Mike Trout to the Orioles?

[Hallas]

I'm also going to add this about Mullins and Hays: I think their offensive performance in 2022 is extremely difficult to grade because I don't think their performance is being correctly weighted by park effects.  This is especially true for Hays, who bears the brunt of flyouts due to the wall.  Typically you use a 3 year rolling average for park effects, but since this is the first season with the new dimensions and they are going from one of the friendliest hitters parks to one of the unfriendliest, it's really unlikely that any reasonable method for determining park effects is effectively capturing how hard a place OPACY is to hit now.  Mullins has a wRC+ of 110, despite having a wOBA of only .321, and I think that might be underselling him.

[Pickles]

4 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I'm also going to add this about Mullins and Hays: I think their offensive performance in 2022 is extremely difficult to grade because I don't think their performance is being correctly weighted by park effects.  This is especially true for Hays, who bears the brunt of flyouts due to the wall.  Typically you use a 3 year rolling average for park effects, but since this is the first season with the new dimensions and they are going from one of the friendliest hitters parks to one of the unfriendliest, it's really unlikely that any reasonable method for determining park effects is effectively capturing how hard a place OPACY is to hit now.  Mullins has a wRC+ of 110, despite having a wOBA of only .321, and I think that might be underselling him.

But hey, if you don't trade the  first fruits of a hard fought rebuild just as they're entering their primes for a 32 year old with a degenerative spinal condition and a 300 million dollar contract through their late 30s, are you really even alive?

Edited August 28, 2022 by Pickles

[Frobby]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Hays and Mullins worth 8 wins a year for the next 3 years?  Is this a hypothetical based on reality or fantasy?

I made a math mistake.  Wanted to assume 2.5-3 wins per year for each of them.   Let’s call it 18 WAR rather than 24 for the two combined over 3 seasons, at $50 mm for the two combined, compared to 35 WAR for Trout over 8 years at $297 mm.  Do you make the trade?

Edited August 28, 2022 by Frobby

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I made a math mistake.  Wanted to assume 2.5-3 wins per year for each of them.   Let’s call it 18 WAR rather than 24 for the two combined over 3 seasons, at $50 mm for the two combined, compared to 35 WAR for Trout over 8 years at $297 mm.  Do you make the trade?

18 is still a fantasy imo.  Not as improbable as 24 but far from likely imo.

That said, yes I make the trade.  Of that 35 WAR, I would bet on him getting around 30 of it the next 5 years.  
 

So, Trout at 5-7 WAR per year Vs those guys getting 4-5 WAR a year? Yes, I take Trout because of the possibility he could pop an 8-10 WAR year.

But i mean, you dress up a hypothetical anyway you want.

I also question whether you will want to pay arb3 money to Hays anyway, so I could see him not even being part of the team in 2025 if not traded before then.

[Aristotelian]

Long term contracts that aren't frontloaded are always signed on the assumption that you are going to overpay at the end, not that the player will have level production for 12 years. He did have a $20M signing bonus but it seems prima facie foolish to pay for the back end 8 years. Add to that a back injury, I don't see who signs Trout to an 8 year contract at $35M+ today. Reminds me of the Prince Fielder trade. For the money, not much upside but a TON of risk 

[yark14]

16 pages and I still don't understand why this thread exists.  Trout will never be on the Orioles for a variety of reasons.  

[Frobby]

8 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

18 is still a fantasy imo.  Not as improbable as 24 but far from likely imo.

That said, yes I make the trade.  Of that 35 WAR, I would bet on him getting around 30 of it the next 5 years.  
 

So, Trout at 5-7 WAR per year Vs those guys getting 4-5 WAR a year? Yes, I take Trout because of the possibility he could pop an 8-10 WAR year.

But i mean, you dress up a hypothetical anyway you want.

I also question whether you will want to pay arb3 money to Hays anyway, so I could see him not even being part of the team in 2025 if not traded before then.

Well, I think it’s a good hypo to draw out people’s thinking.  I think the points you make are valid and it would be a tough call for me.   

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, yark14 said:

16 pages and I still don't understand why this thread exists.  Trout will never be on the Orioles for a variety of reasons.  

It’s just fun to discuss, whether or not it is likely to happen.  No harm in having fun. 

[Hallas]

43 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Because if/when his defense starts to decline, his WAR is going to drop.  I think that happens by 2025.  

His speed doesn’t have to drop off much for that to happen.  
 

I think it's crazy for you to think that Mullins is going to lose enough sprint speed going into his age 30 season that he's going to lose 1.5 wins on defense and baserunning.  Among players that stayed healthy through their age 30 seasons I couldn't find any examples at all of players that lost 1 FPS at age 30. The only example I found of a player losing that much speed is Adam Jones, but he lost that speed going into his age 31 season.

[Can_of_corn]

15 minutes ago, yark14 said:

16 pages and I still don't understand why this thread exists.  Trout will never be on the Orioles for a variety of reasons.  

Baseball fans on a baseball message board enjoy talking about baseball.

 

Was that so hard?

[Sports Guy]

15 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I think it's crazy for you to think that Mullins is going to lose enough sprint speed going into his age 30 season that he's going to lose 1.5 wins on defense and baserunning.  Among players that stayed healthy through their age 30 seasons I couldn't find any examples at all of players that lost 1 FPS at age 30. The only example I found of a player losing that much speed is Adam Jones, but he lost that speed going into his age 31 season.

Well this assumes he is a 3.5+ WAR guy the next few years.  Not sure I buy him being that good.  He stands a decent chance of not being that this year.

But I think his drop off could be steep if he doesn’t start hitting better.  OAA had him at +11 last year.  This year he’s +4.  Does he keep declining or is this where he really is?  
 

But if he is a +1 OAA and a 700ish OPS CFer, what is his WAR going to be?

This is why I want to deal him now and not wait.

[Hallas]

39 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Well this assumes he is a 3.5+ WAR guy the next few years.  Not sure I buy him being that good.  He stands a decent chance of not being that this year.

But I think his drop off could be steep if he doesn’t start hitting better.  OAA had him at +11 last year.  This year he’s +4.  Does he keep declining or is this where he really is?  
 

But if he is a +1 OAA and a 700ish OPS CFer, what is his WAR going to be?

This is why I want to deal him now and not wait.

 

Ok but now you're hand-waving projections for both his offense and his defense.  His OPS this year is .734, and his OPS+ is 108.  Why is he dropping down to .700ish during the prime of his career?

 

If he drops to +1 OAA and he becomes a league average baserunner he's still going to put up 2.7-3 WAR if his hitting remains the same.

 

Edit to add: i dove a little deeper in the WAR calculation and it looks like Fangraphs is crediting him a small amount of bonus runs this year due to park effects so I guess they have made some sort of adjustment to account for the changed dimensions.  The park effect won't really be stable till 2025 though.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Hallas

[Sports Guy]

7 minutes ago, Hallas said:

 

Ok but now you're hand-waving projections for both his offense and his defense.  His OPS this year is .734, and his OPS+ is 108.  Why is he dropping down to .700ish during the prime of his career?

 

If he drops to +1 OAA and he becomes a league average baserunner he's still going to put up 2.7-3 WAR if his hitting remains the same.

 

Edit to add: i dove a little deeper in the WAR calculation and it looks like Fangraphs is crediting him a small amount of bonus runs this year due to park effects so I guess they have made some sort of adjustment to account for the changed dimensions.  The park effect won't really be stable till 2025 though.

Yea I already made the point about how fWAR adjusts better for park effects, which is another reason it’s the superior WAR.

Did the zips projections this year have him all the way down to a 730ish OPS?

[Pickles]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

18 is still a fantasy imo.  Not as improbable as 24 but far from likely imo.

That said, yes I make the trade.  Of that 35 WAR, I would bet on him getting around 30 of it the next 5 years.  
 

So, Trout at 5-7 WAR per year Vs those guys getting 4-5 WAR a year? Yes, I take Trout because of the possibility he could pop an 8-10 WAR year.

But i mean, you dress up a hypothetical anyway you want.

I also question whether you will want to pay arb3 money to Hays anyway, so I could see him not even being part of the team in 2025 if not traded before then.

He just projected those guys at 6 WAR a year.  Not 4-5.  At least debate honestly.  

You can do your "4th outfielder" shtick all you want, but 18 WAR for those guys is pretty close to the median. 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Pickles

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Yea I already made the point about how fWAR adjusts better for park effects, which is another reason it’s the superior WAR.

Did the zips projections this year have him all the way down to a 730ish OPS?

I'm not entirely sure that any of the calculations, Fangraphs included, are properly adjusting for OPACY Park effects because there just isn't enough data on it.  But Fangraphs appears to be taking 2022 as a special case and using some form of their 1 year park effect.

 

Mullins has a .783 projected OPS during 2022 preseason.  That said, I don't think the preseason ZIPS OPS calculation is terribly relevant because the league average OPS dropped by .021 points and the OPACY Park factor went from like 105 to 99 or 98.

 

Mullins' preseason wRC+ projection for 2022 was 110.  He is currently at 111.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Hallas