Trade Trash Talk 3: The Crack-Backening

My pending trade from January prospects for picks has not been updated on the spreadsheet.

I'm still in the market for nickles, preferably wooden ones.

you got a wax pack with Hosmer and Wil Myers?!?!? you must be gittier than a 12 year old Kansas City kid in 2011.
both of them are more 2019 than you think. and shedding those salaries is the asset, not having them signed for 3 years.

its ok for 2021. they may start eating each others playing time in 22 -> Cronenworth showed he's worth playing, Tatis and Machado aren't sitting. Kim just signed 5 years. Grisham and Pham aren't sitting.
Myers is really going to have to hit at a RF to be above replacement level.

I think Nats win this trade.

Okay, with the usual disclaimer, this is how I value each player in that trade:

Wil Myers (WAS --> NYY): +$27 MM
Eric Hosmer (WAS --> NYY): -$22 MM
Rece Hinds (NYY --> WAS): +$6 MM
Pick 3.11 (NYY --> WAS): ?? (I don't have a way to value picks)

So I'd probably give a slight edge to WAS because I see Hosmer as a significant value loss....but that said, there is more upside from their end as well if Hosmer has a good year and is able to recover his value.

This is the thought that the Padres front office wakes up to every morning. Go read Dave Camerons stuff at Fangraphs from before he signed in SD. He is what he is, its not coming back. 2020 was small sample, we had 2 full seasons before that to see where Hosmer was going.  a first baseman that hits 22 homers and has a .315 OBP?!?!?  over 50% GB in a guy who is not fast. and hes not good at 1st base.

I think you DO have a valuation on draft picks, in the NSBL as draft picks...  not as the player thats selected.  I think everyone is aware of the value of draft picks, and its extremely inflated.

I reached out about Hosmer last year, because I figured I'd take on that salary...  NATs wanted value back so I was out, I see him as a salary dump even more so this year.

looking at possible comps,  Matt Carpenter isn't far off,  signed as a free agent in BSNL  for 1 year .750.  

last year in NBSL Justin Bour, Tyler White, Jared Walsh and Mitch Moreland I have has all unsigned...  all of them in margin of error for comps to Hosmer. 

To TB - Jacob DeGrom ($29 ends in 2021)
To SD - Pick 3.22 in 2021, Pick 4.14 in 2021, Corey Ray, Jason Heyward, Stephen Piscotty, Edwin Encarnacion, and $10.170 MM in 2021

well, the value of the 3rd round pick and 4th round pick are what they are... inflated in this league.
the rest of the pieces are throw ins. but not having to outfit an entire team in the free agent market has its advantages.

it DeGrom were less $$ or longer term, I'd agree with Sean, but... its 1 year and the salary are awash. if SD is in a contention window, sure take the picks.

I'm still bitter about Gerrit Cole. I don't have anything constructive to add except that my deal was vetoed even though there was no collusion based on the return not being "enough" and deemed hurtful to the team/league. Circumstances that I was new don't actually impact the value of the pieces. Why can this deal go thru? It feels very "good ol' boys" to me. Ed and I were newer GMs, we essentially got censured. Connor and Deron are more established and get the benefit of the doubt.

Again, I'm still holding this grudge. I apologize for that. I just want to make sure that the standards for these types of deals are consistent. It feels pretty bad to watch blockbusters get done when I had to settle.

BitterBob

I wasn't a new guy Bob.. Deron is newer than me...but you are right in some aspects.  That is the first thing I thought as well but that is in the past.  I think the extra year with Cole made a difference. However, I thought the trade being vetoed, and all the subsequent whining from the portions league to me and accusing me of "taking advantage of the new guy," was utter horseshit.  But that was the decision so life moves on.  I see no problem with the SD trade.   I advised him to try and get a little more but he has basically an entire offense to field and this helped a lot.  Do I think he could have gotten more?  Yes.  I figured Tampa would LOVE to win it all and would have eventually given more, especially after some of the heartbreaks that model franchise had had.  Is he his own man and made the best deal he thought for his team at the time?  YES.   

We can all sit around and wonder this and that, but it is time to play ball soon.   

I'll be honest, I don't even remember the Cole trade. I remember it happening and it got vetoed, but I was pretty checked out mentally already.

As a former Committee member I can tell you that these decisions are the hardest part of the league. We would constantly ebb and flow from "only for collusion" to "good of the league". And when the Committee starts to get into the "good of the league" territory, there is no right answer. Because then you start to dictate how other owners should value their players/prospects and run their teams. So either you piss off the two owners who made the deal that you're vetoing or you're pissing off a handful of other owners who thought it should've been vetoed. And then you have to worry about precedence like we have now.

No matter what happens here, feelings will be hurt and someone will feel wronged.

yes Joe "good of the league" thats is too fueled with bias. bad teams happen, tanking happens, find good GMs and role with the els and flows of contention. only veto if you have evidence of collusion... and then you should be shopping for 2 new GMS anyway.

If the committee would like to use my trade value data for any discussions regarding uneven trades, I'm happy to lend that resource regarding those players. Though it's not fully unbiased (nothing is), it is at least consistent in the way it makes valuations.

Just throwing it out there if they want it, no worries if not.

Since people are questioning the valuation of the DeGrom trade, figured it's only fair I throw out the valuations my model has on each player. As always, it's not clear of bias, since every model has bias, but it's at least consistent:

Jacob DeGrom: +$15.6 MM (expected to produce $44.6 MM of value in 2021, minus a $29 MM contract = $15.6 of surplus)

Jason Heyward: +$10 MM ($16.8 MM of production, $6.75 MM contract)
Stephen Piscotty: +$0.1 MM ($4.5 MM of production, $4.4 MM contract)
Edwin Encarnacion: -$4.4 MM ($1.3 MM of production, $5.75 MM contract)
Cash: +$10.170 MM
Pick 3.22: +$8-10 MM based on cost of past year trades and expected value of a player picked in this range (this is just my guess)
Pick 4.14: +$7-10 MM based on cost of past year trades and expected value of a player picked in this range (this is just my guess)
Corey Ray: +$5.7 MM (mean expected production ~0.9 WAR over 6 years of control). Prospect valuations are strange since it's more about a distribution than a mean, but I still treat them as a mean. This is what Ray's mean looks like:
Year: +0 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $1.4
Year: +1 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $1.4
Year: +2 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $1.3
Year: +3 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $1.0 | Year surplus: $1.0
Year: +4 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $1.5 | Year surplus: $0.5
Year: +5 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $2.0 | Year surplus: $0.0


So in total, TB trades somewhere between $30 MM and $40 MM of surplus production in exchange for $16 MM of surplus value. Now I am happy with the trade and very willing to do this, because for me, adding surplus in 2021 has a lot of value since I'm in a championship window and I can hopefully replace Jason Heyward with Harrison Bader and Franchy Cordero without losing too much production, whereas I was lacking high end talent in my rotation outside of Darvish and May.

Additionally, I will say that if I was in Deron's shoes I would have preferred to get that $30-$40 in a more condensed way rather than spreading it amongst 2 picks, 1 good player, 2 bench pieces, and a fringe prospect but to each their own.


Finally, I would have also held out those picks for a higher dollar amount as the recent cost of picks is much higher than $6 MM per pick, especially when one of the picks is in the 3rd round.

That is an issue with rounded values since I only went 1 decimal place, but also a good excuse to go under the hood and look at how my prospect valuation model works:

1. Corey Ray received a 40+ FV (treated as 42 FV) by fangraphs in 2020 (2021 data is not out, and I didn't scrape mlb.com's 2020 prospect lists since they changed the backend data structure and I didn't want to write a new scraper....will try to get one up for this year though since they changed again and the data is handled nicer).
2. Certainly text words in a player's write-up raise/lower their FV in my prospect FV adjuster calculator (e.g. phrases like "high upside" or "breakout"). Ray received a +1 in this, for a 43 adjusted FV (adjFV).
3. Smoothing fangraph's research on prospect performance (e.g.: blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-to-prospect-valuation/) gives the following 6 year mean WAR production for prospect adjFVs:

       if position in ('sp', 'rp'):
           if adj_FV <= 38:
               war_val = 0.1
           elif adj_FV > 38 and adj_FV <= 46:
               war_val = 0.1 + (adj_FV-38)*0.1
           elif adj_FV > 46:
               war_val = 0.9 + (adj_FV-46)*0.35
       else:
           if adj_FV <= 35:
               war_val = 0.1
           elif adj_FV > 35 and adj_FV <= 47:
               war_val = 0.1 + (adj_FV-35)*0.1
           elif adj_FV > 47:
               war_val = 1.3 + (adj_FV-47)*0.40

4. At 43 adjFV, Ray has a 6 year WAR estimation of: 0.1 + (43-35)*0.1 = 0.1 + 0.8*0.1 = 0.9
5. 0.9 WAR evenly distributed over 6 years = 0.15 WAR per season (this is where the rounded starts, as it rounded to 0.1 WAR per season as opposed to 0.15).
6. The cost per win for a prospect is slightly adjusted to account for volatility:
year_dollar = (12.5 + (year-2019)*0.4)
In 2021, that comes to $13.3 MM per WAR.
7. To summarize, this is the full estimation of his valuation:
COREY RAY: OF (SD | MIL) - PROSPECT PAYOUT
Contract: NonVet w/6 years remaining |  Current Salary: $0.55 (N counted)
adjFV: 43.0 | projWAR: 0.9 ( avgWAR: 0.1)

Year: +0 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $1.4
Year: +1 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $1.4
Year: +2 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $1.3
Year: +3 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $1.0 | Year surplus: $1.0
Year: +4 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $1.5 | Year surplus: $0.5
Year: +5 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $2.0
Est Salary: $2.0 | Year surplus: $0.0

EST MODEL:
Sum salary: $6.3 | Sum WAR: 0.9 | Sum value: $12.0 | Sum surplus: $5.7
PRESEASON MODEL:
Sum salary: $6.3 | Sum WAR: 0.9 | Sum value: $12.0 | Sum surplus: $5.7


To compare, here are some other randomly selected prospects:

WANDER FRANCO: IF (MIN | TBR) - PROSPECT PAYOUT
Contract: NonVet w/6 years remaining |  Current Salary: $0.55 (N counted)
adjFV: 75.3 | projWAR: 12.6 ( avgWAR: 2.1)

Year: +0 | projWAR: 2.1 | Year value: $28.0
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $27.4
Year: +1 | projWAR: 2.1 | Year value: $28.0
Est Salary: $1.3 | Year surplus: $26.7
Year: +2 | projWAR: 2.1 | Year value: $28.0
Est Salary: $2.5 | Year surplus: $25.5
Year: +3 | projWAR: 2.1 | Year value: $28.0
Est Salary: $5.5 | Year surplus: $22.5
Year: +4 | projWAR: 2.1 | Year value: $28.0
Est Salary: $9.0 | Year surplus: $19.0
Year: +5 | projWAR: 2.1 | Year value: $28.0
Est Salary: $17.5 | Year surplus: $10.5

EST MODEL:
Sum salary: $36.3 | Sum WAR: 12.6 | Sum value: $167.8 | Sum surplus: $131.5
PRESEASON MODEL:
Sum salary: $36.3 | Sum WAR: 12.6 | Sum value: $167.8 | Sum surplus: $131.5


SPENCER TORKELSON: IF (CHC | DET) - PROSPECT PAYOUT
Contract: NonVet w/6 years remaining |  Current Salary: $55.0 (N counted)
adjFV: 54.6 | projWAR: 4.3 ( avgWAR: 0.7)

Year: +0 | projWAR: 0.7 | Year value: $9.6
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $9.1
Year: +1 | projWAR: 0.7 | Year value: $9.6
Est Salary: $1.0 | Year surplus: $8.7
Year: +2 | projWAR: 0.7 | Year value: $9.6
Est Salary: $1.9 | Year surplus: $7.7
Year: +3 | projWAR: 0.7 | Year value: $9.6
Est Salary: $3.8 | Year surplus: $5.8
Year: +4 | projWAR: 0.7 | Year value: $9.6
Est Salary: $5.8 | Year surplus: $3.8
Year: +5 | projWAR: 0.7 | Year value: $9.6
Est Salary: $7.7 | Year surplus: $1.9

EST MODEL:
Sum salary: $20.8 | Sum WAR: 4.3 | Sum value: $57.7 | Sum surplus: $37.0
PRESEASON MODEL:
Sum salary: $20.8 | Sum WAR: 4.3 | Sum value: $57.7 | Sum surplus: $37.0


NOLAN JONES: IF (CLE | CLE) - PROSPECT PAYOUT
Contract: NonVet w/6 years remaining |  Current Salary: $0.55 (N counted)
adjFV: 49.4 | projWAR: 2.3 ( avgWAR: 0.4)

Year: +0 | projWAR: 0.4 | Year value: $5.0
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $4.5
Year: +1 | projWAR: 0.4 | Year value: $5.0
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $4.4
Year: +2 | projWAR: 0.4 | Year value: $5.0
Est Salary: $1.0 | Year surplus: $4.0
Year: +3 | projWAR: 0.4 | Year value: $5.0
Est Salary: $2.0 | Year surplus: $3.0
Year: +4 | projWAR: 0.4 | Year value: $5.0
Est Salary: $3.0 | Year surplus: $2.0
Year: +5 | projWAR: 0.4 | Year value: $5.0
Est Salary: $4.0 | Year surplus: $1.0

EST MODEL:
Sum salary: $11.2 | Sum WAR: 2.3 | Sum value: $30.1 | Sum surplus: $18.9
PRESEASON MODEL:
Sum salary: $11.2 | Sum WAR: 2.3 | Sum value: $30.1 | Sum surplus: $18.9


AARON BRACHO: IF (ARI | CLE) - PROSPECT PAYOUT
Contract: NonVet w/6 years remaining |  Current Salary: $0.55 (N counted)
adjFV: 43.4 | projWAR: 0.9 ( avgWAR: 0.2)

Year: +0 | projWAR: 0.2 | Year value: $2.1
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $1.5
Year: +1 | projWAR: 0.2 | Year value: $2.1
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $1.5
Year: +2 | projWAR: 0.2 | Year value: $2.1
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $1.4
Year: +3 | projWAR: 0.2 | Year value: $2.1
Est Salary: $1.0 | Year surplus: $1.1
Year: +4 | projWAR: 0.2 | Year value: $2.1
Est Salary: $1.5 | Year surplus: $0.6
Year: +5 | projWAR: 0.2 | Year value: $2.1
Est Salary: $2.0 | Year surplus: $0.1

EST MODEL:
Sum salary: $6.3 | Sum WAR: 0.9 | Sum value: $12.5 | Sum surplus: $6.2
PRESEASON MODEL:
Sum salary: $6.3 | Sum WAR: 0.9 | Sum value: $12.5 | Sum surplus: $6.2


JOSE DE LEON: RP (CIN | CIN) - PROSPECT PAYOUT
Contract: NonVet w/6 years remaining |  Current Salary: $0.55 (N counted)
adjFV: 40.7 | projWAR: 0.4 ( avgWAR: 0.1)

Year: +0 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.8
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $0.3
Year: +1 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.8
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $0.2
Year: +2 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.8
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $0.2
Year: +3 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.8
Est Salary: $0.8 | Year surplus: $0.0
Year: +4 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.8
Est Salary: $0.8 | Year surplus: $0.0
Year: +5 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.8
Est Salary: $0.8 | Year surplus: $0.0

EST MODEL:
Sum salary: $4.3 | Sum WAR: 0.4 | Sum value: $4.9 | Sum surplus: $0.7
PRESEASON MODEL:
Sum salary: $4.3 | Sum WAR: 0.4 | Sum value: $4.9 | Sum surplus: $0.7



ALEC HANSEN: RP (TB | CHW) - PROSPECT PAYOUT
Contract: NonVet w/6 years remaining |  Current Salary: $0.55 (N counted)
adjFV: 40.1 | projWAR: 0.3 ( avgWAR: 0.1)

Year: +0 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.7
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $0.1
Year: +1 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.7
Est Salary: $0.6 | Year surplus: $0.1
Year: +2 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.7
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $0.0
Year: +3 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.7
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $0.0
Year: +4 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.7
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $0.0
Year: +5 | projWAR: 0.1 | Year value: $0.7
Est Salary: $0.7 | Year surplus: $0.0

EST MODEL:
Sum salary: $3.9 | Sum WAR: 0.3 | Sum value: $4.1 | Sum surplus: $0.3
PRESEASON MODEL:
Sum salary: $3.9 | Sum WAR: 0.3 | Sum value: $4.1 | Sum surplus: $0.3


I don't expect these to line up 100% with anybody's personal valuations, because that would be insane. But I do think it gives a decent approximation for what the trade value of prospects/players in both this league and MLB. Feel free to disagree or leave a comment/shoot me an e-mail if there's anything you'd like to discuss further (or think that's erroneous with the process and want me to look at!)