Who would you not trade?

[DrungoHazewood]

23 minutes ago, weams said:

Heck they don't even care about Triple Crowns anymore. 

Maybe if they made it OBP, SLG, and statcast defensive runs.

[weams]

3 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

 Pete Stanicek was the greatest CFer ever.  Also, greatest second baseman.

I think that might have been Mark Belanger. 

[weams]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Maybe if they made it OBP, SLG, and statcast defensive runs.

I could work with that I think. 

[Just Regular]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'm a firm believer that the overall level of play in all sports increases over time.

FWIW, at a BP book event in the Seattle area circa 2007-2008, the speaker offered the opinion - approximating across eras - that Adam Jones was about as good as Willie Mays.  I forget whether this was before/after the February 2008 Bedard trade.

Now on the one hand it's just a BP staffer plugging the book, entertaining a Seattle audience, and talking modernity, but it did happen to be Kevin Goldstein and today I think he's nearly the last scout left for the Houston Astros.

That day he also answered my question, the gist of which was  "Would you say the definition of a relief pitcher is a pitcher not good enough to be a starting pitcher", with No.

It will be hard for me to ever let go of the notion Michael Jordan was the greatest though.

[atomic]

1 hour ago, weams said:

You are right. I would never have thought Bonds would peak at 40. 

According to David Segui 60 percent of current players are on HGH.

[atomic]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'm sure some guys threw hard.

I'm sure most of them didn't throw near as hard or have near the offspeed pitches that they do today.

Pitchers don’t throw fork balls or spotters most anymore.  Fewer teams and baseball was the the number 1 sport.  

[waroriole]

14 hours ago, wildcard said:

Starters

1.  Grayson Rodriguez

2. DL Hall

3. John Means

4.Dean Kremer

5. Michael Baumann

6. Zac Lowther

Relievers

7.  Hunter Harvey

8. Zach Pop

 

Catcher

9. Adley Rutschman

 

Outfielders

10 . Austin Hays

11.  Yusniel Diaz

12.  Anthony Santander

 

Infielders

13. Ryan Mountcastle

14 Gunnar Henderson

 

 

I’m sure this has been settled but why would we be trading any of them? You don’t trade prospects for prospects, and we’re not looking for established big league players. 

Anyway, I’m sure this has been settled. 

[Frobby]

6 hours ago, atomic said:

How are they trolling.  With logic like that I could say it is trolling to say Trout could be best all around player of all time. 

Responding to how Trout is the best all around player of all time. He isn't as good as Willie Mays was.  

Zero playoff wins is there to tell you getting 1 great player isn't going to turn you into a World Series contender.  

3rd in WAR is important.  Bregman had more WAR than him.  Example of trading a highly rated prospect for Trout.  Bregman is making $640k.  Bellinger who was first in WAR made $605k.   Trout made $36 million this year.  Both Bregman and Bellinger have been to the World Series and are in the playoffs this year. 

 

Willie Mays had a .660 OPS in the postseason.    

I don’t think you judge a player’s greatness by how good his teammates are.    

But, I do agree that one Trout-level player is not going to fix the Orioles.    And, over the next 10 years it’s likely that someone will produce more WAR than Trout, and be paid a lot less.    But nobody knows who it will be.    I’d still bet on Trout to produce the most WAR over the next 5 years, but it’s not a sure thing.    

[Aristotelian]

Speaking of Trout, I was spacing out in the car and had a thought: if we offered our entire minor league system for Trout, do the Angels say yes? What if we offered the entire system except Rutschman?

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Speaking of Trout, I was spacing out in the car and had a thought: if we offered our entire minor league system for Trout, do the Angels say yes? What if we offered the entire system except Rutschman?

Trout says no.

[Philip]

I would happily trade anyone.

depends on the return.

I won’t trade Davies for Parra, though.

[DrungoHazewood]

13 hours ago, OrioleDog said:

FWIW, at a BP book event in the Seattle area circa 2007-2008, the speaker offered the opinion - approximating across eras - that Adam Jones was about as good as Willie Mays.  I forget whether this was before/after the February 2008 Bedard trade.

Now on the one hand it's just a BP staffer plugging the book, entertaining a Seattle audience, and talking modernity, but it did happen to be Kevin Goldstein and today I think he's nearly the last scout left for the Houston Astros.

That day he also answered my question, the gist of which was  "Would you say the definition of a relief pitcher is a pitcher not good enough to be a starting pitcher", with No.

It will be hard for me to ever let go of the notion Michael Jordan was the greatest though.

- There's clearly an arc to history, and in sports the arc is always going up.  The quality of play always increases.  Perhaps one day baseball will collapse in popularity and lose resources and quality will decrease.  But from the beginning of time through today it's only gotten better (with slight, temporary downward blips for wars and expansions).

- It's plausible that Adam Jones was objectively as good as Willie Mays.  But the arc can't be too steep, or you'd see players pushed out of the league in the course of their own careers just from the competition.  If all it took was 15-20 years for an All Star to be pushed to a below-average player you'd have nobody who was any good at 35.  That's not true, so we know the progress has upper bounds.

- But it's all in how you frame the question.  Is it objectively better in the context of measurable things like speed and bat speed and strength?  Or is it in the context of the player's time and place and peers?  And if it's in the context of time and place and peers, do you adjust for the fact that the peers always get better?  Babe Ruth dominated like no other, but the average MLB player in 1925 would probably be in AA or AAA today.  What would Mike Trout's numbers look like in the PCL or the Eastern League?  In this year's PCL he'd probably have been intentionally walked 250 times and hit .450/.650/.800.

I remember reading Pete Palmer's Hidden Game of Baseball in college and reflexively chafing at the idea that Willie Keeler might not even be an average player today (written circa 1980).  After a lot of thinking on the matter I have to believe that's true.  Keeler, taken whole out of 1897 and placed into today, probably wouldn't be a major leaguer.  Maybe not even a professional baseball player at all.  His batting style hasn't existed for many, many decades, and you probably can't successfully teach launch angle to a guy who was 5' 4", 120 lbs. and used a 28" bat.  At best he'd be an 80% scale model of Ichiro.

[LookinUp]

13 hours ago, OrioleDog said:

It will be hard for me to ever let go of the notion Michael Jordan was the greatest though.

To piggy back Drungo's post about changes in baseball, you might think Jordan would be hardest to ever replace because he had athleticism that will likely be elite or close to it for at least another 50 years. He also had the intangibles, defense, etc.

What he didn't have was a league that shot 32 3-pointers per game. It was never above 10 per game until the 94-95 season, and 7 footers were usually camped in or close to the lane, not at the 3 point line. So even the NBA is a totally different game than it was even 20 years ago. It's really crazy how much these things have changed.

[DrungoHazewood]

12 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Speaking of Trout, I was spacing out in the car and had a thought: if we offered our entire minor league system for Trout, do the Angels say yes? What if we offered the entire system except Rutschman?

Let's say Trout has 60 wins left in him. That's probably as good a guess as anything.  Does a typical farm system have 60 meaningful wins in it?  Meaningful would have to be limited to at least 1-2 win seasons, and in the first six years of a MLB career.  You could probably come up with 100 players who could plausibly post a half-win season, but that doesn't count.  One six-win season is way more valuable than 12 half-win seasons.

Basically, does the Orioles farm system likely have about four players in the 10-20 win, Adam Jones/Matt Wieters/Chris Tillman ballpark?  And how much do we factor in salary?  Trout's making $35M a year, but producing $48M (assuming six wins), so $13M in surplus value a year.

I don't know... I think it's unlikely the O's entire farm system produces more meaningful value than Trout over the next 10 years, but may be more productive from a dollars/win standpoint.

[Aristotelian]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Let's say Trout has 60 wins left in him. That's probably as good a guess as anything.  Does a typical farm system have 60 meaningful wins in it?  Meaningful would have to be limited to at least 1-2 win seasons, and in the first six years of a MLB career.  You could probably come up with 100 players who could plausibly post a half-win season, but that doesn't count.  One six-win season is way more valuable than 12 half-win seasons.

Basically, does the Orioles farm system likely have about four players in the 10-20 win, Adam Jones/Matt Wieters/Chris Tillman ballpark?  And how much do we factor in salary?  Trout's making $35M a year, but producing $48M (assuming six wins), so $13M in surplus value a year.

I don't know... I think it's unlikely the O's entire farm system produces more meaningful value than Trout over the next 10 years, but may be more productive from a dollars/win standpoint.

It's not a no-brainer either way, is it? I think factoring salary and Trout's age pushes it in favor of the entire O's system but I could certainly see the case for Trout over a bunch of guys with no MLB experience.