Guthrie traded to Rockies for Hammel & Lindstrom

[Sports Guy]

If Guthrie didn't have the value we thought, you hold onto him at the deadline. I would rather take that risk than make a trade that doesn't really help you.

[TiredofLosing20]

Ok..and say he is. How much better is he than Guthrie? 1, maybe 2 WAR better at the absolutely most.

How does that really improve your team?

More importantly how does this improve your team in 2013 and beyond?

[Mr Snuffleupagus]

More importantly how does this improve your team in 2013 and beyond?

It only helps if Hammel and Lindstrom provide trade value. Not out of the question, but certainly a risk.

[Orange]

I concur on Lucky Jim's post... It is entirely possible that with this trade DD is saying that we're swapping one decent SP for one decent SP plus one decent RP, and we'll develop our own middling prospects ourselves, thank you very much.

He's got a major league roster to build. One that has been terrible in recent years. We swapped 4% of the roster for 8% of the roster so it's a "win." Hammel will be similar to Guthrie and Lindstrom bumps someone like Berken or Simon. Win! Yay!

[dabirds]

Anybody think that Rick Peterson could've had something to do with this???

Just hoping that Hammels isn't the next Victor Zambrano!!

[SoBo]

Ok..and say he is. How much better is he than Guthrie? 1, maybe 2 WAR better at the absolutely most.

How does that really improve your team?

Hammel has also never thrown more than 178 innings.

It can't make it worse in this scenario. I'm not supporting the deal necessarily. But I guess Guthrie's value wasn't all that great. So DD got what he could. It's a head scratcher at this point.

[33rdst]

Guthrie was one of my favorite Orioles so any reaction I would have to him being traded would not be objective. I've always felt JG was a better pitcher than he showed here. I'm very interested to see how he does in Colorado.

With this deal i think we have officially begun the Dan Duquette era with the Orioles. Much like the Bedard deal signaled the beginning of the MacPhail era, this move signals the beginning of Duquette's team. Good luck Jeremy, you were a class act.

[Whammer]

It can't make it worse in this scenario. I'm not supporting the deal necessarily. But I guess Guthrie's value wasn't all that great. So DD got what he could. It's a head scratcher at this point.

Yeah - there's more to this than meets the eye and it may have been personal. Like Tony said, maybe the F.O. thought Guts wasn't negotiating in good faith and decided "we can finish in last place with him or without him".

[TGO]

There is no middle number in the arbitration hearing. But I don't know why they couldn't come in around there by now?

I think they probably knew they were going to trade him and wanted to let the receiving team do what they wanted. It was pretty clear that Guthrie was going to lose and that a reasonable settlement could be reached, probably closer to the team's number than his. But if someone wanted to talk extension with him they might not have wanted to have a set number on the books for this year.

[Mr Snuffleupagus]

Guthrie was one of my favorite Orioles so any reaction I would have to him being traded would not be objective. I've always felt JG was a better pitcher than he showed here. I'm very interested to see how he does in Colorado.

With this deal i think we have officially begun the Dan Duquette era with the Orioles. Much like the Bedard deal signaled the beginning of the MacPhail era, this move signals the beginning of Duquette's team. Good luck Jeremy, you were a class act.

So you're saying this will be the high point?

[RZNJ]

Lucky Jim probably has the post of this thread. It's a sideways move with some upside. It's not a horrible trade it's just not the type of trade people wanted. Another move that creates depth. It's disappointing in respect that it's not an exciting trade but it's not a terrible trade or a boneheaded trade by any means.

[Frobby]

I don't really like the "veteran pitcher for two veteran pitchers" move from a stategic point of view; like most others, I would rather have gotten some prospects. But in terms of a talent exchange, I will wait to see how it works out. We potentially get 2 years of Hammel and 2 years of Lindstrom for one year of Guthrie. It could work out in our favor if either guy does well.

[LookinUp]

For Lucky Jim...I must spread rep.

Ok..and say he is. How much better is he than Guthrie? 1, maybe 2 WAR better at the absolutely most.

How does that really improve your team?

Hammel has also never thrown more than 178 innings.

If Guthrie didn't have the value we thought, you hold onto him at the deadline. I would rather take that risk than make a trade that doesn't really help you.

I think the problem here is not with DD, but rather with AM. He's the one who likely could have parlayed Guthrie into an Alonso-like player a year or two ago when his value was higher. Now, Guthrie's an aging player with poor and declining peripherals. Frankly, I was expecting even more decline this year, and I'm guessing Buck was as well.

This put the O's into an unenviable position. They have an expensive starter who has very little value now. Best case scenario was they keep him and he performs well enough to trade to a team willing to pick up the $4m for 1/2 season and throw in a prospect. Frankly, given the O's past and Guthrie's age/peripherals, I think the chances of getting some kind of magical value at the deadline were slim.

So, in return they have a guy who, in theory, could establish himself in the next couple of months and have more value than Guthrie, to the birds or to another team. Given equal performance, other teams are certainly more likely to take on the value of a guy who has about 1/2 the salary of Guthrie and one more year of arbitration than the would Guthrie. So, in that regard, I think our net potential assets just went up a bit...not a lot, but a bit. Even if we don't trade him, we will have potentially added a #4 type of starter for a decent market rate in 2013.

Net-net, I think this is a positive. The reason it's not a bigger positive for the O's is because of AM, not because of DD.

[24fps]

Found out about this just now and read through the thread. I'm not surprised that people are up-in-arms about this. I'm not, for a couple of reasons. To be clear, I'm not excited by it, by any means, and in fact I'm a moderate "thumbs down" on it. But I'm not up in arms. A few thoughts:

1. The lack of a good prospect for Guthrie leads me to believe that our opinion of him was inflated relative to the market. This isn't surprising, perhaps. But let's be clear: many of us constantly mitigated Guthrie's value due to mediocre peripherals. It feels like recently we've been trying to "will" the market to value Guthrie more than many of us ever have. We may have gotten a decent prospect and a throw-in for him a few years ago, but he wasn't going to get us one now, apparently.

2. The trade may tell us something about Duquette: first, he trusts his scouts to identify skill-sets/hidden value. Clearly, DD thinks he can re-fashion Hammel into something like the 4-ish WAR player he was before 2011.

3. Second, this trade may also tell us that Duquette doesn't value second-tier prospects. We likely could have packaged Guthrie for a handful of second-tier guys, I think. Settling on solid-but-unspectacular MLB value instead tells us something about how DD views risk, and risk-swapping. Trading MLB value for second-tier prospects (because they represent future-value) doesn't seem to be something that DD is inclined to do - though my guess is this changes with very-high-value/elite prospects. This doesn't mean that he won't build up an inventory of them, but he's not inclined to trade actual MLB value for speculative value, and does appear inclined to trade speculative value for nearly any amount of actual MLB value.

4. In other words, DD is less inclined to trade MLB now-value for anything less than very high probability future-value. On the other hand, DD will trade probabilistic future value (MiLB relievers) for marginal MLB value. This is, in some ways, the opposite of MacPhail.

5. Trades like this mean we're going to stock our minors through "primary" channels of acquisition. Draft/int'l FA/whathaveyou.

6. I tend to agree with most that the trade doesn't make any long-term sense for the O's, unless, basically, Hammel ends up being a Scott Erickson-like reclamation. This isn't impossible. But that possibility is wrapped up in figuring out the troubling bottoming out of his peripherals in 2011.

7. I don't think this is about money, or punishment, or any of those other theories (that seem to result more from an overflow of emotion than logic). I do wonder about the value of the parts we got back versus draft picks. What would we have gotten if Guthrie walked in FA?

Great analysis.

I'm beginning to think that two years from now, the team will have so few holdovers from the 2011 squad that our whole notion of long-term will need to be recalibrated. If true this is a good thing.

[Tony-OH]

If Guthrie didn't have the value we thought, you hold onto him at the deadline. I would rather take that risk than make a trade that doesn't really help you.

This is basically how I feel. If Hammel and Lindstrom is all you can get for Guthrie then you hold onto him and hope he pitches well and the market improves at the trading deadline. Middle of the rotation starters have more value in July to a contending team then they do in February when there are still FA options and the bloom hasn't fallen off your own in house options yet.

Basically DD traded Guthrie when his value was at its lowest. Maybe Hammel can come back to the AL East and pitch well, but there are a lot of things to not like about his career pitch values along with his peripherals last year and I'm not a big fan of national league pitchers making the transition into the AL East.