Would you make this trade again?

[Jopal78]

At the trading deadline in 2014, Doug Melvin sent Anthony Banda and Mitch Haniger to Arizona for Gerardo Parra.

 

Parra played the best baseball of his career with the Brewers .312/.355/.482 across 146 games, but the team didn't win enough with him and he was traded to Baltimore at the deadline in 2015 for Zach Davies.

 

Davies has been a good player (career WAR of 5.3) who now has a shoulder injury. Meanwhile, Haniger broke in with the D'Backs and was flipped to Seattle in the Jean Segura trade. He's now hitting in the middle of the Mariners order and already has a 2.2 WAR this season and 5.3 for his career. He's batting .270/.359/.512.

 

Banda was traded over to Tampa Bay and was briefly in their starting rotation until tearing a ligament in his pitching elbow.

 

With all the picks Doug Melvin missed on after 2010, two of the few players he actually hit on were traded away in a deal that at this point can best be called a "push".

[tmwiese55]

Yes, I would make that trade again. No problem.

[adambr2]

With benefit of hindsight would I make this trade again? No, I would rather have Haniger + injured Banda than Davies if that's what you're asking. So no I would not.

[tmwiese55]

Remember we haven't really had any problems with having a strong OF other than when we did it on purpose by trading away Gomez and Davis. As in, where would Haniger have ever played here. And as of now having a good half season often doesn't prove you're going to be long term good. Hope he makes it, but we'll see.

[MrTPlush]

Pointless to really think about honestly. If we take back Haniger/Banda you first assume they would be successful here. Haniger May have altered something along the way we would have never done making him a 4th OFer. I think of this scenario often when we traded Segura. While he ended up great after leaving it is because of something the D Backs changed. He would likely still suck if we kept him.

 

Another problem is the fact we are and have always been pretty loaded with OFers. Would Haniger ever really gotten a chance here? He never was a highly touted guy so not like holding onto him and trading him later would have meant higher value at the time of trade. I guess maybe some increase, but certainly not enough to make some obvious increase in return.

 

Even if you assume he stayed and we played him (having the same success he is having now) what dominos would that have created. No Brinson? Santana traded? ??????

 

 

Hindsight the trade did nothing for us in 2014 and I don’t really like Davies. However the dominos keeping him would have created might have been bad.

[rwa12]

Yep, no regrets.

[DHonks]

I never understood the trade at the time. I never had liked Parra, and felt Haniger was a legit prospect with Banda an intriguing lefty. It always seemed Haniger was the best player in the trade. However, Parra played well in Milwaukee and I learned to feel ok with the trade. I’m happy with Davies

[LouisEly]

Two guys I remember Braun raving about in spring training were Haniger and Taylor Williams. We are now seeing why.

 

Hard to answer this question because we are talking about two different events - trading Haniger/Bandy for Parra, and trading Parra for Davies.

 

The story isn't over yet though, because Davies is still on the team. With Davies eligible for arby next year, and with Woodruff/Peralta/Burnes/Houser knocking on the door and Ortiz/Brown/Ponce/Supak right behind them, there is a good chance that Davies gets moved in the next few years. Then it becomes Haniger/Banda for what Davies brings back.

[jerichoholicninja]

Didn't Hanger make some serious changes to his swing when he got to Seattle? I thought I remembered reading that somewhere. If true, then he probably isn't the same player in Milwaukee.

[pacopete4]

Seems like a common trend that another organization makes a change to a player we had and they become good.

[clancyphile]

I probably would.

 

Davies has had setbacks this year, possibly due to injury (he's been on the DL twice now). I'm of the opinion that the Brewers could have sold high on him and used a Davies+Arcia package to get a TOR starter and some help elsewhere. Use some combo of Perez/Villar/Orf/Sogard/waiver pickups to handle SS and 2B.

[Eye Black]

Didn't Hanger make some serious changes to his swing when he got to Seattle? I thought I remembered reading that somewhere. If true, then he probably isn't the same player in Milwaukee.

 

He made some significant changes to his swing while in Arizona (The evolution of Mitch Haniger), and some additional tweaks since while with Seattle. Player development not only matters, but it is nearly impossible to quantify.

 

Mitch Haniger in his current iteration would be great to have, but I’m not convinced he was likely to become that player in a Brewers uniform. If he hadn’t been traded for Gerardo Parra in 2014 it seems more plausible he would have either been traded for someone else, or left in roster limbo down the road, than the likelihood he was going to transform into a middle of the order slugger.

[adambr2]

Seems like a common trend that another organization makes a change to a player we had and they become good.

 

It's frustrating when that happens, but it has worked the other way too.(Anderson, Jeffress, Aguilar) and some guys have had huge success here and found very little elsewhere (Jeffress again, Lucroy, Gomez)

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Seems like a common trend that another organization makes a change to a player we had and they become good.

 

Ask the Red Sox if they'd like current Travis Shaw in their line-up.

[Eye Black]

Seems like a common trend that another organization makes a change to a player we had and they become good.

 

Ask the Red Sox if they'd like current Travis Shaw in their line-up.

As far as second guessing trades goes, I do think there is a big difference between a player developing into a good player a few years down the road (i.e. Haniger) versus a player seemingly becoming a difference maker overnight upon being inserted into a major league lineup (i.e. Shaw). In my opinion, the Travis Shaw trade is much easier to regret and question (from the Red Sox standpoint) than the Haniger trade (from the Brewers standpoint).

[pacopete4]

Seems like a common trend that another organization makes a change to a player we had and they become good.

 

Ask the Red Sox if they'd like current Travis Shaw in their line-up.

 

Did Travis Shaw go through a transformation as a Brewer? I don’t think we really had much to do with his success. He’s been this hitter really all along. The Brewers trade away guys who don’t have a great track record as a Brewer and for some reason other hitting coaches “fix” them and they become good. Apples to oranges with this comparison.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Seems like a common trend that another organization makes a change to a player we had and they become good.

 

Ask the Red Sox if they'd like current Travis Shaw in their line-up.

 

Did Travis Shaw go through a transformation as a Brewer? I don’t think we really had much to do with his success. He’s been this hitter really all along. The Brewers trade away guys who don’t have a great track record as a Brewer and for some reason other hitting coaches “fix” them and they become good. Apples to oranges with this comparison.

 

I'd say Shaw went through a transformation. If he was seen as a 30 HR 100 RBI 3B, he wouldn't have been traded as part of a package for a decent reliever. He was known as a guy who had major holes in his swing and was prone to long dry spells as a member of the Red Sox, while showing flashes. I would say that, while he is still a streaky hitter, he has found something that puts him squarely in the top 10 3B in the league. Guys like Segura and Gennett are actually pretty good comparisons to Shaw, as they had shown flashes during their time with the Brewers. Sometimes a change of scenery is just needed for a guy to break out. Chase Anderson last year was another good example. These situations have gone both ways.

[xisxisxis]

Segura and Shaw are similar situations to me. Both had a big improvement from a change of scenery.

 

Gennet and Gomez are similar. Both showed some hints of there "breakouts", but consistently underperformed. Both saw "power" spikes that came out of nowhere.

 

What bothers me is the prospects that we don't see a return. Where's our Hanigar? Where's our Brantley? We considered both of them expendable for short term rentals, yet we haven't developed anyone near their quality. Where's our Nelson Cruz? Khris Davis, I guess, and yet we traded him away too. So where's our Khris Davis? Surely not Michael Reed. Surely not .... (insert failed prospect here). What OF have we developed in ages? Yet we trade away two who were not considered to be definite major league contributers. Sure not all prospects evolve to be major league players, but it appears that the Brewers have an excellent track record of trading away the only ones in their system that will. Or, they wouldn't have evolved while with the Brewers. Either option means the Brewers are doing something wrong. Either in their own talent evaluation or in their development pipeline. I don't think it's only one or the other, but a combination of both and it isn't just poor drafting either. Based on track record, Lewis Brinson will become an All-star and Isan Diaz a long-term starter. Hopefully, based on early returns the Stearns Collective looks like they may be much better at talent evaluation. Which means we might learn some as to whether our prospect development pipeline has the right people in place, but being a small market team that relies on developing from within we NEED both to be working well.

[monty57]

I always thought that after the initial wave of prospects (Fielder, Weeks, Hardy, etc.), the Brewers looked at prospects more as trade chips than as future contributors to the Brewers. I think/hope that has changed since Attanasio's epiphany and the hiring of Stearns.

 

What's done is done, but going forward I'd prefer that we do not trade away good prospects for marginal short-term improvements to the MLB roster. We were able to pick up Neil Walker for basically nothing last year and he was probably a bigger marginal improvement to the team than Parra was when he was picked up. If we keep some payroll flexibility, we should almost always be able to find "salary dump" deals like that. If we're going to give up quality prospects, I think it should be for good, long-term fixes like Quintana would have been last year, or Yelich was this off-season.

[Eye Black]

What bothers me is the prospects that we don't see a return. Where's our Hanigar? Where's our Brantley? We considered both of them expendable for short term rentals, yet we haven't developed anyone near their quality. Where's our Nelson Cruz? Khris Davis, I guess, and yet we traded him away too. So where's our Khris Davis? Surely not Michael Reed. Surely not .... (insert failed prospect here). What OF have we developed in ages?

Specific to outfielders drafted and developed in the system that weren’t considered blue chip talents like Ryan Braun, I would say Corey Hart, Lorenzo Cain, and Khris Davis are the best “recent” examples. Obviously Cain and Davis were traded away, but much of their development occurred on the Brewers watch. A lot of Brantley’s development took place with the Brewers also, but it’s hard to say if he would have been the same player (or been given the same opportunities) with the Brewers.

[3and2Fastball]

This is similar to the topic of Scooter Gennett. If you want the current version of Scooter, you need to also have the Reds' hitting coach, because he's the one who help Scooter change his swing.

 

If you are asking if I'd like to have the current version of Mitch Haniger, then, yes I'd love it if Edgar Martinez was the Brewers' hitting coach.

 

These things don't exist in a vacuum, no matter how much we want them to.

 

Do Rangers fans want Jeffress back? Yes, they want Derek Johnson as their pitching coach...

 

For what's it worth, I was never in favor of being buyers at the deadline from 2012-2016

[tmwiese55]

Whoa whoa, I've seen here that hitting coaches don't matter

[jerichoholicninja]

When players make wholesale changes to their swings, they generally do so on their own and work with their own personal coaches.

[3and2Fastball]

When players make wholesale changes to their swings, they generally do so on their own and work with their own personal coaches.

 

Often, yes. But I've seen interviews with Scooter where he specifically talks about the Reds' hitting coach helping him change his swing, and everyone pretty much raves about Edgar Martinez as a hitting coach.

[xisxisxis]

What's done is done, but going forward I'd prefer that we do not trade away good prospects for marginal short-term improvements to the MLB roster.

I agree. Wouldn't it be great if we had the same reputation for batters that the Braves had with pitching in the 90's. The Braves always seemed to keep their best pitching prospects and trade the ones who weren't very good. They were so successful it actually started to impact the view of the prospect if they were willing to trade them. I understand the need at times to trade prospects to add complementary players to the organization/ML team, but not at the expense of the players that actually develop into above average major league talent. We should be trading the prospects we don't see a future when they have value. I know much of this occurred on the Melvin watch, so we may see a completely different result with Stearns.

 

 

A lot of Brantley’s development took place with the Brewers also, but it’s hard to say if he would have been the same player (or been given the same opportunities) with the Brewers.

yes it is impossible to tell how his trajectory changed due to the trade to Cleveland. My main concern is that we were taking on a rental for several months with Sabbathia and even with a legendary performance by him we only just made the playoffs, yet we gave up a prospect who developed into an above average OF, while the prospects we held onto fizzled (or as you state we traded - Cain) and we had zero other OF prospects develop and contribute since then (except of course trading Hanigar as part of the Parra trade that ended with ZD). Man if I ever meet Doug Melvin I'm gonna punch him in the face....