March 17th, 2009 by Admirals GM
Okay, if Rob agrees with you and vetoes the Garcia trade, I'll
just move on. But regardless of how that goes, here are a few points I
want to make about trades in general.
1. First, your counter-offer involves me giving up Garcia + Panchor Urive to get Mark St. John.
I appreciate the effort to make a counter-offer, but I'm sure you'd
agree in retrospect that this isn't really reasonable. On the
assumption of your offer, Sergio Garcia's negative value is so great
that in order to get St. John, who we all will agree sucks, I would
need to add a Pancho Urive to the mix, where Urive is ranked the #13
player in EWB. (I think he's overrated right now, but still.) That is
unrealistic.
We're all new to thinking so seriously about contracts, and
especially about salary dumps. And that mike make us reasonably
hesitant -- overly cautious -- to permit such dumps. But here it seems
to me is a good way to proceed. First, take the money of the Garcia
contract. Second, pretend like Dallas is just adding Garcia as a free
agent, without giving up any talent back. Third, ask yourself what
other player could they reasonably expect to get for the total money
involved. To make this last principle concrete, let's add Matthew
Spencer to the deal for me, a 10 pt. pitcher (9 potential) who's making
the league minimum. I would not agree to add Spencer, for reasons that
will emerge. But the general idea can be illustrated using Spencer.
Would Dallas take Garcia + Spencer in exchange for nothing, just
salaries? Yes, surely they would. Garcia + Spencer are two 10 pt.
pitchers, and the *average* salary for the two of them is about
$3.75M. Now, of course, Garcia is the "big" part of that average,
while Spencer is the "little" part, but that doesn't matter. Picture
it like this. Suppose Dallas was going on the free agent market, and
were committed to signing 2 separate 10 pt. pitchers. What price would
be reasonable for them to expect to pay? Surely, more than $3.75M.
But then, if that's right, Dallas should be happy to add Garcia +
Spencer for salary alone, and they would be.
Now, how does St. John figure in? I was thinking that he was a
total loss. I was supposing that if I acquired him, I might just
release him. Maybe I would give him a shot, but my rotation is pretty
full as is, and so eventually releasing him was a highly likely option
in my mind. If my assessment of St. John's worth is right, then Dallas
should be totally happy to see him go. As good as Garcia + Spencer for
nothing was for them, Garcia + Spencer in exchange for St. John is even
better -- for them. In fact, I as Washington would not do that deal,
because it would be one-sided against me.
I dwell on this point because I think there's a tendency here to
overstate the negative value of an inflated contract. Garcia's
contract is bad, let me just grant. But it's nowhere near Garcia+Urive
<--> St. John kind of bad.
2. The fact that free agency is looming never qualifies as an
argument against a trade. No team has money "saved up" for free
agency. What teams have is salary flexibility, flexibility which can
be used either toward trades or toward free agents. In fact, other
things being equal, a smart team will prefer at this time to acquire
new contracts via trade rather than new contracts via free agency.
This is because, other things being equal, contracts acquired via trade
were inevitably signed years ago, at previous market value, rather than
right now, at current market value. Now, you might think that with
Garcia, other things aren't equal because his salary is just too high.
Fine. But the argument against acquiring Garcia should not depend in
any way on the fact that free agency is looming. If anything, the
openness of money right now speaks in favor of trading for Garcia (and,
more generally, in favor of trading for any player) at this moment.
I mention this point because I have other offers I might make
either before Yugma or during Yugma. The fact that free agency is
looming is not a reason against any of those trades.
Let me note that this is compatible with Rob's point about the
trading deadline. If it turns out, say, that San Antonio is competing
for the division next year, and that Sergio Garcia is just the player
to push them over the top, then they might be willing to acquire him
then, even though they are not willing to acquire him now. That's not
because right now is a bad time for any team to make a trade -- it's a
great time to make a trade. Rather, that's because the trading
deadline, when you're in contention, is the very best possible time to
make a trade. At the trading deadline, sometimes you knowingly allow
yourself to be screwed over in order to get a deal done, if you're
convinced that that's the deal to win it. In contrast, no team right
now should be willing to allow themselves to be screwed over. However,
the fact that the trading deadline is an unbelievably good time to make
a trade does not mean that right now is still at least a very good time
to trade.
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