Dan Haren Traded to Angels

[Never Outhustled]

I sure am happy Melvin didn't see any reason to get involved in this.

 

We could have dealt Prince, kept some of the return for ourselves, and used some of it to get Haren.

[Invader3K]

Doesn't seem like the Angels gave up all that much to get him. I wonder if Melvin even kicked the tires on him or not.

[JohnBriggs12]

Saunders' stats are not comparable to Dave Bush. His WHIP is way higher than Bush's, for instance. Saunders is much closer to Manny Parra, I think...So, we could have traded Parra, Josh Butler and a pretty good AA pitcher plus a PTBNL for Haren?

Saunders has pitched in AL, and had one very good season where he was 17-7 with a 3.41 ERA and a 1.212 WHIP. When did Parra or Bush ever come close to that pitching in the NL where the pitchers bat? Saunders pitches to contact and the difference between his All Star season of 08 and now is that his control the last couple year has not been as sharp.

 

Saunders makes a lot less than Haren so they accomplished getting a major league starter back and while saving quite a bit. Rodriguez is a decent young bullpen arm which they desperately need and Corbin appears to have some promise down the road as a starter. This could turn out all right for both teams though I don't think this makes the Angels significantly better.

[Roscoe Chill]

You guys are forgetting about Haren's no trade clause when talking about the Brewers topping this offer.

[GAME05]

but Saunders is hitting his Arbitration years and will make something like $6M--if you're trying to free the books, then why get an arby guy back? would it have been that much harder to find a guy with a year or two less service time?

 

seems like Arizona is really resting a lot of faith on a 19-year-old.

[monty57]

When did Parra or Bush ever come close to that pitching in the NL where the pitchers bat? Saunders pitches to contact

 

Could part of the reason Parra and Bush haven't come close to that is if someone on the Brewers pitches to contact our Swiss cheese defense would turn a 17-7/ 3.41 ERA / 1.212 WHIP into a 4.50 ERA / 1.6 WHIP season?

 

Unfortunately, as long as our defense remains intact, we need high K, low BB guys. In other words, we need the guys that are too expensive for us to go after in FA. That's why I liked Haren, he fits our needs while being much cheaper than we'd find on the FA market and under control for three more seasons. Now I guess I'll hold out hope that we can somehow land Vazquez in free agency, as he fits the bill.

 

Of course, we could decide to forego some offense for some defense, but that wouldn't be the Brewers' style.

[TooLiveBrew]

You guys are forgetting about Haren's no trade clause when talking about the Brewers topping this offer.

And the apparent vapidity of the Arizona front office

[logan82]

The return for Haren wasn't really good but it isn't like the players traded for him suck. They are just young and really unproven to this point. Corbin and Skaggs are players we wouldn't have wanted to give up. Skaggs was the 40th player taken in the draft last year.

[trwi7]

We achieved by maintaining major league quality with a 2008 All-Star in Joe Saunders and a guy who quite frankly has been one of the winners in Major League Baseball.. I think he trails only Roy Halladay among major leaguers in total wins. He’s won 63 percent of his games since coming to the major leagues, pitched in the postseason on two different occasions.

He’s a pedigreed major league pitcher who has accomplished quite a bit. I believe it’s a .630 winning percentage in his major league career. We’re getting a pitcher for our major league club who comes in and delivers a message to our guys that this is about winning now and winning in the future."

Geez. I know he's the interim GM, but if I was a fan I would want him fired now and I'd be extremely pissed that he was allowed to make this deal based on these comments.

 

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/NickPiecoro/91159

[Schlitz001]

You guys are forgetting about Haren's no trade clause when talking about the Brewers topping this offer.

This is a good point. If anyone saw the Dan Haren press conference, he mentioned that both he and his wife are both from the same city which happens to lie 20 miles away from the stadium in Anaheim. Besides that, his facial expression was one of a man experiencing the greatest day of his life. It wouldn't be a surprise if Haren's choices of cities was very limited.

[Oldcity]

You guys are forgetting about Haren's no trade clause when talking about the Brewers topping this offer.

I didn't. I just was saying that there would be plenty of teams willing to top this offer. Haren definitely could have restricted their options... But then again, if that was the case, you'd think that would have come out by now.

[giffted1]

You guys are forgetting about Haren's no trade clause when talking about the Brewers topping this offer.

Great point.

 

Haren was going to make the same money no matter where he played. He was almost certainly looking to go to a contending team or somewhere close to home. Milwaukee is neither of those.

[logan82]

Doesn't sound like Haren was highly valued by scouts. Obviously Fangraphs has several articles about this trade already.

[endaround]

Arizona seems enamored with Saunders and even with a 3rd team involved its hard seeing the Brewers finding a guy with "a .630 winning percentage" in a deal that moves Fielder or Hart.

[monty57]

If Haren's no-trade clause limited the Diamondbacks in trade negotiations, the D-Backs should let the public know this for PR reasons (i.e. "We had a better deal on the table, but Haren vetoed it"). However, they had no need to trade Haren, so they must have thought this was a good offer or they simply could have held onto him. I'll admit that I don't know much about the prospects in the trade, and am going off of some opinions I have read more than anything.

 

I will say that if we traded Yo right now for a decent-but-far-from-great SP entering arby, a AAA reliever, a AA starter and a PTBNL, the PTBNL had better be awful good. If our GM justified the trade by saying "the guy we got has a good winning percentage," I'd be pretty upset. Haren's a little more expensive than Yo, but he's also accomplished more in his career, so I'd guess value-wise they're similar.

 

If this is truly what top of the rotation starters are worth, then I think we should have no problem trading Fielder and Hart for numerous top of the rotation starters. I guess this shows that if you look hard enough, you can find some GM that is willing to be swindled.

[logan82]

The reason this trade is so bad is because they have the MLB talent to be a good team next year and the fact that Haren is still signed for a good contract with an option through 2013. The players they traded for, at least the ones that actually seem worth trading for, are in A or A+ ball right now. Corbin and Skaggs were both drafted last year 80th and 40th respectively.

[TooLiveBrew]

Responding to a post in the Transactions forum Fielder trade thread

You don't think is reactionary and knee-jerk? How much do you know about the Diamondbacks budget? How confident are you that Haren over the last year is really a fluke, and not closer to his future performance level?

Obviously no, I don't. I am confident that Haren is better than his recent performance, his K/9, BB/9, and xFIP rates are all very similar to the prior two seasons, as are his LD, GB, & FB rates. The two main things that stand out are his BABIP (.350, career .304) & HR/FB rate (13.9%, career 11.1%)

Clearly, given DBacks' interim GM Jerry Dipoto's comments, the move was largely driven by the fact that Saunders's W% is good -- that he's a "winner". Maybe "crap deal" was too harsh. Maybe "deal that many organizations could've beaten" would be more appropriate.

Calling the front office vapid is just more of your incessant need to call baseball people stupid.

I really don't know where you come up with me having an incessant need to call baseball people stupid. Frankly, the comments made by Dipoto on Saunders were stupid, and he continued in that vein on Corbin

"We had a lot of interest in him during last season’s draft and all he’s done is go out and lead the minor leagues in wins. To this point in the minor league season, he’s 13-3 at two A levels."

Winning percentage wasn't the only reason the DBacks accepted this offer, but it certainly played a much larger role in the decision-making process than I (& clearly many others) think it should have.

"Joe Saunders steps into our major league rotation, gives us a guy who generally has been a dependable, 190-innings starter who goes out and he wins. He’s been exposed to a winning environment. Obviously he has big shoes to fill because we’re taking away the best starter on our ballclub."

Dipoto is placing a tangible value on the fact that Saunders (and to a lesser extent, Corbin) is a "winner". That's an awful criterion to use, but it seems a main component of his decision. Just in the quoted excerpts in the azcentral.com link, he mentions Saunders's "winningness" three separate times.

[kramnoj]

I really don't know where you come up with me having an incessant need to call baseball people stupid

 

You don't? You called the Diamondbacks vapid, you said Macha isn't smart, you are constantly ripping on the Journal staff.

 

Clearly, given DBacks' interim GM Jerry Dipoto's comments, the move was largely driven by the fact that Saunders's W% is good -- that he's a "winner".

 

The problem there is actually believing what front office people say. It has to be understood as PR or gamesmanship first, logical statements second.

 

Maybe "deal that many organizations could've beaten" would be more appropriate.

 

That only matters if Haren would accept a trade to those other organizations. If he didn't, and the Dbacks needed to clear some salary, they traded away their most expensive, most valuable asset for the best that they could. Since you don't know the budgetary constraints of the Dbacks, you need to defend calling them vapid.

[GAME05]

why would a GM be so enamored with Wins? is that the best there is to say about him? maybe we could have given him Braden Looper last year, then.

[Invader3K]

Maybe his comments are just an attempt to sell the deal to the fans and nothing more?

[monty57]

I really hope the Brewers don't get to a point that they have to trade away their best players, whose values far outweigh their contracts. The Brewers have had some bad contracts, and it looks like we're getting into the phase where we'll continually have to trade good players before they hit free agency, but at least we haven't had to trade away good players signed to good contracts while they were still under team control for several years.

 

It would sure suck to have to trade away Yo or Braun next year because we were losing money and had bad contracts we couldn't get rid of. It would be even worse if Melvin settled for what would seem to be far less value than Yo/Braun is worth, and we were told "I know Braun was good, but we got Juan Pierre back, and he's played on some playoff teams in the past, so he knows how to win. With his MLB experience, he'll fit right in and we won't miss a beat in LF."

 

On top of bad planning that forced them to trade a good, underpaid player, what gets me is the seeming desire for a guy with MLB experience in order to placate the fanbase. I've heard those rumblings about the Fielder/Hart situations... we need someone with MLB experience in return. I'd rather they just get the best players/talent back. A few years of MLB experience simply means we'll have him a few less years, and he'll get expensive sooner.

[TooLiveBrew]

You don't? You called the Diamondbacks vapid, you said Macha isn't smart, you are constantly ripping on the Journal staff.

I think the deal they made wasn't smart, I think Macha does dumb things like all managers, and add me to the long, long line that recognizes that the JS beat reporters aren't anything to write home about & chats on a message board about it. So two instances, plus me being one of many that doesn't care for much of the JS writing now = "incessant need"? Not really.

Since you don't know the budgetary constraints of the Dbacks, you need to defend calling them vapid.

Clearly I've hit a nerve with you not only now but along the way. Sorry you don't like reading some or many of my posts. I believe that contending teams could have beaten this offer, it's just not special, and I think accepting this offer was an unintelligent move by the Diamondbacks. If you could elaborate on the budgetary constraints of the DBacks, I'd appreciate it. The problem is that neither one of us can realistically know, since MLB clubs' books aren't open. I'd like to know how they're so cash-strapped that holding onto a guy I believe is one of the best pitchers in baseball that they couldn't afford to pay him the remainder of his pretty affordable 2010 salary.

Keeping Haren until the offseason would have yeilded a better return than this one, and would have been a good investment. By my crude estimate, the DBacks owed Haren around $1.4M the rest of the way. If $1M to 2M was such a huge priority, there are plenty of other players they could have moved for the sake of clearing salary instead of settling for an underwhelming return on their most valuable pitching trade chip. The market this offseason would have potentially been huge on Haren, since there are so few top-level arms on the FA market (given that Lee is all but assured to be a Yankee).

[trwi7]

If money is a huge concern to the Diamondbacks, I would expect them to non-tender Saunders in the offseason rather than pay him the $6-7 million he isn't worth in the first place.

[danzig6767]

I'll be very very disappointed if it comes out that Melvin didn't submit an offer for Haren, he's exactly what the Brewers need, especially when you factor in his reasonable contract.

[Roscoe Chill]

But if Haren had Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Minnesota on his partial no trade clause, what makes anyone think Milwaukee wouldn't have been on that list?

Yes it sucks that Haren was acquired for what seems to be a pretty reasonable package, but I guess I don't understand why people don't understand that there's no use sweating the impossible...Haren wasn't coming to Milwaukee.

And sure, I don't know for a fact that the Brewers were on that list, but I'm just going to choose to be realistic.