Grade the Gausman Deal

[Aristotelian]

8 hours ago, Cy Bundy said:

What does the salary free us up to do?

The slot money gives us the right to sign Cruz. It is possible that O'day gives us the actual cash to do it. We aren't going to have money coming in from tickets for a long, long time, and we still have to pay Trumbo, Davis, and Cobb.

[TonySoprano]

Quote

While the returns for Machado and Britton generally received favorable reviews, the Schoop deal seemed curious, as discussed in the previous item, and the trade involving Gausman and O’Day was partly driven by finances. 

The Atlanta Braves, by taking on O’Day’s entire $9 million salary for next season, parted with lesser players than they might have in a deal that included only Gausman. The Orioles, as a result, failed to acquire a legitimate starting-pitching prospect from the Braves’ pitching system, instead landing one highly regarded long-term project, Class A infielder Jean Carlos Encarnacion; a switch-hitting catcher at Double A, Brett Cumberland; and two pitchers who did not crack their revised top 30 according to MLBPipeline.com, Evan Phillips and Bruce Zimmerman.

Rosenthal - https://theathletic.com/454272/2018/08/01/rosenthal-pirates-defy-the-narrative-by-pulling-off-trade-for-chris-archer/

[baltfan]

To me this deal is all contingent on What do with international dollars.  If don’t spend them all, then this is a dud 

[Aristotelian]

10 hours ago, Thato'sfan said:

The Gausman deal IS uninspiring, but IMO has more value to this organization than the Gray package would have.

 

On top of that, Gray IMO had the stronger resume at the time of the trade. He had both more career WAR (12+) and a higher established ceiling (5.3 WAR) than Gausman (10.5 career, high of 4.1).

[Frobby]

I find it interesting that although most of the articles I saw yesterday highlighted Encarnacion, Fangraphs has Cumberland rated as the 7th best prospect acquired by any team in the deadline deals, and second only to Diaz among the 15 players the O’s acquired in all their deals.   

[atomic]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I find it interesting that although most of the articles I saw yesterday highlighted Encarnacion, Fangraphs has Cumberland rated as the 7th best prospect acquired by any team in the deadline deals, and second only to Diaz among the 15 players the O’s acquired in all their deals.   

MLB.com has Encarnacion as our 15 best prospect and Cumberland as our 30th best prospect. 

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, atomic said:

MLB.com has Encarnacion as our 15 best prospect and Cumberland as our 30th best prospect. 

Just goes to show that opinions can differ.    

[atomic]

17 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Just goes to show that opinions can differ.    

Fanagraphs seems to be not very useful for opinions. If you want to know how fast someone is throwing each pitch they can provide that but beyond that they are pretty useless. 

[NATTYBO's]

Horrible sell low deal, look at the Archer deal, we were robbed to shed salary.  

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, atomic said:

Fanagraphs seems to be not very useful for opinions. If you want to know how fast someone is throwing each pitch they can provide that but beyond that they are pretty useless. 

I don’t agree.     Of course, it depends whose writing, and there’s nobody I agree with all the time.   But overall I think their opinions are well informed and well reasoned.  

[atomic]

Just now, Frobby said:

I don’t agree.     Of course, it depends whose writing, and there’s nobody I agree with all the time.   But overall I think their opinions are well informed and well reasoned.  

I can't even read most of their articles because they are so poorly written.   

[Redskins Rick]

51 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

On top of that, Gray IMO had the stronger resume at the time of the trade. He had both more career WAR (12+) and a higher established ceiling (5.3 WAR) than Gausman (10.5 career, high of 4.1).

BUT

Sonny was coming off a terrible year, and then somewhere better than a replacement player; -0.3 and 1.6 before his trade.

Gausman did a 2.0 and then 2.4.

 

 

[jamalshw]

I'm late to the party here, but I REALLY don't like the Gausman deal at all. I get the Schoop deal and I was okay with it. I was hoping for more, but understand the get there. I really don't get it for Atlanta. Do we really need to save the money on O'Day THAT much? I like the international spending money, but that only matters IF we get VVM and use the rest of the money for meaningful pieces. If we don't this is a clearly failed trade in my mind. I gave it a "F" with a chance to move up to a "C" if we sign VVM and it's clearly understood that would NOT have happened if not for this deal.

Moving Gausman, I really wanted one of Soroka/Wright/Anderson/Gohara/Toussaint/Allard. I don't mind the risky, but high upside play on Encarnacion, but that would be the No.2 piece (at best) in a deal for me. And maybe it was with the $$ as the top get, but I wanted something like Toussaint, Wilson and Encarnacion and instead we got the third piece of that deal as the top prospect back, a catching prospect with an upside of a platoon player and some arms that have to pitch above their stuff-level to have an impact.

[Bradysburns]

9 hours ago, ThomasTomasz said:

I posted this assessment on another site, but I was originally disappointed and thought the Braves took advantage of us.  After calming down and reading up on all that was in play, I thought it was a pretty good deal and took away four points from it: 

 

1.) Gausman doesn't have a positive trending track record. He's had good stretches and half seasons, and bad stretches. This isn't like the Schoop deal, where he's trended up every year and you can argue he had a bad first half. We dealt Gausman as a controllable starter with great stuff, but is inconsistent. I wonder if the Braves try to slow his delivery down as the Cubs did with Arrieta.  

2.) They also wanted to dump the O'Day contract. From comments made from Duquette, he is emulating the tanking strategy and wants to get there quickly. After the Britton trade, Spotrac had us committing $69 million next year to a handful of veterans, and with a payroll over $100 million once arbitration raises are put in. This deal is saving us $9 million with O'Day next year, the the substantial raise Gausman is likely to see from his almost $6 million contract this year (he was a Super 2 player I think.). So this deal also gets substantial money off the books for next year. 

3.) The $2.5 million is going to go a long way to sign Victor Victor Mesa. The Orioles have the cash to bring both him and his brother in, something none of the other teams in the running have right now. It is essentially down to the Orioles and Marlins.

4.) Seriously read up on the prospects we are getting back. Encarnacion is a toolsy guy, someone that the Orioles up until now do not like to draft and develop. He has a low floor, but a high ceiling. If he was 14th in the Braves' loaded system, he's likely a top 5-8 guy for us. Phillips is a great reliever candidate for the back of the bullpen, and Zimmermann is an underrated piece and could be the best of them all- read this link- https://www.talkingchop.com/2018/7/10/17551486/the-rise-of-atlanta-braves-minor-league-prospect-bruce-zimmermann  
 

Very insightful take. I still rate the trade a C, but that's based on available information today. 

I'll happily adjust my grade as more information flows into the pipeline, and we see how these players pan out. The wonders of Bayesian inference...

If I had to guess, Encarnacion will become an everyday player for us. I don't think any of the other guys will make a major impact. 

One funny sidenote: Cumberland was rated the 30th best prospect in the Braves system. He's also rated the 30th best prospect (by MLB) in OUR system. 

Not sure what that says about our system right now, or theirs... but it's interesting. 

[Sydnor]

2 hours ago, baltfan said:

To me this deal is all contingent on What do with international dollars.  If don’t spend them all, then this is a dud 

I’ve seen many posts similar to this. I am keeping an open mind, but am somewhat curious as to how the Orioles are going to use all of the slot money acquired if VVM and Gaston elect to play in Miami, New York, or somewhere else (I am aware of the Walton report on VVM). The overwhelming majority of the top level talent has signed (or is otherwise committed, such as Jose Baez Ramirez, Jose Ramirez’ younger brother, to the Indians) and I can’t envision the organization spending its current allotment on fringe players just to do it when such players are unlikely to make a substantial impact. If it was possible to carry over the unused portion of the allotment to 3 years from now, I would find the slot money more valuable as hopefully the organization will have established some relationships in the international market at that time. Given that it isn’t possible, the organization seems to be in a VVM and Gaston or bust situation.