Seattle Sports Insider

Q. Paxton and Franklin ... for?

A. ... anybody

Posted by

10/27/12

We're like you. A little bit different. -- ad seen on a bus ... for an insurance company, of all things

The Seattle blog-o-sphere has definitely always been a little bit different. One of the ways in which it is different is the way in which we all one-up ourselves in the hustle and bustle to take 1st place in line at the Most Objective counter.

Monday, Dr. D will smile wryly as a writer informs The Faithful that Hultzen, Franklin and Wilhelmsen aren't worth nearly as much as we homers assume that they are. Tuesday, he'll smile sardonically as we're warned to stop noodling about deals for Wil Myers and Billy Hamilton; teams don't trade the diamonds of their farm systems. They play the cheap guys and trade the arb guys. C'mon, don'choo know anything?

.............

We can yell, scream and threaten about how much different James Paxton's value will be after he makes 8 good starts in the majors. In my view that's just about impossible to nail down. What I do know is that Bill James said that a glamor ML-ready starting pitcher in the minors is priceless before he debuts in the majors, and we'll proceed here on the assumption that you don't lose a lot of value on Paxton by trading him two months early. (Winter, vs. in June.) If the reality is different - if Paxton's value doubles with his first 8-10 starts in the bigs - then of course you just don't trade him.

..............

Billy Beane has made some unreal trades over the years. He flipped Mark Mulder and got --- > Dan Haren, Daric Barton and Kiko Calero. Slap me silly!, that's enough to make a rival GM swear off dealing with Moneyball.

You want to count up Billy heists on your fingers, you're gonna have to take off your socks too. He traded for Milton Bradley right before MB went nuts. With the bat, not with the antics. Billy traded an aging Terrence Long for Mark Kotsay, and then Kotsay immediately turned in a season that raked in MVP votes. He got Kevin Appier for Jeff D'Amico and two guys you never heard of, and Appier won him 15 games. He traded Ben Grieve and parts for Johnny Damon, Cory Lidle - who was excellent for him - and Mark Ellis. There was Jose Ortiz for Jermaine Dye. And when it came Nick Swisher's time to go, Beane got back Gio Gonzalez and spects for him.

But the best trade Billy Beane ever made - the one that dropped baseball's jaw so wide that it walked home scooping gravel - was the Dan Haren trade:

December 14, 2007: Traded by the Oakland Athletics with Connor Robertson to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Brett Anderson, Chris Carter, Aaron Cunningham, Dana Eveland,Carlos Gonzalez and Greg Smith.

We bring this up because Brett Anderson and Carlos Gonzalez -- the two top-100 prospects in the deal -- pair off so symmetrically with James Paxton and Nick Franklin.

Brett Anderson - ranked #38 by Baseball America at the time. Had just completed class A+ ball with a hot fastball, good but not great statistics. Was considered possibly only 1-2 years away from the majors.

James Paxton - variously ranked #15 to #45 by different services. Has graduated AA and is considered 1 game away from the majors.

Carlos Gonzalez - ranked #18 to #32 over the years pre-2006 to pre-2007; had been a hotshot for a while. At the time of the deal, had just hit .285/.335/.480 in AA ball at age 21 as a "tweener" outfielder.

Nick Franklin - variously ranked #20 to #55 pre-2012; is currently ranked #16 hitter by John Sickels. Has just hit .320/.400/.500 in AA at age 21 as a shortstop.

A quick note on Nick Franklin. He could be Hansley Ramirez; it's a very realistic possibility. The swing is unreal. The results are there to match. Sabertistas don't care about Ken Griffey Jr. swings. Scouts? MLB(TM) shot-callers? They do sit there in the stands and stare at the mechanics. They do care about Ken Griffey Jr. swings. /note.

Supposing that Paxton and Franklin perform anywhere near military specs, couldn't we use them? ... Naaaaah. Perfect ... for anyone else. :- )

....................

Anderson was in the low minors at the time of the Dan Haren trade; CarGo had a bat very similar to Franklin's but coming from an outfield, not an infield, position. James Paxton, and Nick Franklin, as they stand right now, are superior assets to what Anderson and CarGo were at the time of the Haren trade.

The reason that Beane was able to score such a rich haul on Dan Haren was that he'd made Haren available early. Haren still had three cheap, club-friendly years remaining; he scored 6 WAR per year for the DBacks at $4, $7, and $8 million.

If you were going to package James Paxton, Nick Franklin, and filler for somebody, it had better be exactly the player the Mariners want. We're not talking Alex Gordon or Billy Butler here.

Zduriencik talks about "getting this thing where we want it." The talent pyramid, BELOW the 25-man level, is THERE. He is sitting on premium, premium trade assets. And a lot of them.

Comments

Excellent Argument

I'm literally near the point where I would rather let the cards fall where they may, make the bench consist of Zunino, Franklin, Romero or Liddi, and Thames coming out of spring training and let it ride. Maybe sign Youkilis if the Sox let him walk. Maybe it's that I didn't spend as ton of time looking at the minors this year until now, but the attachment is forming late. What if we started skipping free agents and just signed the in house talent to a bunch of long term contracts around year 2 of their careers. Okay, maybe that and a trade for Will Myers would do.

Your stack is too short to be playing at the $100 table.

Too few horses in the corral and too many fences to mend on the ranch to trade for that overused stallion. Continue your intended and agonizing course of youth.
There is nothing on the FA market this year worth trading for. Besides isn’t this subject mute? Or was Z man bluffing back in July when his list of the "Untouchable 7" was announced.

Even if they don't go big

Even if they don't go big, they need to bring in a competent OF. If they could get a Torii Hunter type (respected veteran, winner, can still play) to come in for 120 games in each of the next 2-3 years it should bridge the gap but an OF rotation of Saunders-Gutz-Wells-Thames-Robinson is just not MLB caliber. The IF, I could see standing pat on for another year to see what gells but the OF needs help.

Justin Upton. The one

Justin Upton. The one downside is the injuries, but we have DH in the AL.
Thumb injury zaps his power this year. You're going to target a player like this, you have to do it on a down season. Never buy a player after a career year.
Denard Span. Wanted him last year after his down year, still like him. Unfortunetly, put up another ho-hum 4 WAR year and won't be as cheap now, but we have some RP depth to trade.

You sure?

I've been banging the "no Upton" drum for a good long while. I'm concerned that on the road, for his career, he hits with the same wOBA as Coco Crisp... We're going to take a power RHB with an extreme hitter-friendly home park who hits league average on the road and move him to the land where power RHBs go to die?
So why do you like Upton so much? If you want to trade for the guy, you must be convinced that he'll hit...

That's a good prompt

Baseball's biggest jaw dropping trades. How about Montreal dealing Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips and Lee Stevens, for Bartolo Colon and Tim Drew.

I could go there

Mal, I could go there with you.
I would make Franklin my SS, find Liddi 250 AB's and keep an eye on the Romero Rocket.
For the right OF, I could make the right trade. But I would be just as comfortable watching the kids learn to win.

Myers

Just watched a couple of youtube vids of this guy and have fallen in love with his swing. Sets up like Longoria, finishes like A-rod.
Nuts to trading away Paxton+Franklin for the priviledge of paying Gordon handsomely for his 125 OPS. If I am Z, I would offer the Royals the same deal that I offered the Yankees last offseason. The Yankees were widely regarded to have won that trade before Pineda went down, IIRC. The big difference in the two deals would be lack of MLB experience on boths sides.
If the Royals are talking Pax, Z outta be talking Myers, not Gordon.

Myers sounds like a good

Myers sounds like a good target, but that I though we were looking to get a veteran anchor-type in the line-up to "take the pressure off of the kids". Are we giving up on that thought or is the thinking that those considerations are overblown in real life usefulness?

Woops!

http://seattlesportsinsider.com/article/pitching-wil-myers
Apologies to all. I thought that trade idea looked familiar :-P How about a reboot on this article due to the new dimensions at the Safe and the recent Royal scouting.
I really like Thriteen's idea. I like Doc's idea for a Hamilton/Saunders/Myers OF even more!

You can't just look at a players road numbers

People seem to think that a players road stats represent a guy's "real" talent, but that just isn't the case. First, you're cutting your sample size in half. Second, players perform worse on the road. Third, players can adapt to their park.
Colorado hitters often have huge splits, but when they play for other teams they do fine. For example, Matt Holiday hit .357/.423/.645 (1.068 OPS) at home when he was with the Rockies and only .280/.348/.455 (.803) away. If you just looked at his road stats you'd think that he was an average hitter for a corner outfielder who was mostly a Coors Field illusion and so giving him a big contract would be a mistake. But after he left Colorado, he hit .305/.388/.517 (.905). So he was a lot closer to his overall Rockies numbers than his road numbers.

Do the M's have the resources to do both?

With money being freed up and the plethora of prospects in the upper minors, it seems the M's could probably get an impact veteran bat as well as a young impact bat in the same offseason, even when you include going out and signing Kuma or McCarthy. Of course, this all depends on other teams, the free agents themselves, and how much the M's are willing to give up, but it seems reachable.
Could Wil Myers playing 3B as indicated around the prospect-osphere change the conversation about Seager's availability in a separate trade? I'm thinking Arizona would probably bite on a deal that starts with Seager+Franklin+Furbush for that "vet OF" of theirs and Myers for a deal similar to the one proposed by thirteen on LL. Anyone know more about Myers, the third-baseman?