The death of a trade

I men­tioned ear­lier a few of the sug­ges­tions for good trad­ing prac­tices. One of the main rea­sons I wrote that is because I’ve been burned and frus­trated count­less times by other own­ers who don’t keep the same rules in mind. And while it’s one thing to say “well, that just didn’t work out”, if it hap­pens too often then that per­son in your league becomes one less per­son you can approach for a deal. And if he does it to too many peo­ple, he becomes a pariah in the league, and essen­tially use­less the day after the draft.

Watch care­fully as a deal that seemed to work for both par­ties dies a hor­ri­ble death, and think about what could have hap­pened if the other party had fol­lowed the guide­lines I talked about earlier.

One of my leagues uses a Yahoogroups mail­ing list for leaguewide announce­ments, specif­i­cally for keep­ing records of announced trades and the like. It’s meant to be a dis­cus­sion list, so it defaults to reply­ing back to the rest of the league. This works great when there’s a dis­cus­sion about league rules, but when some­one starts look­ing for or shop­ping play­ers, there’s bound to be a reply meant for just that one per­son but sent to the entire league. Such a thing hap­pened three weeks ago, when an owner (let’s call him “Apple”) responded to a request for pitch­ing, mak­ing it known that Randy John­son and Jason Jen­nings — two pitch­ers who had been on the DL this sea­son but were back — were available.

Now, Apple has been in the league for a few years and been clas­si­fied as a “future” owner; Apple loves the prospects and the great cheap con­tracts for young play­ers. As a result, his teams are usu­ally this hor­ri­ble mixed bag of a few high priced name play­ers and guys in AA. This usu­ally gets him in trou­ble, and two los­ing sea­sons (70–92 and 74–88 respec­tively) have proven that, mainly because his teams have no depth. An injury here or there results in no backup to turn to, and in some cases he leaves the draft with­out a starter at mul­ti­ple posi­tions. This year’s draft was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent in that he didn’t get in on the huge con­tracts (which can be dif­fi­cult to trade mid-season with our cap struc­ture) and scooped up some good value con­tracts when the rest of the league spent big early, but at the same time he went huge on play­ers with zero track record in the league who weren’t guar­an­teed to be play­ing in the majors this sea­son. Often, a rookie player or a top prospect will get bid up to $500,000 — this is the high­est a con­tract can be that can be extended at the $100k level. The threat is that if the other per­son wants the player so bad, they have to bid $600,000, and that player’s sec­ond year of their con­tract becomes a $1.1 mil­lion deal — a bit much for an unknown quan­tity. Apple didn’t just hit that $600k bar­rier for one player — he did it for sev­eral, includ­ing a $2 mil­lion con­tract for catcher Miguel Mon­tero, who had six games of major league expe­ri­ence, and only 36 games of AAA. Despite the high final bid, he still gave Mon­tero a three year con­tract, mean­ing he was oblig­ated to $2 mil­lion this sea­son, $3 mil­lion next sea­son, and $4 mil­lion the sea­son after that. For per­spec­tive, I drafted Jorge Posada in this league this past draft for $3.9 mil­lion. Four time all-star .866 OPS last sea­son Jorge Posada.

[Side note: Montero’s bat­ting .218 with a .643 OPS, los­ing a pla­toon with Chris Sny­der, who is bat­ting .221 with a .671 OPS. Sny­der was drafted for $500k.]

So in Apple, you have an owner who is addicted, seem­ingly, to the thrill of hav­ing the break­out guy, who likes Christ­mas shop­ping bet­ter than Christ­mas Day. So it didn’t sur­prise me that he was shop­ping two vet­er­ans and look­ing for draft picks and prospects. What did sur­prise me is that upon closer look, Apple had a win­ning record, only a few games behind the first place team in his divi­sion, and if the sea­son had ended that day, a wild card entry into the playoffs.

And he was sell­ing for next year.

So between the announce­ment to the whole league that major play­ers (who were afford­able) were avail­able and the time tick­ing down before Apple real­ized that he could be buy­ing instead of sell­ing, I had to jump on the oppor­tu­nity. I sent him an email:

Saw you were shop­ping Randy John­son and I’d be inter­ested in work­ing out some kind of deal. I have my future FA picks, and I’m not sure if you have any inter­est in my minor league guys — I know there isn’t that much to pick from there.

Let me know — I’d be will­ing to talk about Jen­nings as well if John­son is already gone, but I’d pre­fer Randy.

Granted, it kind of goes against my rule of approach­ing with an offer in hand, but Apple is an extremely tough read (and you’ll see why later), and I did approach with spe­cific names and what I was offer­ing, not just a “what would you want for him?” Note too that I was stat­ing the dif­fer­ence in inter­est between John­son and Jen­nings. While I could use Jen­nings, it was John­son who was my top choice, and I wanted to make that clear. Often own­ers like to mix together numer­ous play­ers and treat them sim­i­lar despite their not hav­ing sim­i­lar inter­est in the play­ers in an effort to cam­ou­flage the player they truly want in case the other owner wants to run up the price. This results in a lot of unwanted sub­sti­tu­tion — when you go to turn the talk towards the player you really wanted, the other owner will end up replac­ing that player if they (like you) feel that the player that you really wanted is bet­ter than the other player. This results in a lot of wasted time and frustration.

Apple got back to me later that day:

I am always inter­ested in draft picks and I can move either John­son or Jen­nings. I also like Encar­a­cion and Hamil­ton but I don’t think we could work out a deal for either one of them. Let me know your thoughts.

I will be in and out all day but I will keep check­ing my e-mail.

Edwin Encar­na­cion and Josh Hamil­ton are my two biggest bar­gain­ing chips as we go towards the trade dead­line. Both have favor­able con­tracts (Encar­na­cion with one more cheap year @ $600k, Hamil­ton with 3 more years @ $200-400k), but the catch is that both are cur­rently start­ing for me, and play­ing pretty well. Trad­ing either of them means hav­ing to replace them in the lineup, which would be tricky because it would mean tak­ing on more con­tracts. John­son, despite being afford­able, has a salary just around my remain­ing cap room ($4.7 mil­lion), while Jen­nings sits at another three and a half. If I were to trade for either of these play­ers, I couldn’t take on any more con­tracts. But, Apple him­self seemed to under­stand this as he stated that he didn’t think we could do any­thing with them, so I came back with an offer that ignored Encar­na­cion and Hamil­ton but still worked for my cap num­ber. It was prob­a­bly shoot­ing a lit­tle high, but it got us past vague offers into some­thing solid to work from:

I’d be inter­ested in either of them, and I’d be curi­ous if you’d be open to deal­ing both. I’d be will­ing to offer two FA picks of your choice, and for salary rea­sons I’d have to offer you Brett Myers as well.

Would that be some­thing you’d be inter­ested in? Two FA picks of your choice and Myers for Randy John­son and Jason Jennings?

Myers, whose demo­tion to the bullpen really hit my team hard, was on the DL at this point but sched­uled to come back in a month. It wasn’t that I nec­es­sar­ily wanted to lose him, but his $5.7 mil­lion con­tract was def­i­nitely mov­able. It allowed me to take on both John­son and Jen­nings, and still have a cou­ple of mil­lion in cap room to make a few more deals later on if nec­es­sary. While I hoped that the deal would get accepted, I wasn’t opti­mistic. Note too that I left it open to him which FA picks he wanted; allow­ing the other GM to “craft his own deal” makes him feel more com­fort­able about it.

I wasn’t too sur­prised at the email I got back:

Just out of curios­ity would you pos­si­bly move either of the play­ers I mentioned?

So like five sec­onds after say­ing that he didn’t think we could do any­thing for those play­ers, he asks about them. What he was really say­ing when he men­tioned them the first time is a ploy I’ve done in the past just to throw out a player who you’d think is untouch­able; you talk to some­one about a backup first base­man, and in the talk you men­tion some­thing like “well, I’d like to have Pujols man­ning first, but that’s not going to hap­pen”, because your trad­ing part­ner has Albert Pujols. You do it in the hopes of a reply like “yeah, the only way I’d trade Pujols is if you sent me [player]”, and then the mega-trade talks start.

How­ever I didn’t do that, and it back­fired on him. But that didn’t stop him from bring­ing it up any­way. Should he have been more straight­for­ward? Prob­a­bly, but even if he said “geez, I sure do like those guys”, it wouldn’t have mat­tered to me unless he gave me a rea­son to deal those guys off. I tried to be nice though and explain my position:

Maybe a lit­tle bit later, but not right now — both are start­ing for me right now and if I were to deal them I’d need an upgrade at those posi­tions. It’d be one thing if they were on my bench, but my depth sucks.

Come the dead­line, I’ll def­i­nitely keep you in mind, espe­cially with Hamels on your roster.

The best I can do right now is:

I receive:

Randy John­son ($4.2)
Jason Jen­nings ($3.4)
Adrian Bel­tre ($3.6)

You receive:

Edwin Encar­na­cion ($0.5)
Brett Myers ($5.7)
Jeff Weaver ($0.7)
June FA pick
August FA pick

He coun­tered a few days later with this:

Just toss­ing this out there..

Tavarez .3 or Math­ews 1.8
Bel­tre 3.4
R.Johnson 4.2
Jen­nings 3.4

FOR

Encar­na­cion .5
Hamil­ton .1
B.Myers 5.7
June FA Pick

I only have 4.5 mil­lion in cap room, so I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out what would work for me — unfor­tu­nately I don’t have any other “big” con­tracts that I’m not using

A few ques­tions — do you plan on DITRing Per­alta, and would you con­sider deal­ing Putz in a deal, even a pos­si­ble deal where I’d trade him back to you after the sea­son is over?

• I asked about the player
• He said he wasn’t sure if he was keep­ing him for next year
• I said that if it were me, I wouldn’t extend him for next year
• He went to the league and told them he was available

I was thinking:

Gary Matthews (1.8)
Adrian Bel­tre (3.4)
Randy John­son (4.2)
Jason Jen­nings (3.4)
J.J. Putz (.3)

FOR

Edwin Encar­na­cion (.5)
Josh Hamil­ton (.1)
Brett Myers (5.7)
Bob Howry (2.0)
Eric Dun­can (.3)
June FA pick

I would end up receiv­ing this:

How about this:

Math­ews 1.8
Jen­nings 3.4

for

Hamil­ton .1
Howry 2.0
Your June & August FA Picks

Let me know or send a counter

Bel­tre
Johnson

for

Encar­na­cion
Myers
June FA pick

Fur­ther unraveling:

Let me know what you think. I am field­ing offers from three teams try­ing to get the best deal possible

offered you a bet­ter deal ear­lier but I’m openly telling you that I’m work­ing your deal with other peo­ple so feel lucky you’re even still in the mix.”

Those offers are pretty much the best I can do — I men­tioned Per­alta in a thought that I could poten­tially swap Durham for Per­alta and play him at sec­ond base if you weren’t going to DITR him next sea­son (which would free up another $0.3 in cap in a deal), but that would be a min­i­mal cap fix and you could prob­a­bly find bet­ter value for Per­alta if you were to deal him elsewhere.

This is pretty much the best I can do, with the biggest deal being:

Gary Matthews (1.8)
Adrian Bel­tre (3.4)
Randy John­son (4.2)
Jason Jen­nings (3.4)
J.J. Putz (.3)

FOR

Edwin Encar­na­cion (.5)
Josh Hamil­ton (.1)
Brett Myers (5.7)
Bob Howry (2.0)
Eric Dun­can (.3)
June FA pick
August FA pick <– last time I offered this the August pick wasn’t included

or some­thing smaller, such as:

Bel­tre
Johnson

for

Encar­na­cion
Myers
June FA pick

Any­way, let me know.

I should have known better:

I would want to see if any­one else in the league would be inter­ested in him but how about this:

M.Owings and W.Tavarez

FOR
J.Hamilton and June FA PICK

I know Hamil­ton is bet­ter than Tavarez but I thought Owings for the June FA pick might bal­ance it.

Let me know what you think.

That’s the John­son and Jen­nings who Apple appar­ently refuses to speak to me about.

I went in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion with the pick, how­ever, hop­ing to still

Any­way, let me know if you’ve thought of any­thing different.