Major League Baseball has seen some stuff, man. That's including, but not limited to, all the lopsided trades of this century. It's going to be hard for any trade to top those.
According to the baseball commentary parlor, however, last week's blockbuster trade that sent Shelby Miller to Arizona is sure going to try.
The Miller trade went down a couple days after the Arizona Diamondbacks bolstered their starting rotation by signing ace right-hander Zack Greinke to a six-year, $206.5 million contract. On the surface, it looks good that the Diamondbacks were willing to then go the extra mile for Miller. After all, they had to suffer through some lousy starting pitching in an otherwise promising 2015 season.
The problem isn't so much what the Diamondbacks are getting—it's what they gave up.
The Diamondbacks sent three players to the Atlanta Braves to acquire Miller: outfielder Ender Inciarte, right-handed prospect Aaron Blair and shortstop prospect Dansby Swanson. This is short of a Herschel Walker-esque trade package, but it's definitely a big one.
Behold, a bullet-pointed summary!
- Inciarte: A 25-year-old outfielder who hit .303 while continuing to play superb defense in 2015 and who's under club control for five more seasons.
- Blair: A 23-year-old who's used a mid-90s fastball and solid changeup and curveball to establish himself as MLB.com's No. 61 prospect.
- Swanson: A 21-year-old do-it-all shortstop who was the No. 1 pick of the 2015 draft and is now MLB.com's No. 10 prospect.
That, folks, is a lot of talent. Arguably too much for Miller, who's only managed a good-but-not-great 3.22 ERA in 575.1 major league innings. He's also under club control for just three more years.
To get the gist of what's being said about this deal, all you have to do is Google "Shelby Miller trade" and let the hate wash over you. From ESPN.com to USA Today to CBS Sports to FanGraphs, the consensus is that Arizona got robbed.
Of course, this is just what everyone is saying now. Surely, this trade won't end up being that bad, right?
... Right?
Here's where we need some context. For that, we'll take a stroll down the "Terrible Trades of the 2000s" wing of Memory Lane.
Here are the ones that stand out, presented in another bullet-pointed summary!
- 2002: The Montreal Expos trade Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips to the Cleveland Indians for Bartolo Colon.
- 2003: The San Francisco Giants trade Francisco Liriano and Joe Nathan to the Minnesota Twins for A.J. Pierzynski.
- 2007: The Florida Marlins trade Miguel Cabrera to the Detroit Tigers for Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller and others.
- 2007: The Braves trade Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and Jarrod Saltalamacchia to the Texas Rangers for Mark Teixeira.
- 2008: The Seattle Mariners trade Adam Jones, Chris Tillman and others to the Baltimore Orioles for Erik Bedard.
This is far from the entirety of the list of lopsided trades from the last 15 years—MLB Trade Rumors has a pretty good round-up—but it's hard to argue that these five aren't the worst of the worst.
Of these, it's the Colon, Teixeira and Bedard trades that stand out as cautionary tales for the Diamondbacks. Those trades involved a borderline contender going all-in on one player, and the cost ended up being extraordinary.
The buzz around the Miller trade suggests that the same could happen to the Diamondbacks. And, frankly, it doesn't require much of a leap to reach that conclusion.
At the least, we know what Inciarte is. He's a good batting-average merchant with speed that serves him on the basepaths and on defense. That's a combination of talents that, in FanGraphs' eyes, made him worth 3.3 WAR in 2015.
For perspective, Miller was worth 3.4 WAR in 2015. As such, Miller-for-Inciarte alone was arguably a fair enough swap based on talent. But when you factor in that Inciarte has two years of club control left, that no longer sounds fair.
Then there's what Blair and Swanson could become. ESPN.com's Keith Law, for example, sees Blair as a pitcher with a "limited ceiling" but with a skill set that "generates a lot of ground balls and misses just enough bats." Swanson looks even better, as Law sums him up as "a true shortstop who projects as an above-average or better defender there, with plus running speed and the potential to hit in the .290-.300 range with a handful of homers and good OBP skills."
Bottom line: If we look at this strictly as a value swap, it's pretty clear the Braves are going to win. The Diamondbacks know they've traded for three years of Miller. The Braves know they've traded for at least 16 combined years of Inciarte, Blair and Swanson.
Even if Blair and Swanson aren't all they're cracked up to be, there's no way the Braves are losing more value than they've gained in this deal. If they are all they're cracked up to be, then this trade will prove to be just as bad as the Colon, Teixeira and Bedard deals—if not worse.
We can say this in Arizona's defense, though: It's over-simplistic to look at this trade strictly as a value swap. Maybe this trade won't be a win for the Diamondbacks from a value standpoint, but what if it gets them to where they want to go?
If this reasoning sounds familiar, that's because it's the same reasoning that the Expos, Braves and Mariners were working with when they went ahead with the Colon, Teixeira and Bedard trades. Obviously, that doesn't bode well for the Diamondbacks.
But for those three bad examples, there are three good examples.
The Tigers benefited big time from betting that Cabrera could take them over the edge. Likewise, the Boston Red Sox don't win the 2007 World Series if they don't trade Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez for Josh Becket and Mike Lowell. More recently, the Kansas City Royals don't win a pennant and a World Series if they don't trade Wil Myers and others for James Shields and Wade Davis.
Clearly, winning big on an all-in trade can be done. And knowing where they are, the Diamondbacks aren't fools to think they can be next in line.
The Diamondbacks won only 79 games in 2015, but they did it with half of a really good team. Led by Paul Goldschmidt and A.J. Pollock, their offense ranked second in the National League in runs. And though losing Inciarte hurts their defense, the Diamondbacks did have defense to spare. According to defensive runs saved, theirs was far and away the best defense in MLB in 2015.
If the Diamondbacks only had more starting pitching than basically "none," they might just have been able to hang in the race in 2015. If we can take it from what his agent supposedly told Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall, one guy who saw this clearly was Greinke.
“I’m telling you, they’re an ace away from being legitimate,” Greinke told Casey Close, as Hall told Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports. “I think I can help.”
Greinke, who's coming off a 1.66 ERA in 2015, can indeed help. So can a healthy Patrick Corbin, who was an All-Star in 2013 before the evil Tommy John spirit whisked him away in 2014.
And yes, Miller can also help.
Miller has had his ups and downs, but he's coming off an up after posting a 3.02 ERA across 205.1 innings in 2015. Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs broke down how that may have only be the start of Miller's rise to ace status. He expanded his repertoire from two reliable pitches to four, making himself an excellent contact manager with room to grow as a strikeout artist.
All told, what we're looking at is a team that has gone from having a great offense, a great defense and no starting rotation to having a great offense, a great defense and a rotation anchored by a potentially excellent front three.
If the Diamondbacks could win 79 games without that last part in 2015, it's not crazy to think the 2016 season will see them become contenders. If they do, it won't be a one-off. This isn't a veteran team circling a last gasp. This is a young team striving for a dynasty.
So, if we're talking about where this trade is going to rank among the most lopsided deals of this century—and we are—the answer may be just as likely to be "not at all" as it is to be "pretty high up there." Though there's virtually no chance of the Diamondbacks getting the better end of the value swap, the Miller trade will be worth it if it helps turn them into contenders.
That's our two cents, anyway. Now, we turn it over to time, which always has the final say.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
- Login to post comments