2023 Trade Deadline

[mtutiger]

15 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

But baseball is my escape from the real world. 😃

I get it, it's mine too

But that's just it... it's our escape from reality, but for people like Scott Harris, it's their job, it's their responsibility. It just changes the perspective.

[Edman85]

There are diminishing returns, if not (what's the term, negative returns?) going too heavily in the free agent market. It's not just money. We are seeing it with the Miguel Cabrera anvil the last five years. Imagine that times 5-10.

[Edman85]

Also, am I crazy for saying Lorenzen has been more valuable than Jeimer this year? And likely should fetch more in the trade market if his arm stays in tact another few weeks.

[1984Echoes]

Candy is 2.6 WAR to Lorenzen's 1.1... which is probably going to change after tonight...

But it is sometimes hard to trade starting players at the deadline because most teams have their positions filled adequately or better... So there's that.

But I'm with Lee. Don't care about the money. My choice would have been to have both Candy & Lorenzen on the roster... and I would have jettisoned Schoop because I had ZERO confidence in him this season and stated as such in the offseason...

But that's just my own preference.

[Tenacious D]

52 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Also, am I crazy for saying Lorenzen has been more valuable than Jeimer this year? And likely should fetch more in the trade market if his arm stays in tact another few weeks.

You are crazy, but not for this reason.  Agree that Lorenzen would command more.

[Edman85]

20 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Candy is 2.6 WAR to Lorenzen's 1.1... which is probably going to change after tonight...

But it is sometimes hard to trade starting players at the deadline because most teams have their positions filled adequately or better... So there's that.

But I'm with Lee. Don't care about the money. My choice would have been to have both Candy & Lorenzen on the roster... and I would have jettisoned Schoop because I had ZERO confidence in him this season and stated as such in the offseason...

But that's just my own preference.

Replacement level is general and WAR is a very broad brush. It is clear the replacement level that Lorenzen was performing over was much lower than the leaguewide level given Toledo's rotation and the preference for "Bullpen Day"

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

Also, am I crazy for saying Lorenzen has been more valuable than Jeimer this year? And likely should fetch more in the trade market if his arm stays in tact another few weeks.

LOL - today's outing didn't help him.

[mtutiger]

53 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

LOL - today's outing didn't help him.

I think Ed is actually right here, and it comes down to versatility - Lorenzen had a bad night, but he's profiles as both a fifth starter and as a possible bullpen piece.

Candelario has hit well this year, but he's not versatile - either he plays third or DH. 

WAR can be a useful stat, but with Candy, I just think the fact that he can't move around the diamond probably limits the competition for his services some.

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

Replacement level is general and WAR is a very broad brush. It is clear the replacement level that Lorenzen was performing over was much lower than the leaguewide level given Toledo's rotation and the preference for "Bullpen Day"

I don't like to compare WAR for hitters and pitchers anyway.  It's apples and oranges and I'm not sure it's measuring the same thing.  I believe pitcher value can be understated.  For example, I think an average starter who can give you 150+ innings is actually better than average position player because so few pitchers remain healthy all year.  It is also probably easier to hide a replacement level position player for a couple of weeks than a replacement level starter.  

[casimir]

17 hours ago, KL2 said:

He wasn't even a 1 WAR player last year. I disagree there was nobody possibily out there either via free agency, trade or our sytem who could possibily put up a .5 WAR -- especially when you consider the cost. Even if you thought candy came back to a 1.5 player. Is 1.5 WAR at the cost worth it than less say not signing Lorezeno or not doing XYZ. 

This could very well be true (I'm drawing a blank on who the free agents were).  But the opportunity cost reward isn't necessarily 0.5 WAR.  Mixed into that is the reasonable expectations of what Candelario could provide.  A repeat of 2022 is possible because he has shown the capability of it.  But he's also shown the capability of putting up much better numbers if you go all the way back to 2021.

If retaining Candelario would have made it impossible to sign a Lorenzen to his contract, then this team has bigger problems.  Certainly the Tigers needed to address the starting rotation.  I liked the Lorenzen signing, he's done well enough to justify the risk of signing a non SP (recently) to fill a spot in the rotation.  I think that was a reasonable gamble.  But for crying out loud, what's one more $7M on top of around $117M, especially when a reasonable possibility exists that the bat comes around and he becomes a trade candidate?

I guess the variable that we on the outside cannot calculate is that of did both sides simply exhaust the working relationship to its end?  I don't know one way or another, and I'm not going to assume any of us know either.  Maybe Candelario needed another environment.  Maybe the Tiger brass decided they couldn't do much more with Candelario.  It could be somewhere between innocent and acrimonious, and again, we don't know one way or the other.  But there is the possibility that it was just time.  Its entirely possible that Candelario's 2023 wouldn't have occurred with Detroit.  That's part of the vexation of baseball.  There's more to assembling a major league winner than just playing rotisserie baseball.  

[chasfh]

15 hours ago, mtutiger said:

What I keep coming back to is that, realistically, the only chance the Tigers had to retain him was to overpay him. I understand why they shouldn't have felt obliged to do that... I'm happy that he's an "old friend" having success elsewhere, good for him. But he wasn't worth $7 million, so it's hard for me to feel much sympathy or regret for the decision that the Tigers made. And I'm guessing most other GMs and Presidents in that same situation would have done the same thing.

I might be the only person here who thought that $7 million would not have been an overpay for Jeimer, because I was thinking of it in terms of paying him for the season he was projected to have coming up, which was more than one win by the lowest estimates, rather than paying him for the season he just had, for which he should have been paying us.

I also may have been the only person who thought that the low end projections of slightly more than a single win was really low, that he would probably exceed that that at least half a win, and that even if not, the cost of being wrong would have been pretty minimal, and not close to being ruinous of our plans to rebuild the organization. IOW, I thought it would have been a low risk/high reward sign. But then, I see how other folks could look at his 2022 and think he was done done, too.

[chasfh]

12 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Jeimer making $5M (plus incentives, but I'll ignore them for this point) versus $7M. Let's say the trade is now, at the mid-season point to make the math easy. A team picking up $5M Jeimer adds roughly $2.5M to their CBT bill. A team picking up $7M Jeimer adds roughly $3.5M to their CBT bill.

Just so I have this straight, is CBT based only on base salary, and achieved incentives are not part of that?

If Candelario is traded at the exact midpoint on a $7MM straight contract, that’s $3.5MM. Easy peasy. If he’s traded on his current contract and he hits the remaining three incentive benchmarks, that’s $2.5MM in base plus $600K in incentives he’ll paid, which makes $3.1MM.

But does the latter example still count as only $2.5MM against the CBT, as in your example, because only the base counts against it?

[chasfh]

12 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

But if I had as much money as they do, I could buy any car or house I wanted.  I know it's a business and they don't have all their money budgeted on the team, but I don't think their situation is comparable to mine.  If I was a billionaire with a wife and three children and I bought a two room house because it fit my business budget, I don't think my hypothetical wife would see that as a shrewd move.  

That’s because your hypothetical wife is a bitch.

[Edman85]

8 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Just so I have this straight, is CBT based only on base salary, and achieved incentives are not part of that?

If Candelario is traded at the exact midpoint on a $7MM straight contract, that’s $3.5MM. Easy peasy. If he’s traded on his current contract and he hits the remaining three incentive benchmarks, that’s $2.5MM in base plus $600K in incentives he’ll paid, which makes $3.1MM.

But does the latter example still count as only $2.5MM against the CBT, as in your example, because only the base counts against it?

Incentives are part of it. I was just leaving them out to simplify the math.

[mtutiger]

16 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I might be the only person here who thought that $7 million would not have been an overpay for Jeimer, because I was thinking of it in terms of paying him for the season he was projected to have coming up, which was more than one win by the lowest estimates, rather than paying him for the season he just had, for which he should have been paying us.

The market sets the value. And clearly, given how it played out, $7 million would have been an overpay

 

[chasfh]

12 hours ago, Edman85 said:

What if Candelario was a bit of a malcontent who was interfering with the development of players? Interfering with instruction and casting doubt on the regime's development methods. Bringing him around was only going to hinder the rebuild. I'm not saying that is true, but that's the type of stuff we don't know.

Exactly what I have implied before. I get your point about the money and its effect on the rest of the budget, but it also wouldn’t surprise me to learn that personal reasons were involved in the decision not to retain him—whether it was the personal distaste of the owner for the bad press Jeimer’s lack of performance generated, or the personal desire of Jeimer to get the hell out of this organization, or the personal distaste the other guys might have had for Jeimer as a teammate. I know nothing about any of that—I’m just speculating based on my calculation about the actual dollars involved, i.e., I have trouble believing the amount of money was the one nonstarter that was completely responsible for preventing the re-sign.

[chasfh]

12 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

LOL - maaaaybe......

actually if I had to take a WAG about a clubhouse issue it would be that if anything Jeimer seemed like he might have been a bit of a stick in the mud and maybe Hinch enjoys a looser clubhouse and Jeimer wasn't always comfortable with that.

Well, to be fair, you did preface this with “wild ass” … 😉

[mtutiger]

1 hour ago, casimir said:

I guess the variable that we on the outside cannot calculate is that of did both sides simply exhaust the working relationship to its end?  I don't know one way or another, and I'm not going to assume any of us know either.  Maybe Candelario needed another environment.  Maybe the Tiger brass decided they couldn't do much more with Candelario.  It could be somewhere between innocent and acrimonious, and again, we don't know one way or the other.  But there is the possibility that it was just time.  Its entirely possible that Candelario's 2023 wouldn't have occurred with Detroit.  That's part of the vexation of baseball.  There's more to assembling a major league winner than just playing rotisserie baseball.  

This is probably a factor as well.

Again, happy that Jeimer is having success elsewhere, but he wasn't merely incidental to the failures of 2022 but was a huge part of it. Both through a mix of underperformance and injury. I seem to recall a stretch of games in June or July 2022 where AJ was holding him out of the lineup for a mental break and that he wasn't necessarily an asset to the club off the field as well.

We keep looking at this through the lens of the talent on this roster and how, for one year anyway, Candy may have been supplemental. But he holds some responsibility for his level of play in 2022 as well, and I can understand the team not wanting to pay him more than what the market was likely to judge his value at. And with a new brass that values versatility and strike zone discipline, not clear he was even a fit anyway

Edited July 1, 2023 by mtutiger

[chasfh]

11 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Also, am I crazy for saying Lorenzen has been more valuable than Jeimer this year? And likely should fetch more in the trade market if his arm stays in tact another few weeks.

No, you’re not crazy for saying that. To the degree that healthy pitching is always more valuable than hitting in the trade market, I would agree with this.

Lorenzen and Jeimer together in the trade market would have fetched the most in the trade market. Maybe even together. Mets, Brewers, Yankees could all use both a good third baseman and another starter right now. That’s a competitive market right there.

Edited July 1, 2023 by chasfh

[chasfh]

9 hours ago, mtutiger said:

I think Ed is actually right here, and it comes down to versatility - Lorenzen had a bad night, but he's profiles as both a fifth starter and as a possible bullpen piece.

Candelario has hit well this year, but he's not versatile - either he plays third or DH. 

WAR can be a useful stat, but with Candy, I just think the fact that he can't move around the diamond probably limits the competition for his services some.

If your third base options are struggling and you need a guy to push you over the top for this season, getting a guy on an expiring contract who’s arguably the best at that position and plays there only should not be a barrier to making a move.

[chasfh]

16 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Incentives are part of it. I was just leaving them out to simplify the math.

OK, I see. Since the incentives are definitely a part of his equation, though, wouldn’t that make the difference between the two examples much smaller in this real case?

[mtutiger]

2 minutes ago, chasfh said:

If your third base options are struggling and you need a guy to push you over the top for this season, getting a guy on an expiring contract who’s arguably the best at that position and plays there only should not be a barrier to making a move.

Are there a lot of contenders who aren't totally solid at third base at the moment?

[chasfh]

18 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

The market sets the value. And clearly, given how it played out, $7 million would have been an overpay

 

That’s true, and the market for Jeimer was very small—basically us, who didn’t want him around anymore, and Washington.

[mtutiger]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

That’s true, and the market for Jeimer was very small—basically us, who didn’t want him around anymore, and Washington.

I mean, there may have been others... but clearly Washington must have been the best offer.

[buddha]

i'm just here to watch chas type and pat himself on the back at the same time.