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the word I'd use. He, unlike us, actually had the agents for guys like Santana and McCarthy on the phone, peddling their clients as they're paid to do, so he already *knew* approximately where the SP market would be. He pre-empted it and landed a guy in the vein of the aforementioned veterans for the cost of Michael Saunders.
This, to me, is not something to be ignored. There was a recent article at Fangraphs where a commenter asked, in a completely reasonable and articulated fashion, whether or not Cole Hamels and his contract (4 years at $22.5mil plus a $6mil buyout on an option year valued between $19-24mil) was worth more, in trade value, than Jon Lester is (6 years at an AAV of $25.8mil plus a $10mil buyout on a seventh option year of $25mil). The thinking, I believe, was that Hamels doesn't have the extra couple of years worth of liability on his contract and provides substantially the same production (average of something like 4.2 Fangraphs WAR for each pitcher over the last four years).
It was pretty amazing to me to see people steadfastly cling to the 'Cole Hamels' contract is an albatross; there's simply no way the Phillies get out from under all of it, even if they take little-to-no prospect value in return' line. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on the entire community, but why didn't anyone jump up and say, "Why, yes, in fact here is the attrition rate for pitchers heading into their mid/late-thirties, and that works out to about $10mil worth of average liability on those extra years." I mean, I have no idea what the numbers actually are, but there IS value in having Jon Lester's bearded twin from an alternate universe signed for two fewer years, especially when those years come in what is generally considered a decline period in an athlete's career.
Z got Happ for the cost of a nice 4th OF, and he apparently only has to pay him the same salary he was paying Condor for the upcoming season in terms of salary. That, essentially, can be viewed as a talent swap (maybe we lost $2mil worth of value in predicted performance?) AND ALSO as a way to avoid spending $50mil+ on a guy like Santana or McCarthy, who are by no means 'sure things' themselves (although I do tend to buy the idea that Santana has figured something out over the last year or so).
How much value do you place on the ~$45mil Jack Z saved on his #3 pitcher? In some scenarios, you WANT to spend that $45mil because the player ends up outperforming the contract. But in a more common outcome, you end up with a pitcher whose last couple years look more like Carlos Silva's or, at best, Jarrod Washburn's.
Fangraphs' writers, however, prefer to use the aggregate WAR projections because it reduces things, but they're closing off several key points of examination by doing so. When you see a WAR projection, and the infamous "subtract about half a win per season" to determine long-term value, you're missing the boat by the length of the dock in many cases. Sullivan's article where he examined Giancarlo Stanton's contract was a MUCH better attempt to analyze potential outcomes since he examined several INDIVIDUAL cases, rather than saying, "The aggregate of the outcomes suggests..." The aggregate is only useful in the macro sense; in the micro sense, you have to get more nuanced than that.
There are scenarios where trading Saunders for Happ was a mistake; there are scenarios where the reverse is also true. But the question isn't, should not, and cannot be, whether or not the trade was fair in a WAR-for-WAR sense. That's reducing it too far. The question very well might be: was Z wise to trade a 4th OF for a MOR arm when quality 4th OF's cost fungible, AA bullpen arms (as with Ruggiano) or