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Post by jmei on Nov 2, 2013 13:36:00 GMT -5
NB: this is purely a hypothetical thought exercise and is extremely unlikely to happen for obvious reasons.
Say Jerry Dipoto calls up Cherington and says, we saw what you did last year and we want to do the same thing and start all over. We're offering you Mike Trout, but you also have to take Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton.
Here's how their actual combined salaries line up:
2014: $40.5m
2015: $49.4m + Trout's Arb1
2016: $57m + Trout's Arb2
2017: $58.4m + Trout's Arb3
2018: $27m (Hamilton and Trout are free agents)
(Total: $232.3m, plus three years of Trout's arbitration totals)
(For luxury tax purposes, Pujols + Hamilton count for $49m each year from 2014-2017. Pujols counts for $24m in 2018, when Hamilton and Trout will be free agents).
Note that Trout, Pujols, and Hamilton combined for 13 fWAR in 2013. Steamer projects them to combine for 14 fWAR in 2014.
(a) Would you be interested in a trade like this at all, assuming the Angels offered to cover a significant portion of Pujols/Trout's salary?
(b) If yes, how much money would the Angels have to eat for you to do the deal? Assume that no significant prospects go from Boston to the Angels in the deal.
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Post by James Dunne on Nov 3, 2013 1:09:28 GMT -5
Interesting thought experiment, I like it. A key question here is what we think Pujols has left. He was still the Best Hitter Alive in 2010, a great hitter in 2011, and a very good one in 2012 (and really still a great one after a bad first month, if you'll allow my temporary case of arbitraryendpointitis). Then in 2013 he had a pretty severe case of plantar fasciitis that he probably shouldn't have been trying to play through. If he can get that fixed (and that shouldn't be brushed aside as definite, this isn't fixing a broken doorknob), I think he can go back to being an excellent hitter again - not 2010 probably, but 2011/2012 to me is quite possible. As a 5.0 WAR player he's not worth his contract, but he and Trout are worth what he and Hamilton will earn. Next up, Pujols is playing a position that could be a weakness on the Red Sox. Napoli isn't a sure thing to come back, and he's also not a sure thing to continue producing - he has a bad hip and the highest swing-and-miss rate in the league. His power is awesome but the red flags are a bit terrifying. There's a pretty good chance that Pujols represents an upgrade over the other potential first baseman that will be on the market. So to me, the answer to A is yes. If the Red Sox could get Mike Trout AND upgrade first base, I'd have to be interested at the very least. That does mean it's a definite good deal, but it would at least be worth exploring. It's hard to overstate how good Trout is. I mean, look at his B-Ref comparables, and then consider how good his defense is - the chances of him turning into Vada Pinson or Orlando Cepeda is slim. Additionally, I want any player whose downside is Vada Pinson and Orlando Cepeda. Cepeda is a Hall of Famer, and Pinson was probably better. The word tragic gets thrown about a little too liberally, but it's probably going to take something tragic to keep Trout from the Hall of Fame. How much is having an all-time great worth? I mean, you can say that Barry Bonds never won a title, but he also was on some great teams that wouldn't have gotten close to where they did without him. And it wasn't just an allocation of resources decision, where Bonds' burdensome contract was preventing his employer (and I'm mostly referring to the late 90s/early 00s Giants here) from surrounding him with useful players. The trouble is that we don't know what the next CBA will be. If Pujols contract is so massive that it pretty much prevents the Sox from keeping Bogaerts and Trout then it is a bad deal. At a luxury tax threshold that doesn't move much from its current $189 million, a $24 million hit is tough to take. If it's something like $250 million though? If that's the case, $24 million will be expensive but not damning - $40 million AAV contracts will be going around. They can commit the $60-80 million annual necessary to Trout and Bogaerts and still have a usable amount of cap room. I'm going to sit on Part B for a bit because I really don't know right now. The thing differentiating this scenario from the Dodgers deal is that you'd essentially be paying Pujols and Hamilton for Trout's production in the first few years. The fact that the guys you're making the check out to are underproducing shouldn't matter - it needs to be viewed as a package. |
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Post by rjp313jr on Nov 7, 2013 14:33:47 GMT -5
What do you think Trout's arbitration contracts will look like? He's going to ask for 15M in year 1. A team would probably try to submit something around half of that, but you won't take your best player who you want around forever to arbitration and try to trash him (good luck with that by the way - what's his weakness?)... does the 3 year arbitration package push 50m?
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Post by jmei on Nov 7, 2013 15:06:51 GMT -5
The nice thing about salary arbitration is that it heavily relies on comparisons with comparable players, and there just aren't a lot of comparables to Trout. The highest first-year award was $10m to Ryan Howard in 2008 (back when he was fresh off the MVP in 2006), while Tim Lincecum asked for $13m in 2009-10 coming off two consecutive Cy Young awards. Coming off an MVP season, Josh Hamilton ended up signing a two year, $$24m deal in the 2010-11 offseason, covering his last two arbitration years. Tven with inflation, it'll be hard for Trout to get more than $10-13m in his first year, especially considering that the arbitrators probably won't fully value his defense and baserunning contributions and he'll lack the hardware of guys like Howard and Hamilton. If I had to guess, I'd think the three year arbitration package is closer to $40m.
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Post by James Dunne on Nov 7, 2013 15:10:36 GMT -5
The other nice thing is that they keep giving Trout's MVP awards to other people, which will keep his salary down in the arbitration process.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Nov 8, 2013 15:54:21 GMT -5
If I were Trout's agent then I would go Shylock on Arte Moreno and ask for pounds of flesh and body parts. Wonder how far he would go.
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Post by jmei on Nov 8, 2013 17:25:33 GMT -5
I'll come right out and say it-- I would probably do Trout, Pujols, Hamilton, and 25m for Dempster. To fit under the luxury tax (considering they'd still need a catcher), the Red Sox will probably have to shed at least another $10m in salary, which probably means Peavy is gone, and one of Nava and Carp would also have to be traded. But pairing up Trout and Bogaerts, even if it's just for four years, would be the Ortiz-Ramirez of this era, and the Red Sox have the farm system to slot minimum salary guys around Pujols' and Hamilton's onerous contracts.
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