Goodbye JJ, Hello Defense
Rosenthal says it’s a done deal. From the M’s perspective, this is what’s being reported:
M’s trade RHP J.J. Putz, RHP Sean Green, OF Jeremy Reed, and 2B Luis Valbuena for OF Franklin Gutierrez, RHP Aaron Heilman, OF Endy Chavez, 1B Mike Carp, and “minor leaguers” from Cleveland.
Z’s first significant trade is certainly a big one – probably the most interesting trade the M’s have pulled off in five years. Let’s break down the pieces by win value.
Putz (+2 wins), Green (+1 win), Reed (+0.5 wins), and Valbuena (+1 win) represent a net loss of about 4.5 wins over replacement level players. Combined, they’ll make about $7 million in 2009, so it’s definitely a valuable group of players – productive and cheap. Putz and Valbuena are the real pieces of value, though – Reed and Green are role players. Valbuena could be a league average second baseman pretty quickly, and the Indians did well to spot him as a guy who could help them long term. I hate giving up Valbuena, as I was hopeful the M’s would sell high on Lopez and keep Luis as his replacement.
However, the M’s aren’t getting a bunch of crap in return.
Gutierrez is a +2 win OF (yes, even with a questionable bat, he’s a league average player) who instantly solves the center field problem. Heilman is a +1 win reliever with an undefined role. He wants to start but isn’t good enough to, so if they can convince him to close, that’s in everyone’s best interests. Chavez is a +1 win OF who will probably share time with Wlad (like Gutierrez, his defense is other worldly), and Carp is a +0 win prospect with moderate upside – think Lyle Overbay if he develops well.
The M’s ship off about +4.5 wins and get back +4 wins, so you could call it a big push overall, but that’s where the nuances come in. Here are the reasons I like this deal:
1. The +2 win player the M’s are getting back is much younger than the +2 win player they’re giving up, and they have him under team control for a lot longer. For where this team is, Gutierrez is more valuable than Putz.
2. One of Valbuena or Lopez had to go, because there was no way for them to coexist at full value. In that sense, the M’s swapped a prospect at a position of depth for a prospect at a position where they have a gaping hole. I like Valbuena better than Carp, but Carp has a much clearer road to a job in Seattle.
3. By acquiring Gutierrez and Chavez, the M’s just have given themselves the ability to run out one of the best outfield defenses in baseball on days where they send a contact pitcher to the hill. A Chavez/Gutierrez/Ichiro outfield will make Silva and Washburn look significantly better than they really are, and by investing in the defense, the M’s have made it possible that they could salvage some value from a pair of bad contracts.
To me, those three things swing this trade into the plus column for the M’s. That doesn’t make it a total home run – Heilman’s desire to start and the loss of Putz and Green make it much more likely that Morrow’s going to remain in the bullpen, Chavez is only under team control for one year, and Gutierrez’s right-handed bat isn’t a great fit for Safeco.
But in this case, I’d say the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s not an outright fleecing like Putz for Joyce would have been (and if that was on the table, I’d have done that before I did this, but it’s quite possible that was never offered), but I’d say that the Mariners are better right now than they were yesterday and they have a brighter future, and that makes this a good trade.
I know Im in the minority on this site, but i think Griffey would really help this team at DH and part-time OF. Left handed power that wont have to worry about Defense everyday. If he just hits I think he would hit 30HR and 75-80 RBI’s next season, which we would all take. Plus, i think he would come back to Seattle for cheap and could show the young guys how to play great D.
I was reading rotoworld with the morning coffee and came across this commentary about the Putz trade:
This kind of cheap innuendo masquerading as analysis really hacks me off.
I’ll miss JJ but he just wasn’t that effective last year and who knows if he’ll ever get back to anywhere near the dominance of two years ago. I’ll be very disappointed if Morrow gets moved back to the bullpen, though. I’d rather see a closer-by-committee than continue to see his growth as a starter stunted, especially if the team isn’t likely to contend next year anyway.
If we end up with two long term position players in CF and 1B out of this it will have been well worth the price. It’s heartening to see that Z’s first big move as GM was to shore up the defense.
Well, let me just go ahead and complete a USSM trifecta of posts bringing up topics we really don’t like discussing.
Josh Fields.
Yeah, I said it. Haven’t heard much about the kid…last I heard, the M’s and Boras were 500k apart and then the trail (at least in the most public media) seems to vanish.
Does this trade give him more leverage to force the M’s to bump up their offer? Or does his being a “them” pick instead of Z’s “us” direction suggest that the M’s are simply moving on with plans for a compensation pick and without him?
And would he even be worthy of fighting for the closer role right out of the gate–this summer, the talk was that he might be a decent set up guy…but I think that was assuming JJ in the true closer role.
I apologize for even bringing it up–but I have to admit that this deal made me curious.
(And it certainly won’t be a 2008 M’s team put on the field this year, will it?)
My guess is that Z must be close to finalizing the Fields deal or he wouldn’t have been shopping JJ as agressibely as he was… At the very least, he must be confident it is going to get done.
If it is healthy, the rotation is going to be solid… even more so now that the OF defense will be lights out… Z is moving the M’s in the right direction.
I really like the defense strategy. If it improves the numbers of pitchers like Washburn and Silva, then other teams might overvalue them and we can dump their contracts and potentially get something in return as well.
I can’t imagine that 500k would stand in the way of signing Fields if Z really wants him. It sounds like the kid could be ready to join the bullpen fairly quickly, possibly even out of spring training.
I’m not that worried about finding arms for the bullpen next year. What I really don’t want to see is Morrow taken out of the rotation.
Fields has nothing to do with nothing. If Zduriencik signs him, it will be at his price, not Fields’, and we won’t be counting on him anywhere above AA, given that he has 0 pro innings and hasn’t pitched since the CWS. My guess is that Z/W have talked with Peterson, and that their thinking lines up with Dave’s best-case scenario: they’ll try to make Heilman the closer. If he junks the slider and just goes with the fastball/change, he should do well in that role.
Last winter, I favored trading Putz in a package to get a decent SP.
As for this factoring into the Fields signing, I fear that Boras will use this as leverage in his client’s favor. Even if Josh isn’t ready to step in ASAP, the M’s need a closer.
I don’t know, I heard that Fields was the closest to being MLB ready of the early draft picks. If that’s the case I could see him in the M’s bullpen sooner rather than later.
But, yeah, I don’t think Fields figured at all into the Z’s thinking when he decided to trade Putz. He certainly isn’t counting on Fields to be the team’s closer next year.
If he signs, yes, there’s a chance he might move that fast on performance; there’s also a chance he wouldn’t. You don’t count on him.
This kind of cheap innuendo masquerading as analysis really hacks me off.
Not to mention it’s lazy “journalism” — we know why JJ suddenly improved over previous seasons: he picked up / perfected the splitter from Everyday Eddy.
Good trade for sure — losing a healthy Putz doesn’t really hurt the team unless you’re 100% ready to contend; otherwise you can throw a committee out there of Heilman/Lowe/etc until one sticks. Hopefully not Morrow. Losing an un-healthy Putz doesn’t hurt at all. Either way, restocking the farm system after years of Kim Jong Il-like pillaging is a win.
I’m also really happy for Jeremy Reed — I never felt like he got a full, fair shot in Seattle and think that he’s moving to a role and league that will better suit him.
He most certainly got a full and fair shot. He was a regular from Opening Day 2005 til he got injured in 2006, except that he was proving in 2006 he couldn’t hit lefties with a rake. His power numbers never improved and he was a simply awful base stealer (his lifetime percentage is 51%, which is “don’t even think of running” territory). His closest comp both by age and lifetime is the immortal Jermaine Allensworth, who was out of the league after his age 27 season. Jeremy Reed’s problem is that he didn’t produce, not that he didn’t get a chance.