A discussion on trading starting pitchers with a year of control remaining

[long ball]

For me, it’s tough to separate the trades if Burnes and Peralta from all of the other trades that have been made under Arnold (or even Stearns if you want to include his tenure). 
 

I’d agree that the Burnes trade looks like it will be a bust. Too early to tell on the Freddy trade (I was against trading Freddy). 
 

I think the overall trend is that the Brewers are pretty strong in scouting other orgs and being realistic with what they have in their own players. The brewers trade a lot, not only guys in the final year of team control, and not everyone is going to be a home run. I don’t think the Burnes trade being a bad one is enough for me to question the strategy. 
 

hey we traded Civale in the final year of team control and that turned into Andrew Vaughn! 

[CheezWizHed]

3 hours ago, gregmag said:

By your logic, all that matters is how much WAR you get out of the best roster spot you fill in exchange for the one season you lose.  We lost 3.9 WAR; we gained 2.8 from Joey. So by the way you want to measure trades — ignoring whatever marginal benefit the team can milk out of other pieces, ignoring all future years of control — we lost the Burnes trade by 1.1 WAR. That’s a loss, but “bust” seems strong.

I’m not inclined to ignore everything else the Brewers got back in the trade beyond the best single season in the trade year. You’re right that you have to consider roster spots when comparing WAR, but that’s kind of the point of WAR; you’re assessing how much you’re able to improve each roster spot over what you would’ve had there otherwise, which the WAR comparison presumes is a replacement-level player. Each year the Brewers roll with Ortiz or Hall or anyone else reflects the best judgment of a strong organization that the next player available to fill that roster spot would be worse. I think the Burnes trade is just evidence of how easy these trades are to win.

I know I was being more "black and white" in my determination of success on the trade, but the reality is that there is still plenty of gray possibilities... If Ortiz produced multiple 3.0 WAR seasons and Hall had multiple 2.0 WAR (as a reliever), you probably claim that a win. 

I was trying to make more of a point against the "sum total WAR = WIN" argument rather than being definitive on what I consider a "win".  If I gave 5 "win" scenarios it would've muddled my original argument and put the focus on the wrong part. So I chose to be succinct over thorough. 

you’re assessing how much you’re able to improve each roster spot over what you would’ve had there otherwise

But getting multiple players that are 2.0 WAR or less in a trade (especially when we are giving up a high-end player) really can't be the goal.  You can get those types of players with lesser trades and/or waiver pickups. If we didn't make the Burnes trade, it isn't automatic that our 3B that year would've been a 0 WAR player.  

[CheezWizHed]

4 hours ago, liveforoctober said:

Someone had to pitch for us in the rotation the year Burnes left. Tobias Myers and Colin Rea had good years for us (combined 3.7 WAR)... do one or either of them see the mound if Burnes is here? Shouldn't we factor in their WAR to a degree in grading the trade?, etc 

Well, Hall started that year as a starter, so we can remove his -0.2 WAR and I'd guess we'd see less of the Frankie Montas (-0.1) or Joe Ross (+0.5) rather than impacting Rea (+1.1) or Myers (2.6 WAR - who came up a month into the season as an SP replacement). 

[liveforoctober]

4 minutes ago, CheezWizHed said:

Well, Hall started that year as a starter, so we can remove his -0.2 WAR and I'd guess we'd see less of the Frankie Montas (-0.1) or Joe Ross (+0.5) rather than impacting Rea (+1.1) or Myers (2.6 WAR - who came up a month into the season as an SP replacement). 

Exactly my point. There are like nine names that could or could not have been impacted by that trade. So trying to figure out what value we did and did not gain from it is far too complicated.

[adambr2]

7 minutes ago, liveforoctober said:

Exactly my point. There are like nine names that could or could not have been impacted by that trade. So trying to figure out what value we did and did not gain from it is far too complicated.

Right, and all that is hypothetical, so really the best way is just looking straight at what was lost and what was gained.