Q.  Do you buy into the rumors?

A.  You know as much as anybody else does:  

1.  Zduriencik is attached to all of the biggest names available in the trade market.  He'd love to cash in Bavasi's prospects for impact veterans of his own choosing. 

2.  The Padres are a losing team, in a small market, where the economy is lousy, and have been attached to Gonzalez rumors for a while.

3.  It's going to take a lot to reel in a player like Gonzalez.  MUCH more than it would to reel in Edwin Jackson or Curtis Granderson.

............

I'm sure that right now, the M's are working lots of different fronts.  Early stages.  If they were zero'ed in on one front I'd be surprised, but of course only the guys in the offices know.

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Q.  Would it be worth a trade package like the ones took to land Beckett, Haren, Bedard and those guys?

A.  Sure it would.

If you want to dance, you gotta pay the piper ... when has a player like Gonzalez ever been moved unless his club got three or four of your best-and-brightest...

Adrian Gonzalez, himself, created $15 and $28m of value the last two years, and is making $5m the next two.  So you won't see as much opposition to dealing blue-chippers for him (though Bedard also offered a cheap arb salary, relative to his ability).

But we still see the idea that "he's going to cost wayyyyyyyyy more than he's worth."

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Q.  How would you "calculate" that?

A.  You wouldn't.

Well, not the way we see it done on the internet.  A real calculation would require the boss to plug in some variables for us.

WAR/$ grids comparing one player's net performance profit to the other three -- as was so popular in the Jones+ vs Bedard deal -- are far too simple to be useful in analyzing 4-for-1's.  No roto owner would use those sorts of grids to judge a trade.

It is the DELTA between Adam Jones and FGut / Saunders / Ackley / whoever that you are trading, against the DELTA between Bedard (Gonzalez) and your SP5 / 1B.

If you merely ask, what is AGon's [Value - Salary] vs Saunders' [Value - Salary], you are ignoring the fact that by keeping Saunders, you are blocking some other bright prospect who now gives you zero.   In essence, by turning down a 4-for-1 trade, you are "flushing" the four prospects who would otherwise slot into your roster.

So the WAR/$ evaluations of these 3-for-1's fail to capture the cascade effects of the trade.  The Mariners didn't lose Adam Jones' [performance - salary].  They lost the delta between Jones and FGut (or Saunders, or Ackley, or take your pick).

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You use the WAR/$ profit paradigm, you're always going to conclude that Carlos Gomez is more valuable than Johann Santana, right?   Santana is paid fairly and "therefore no net value."  Any scrub non-arb player is going to pencil out as superior to Santana per this paradigm.

The problem is the missing factor:  value DELTAS.

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Q.  But supposing I DID want a clear mathematical calculation.

A.   If you DID want to run a calculation like this, you would need to do some work, and plug in the values of the Gutierrezes and Saunders and Ackleys available to you, as opposed to using the easy "RLP" variable.

This is done in F-500.  A director asks an analyst to provide P&L's for a complex forecast.  The analyst tells the director, I'll need you to plug in your estimates at points A, B, and C.

...............

The M's traded Adam Jones, but they do not have an RLP value currently playing center field. 

In order to provide math to the boss on the Bedard trade, you'd have needed him to tell you what he expected to have in center field the next six years.  "RLP" would have been a wrong value to plug in, simply because that turned out not to be the case.

RLP is useful because it allows us to compare players on the same scale.  It is not useful for comparing Michael Saunders' six-year-value to whoever's coming in behind him, and not useful for trade valuation in a vacuum.

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You want me to tell you what you'll lose in Carlos Triunfel, you'd better tell me whether he's playing 2b or 3b.  And then you'd better tell me what to plug in for Ackley and Tui.  And you'd better be right :- )

...................

All that said, Gonzalez will be popular with everybody this winter, because Fangraphs has him at $15 and $28m in value the last two years, compared to Gonzalez' $4.75 and $5.5m salaries the next two.

But there's still a latent idea, "you can't give three or four blue-chippers for any one MLB star.  That's just too much."

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Q.  So what IS way too much for Gonzalez?

A.  You'll hear lots of good amigos, fine analysts, saying "it would take far more than it's worth to get Gonzalez.  Not happening."

But how much is way too much?  If the M's gave four excellent minor leaguers, how would you calculate the deltas between them and the next four excellent minor leaguers?

You could find all sorts of points in ML history wherein a team could have traded its top 10 prospects for an Adrian Gonzalez in a 10-for-1, and come out way ahead.  Most prospects fail.

I'm not saying the M's should do that, but it's difficult to evaluate Adrian Gonzalez trades.

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Part II