We’re already talking about this in the comments … and I already had this written, assuming we’d make 4-5 trades like we did last summer. But we didn’t, so this is a whole lotta nothing of a post. But i’ll post it anyway.
I tried to predict what kind of return we’d get back for all our trade-eligible players a few weeks back. Here’s what we ended up getting back for all our trade candidates:
High Value Trade Candidates
- Juan Soto: Predicted Return: 3 top 10 prospects plus two pre-arb Major Leaguers. Actual Return: almost exactly this: the 3 top 10 prospects were Hassell, Abrams and Wood, the two pre-arb major leaguers were Gore and Voit.
- Josh Bell: Predicted return: One top10, one 10-15th ranked prospect. Actual Return: Well, we got the 10-15th ranked prospect in Susana, but I may have overvalued his individual/separate trade value.
We separately reviewed this deal so I won’t go back into it.
We’ll Take what we can get:
- Nelson Cruz: Predicted Return: One 15-20th ranked prospect. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Cesar Hernandez: Predicted Return: a 20+ ranked prospect. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Steve Cishek, Predicted Return: a 20+ prospect. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Carl Edwards Predicted Return: a non prospect. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Erasmo Ramirez: Predicted Return: a non prospect. Actual Return: was not traded.
At the end of the day, not one of these players actually got traded. All of them are FAs at the end of 2022, and none of them got moved. Why? Well, the WP’s Jesse Dougherty has an article about exactly that. In summary: none of these guys were actually wanted by other teams. Cruz has struggled in 2022, Hernandez is hitting an empty .240, Cishek isn’t dominating enough, Edwards may not actually be a FA (Cots and Dougherty disagree on his eligibility for 2023, perhaps b/c he was a MLFA this past off-season). Ramirez is a workhorse but has a 4.75 FIP. Cruz is the really disappointing one; everyone thought that was a FA bought to flip. Now he’ll play out the string on the worst team in the league.
So … at the end of the day we got nothing for all these potential trade pieces.
Not Likely to be Traded despite being FAs to be:
- Wil Harris, Predicted Return: wouldn’t be traded. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Joe Ross, Predicted Return: wouldn’t be traded. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Anibel Sanchez, Predicted Return: wouldn’t be traded. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Ehire Adrianza, Predicted Return: I didn’t think he’d be traded. Actual Return: Trey Harris, from Atlanta, a 32nd rounder repeating AA at age 26. So, a non-prospect.
- Sean Doolittle: Predicted Return: wouldn’t be traded. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Maikel Franco: Predicted Return: wouldn’t be traded. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Alcides Escobar: Predicted Return: wouldn’t be traded. Actual Return: was not traded.
- Tyler Clippard: Predicted Return: wouldn’t be traded. Actual Return: was not traded.
Somehow, out of this list, we got something back for Adrianza. Not surprisingly, most of the rest of these guys are hurt (or have really underperformed) in their walk years and thus netted us nothing. Certainly at the beginning of the year, we looked at a bunch of these guys (especially Harris, Ross, Sanchez, Doolittle) and thought they’d be excellent walk-year trade pieces. In the end though, we got nothing.
Pre-FA players thinking outside the box
- Kyle Finnegan Predicted Return: a 10-15th ranked system prospect. Actual Return: was not traded.
Dougherty notes that they had some conversations, but not a good enough return to off-set the fact that Finnegan is under team control for 3 more years.
So, at the end of the day, just two trades, a far cry from the 5 separate trade deals negotiated at this time last year. I’m pretty sure this is now how Rizzo thought the 2022 trade deadline would go down. So many of our trade assets have gotten hurt or underperformed this year.