Revisiting the Hader Trade

[Fear The Chorizo]

3 hours ago, wiguy94 said:

Let's see the numbers for everyone else.

They're right there for you to look at them

[rickh150]

3 hours ago, edfunderburk said:

Gasser for Hader straight up would have been a good trade 😉

Could have done this and more after the season…

[brewcrewdue80]

I don't recall but wasn't Gasser a soft tosser when the trade happened?

Ruiz was a "who?"  "Why"  

It was a weak trade at the time. Gasser has improved his velocity(if I remembered correctly) and made his debut recently.

Ruiz is a stud in the minors, dud in the Majors.  Until he does something, will never understand Oakland trading for him, nor Atlanta parting with Contreras for his value.

Like mentioned above, they could have traded Hader that offseason and gotten similar value.

Padres have a 4th round pick to add to their side of deal. One that would have been end 1st for Milw I believe.

Hader was his dominating self last season.  Gasser is still where I'm tracking the w/l on Hader trade. 

There were other Padre prospects the Brewers should have asked for over Ruiz wasn't there at that time?

 

[sveumrules]

4 hours ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

I don't recall but wasn't Gasser a soft tosser when the trade happened?

Gasser had 115 K over 90 IP in the Midwest League when we acquired him.

He may have been a “soft tosser” but he was striking guys out at the third highest rate in the league, just fractions behind Antoine Kelly.

[Fear The Chorizo]

5 hours ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

I don't recall but wasn't Gasser a soft tosser when the trade happened?

Ruiz was a "who?"  "Why"  

It was a weak trade at the time. Gasser has improved his velocity(if I remembered correctly) and made his debut recently.

Ruiz is a stud in the minors, dud in the Majors.  Until he does something, will never understand Oakland trading for him, nor Atlanta parting with Contreras for his value.

Like mentioned above, they could have traded Hader that offseason and gotten similar value.

Padres have a 4th round pick to add to their side of deal. One that would have been end 1st for Milw I believe.

Hader was his dominating self last season.  Gasser is still where I'm tracking the w/l on Hader trade. 

There were other Padre prospects the Brewers should have asked for over Ruiz wasn't there at that time?

 

Read Stearns' quotes on Gasser after the trade happened in 2022 - he was the centerpiece in that deal the Brewers coveted.

[sveumrules]

12 hours ago, rickh150 said:

Could have done this and more after the season…

Maybe they could have, maybe they couldn’t have, impossible to know for sure.

What we do know for sure is that without trading Hader at the deadline and already having Ruiz in the fold we wouldn’t have been able to insert ourselves into the OAK/ATL deal to steal Contreras.

[Oxy]

4 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Maybe they could have, maybe they couldn’t have, impossible to know for sure.

What we do know for sure is that without trading Hader at the deadline and already having Ruiz in the fold we wouldn’t have been able to insert ourselves into the OAK/ATL deal to steal Contreras.

Exactly.  Sure, in a vacuum this trade is still questionable, but one must understand the deal in the whole of an organizational philosophy of constantly churning talent at the correct time.  Did we get lucky because OAK rally wanted Ruiz? Kind of...the more deals one makes to accumulate young talent the more likely it is that another franchise will be enamored with one of those talents and/or one of those talents will flourish into a perennial all-star.  I know people hate the "bites at the apple" quote, but it is even more true of 21 year old prospects than it is of getting into the playoffs and hoping to get hot.  Stockpile, stockpile, stockpile....

[Team Canada]

7 hours ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

It was a weak trade at the time.

If you're basing that on Gasser being a "soft-tosser" that's a really shaky evaluation.

As quoted above, they really wanted Gasser. This trade is panning out exactly as they hoped, so credit to Stearns and co for acquiring many years of what looks to be a very good pitcher.

[brewcrewdue80]

1 hour ago, Team Canada said:

If you're basing that on Gasser being a "soft-tosser" that's a really shaky evaluation.

As quoted above, they really wanted Gasser. This trade is panning out exactly as they hoped, so credit to Stearns and co for acquiring many years of what looks to be a very good pitcher.

Weak because Ruiz an OF that Milw had 4 upcoming prospects holding down the position.

Gasser that is/was thought of as a backend starting pitcher at peak.  My problem with that was the soft tossing. 2022 mpb wrote upper 80s that recently touched 91-92.  Bullpen are loaded with flame throwers 96mph+ heat. So Gasser doesn't fit mold, and back end starter peak isn't promising for the majors best RP over the recent years. After Hader's 2023 I imagine the Padres make that trade everytime and feel like they won the trade.

[Playing Catch]

42 minutes ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

Weak because Ruiz an OF that Milw had 4 upcoming prospects holding down the position.

Gasser that is/was thought of as a backend starting pitcher at peak.  My problem with that was the soft tossing. 2022 mpb wrote upper 80s that recently touched 91-92.  Bullpen are loaded with flame throwers 96mph+ heat. So Gasser doesn't fit mold, and back end starter peak isn't promising for the majors best RP over the recent years. After Hader's 2023 I imagine the Padres make that trade everytime and feel like they won the trade.

That's a reasonable position. Do you feel like the closer position is really important? Do you feel like Hader's current deal is a good way for a franchise to spend their available budget? Did you just really like Hader, the fan-favorite?

[wiguy94]

45 minutes ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

Weak because Ruiz an OF that Milw had 4 upcoming prospects holding down the position.

Gasser that is/was thought of as a backend starting pitcher at peak.  My problem with that was the soft tossing. 2022 mpb wrote upper 80s that recently touched 91-92.  Bullpen are loaded with flame throwers 96mph+ heat. So Gasser doesn't fit mold, and back end starter peak isn't promising for the majors best RP over the recent years. After Hader's 2023 I imagine the Padres make that trade everytime and feel like they won the trade.

They only traded for Ruiz to try and flip him. Robert Murray confirmed a couple weeks ago that the Brewers were trying to flip Ruiz at the same deadline they got him. 

[Matt]

2 hours ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

Weak because Ruiz an OF that Milw had 4 upcoming prospects holding down the position.

Gasser that is/was thought of as a backend starting pitcher at peak.  My problem with that was the soft tossing. 2022 mpb wrote upper 80s that recently touched 91-92.  Bullpen are loaded with flame throwers 96mph+ heat. So Gasser doesn't fit mold, and back end starter peak isn't promising for the majors best RP over the recent years. After Hader's 2023 I imagine the Padres make that trade everytime and feel like they won the trade.

Baseball America on the day of the trade: 

Quote

Gasser has plenty of stuff with a fastball that sits 92-93 mph and touches 95 from the left side. He’s added a cutter at 88-91 mph with angle that effectively jams righthanded hitters and has a big, wide breaking ball that is an effective third pitch in his arsenal. 

 

[homer]

I don't really care how strong the trade was on the day it was made. I care how it turned out over the long run.

[Thurston Fluff]

20 minutes ago, homer said:

I don't really care how strong the trade was on the day it was made. I care how it turned out over the long run.

That's not how it works. We have to grade everything immediately or the players have to go back to their original teams. I read about that rule online somewhere.

[Ulice Payne]

My uninformed opinion is that Hader for Gasser / Ruiz was step one at the trade deadline, and step two somehow fell through.

 

I believe this mis-handling of the trade deadline led to Stearns being forced out of the GM role, with it all transpiring on the downlow out of respect for the personal relationship between Attanasio and Stearns.

 

Furthermore, my guess is the way Stearns was handled gave Counsell second thoughts on staying with Milwaukee long term.

 

Hopefully someone spills the whole behind-the-scenes story one day.

 

Even with all that, Gasser looks like the real deal and the Ruiz-Contreras move was truly inspired.

[brewcrewdue80]

3 hours ago, Playing Catch said:

That's a reasonable position. Do you feel like the closer position is really important? Do you feel like Hader's current deal is a good way for a franchise to spend their available budget? Did you just really like Hader, the fan-favorite?

I feel like Hader who set a few MLB records should have been valued more when traded. San Diego traded for Juan Soto the following day giving up CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, James Wood, and Robert Hassell.  The 2 names that stand out that Milw missed out on is Gore and or Wood vs taking on Ruiz. 

1 hour ago, homer said:

I don't really care how strong the trade was on the day it was made. I care how it turned out over the long run.

Easy to say in this instance because the team acquired Contreras and Payamps who have exceeded expectations. Something stronger could have results in long run bigger than what the Crew is going to end up with.

Nobody traded for Ruiz at the deadline according to above.  Just super lucked in to being a 3rd team who acquired to major league players for somebody that was still a prospect with Majors exp. No hype behind him aside from SB threat non top 100prospect.  

[homer]

5 minutes ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

Easy to say in this instance because the team acquired Contreras and Payamps who have exceeded expectations. Something stronger could have results in long run bigger than what the Crew is going to end up with.

Nobody traded for Ruiz at the deadline according to above.  Just super lucked in to being a 3rd team who acquired to major league players for somebody that was still a prospect with Majors exp. No hype behind him aside from SB threat non top 100prospect.  

We can't deal in hypotheticals because we have no clue what other deal the Brewers could have gotten. We can only evaluate the trade and following trades as they occurred. It's very possible the Brewers were a lot higher on Gasser than the prospect raters and thought it was a great return.  

[wiguy94]

21 minutes ago, Ulice Payne said:

My uninformed opinion is that Hader for Gasser / Ruiz was step one at the trade deadline, and step two somehow fell through.

Robert Murray essentially confirmed this to be true. They were trying to immediately trade Ruiz for a bat but that fell through. We know the A's were in love with Ruiz, so maybe we were trying to trade for Sean Murphy and A's didn't like the secondary pieces we were willing to offer.

[sveumrules]

4 minutes ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

San Diego traded for Juan Soto the following day giving up CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, James Wood, and Robert Hassell.  The 2 names that stand out that Milw missed out on is Gore and or Wood vs taking on Ruiz. 

Soto is an everyday player who had 2.5 years of control at the time of the trade, Hader is a one inning reliever who had 1.5 years of control at the time of the trade.

There is a massive gap in value there.

Players like Gore (who was a Top Ten prospect for years) or Wood (who was #9 on FanGraphs 2022 midseason update) were likely never on the table for Hader.

[tmwiese55]

At time of trade I think I was of the opinion that you'd probably get a similar return in the offseason so what was the rush messing with a playoff team.  But, there was real fear that his slump could prolong and crater his offseason value. So I get it.  Plus they brought back Rodgers as the 'insurance' for that year, unfortunately he flopped like Hader did too.  Think of it from the perspective of if Rodgers is what he'd been then him vs Hader for 20 inning is negligible or at least greatly minimized.  But even still they did well in this and as shrewd as it is unfortunately it is what has to be done in our market. 

Of course management doesn't get everything right, but this seems to be one they did.  And returns look good so far on Burnes too.

[wiguy94]

27 minutes ago, tmwiese55 said:

At time of trade I think I was of the opinion that you'd probably get a similar return in the offseason so what was the rush messing with a playoff team.  But, there was real fear that his slump could prolong and crater his offseason value. So I get it.  Plus they brought back Rodgers as the 'insurance' for that year, unfortunately he flopped like Hader did too.  Think of it from the perspective of if Rodgers is what he'd been then him vs Hader for 20 inning is negligible or at least greatly minimized.  But even still they did well in this and as shrewd as it is unfortunately it is what has to be done in our market. 

Of course management doesn't get everything right, but this seems to be one they did.  And returns look good so far on Burnes too.

I've long felt the first part is true. I think no way Hader gets traded then if he wasn't slumping so bad the month up to the deadline. 

[Matt]

28 minutes ago, tmwiese55 said:

Of course management doesn't get everything right, but this seems to be one they did.  And returns look good so far on Burnes too.

With Ortiz being a front-runner for ROY and looking like a probable All-Star this summer, the Burnes trade thread already looks hilarious. 

 

[markedman5]

2 hours ago, Matt said:

With Ortiz being a front-runner for ROY and looking like a probable All-Star this summer, the Burnes trade thread already looks hilarious. 

 

lol……”When you can tank your season for a utility infielder and a relief pitcher, well how can you say no?”

I can say I am quite enjoying this tank of a season right now……😎

[markedman5]

The worse the reaction the better the trade seems to be the typical result…..

[rickh150]

9 hours ago, Playing Catch said:

That's a reasonable position. Do you feel like the closer position is really important? Do you feel like Hader's current deal is a good way for a franchise to spend their available budget? Did you just really like Hader, the fan-favorite?

not to me but I am going for it….
Closer is important, yes. 
Hader deal is a terrible way to run a franchise and there is no coincidence we did not trade Burnes at deadline last year or other first place teams dealing elite closers at deadlines, or will not trade Adames this deadline.  And Hader was clutch in September and October for the Padres, by the way….waaay outperformed Rogers. Glad we backwardex our way to making the trade look good with Contreras.

No, I do not think Hader would’ve signed with us and no we shouldn’t have tried to spend huge money for a closer. I assumed wrongly that Hader would have been dealt in the offseason, ala Burnes.

And fan-favorites count minimally…there is something there to drawing crowds with some familiarity but winning trumps it.