I haven't posted anything on the trade yet, because I'm still unsure exactly what to think. Not that I'm indifferent to it, just that I see both some real positives and real negatives, and I'm not quite sure how I value them and what the end result is. So I'll just use this post to sum up some of the points and see where I land afterwards. Beware of some rambling. To start with, I should say that I don't think this was the year to make the big moves, I would have preferred to use 2018 to see if 2017 was real, to allow some top prospects to graduate and get ML playing time. But, I'll try to not let that get in the way of the analysis, as I can also see that the depressed FA market (Cain would've been long gone at a higher AAV in most previous years), the Marlins fire sale and the huge 2019 FA class and the incoming 40-man crunch making some arguments for why making these moves now makes sense. We should first take a moment to appreaciate how rare the Yelich trade is. It's a 4-WAR (Average over his first 4½ seasons) All-star outfielder, under contract for 5 years (Or 4 years + team option, which is even better), through his age 26-30 seasons for an extremely team-friendly amount. The 5 years in particular, for such an established player, are very very rare. Even rarer that they get traded. The years of team control in particular will reflect the cost; when we compare this trade to other trades, nearly all of the comparisons are for fewer years, or higher salaries. And yet it gets judged by the same standard as those by many. Trades are always hard to judge as one can't predict the future. But there are projections and predictions (And Yelich is young, consistent and seemingly durable (155 and 156 games in 2016 and 2017) so should be comparatively easy to project), and there are very few players expected to be more valuable at the time of a trade than Yelich; at least I struggle to come up with any examples. (In a vacuum that is; Chapman was infinitely valuable in that he may have been the difference between WS and no WS, but not in raw numbers). There simply aren't many opportunities to acquire players like this. There aren't many 26 year old FAs either; Bryce Harper will be one, and is clearly a better player. But that's also going to be the biggest contract ever, likely $400m+. Stanton had averaged less than 0.5 WAR more than Yelich (And was a year younger tbf) when signing his for $325m. What would Yelich get? I don't know, I'm not a great judge of the FA market, but it would be the kind of deal a club with a budget like the Brewers would never, ever make. So what I'm trying to say is that this is the only way to get a player like this. Brinson could become one, but probably not straight away. Meaning there'd need to be an early extension to make full use of it. And with more risk. And risk brings us to the next point. Even a fair veteran for prospects trade is lopsided. The immediate (and 1-2 year) return is in favour of the club trading the veteran, and the overall value over the years of control is in favour of the other club. That's just the nature of it. You pay a premium for certainty. I would think it's not unreasonable to expect that Yelich will produce 15-25 WAR over the 5 years of control. The projections for Diaz, Harrison, Brinson and Yamamoto are much, much wider. With high-risk and high-ceiling prospects like Brinson, Harrison and Diaz it's even tougher than usual. The best case scenarios for Harrison and Brinson (i.e their hit tools becoming even above average) are superstars, 5+ WAR players, so 30 WAR each over their years of team control. Or they could never establish themselves in the majors. Or be 4th/5th OF types. Or simply average starters. Even when discounting the most unlikely outliers (i.e none of them making the majors, or all of them becoming superstars) you still have a very wide range. But even then, when weighing the various projections and scenarios together by their likelyhood you still end up at an expected value higher than the average for Yelich. So, in that sense it's an 'overpay'. Every veteran for prospects trade is, by design. For one team a narrow and fairly certain range of outcomes is more valuable, at this time, than a more uncertain outcome but with a higher average outcome. So you're paying for certainty and decreased variance. You're also paying for knowing when you're getting that production, from which playing position, and in what manner. The Yelich trade is a great example of this IMO, where the prospects are very high risk and high variance and the veteran is very consistent and low risk. There's also the fact that the three highest rated pieces in the deal were all position players, and the pitcher included wasn't one near the majors. Pitching prospects are much more volatile, much harder to predict. So if sustained success for the next 4-6 years or so is what you want, keeping hold of your AA and AAA (and ML) pitching prospects makes a whole lot of sense. Maybe the cost of the deal could have been lower had some top pitching prospect been included, but as much as much as I believe in Harrison and Brinson I value developing internal pitching options more. There's higher development risk in pitchers (TINSTAAPP and all that), but that's the kind of risk a small market team can bear, hence focus development on pitching. They also have a higher economic risk when making signings, but that's one risk a small market team can't bear, so I'd focus on position players there. So yeah, while I think the overall package could have been less had a Woodruff or Burnes or Ortiz been included, I'm still happy with this. While this seems to signal a change in approach, I still don't believe it as an "all in" move. It's a move (Or moves, if we factor in Cain and the likely Santana trade) to signal the start of a competitive window (Which might be the kind of window that is intended to stay open for a loong time, or a "soft" window, or "Cardinals-style" type of approach, or whatever you want to call it), it's a move to shift from high-risk to low risk. By which I mean that a focus on retaining and developing all top, high-celing prospects, like Harrison, Brinson and Diaz, is perhaps the best way to build a true WS-favourite, a kind of one in a generation team. But it's also an approach that gives a pretty good chance of hardly ever going to the playoffs if things go wrong. Somehow I was a lot more against this type of move before it happened; looking at a prospect list and imaging those three names gone felt a lot worse than looking at the same lists now without these guys. It's still a strong system. The fact that they were traded for five full years of a young player helps; it's not a short-term move. The OF is set for several years now, but that just gives time for Grisham, Ray, Stokes, Lutz and the rest to develop quietly. That's the beauty of a deep system. There's also the matter of what we do with Santana and in the FA market. It's still possible that the strengthening of the current rotation comes from free agency, say Alex Cobb. And that Santana is used to replenish the system. Won't bring a Harrison/Brinson/Diaz package of course, but perhaps prospects in a position of weakness. Looking at it like that, the balance off this offseason isn't either rebuilding or "going for it" in the traditional sense. It's a shift towards winning now, or winning soon(er), but more like reshaping than anything else. I don't think we'll see a massive buying spree, I still think that the team will rely a lot on the prospects (mainly pitching) to fill major roles in the team over the next few years and not just be used as trade chips. A big question to ask though is how far these moves take us? Is it enough to be truly competitive? Was it too soon? Will we be caught somewhere inbetween, with neither the future value or present value we'd like? I guess that this already very long rant hasn't really brought any answers, so I'll stop for now (40-man issues being one thing I never even got to!). But the overarching feeling I get, surprisingly considering my views before the trade (and the Cain signing) is a fairly positive one. And that's despite believing that Brinson will be a huge success (And possibly he would not have been that here, not being given the development time needed during a competitive push), that Harrison is very high risk but worth it due to the sky-high potential, and that Diaz will be a productive MLB starter. But it depends also on what the next step is. I want these moves, and possible future ones, to supplement a focus on developing our own talent. Not as the starting signal for a series of short-term moves.
