potential and well below market contract, there should have been more value from an upside perspective here.