Sign and Trade
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This week, the Angels have been shopping Dan Haren and Ervin Santana. They have (had) one-year club options on both, and didn't want to use either one this year at that money. So they grabbed a megaphone and said "HEY EVERYBODY! WHO WANTS TO GIVE US SOMETHING FOR ONE YEAR OF DAN HAREN OR ERVIN SANTANA? ANY REASONABLE OFFER ACCEPTED!"
The Royals finally held up a hand, about halfway into the air, and gave Brandon Sisk. He's a career minor league lefty with a mediocre fastball, 88-92 MPH, that he says is his key pitch ... yet he fans 9 men per game in AAA. You could (very) loosely compare him to Lucas Luetge 2011, as far as value is concerned. Luetge would be higher.
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=== Talking points ===
1. I was kinda thinkin' about this all week, because I didn't remember this situation ever coming up before, the sign and trade. Could be I just hadn't noticed. Is this a common thing, this sign-and-trade coming out of a team option year? Why wouldn't you do it with every option that was theoretically in favor of the club, but which didn't fit its needs going into that season?
You'd think this would be one of the most common transactions in baseball, because there are always situations where you can't use the player but somebody else can. Don't recall any at all, though. All you would need, to make this work, would be:
- The club-option year is one in which the player is theoretically underpaid
- You have internal options that you prefer
Club-option years, for players under 33 or so, should be club-favorable once you get there. You'd think that many club-option situations would lead to sign-and-trades.
Is this something new in baseball, where clubs have decided they don't care whether they tick players off? The Mariners have one player coming into that situation after this year: Franklin Gutierrez has a $500,000 buyout next year or a $7.5M salary at the Mariners' option. If he produces 2-3 WAR this season he's a perfect sign-and-trade. How good do you have to be, to be a CF worth $7M? Not very. And the M's will probably have better options than him next winter.
Sign and Trade alert?
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2. Dan Haren would be a good fit for the Mariners, at one year and $15M - he could in theory be an alternative that 4/$40 Jackson slot in 13's idea.
I thought for sure I'd done a POTD series on Haren, but there are none in the archives. Am I spacing out?
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3. Not in terms of style, but in terms of value, Ervin Santana is comparable to Jason Vargas:
| 2010 WAR | 2011 WAR | 2012 WAR | Remarks | |
| Santana | 2.2 | 2.9 | -0.9 | Down years occur due to Gopheritis; is trending down at the moment; VERY durable |
| Vargas | 2.4 | 2.1 | 0.8 | Down years occur due to Gopheritis; is trending down at the moment; VERY durable |
The Santana deal gives us interesting feedback as to Jason Vargas' value. Baseball looked at Santana and said "MMMMmmmMMmmmmmehhhh .... oh all right, we'll give you $12M for one year of Santana, with the inside track to re-sign him if he trends up."
This would appear to confirm SSI's year-long conviction that Vargas is, objectively speaking, worth about $8-10M in salary. Being average, durable, and established in the league has that value. Some pitchers got only 2/$10M type offers last winter, but contract offers are about confidence in the future, not about calculations of past performance. Jason Vargas? Confidence in him will be reasonable, SSI predicts. He's a solid guy, an $8-10M per year starting pitcher.
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4. Dr. D would be trying desperately to deal Jason Vargas away from those LF fences casting their angry shadows over the shortstop's jersey. In June, Vargas could be a DFA, if the park effects go North. Well, you know what we mean. And in that TV interview after the news about the fences, he looked like a man going to the gallows. There was a numb, slumped-shoulder zombie countenance that we'd seen somewhere before ... oh yeah! Like Tom Cruise in Top Gun sitting at the bar with ice water.
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5. It's possible that this move - coming from the SuperChintz Royals - is a harbinger of inflation. Excellent catch by Dave Cameron to see the intersection between the Royals' grab of a pricey rental and the $28M per year that the Royals get from the industry's new TV contract.
If WAR is going to run $6-7M per win, rather than $4-5M, then certainly a businessman has to anticipate that. If prices are going up by 30-40% over the next two years, then you have to pay 15-20% when you get the chance. Twenty, twenty-five percent of ten million, pretty soon you're talking real money.
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I thought no way, Jo ZAY that anybody would go for Santana. I thought fo SHO teams would line up on Dan Haren for a rental. Would like to see the M's do so - along with an appropriate hike of team salary over the 2013-15 projecteds.
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