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10/2/19

Reese Kaplan -- Never Say "Untouchable" in the Off-Season



Buy low.  Sell high. It’s one of the most basic tenets of the free enterprise system.  You buy players at the nadir or their value and try to sell off redundant assets or people for whom you can readily find alternatives who might not perform at the same elite level but who could do a credible job for you while the peddled player could net a major haul in return.


Yesterday one of our writers posted the idea of trading Pete Alonso.  Once you got past the emotional and financial implications of trading away the HR champion and reigning Home Run Derby champion, the notion is an interesting one.  While I disagreed with the package – two expensive rentals – the fact is he would be the ultimate sell-high candidate.  He’s making minimum wage and delivered 53 HRs while driving in 120 in his rookie year. 

Picture by Ernest Dove

Lost in the shuffle between his injuries and Alonso’s monster season is Dom Smith.  Will he hit 53 HRs?   Highly unlikely.  Will he drive in 120?  Again, highly unlikely.  However, he did hit .287 and ended the season in the most memorable way by depositing a walk-off home run in the 11th inning in dramatic fashion to remind people that hey, I’m here, too. 

I’m not going to sit here and speculate what you could receive for Alonso in trade but think about if Mike Trout was on the market.  Alonso doesn’t have the speed of Trout but has way more power and doesn’t cost $30 million per season.  In other words, you can pretty much name your price.   There are no untouchables on a roster and with a very capable spare part in Dom Smith (not to mention JD Davis), asking for the best offers on Alonso would allow you to address a myriad of problems in one fell swoop. 

Suppose the Padres turned around and offered you starter Chris Paddack (3.33 ERA in his rookie year), closer Kirby Yates (1.19 ERA), and a few top prospects…you’ve got 1B covered, you pick up another quality starting pitcher, another quality relief pitcher and a few wildcards.  That would help you with the Noah Syndergaard/Zack Wheeler/Marcus Stroman/Steven Matz uncertainties, all of whom will be walking away before Paddack even hits arbitration.  It would also immediately stabilize the bullpen and perhaps allow you to trade off excess mid-year if Diaz and/or Familia rebound to form.

Now this deal wouldn’t happen because Eric Hosmer is at 1B for the Padres and although he hasn’t worked out as they had hoped, they’re on the hook to the tune of $99 million over the next six years.   The point is that it is silly to say you can’t trade Alonso.  If the right package comes along, anyone should be available. 


One of the friends of the site raised an interesting question about JD Davis.  Many folks are screaming for him to be an everyday player based upon his great rookie campaign.  The same folks are now calling Brandon Nimmo a 4th outfielder.  I guess they forgot already what a healthy Nimmo can do.  It was just a year ago that Nimmo delivered a 4.4 WAR season playing almost regularly. 

So maybe it’s not Alonso but Davis that you might want to dangle to another club, such as one in the AL to function as a DH?  He has a lot of the same positive attributes of a Pete Alonso plus some positional versatility though he doesn’t play any particularly well.  He is also a minimum wage player with many years of financial control. 

Picture by Ed Delaney

As much as folks like homegrown heroes, I have suggested a few times that financially it may make sense to sell high on Michael Conforto.  His 32 HR/92 RBI season is his best and he finished playing at an All-Star level.  In 2019 Conforto earned a hair over $4 million and is under team control for 2020 and 2021.   He's due a MEGA-raise in arbitration.  An outfield of Yoenis Cespedes, Brandon Nimmo and JD Davis is not exactly chopped liver and Conforto, selling high, could bring back quite a haul. 

On the pitching side of the ledger, a lot of folks are advocating trading away Edwin Diaz and/or Noah Syndergaard.  In both cases (more so in Diaz’ case) you would be selling low which is never good business.  You could flip the script and sell high on Seth Lugo (especially if you think his arm is going to fall off and you worry that his IL stints each season are going to be longer or more frequent).  His numbers are great, he makes no money and could also net a lot in return, but unless you do one of the other above deals or hold out hope that in 2020 Diaz and Familia will pitch like it’s 2017 or 2018 again, that’s a very risky proposition, weakening further your obviously weakest link – the pen. 


The off-season has just begun, and the management meetings are taking place this week.  Many strategic approaches will be analyzed and discussed, including the future of the thus far winning manager (Mickey owns a career 163-161 mark, something the more experienced predecessor couldn’t deliver).  At this juncture all options should be on the table, even the distasteful ones. 

13 comments:

  1. Reese, I read the article in question. I agree with the buy low sell high theory, however to suggest an Alonso trade for two one year rentals
    the Mets could never afford to sign long term is crazy. Maybe this writers articles should pass through Mack’s legion of writers before future publications...just sayin

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  2. I would consider trading Davis.

    Especially in a package for Mookie Betts.

    Davis, Gimenez, Harol Gonzalez, and minor league RP

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  3. Lowrie will be with the Mets one hopefully healthy year, then the logjam breaks in the infield. Maybe Gimenez reestablishes a logjam, by making it up to Citi playing well enough for the Mets to want to have him play full time in 2021. I have my doubts.

    Davis could be a GREAT bat down the road. I'd be very loathe to trade him.

    Considering the Mets went 46-25 over their last 71 games, a 105 win pace, with only a modestly functional bullpen, I'd be very leery of messing that up.

    Lowrie presumably will fill Frazier's shoes very nicely. If Cespedes is healthy enough to play in 2020, he will be here, as trading him is impossible at the start of the season.

    Some players are far more than their stat lines - if you watched Dom Smith's post-game interview, he oozes positivity, love of teammates, and love of Mets....I would keep him if at all possible. You can't bottle that.

    Fix the pen, try to re-sign Wheeler, stay the course.

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  4. The better way to break this down in my opinion is to trade the overvalued for the undervalued. The Astros, Yankees, Dodgers, A's, Rays have largely figured this out. They seem to have more advanced evaluations of players and player development in general that other teams. They can identify the DJ Lemieus, the Gio Urshelas etc. Many of these teams also know when their players are outperforming their ability due to luck or whatever and can capitalize on it and which players are undervalued for the same reason. You could send the Astros Familia and Diaz and their analytics team could probably identify their problems and figure out a solution to return them to dominant form.

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  5. Interesting, Reese.

    We do have a logjam in the outfield, especially if Cespedes returns. Of all the players we could deal, I think I would deal Conforto first.

    I don't WANT to, but he would bring back a nice haul and he is going to get expensive soon. Plus, he is a Boras client, so we all know how that will go in a couple years.

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  6. Ummm, Dallas, didn't the vaunted Astros trade us JD Davis...so much for their keen evaluation of undervalued talent :)

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  7. Reese, the Astros just won 107 games. Do you think the miss JDD? He might still not make their 25 man roster. Their depth of talent is incredible. JDD was barely even starting for the Mets he isn't going to start for the Astros. The Astros traded true surplus talent for what they viewed as undervalued prospects in the Mets system that would help them in the future. They aren't going to hit on every trade but they sure will over the long term. On the Mets JDDavis is not surplus talent, he is a guy that makes the team better unquestionably but thats just the stark contrast of talent between the Astros and the Mets. The guys we traded weren't doing much last I looked but I don't know if you can consider them all busts after 1 year.

    Someone on the Athletic did a thought exercise on how good the Astros/Dodgers are. You had to take the best players from the worst 6-8 teams before you could match the value those teams have. Thats how much better these teams are at evaluating and getting talent out of players.

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  8. Dallas is definitely giving praise where due. Look at how the Astros got Yordan Alvarez. Man, was THAT smart. Just one of their many great moves.

    I agree with Dallas: JD Davis probably would have had a minimal role with the Astros in 2019 if they'd kept him.

    And as Dallas says, they have superior evaluation skills - but I also keep saying to keep it simple: when it comes to International and the draft, sign/draft power arms and power bats. Do that consistently, and we wouldn't have been scrounging as we have for viable pen arms the past two seasons. We'd have them. Enough of them.

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  9. The Astros front office is just playing at a completely different level than the rest of baseball. Not every one of their moves works out but they stack the odds in their favor over the long term.

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  10. Part of that is knowing how to spend money as well. They don't go for rookie managers who never swung a bat or kicked-to-the-curb veterans who were out of baseball for nearly 15 years.

    When they sensed they were getting close, they went big and landed Verlander.

    They locked up some of their good young players instead of procrastinating the decision until they leave as free agents partly because they didn't feel appreciated by their current club.

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  11. You are right Reese. Look what the Braves did with Acuna and Albies too...that Albies is one of the most lop sided team friendly contracts I've ever seen. They lock up their stars to have predictable and reasonable costs instead of exploding arbitration then free agency.

    Not only did they land Verlander but he has been next level with them. Is that a product of analytics and player development or did Verlander just figure out something on his own. I'm leaning towards player development based on what I've read and how they have done this with many players now.

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  12. This article on player development from the Athletic gives a glimpse of what the best teams are doing.

    https://theathletic.com/681387/2018/12/07/sarris-the-next-moneyball-is-already-happening-all-around-us-in-the-wild-west-of-player-development/?fbclid=IwAR1UQQ_APOTGWo1XbBkeDqg4cGlMZ6CBJKpQyJwMa4OKgcL54vyWUJg5MEc

    Its fascinating stuff. 6 of the 10 play off teams have the most analysts.

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