Why does everyone want to trade Hart?

[TheCrew07]

He was BA's 2006 #1 prospect and Milb player of the year. To put it in

2011 perspective that would be trading Bryce Harper for Mike Montgomery.

Yes, in the end it worked out for Tampa, but that is an extreme

gamble.

 

I get what you're trying to do here, X prospect is rated higher than Y prospect so as such he's more valuable. It doesn't really work that way, the top 25-30 prospects are all around the same caliber. Occasionally there will someone that's head and shoulders above everyone else, but the order isn't as important as is being in the list itself. I linked back to when Gamel was the #34 prospect in a different thread and the players he was surrounded by are pretty much a who's who of good young baseball players in the league today. From experience I know it's incredibly hard to do a top 25-30 list for our system and get them in the right order, much less order the prospects appropriately for all of MLB. Take a look at the minor league forum and see how varied the lists are for the user power 50. Just because BA rates the list the way they do, doesn't definitively mean that a given prospect will carry more value than another, in most cases it's just not that simple.

 

Futhermore Young wasn't a once in a generation talent like pretty much everyone thought Harper and Strasburg were for their respective positions, your comparison is extremely off the mark not only because of the talent you chose to utilize, but because it's based on a flawed premise from the start.

 

I don't see how prospect for prospect deals are any more of a gamble than any other trade, no established talent is trading hands so that may make some people that don't like prospects uncomfortable, but it makes good sense from a value standpoint. As I've pointed out numerous times, all TB did was trade up value.... they cycled a prospect SP for an aging MLB SP, they cycled a prospect SP for a MLB closer, and they traded prospects for prospects. TB was clearly building around pitching, and rightly so, they traded up value and/or talent every single time, that's astute organization building. You can claim it was an unacceptable risk, but all trades carry a fair amount of risk, others may claim they got lucky, where they see luck I see skill and entirely different approach organization building. If you have fewer resources at your disposal than the teams you are competing against I'm not sure how you can remain competitive without taking an aggressive approach to organization and roster management? When you're starting from nothing more than an idea, what exactly do you have to lose? You're already the worst organization in the league, how much worse can it get?

 

Their organization was incredibly thin on impact pitching in the time frame being discussed, much like the Brewers organization has always been thin on impact pitching. TB clearly built team around young pitching, they made a WS playing out of the toughest division in baseball, they've continued to cycle that pitching away for various needs as their system started to provide enough talent. This is a vastly different strategy than we had here in Milwaukee where everyone knew we had plenty of impact bats and were terribly thin on pitching throughout every level of the organization. In Milwaukee FAs were signed to plug holes long-term, there was no concerted effort to acquire young impact pitching to go with the impact hitting.

 

Garza wasn't a garbage prospect, but going from #1 prospect in the game

to #21 is a pretty significant drop in talent. Even with the addition

of a mediocre SS. Tampa Bay lucked out with Young never coming anywhere

close to his immense potential, otherwise we would all be talking about

how foolish Friedman's move for Garza was.

 

This is another statement based on a flawed premise. Many people get caught up discussing what the prospects did or didn't do to determine who won the trade. For me it's always been about value given vs value received, I could care less what the prospects do in the future, I'm concerned with the ultimate value obtained by selling the prospects. Young could have became the MVP and my opinion wouldn't have changed... Friedman still accomplished exactly what he wanted to do building around young impact arms, they still would have made the WS, why would it matter to them what Young became? I feel bad for the Twins because of how the trade worked out, but I don't point to the trade as a good deal because someone got fleeced, I point to it as proof of a philosophy. Zambrano/Kazmir wasn't a great trade because the Mets got fleeced, it was a great trade because TB sold a decent pitcher at the perfect time and cycled back young impact pitching into their system.

 

Finally, what's wrong with Garza topping out as a #2 pitcher as someone said earlier? Young #2 pitchers tend to be the value in baseball, I'll take a rotation full of them. I find the argument that he only topped out as a #2 absurd, that's exactly what we should want for all of young pitchers. Very few pitchers will take that leap to become like a Halladay, that's just not a realistic goal. However I'll take Gallardo, Cain, Saunders, Moore, Davis, Shields, and the like on my team any time. The problem I have with our farm system on the pitching side is that many of those guys project as #2's best case, we don't have any pitchers in the upper minors that I'd throw a #1 label onto, and as I said I have a real hard time projecting best case scenarios for the majority of prospects.

 

Point remains, if you want a prospect pitcher in the top 20-30 range, the cost is going to be extremely

high. It cost Tampa the top prospect in baseball to get Garza. The

idea that the players included in the Sabathia or Grienke trades could

have been used to acquire prospect pitchers like that is totally bogus.

That was my chief point, and it is the point that you are refusing to

address

 

That's true of the current market environment, but wasn't true of the market through the mid 2000s. How exactly is the premise that a package with a specific value is valid only for a certain trade that was made and nothing else? Where's the proof that it's bogus? Because you say so? You're very fond of arguing in favor of the players/organization, but you're making broad statements, but where's the substance of the argument? The Brewers have clearly operated in a different manner than that of building around pitching, Melvin has been very consistent across his 2 tenures as a GM in MLB. Melvin came into an organization 1 impact pitcher at MLB and a minor league system struggling to develop pitching to match to the hitters it was turning out. Pitching wasn't Z's strength, it wasn't his staff's strength, and we're still struggling to develop pitching in 2012, the problem I have is that Melvin basically rode out the situation until Yo arrived.

 

In the example of the Sabathia trade, how do we know that LaPorta/Brantley wouldn't have been enough to snag Niemann who was on the block as TB was looking for a bat? After failing to land that extra stick for the stretch run they might have been interested in getting ready replacements for Crawford and Pena instead, they are a forward thinking organization, they traded Jackson that off-season if you recall for a decent corner OF prospect. How do we know we couldn't have traded have Hart for Cain as was the popular rumor? How do we know Buchholz couldn't have been had when he was on the block in 2009 as the Sox were trying to keep pace with the Yankees? How do know we couldn't have traded Hart for pitching anywhere along the line? Plenty of teams have shown interest in him through the years. Just because Melvin chooses to make certain trades isn't proof that other deals weren't out there for the taking, it's just simply proof of the way he prefers to operate.

 

So again I ask, how do you really know what's bogus and what isn't?

 

I'll share how I came to form my current opinions on organization building for those that are interested.

 

The young hitting core had all finally arrived and were starting to be fairly productive, and we had 2 young starting pitchers in Yo and Parra coming up who I was excited about. I was very interested in the best way to sustain success and compete year in and year with teams that can out spend Milwaukee by 2 and 3 times. It's much harder to draft and develop players than it is to sign established MLB players to plug holes, so from of the start I was interested in maximizing value for the players that we developed, the best value trade wise, and the best values in the FA market.

 

At the time 2007-2008 I sat down with a pen and notebook and then used then EPSN stats page, BA, MLB.com, MiLB.com, THT, Fangraphs, Cots, and articles pulled from various other sources and just started digging in. Well I quickly figured out that the one thing the vast majority of all WS champions had was superior pitching, this led to me thinking about how to acquire long-term pitching solutions since I knew we were never going to be able to compete for the marquee FA pitchers and the organization was still thin on impact starting pitching, so I was looking to get a base of young arms to MLB and go from there.

 

Well I was doing all kinds of reading, sorting player stats, looking at salaries vs production, and I was looking at GM trade histories. Someone had posted an excel spreadsheet that was incredibly handy as it all of the trade histories for every current GM in baseball, I don't remember what site it was from but I started looking at trades for pitching. If I didn't know who a player was I did my research on his stats, his level of play, scouting reports, his contract, the entire works. I was looking at everyone from MLB to rookie ball, I actually looked at the top 30 prospects in every organization in baseball. I looked at when star players made their MLB debut, I was looking at everything, my scope was probably too broad.

 

After about a week of doing this every night after work I had my base philosophies on FA, where the value in players ultimately lies (sp > position players > bp > cl), and had some ideas of where the Brewers should head. My personal epiphany was that the Brewers were on the wrong track, we didn't have enough pitching, hadn't focused on young impact pitching, so we were never going to be able to sustain success. I had been so happy that we had competent position players being graduated to MLB that I had completely missed the larger truth of this glaring problem with the organization. I had been a huge Melvin fanboy, in Doug I trusted because the MLB team was on the upswing, he seemed to be finding nuggets everywhere, but I hadn't been very objective about what he'd done and and how the future would turn out without more pitching. My opinion on DM swung 180 degrees in a heart beat.

 

I knew I wanted young pitching, I knew I wanted to retain our young position players through their peak, however the 1 thing that was bugging me was that I couldn't come up with a solid way to retain players we developed through their peak years. At most the arbitration system would allow us to hold onto a player for 7 years, so any special talent we drafted out of high school like a Fielder would be walking right in the middle of his peak years if he came up at age 21 which is when many of the of the impact players debut in MLB. and then let them walk or cycle them back into more talent for the organization. I was on Cot's looking at the contracts of former pitching prospects that had been traded for, in this case I was working my way through the Garza and Jackson trades and I stumbled across James Shield's contract and thought it was brilliant, then I took a closer look at the entire organization and found exactly what I had been looking for.

 

Here was an organization that I had regularly/routinely dismissed that was actually perfectly aligned to my new personal philosophy and had been working on that model for 4-5 years now. I was only there doing my due diligence on contracts, I vaguely knew who Shields was, I looked at his stats earlier, but I was shocked at what I was looking at. Obviously I started to look very closely at what was going on, TB was kind of all the rage at the time because of how many wins they were being projected for. Like everyone else I knew they had talent, how could they not drafting at the top of every draft class? Sooner or later they were destined for a good year in the sun weren't they? Only it wasn't that simple, they weren't built on 1st round draft picks, they were built on young pitching, and they had gotten there a much different way than I had expeted. Later in that season Longoria came up and was signed to another brilliant contract (at least I thought so) and I was hooked. Here was the organization that was operating the way I wanted the Brewers to operate and had solved the remaining puzzle for me in how to retain our impact talent through their peak years.

 

The culmination of all my work eventually led this thread about long term rotation ideas and I've been yapping about locking up core talent early, cycling the rest through arbitration, and ultimate value ever since. It's never been about what we've given up for me, it's been about what we've gotten back. Not only in trades but in FA contracts as well. If the players we acquire don't have more than 3 years of service left with us we're essentially spinning our wheels, because the same holes will eventually always need to be refilled and it takes 3-4 years to develop enough excess depth to sell it away. It's how we've ended up with a fairly barren farm system, and I say that in an impact talent sense, we have nice quality depth in the system, but we won't get anywhere building to be average. That's why Oakland and Minnesota have won games in regular season but haven't won anything meaningful in the post season, they haven't been able to keep enough impact talent together to make a serious run. This is why I say if a player won't sign early then he's expendable if a good enough deal comes along, any player not signed to long-term contract isn't part of your core, he's just part of the cycle talent coming through your organization.

[TooLiveBrew]

How do we know we couldn't have traded have Hart for Cain as was the popular rumor?

 

The popular rumor was Prince for Cain, not Hart for Cain.

 

 

How do we know Buchholz couldn't have been had when he was on the block in 2009 as the Sox were trying to keep pace with the Yankees?

 

Melvin tried to trade for him & found the price too high. I respect your stance in this discussion, man, but these are two items you've brought up & been corrected on before.

[strawbossisevil]

How do I know that those deals weren't available?

 

1) As TooLive pointed out, they weren't necessarily available as you indicated. Also, Melvin has come out time and time again about rumors to say that there is no validity to them. If you are going to base your entire argument on unsubstantiated rumor that time and time again has been proven to be false...then go right ahead...however if you do, don't expect me or anyone else to even consider your argument.

 

2) The going market for those type of pitchers at the time was much higher than what those "rumors" indicated. If the going rate for a Bucholtz (for example) was really as low as you indicate, there is no way that he wouldn't have been traded...if not to the Brewers to another team. More than likely, the rumors were wrong and the Red Sox/Rays/etc. were asking for a return that was very steep. Like has been said, young pitching prospects come with a huge price tag (per my point about the Garza trade).

 

3) I call them bogus because the going rate for prospect pitchers was much, much higher than the value of prospects like LaPorta or Brantley. You don't trade players who in a best case scenario become league average starters for top of the rotation pitching prospects. No team would make that kind of trade. Once again this is why I say that repeating over and over that those players could have been used to acquire prospect pitchers is bogus. The trade market overwhelmingly supports me on that.

 

4) The Kazmir trade is a once in a decade move. The Mets GM was a moron who became infatuated with a certain player whom he thought his team could turn into a star. It probably stands as the worst trade in the past decade. Expecting similar trades to be available as that one is being somewhat naive, IMO. There is a reason that GM (Phillips) doesn't have a job anymore. You don't make trades like that and remain employed as a GM.

[danzig6767]

How do we know we couldn't have traded have Hart for Cain as was the popular rumor?

 

The popular rumor was Prince for Cain, not Hart for Cain.

 

 

How do we know Buchholz couldn't have been had when he was on the block in 2009 as the Sox were trying to keep pace with the Yankees?

 

Melvin tried to trade for him & found the price too high. I respect your stance in this discussion, man, but these are two items you've brought up & been corrected on before.

Crew constantly talks about internet rumors involving young pitchers like Cain, Buchholz, and others like them, then extrapolates from those rumors that Melvin was stupid to have not acquired any of those young arms. Extremely valuable young high upside arms that no surprise ended up not being traded to any other team either.

 

I certainly can understand that some Brewers fans preferring that Melvin built his teams in a different fashion, but i find it beyond silly when anyone tries using totally unsubstantiated rumors as a reason to rip any GM in any sports. Be it reporters, bloggers, or TV mouth-pieces all fighting for attention, they get fed socalled insider "information" all the time that can range from 100 percent bogus, agenda driven, and/or from "sources" who like feeling as if they are important. Yet, a very sizable percentage of real trades, not pretend ones do instead happen with no socalled sources predicting it would happen first except maybe some deadline deals.

 

Plus, i see this whole Friedman is better than Melvin argument as being largely irrelevant. So what if Friedman is a better GM? Ted Thompson is arguably the best GM in the NFL, so does that mean that any other NFL GM who isn't as good as Ted must then be deemed to not be doing a quality job? Melvin should be judged on the results of the Brewers on the field and compared to other GM's as a whole, not just how he compares with Friedman. That alone would be ridiculous and doesn't factor in either that the two teams have different owners who can push their GM's to certain directions.

[danzig6767]

4) The Kazmir trade is a once in a decade move. The Mets GM was a moron who became infatuated with a certain player whom he thought his team could turn into a star. It probably stands as the worst trade in the past decade. Expecting similar trades to be available as that one is being somewhat naive, IMO. There is a reason that GM (Phillips) doesn't have a job anymore. You don't make trades like that and remain employed as a GM.

I still remember the shock through baseball when the Mets traded Kazmir for Víctor Zambrano, who never was any good because he was a walk machine. People in baseball saying Phillips had to have lost his mind and couldn't fathom why he did that. Mets fans were on suicide watch and wanted Phillips hung from the rafters of Shea Stadium.

 

Looking back at the trade in retrospect, i still can't grasp at all what Phillips was thinking. Zambrano wasn't even having a surprise great year at the time, his ERA was 4.37 and his WHIP was 1.55, with a whopping 96 walks in only 128 innings.

 

I forget if it was LeMar or Friedman who made that trade, but regardless of who it was, the guy had to be in near shock and pinching himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming once he hung up the phone to get a top lefthanded top 10 prospect at the time with a golden arm for pretty much a spare part pitcher like Víctor Zambrano.

[Mass Haas]

4) The Kazmir trade is a once in a decade move. The Mets GM was a moron who became infatuated with a certain player whom he thought his team could turn into a star. It probably stands as the worst trade in the past decade. Expecting similar trades to be available as that one is being somewhat naive, IMO. There is a reason that GM (Phillips) doesn't have a job anymore. You don't make trades like that and remain employed as a GM.

Looking back at the trade in retrospect, i still can't grasp at all what Phillips was thinking. Zambrano wasn't even having a surprise great year at the time, his ERA was 4.37 and his WHIP was 1.55, with a whopping 96 walks in only 128 innings.

4) The Kazmir trade is a once in a decade move. The Mets GM was a moron who became infatuated with a certain player whom he thought his team could turn into a star. It probably stands as the worst trade in the past decade. Expecting similar trades to be available as that one is being somewhat naive, IMO. There is a reason that GM (Phillips) doesn't have a job anymore. You don't make trades like that and remain employed as a GM.

***

 

Poor Steve Phillips always gets lumped into having made that deal. It was Jim Duquette.

[Invader3K]

All this criticism of Melvin ignores the fact that he got this team within two wins of its first World Series in nearly 30 years. I'll take that and say Melvin has done a pretty good job.

 

Not sure what any of this has to do with the OP at this point, though.

[jjfanec]

Attendance is up, team is consistently competitive, players actually are excited to come and play in Milwaukee. Melvin has done a good (not great) job as GM

[monty57]

My point was if we want to talk about trading prospects for other prospects, it took the #1 prospect in all of baseball to get a prospect pitcher who peaked as a #2.

 

To the topic of the thread, I think it's more about trading Hart for prospects. Since we in a "go for it" year, we aren't trading him this offseason, but for discussion sake, what would Hart bring in trade? He's an All-Star player with a reasonable contract for two years, so I'd have to think he'd bring back a pretty good package of prospects. What would be a reasonable return if we were to trade Hart?

Something a little bit more than what the White Sox got in return for Quentin. If a team like the Tigers were looking to trade for a bat Jacob Turner would be a very long stretch but you would be getting back a #2 or #3 type pitcher with the potential to be a #1 or an ace.

 

Again, I don't see any way we'll trade him this offseason, as we're in "go for it" mode, but if we could trade Hart mid-season (if we're out of it) or next offseason, and get a young #2/3 starter, I'd think that six years of a #2/3 starter with Gindl in RF (both making league minimum) is better than one more year of Hart at $10MM and then letting him walk for nothing.

[paul253]

Attendance is up, team is consistently competitive, players
actually are excited to come and play in Milwaukee. Melvin has done a
good (not great) job as GM

While they may be more competitive as of late, I'm not sure how consistent it's been. They finished 14 games out in 2010 and 11 games out in 2009, both years under .500. That may be better than how they did in the late 90's and early 2000's, but I think shows more about how bad they were back then.

To me, the glaring flaw about Melvin that stands out and prevents him from being a "great" GM is his complete lack of ability to develop his own pitching, either through the draft or through trades. How many successful, home grown pitchers have been drafted or signed under Melvin? I count one. Maybe things will change with successful debuts of Peralta, Thornburg, Bradley and Jungmann, but until that happens we can't give him credit for any of them. As good as the trades for Greinke and Marcum were, they wouldn't have been necessary if Melvin could develop a successful #2 or #3 type pitchers. Brett Lawrie looks like he may turn out to be a very, very good player and we had to trade him because we had absolutely zero in the pitching department. Hopefully the little pitching pow wow they had a year or two again is going to bring a change in our fortunes because we can't keep trading away all of our top prospects for pitchers.

[jjfanec]

Attendance is up, team is consistently competitive, players

actually are excited to come and play in Milwaukee. Melvin has done a

good (not great) job as GM

While they may be more competitive as of late, I'm not sure how consistent it's been. They finished 14 games out in 2010 and 11 games out in 2009, both years under .500. That may be better than how they did in the late 90's and early 2000's, but I think shows more about how bad they were back then.

 

To me, the glaring flaw about Melvin that stands out and prevents him from being a "great" GM is his complete lack of ability to develop his own pitching, either through the draft or through trades. How many successful, home grown pitchers have been drafted or signed under Melvin? I count one. Maybe things will change with successful debuts of Peralta, Thornburg, Bradley and Jungmann, but until that happens we can't give him credit for any of them. As good as the trades for Greinke and Marcum were, they wouldn't have been necessary if Melvin could develop a successful #2 or #3 type pitchers. Brett Lawrie looks like he may turn out to be a very, very good player and we had to trade him because we had absolutely zero in the pitching department. Hopefully the little pitching pow wow they had a year or two again is going to bring a change in our fortunes because we can't keep trading away all of our top prospects for pitchers.

Good point on 2009 and 2010. Consistent was wrong. Why is the fact that Jack Z couldnt draft a starting pitcher to save his life Melvin's fault? Now he definitely has some blame but Jack Z gets all the credit for drafting Braun, Prince, etc but no blame for his inability to find starting pitching. The cost of young pitching is astronomical in trades and that left the Brewers in a terrible situation.

[TooLiveBrew]

Melvin also was named BA's executive of the year for 2011... I don't recall seeing that ever posted here at BF (link)

[jjfanec]

Melvin also was named BA's executive of the year for 2011... I don't recall seeing that ever posted here at BF

Melvin is undervalued by some of the more outspoken people on this board. I think numerous people here are convinced they would be much better GMs than Melvin. While Melvin isnt perfect, he has done a good job.

[paul253]

Why is the fact that Jack Z couldnt draft a starting pitcher to save his life Melvin's fault?

It wasn't just Jack Z. though. He left in 2008 and someone else (Reid Nichols right?) is now "in charge" of the draft. His first pick was Eric Arnett and he seems to have some unhealthy obsession with big bodied type pitchers (Heckathorn, Miller, Pierce, Nelson, Ross, Gagnon, Jungmann, Bradley, etc.) Looking over his three drafts I am not impressed in the least bit. And he may be saved by the two first round picks in one of the deepest drafts ever last season. I guess my point is that even if Melvin isn't the one making the final decision, he is the one who hires the guy who makes the final decisions. It seems like the drafts have been getting progressively worse. So even though he may not be scouting and picking these guys, I still blame him because he needs to realize that the drafts aren't as strong as they should be and it's responsibility to fix that.