Trades from the Trade Value Lists: Part 3 – 2011

In our look through Dave’s past Trade Value lists, we’ve only found trades that were completed in the offseason following the completion of the lists. However, we have something different with our four players dealt off the 2011 list. Two of the four were traded within a few weeks of Dave publishing his articles, and one more was dealt almost a year later in June 2012, which allowed his value to drop considerably before his old team decided to cut bait. It’s time for the 2011 Major League Baseball Trade Value List.

All trade information was taken from Baseball-Reference.com. For each player, I’ve included next to his name, his age at the time of trade, along with his final year of team control and the amount due for that player including all team options.

2011

25. Ubaldo Jimenez, 27, controlled through 2014, $17.95 million

• July 30, 2011: Traded by the Colorado Rockies to the Cleveland Indians for a player to be named later, Joe Gardner (minors), Matt McBride and Alex White. The Cleveland Indians sent Drew Pomeranz (August 16, 2011) to the Colorado Rockies to complete the trade.

The contract status above for the ever-mercurial Jimenez is actually rather deceiving, as his original 4-year deal with Colorado signed in 2009 came with team options for 2013 and 2014, but with a catch. If he’s traded at any time during the years of  the contract, he can void the latter option and go directly to free agency, and after a blistering second half of 2013 that helped propel Cleveland to a wild card berth, that’s exactly what the right-hander did. But we’re not so much concerned with his free agency as we are with the trade that went down just after Dave ranked Jimenez so generously. Desperate for a frontline ace and sitting only 1.5 games back of the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central, the Indians sent a package of Gardner, Pomeranz, White, and McBride to Denver. Instead of having a lot of text to read, I decided to include more of a graphic look at the quality of the prospects sent over. I think you’ll figure it out for yourself.

	2011 Opening Day Age	BA Overall Top 100 (2/23/11)	BA Org (CLE) (11/17/10)	FG Overall Top 100 (3/28/11)	FG Org (CLE) Top 10 (2/8/11)
Alex White, RHP	22	47	2	55	2
Joe Gardner, RHP	22	N/A	9	N/A	6
Drew Pomeranz, LHP	22	61	4	82	4
Matt McBride, OF	25	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

As the 25th ranked trade piece, Jimenez was worth two top-100 prospects, a solid top-10 organizational guy, and then just a guy in McBride, who peaked as the 13th-best prospect for Cleveland after the 2007 season. Comparing this Colorado haul to the Kansas City package for the similarly ranked Greinke, I’d say the deal that the Royals got was slightly better, with a true blue-chipper in Escobar and a major-league ready piece in Cain. Unfortunately for the Rockies, nothing worked out for them in this trade. Pitching prospects at Coors, eh?

29. Kevin Youkilis, 33, controlled through 2013, $14 million (team option)

• June 24, 2012: Traded by the Boston Red Sox with cash to the Chicago White Sox for Brent Lillibridge and Zach Stewart.

So this is the only trade out of all the lists that took place during the following season after the list in which the player was ranked. We can see how much Youkilis’s value tanked, as Boston only got a couple organizational guys that peaked a long while ago and not ranked on anything at the time of the trade. Stewart was a 25-year-old RHP that peaked as the top prospect in the Toronto system after the 2009 season, but still didn’t rank in BA’s Top 100 even then. Lillibridge had a breakout 2011 season as a 28-year-old when he accumulated 1.3 WAR in 216 PA, mostly on the back of a .247 ISO. However, all the shine had worn off by 2012, when he only managed an awful 70 PA for the White Sox before being dealt.

The curious case of Kevin Youkilis is a reminder that as much as we fans are aware of how volatile pitchers can be in terms of performance and health, hitters can also experience similarly rapid, sudden, and unpredictable declines. When Dave put together his 2011 Trade Value list, Youkilis was a healthy 32-year-old in the middle of yet another dominant offensive season, raking to a tune of a 147 wRC+. After a disastrous second half for him (79 wRC+) and his teammates in one of the most memorable collapses in recent years, and an even worse start to 2012, all the value had been sucked out of him faster than anyone could’ve ever imagined. Boston got basically nothing for him less than a year after he was the 29th most valuable trade asset in baseball and less than two years after he was ranked 17th.

35. Trevor Cahill, 23, controlled through 2017, $55.2 million

• December 9, 2011: Traded by the Oakland Athletics with Craig Breslow and cash to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Ryan Cook, Collin Cowgill and Jarrod Parker.

If Jarrod Parker didn’t have such terribly awful luck staying healthy, this trade would look like one of the steals of the decade. As it is, this deal still looks like yet another robbery for Billy Beane’s front office, as Cahill has just not been able to find that 2010 magic that allowed him to put up a 2.97 ERA with 18 wins. Just like in 2007, when the A’s turned Dan Haren into a stockpile of quality prospects, Cahill also became more building blocks for the franchise’s future. As the second piece headed to the desert, Breslow was a useful reliever for the past couple years for Oakland, but hardly a player that should have swung the deal significantly.

	2012 Opening Day Age	BA Overall Top 100 (2/21/12)	BA Org (OAK) (1/25/12)	FG Overall Top 100 (3/12/12)	FG Org (ARI) Top 15 (11/15/11)
Jarrod Parker, RHP	23	26	1	23	2
Collin Cowgill, OF	25	N/A	11	N/A	N/A
Ryan Cook, RHP	24	N/A	18	N/A	N/A

However, if we compare the returns that Cahill and Halladay (ranked 35th and 37th respectively on their lists), we can see how Toronto clearly got the better package. The Jays received three high-end prospects all ranked in the top 100, while Oakland acquired a gem in Parker but then two more lower-end organizational players. While the two pitchers were ranked very closely during the All-Star breaks of their years, I suspect what happened the rest of the year greatly affected their respective values. While Halladay continued to dominate in the second half of 2009, Cahill struggled mightily with his results in 2011, coming into the break with a 3.12 ERA but getting pounded to the tune of a 5.80 after. So by the time the offseason rolled around, Toronto was able to sell their ace at a much higher price than Oakland could for theirs.

41. Colby Rasmus, 24, controlled through 2014, Arb1 – Arb3

• July 27, 2011: Traded by the St. Louis Cardinals with Trever Miller, Brian Tallet and P.J. Walters to the Toronto Blue Jays for Octavio Dotel, Edwin Jackson, Corey Patterson and Marc Rzepczynski.

Welcome back, Edwin Jackson! After being involved in the three-team trade that saw Curtis Granderson and Max Scherzer change teams, he makes a comeback in this trade that was more about Rasmus being out of favor in St. Louis than anything, especially when we consider what the Cardinals got in return for their young outfielder.

The pieces sent to Toronto along with Rasmus don’t have much significance, as Miller and Tallet were mediocre relief pitchers in their 30’s, and while Walters was ranked in the top 20 of St. Louis’s system after 2010, he was not having a good season at Triple-A at age 26 and had shown no signs of sticking in the big leagues in his few innings.

In the return headed to Busch Stadium, the main piece was 27-year-old Jackson, who was having yet another solid season, this year for the Chicago White Sox. As a somewhat irrelevant note, Jackson had already been traded that same day from the White Sox to the Blue Jays, and Alex Anthopoulos quickly sent him back to the Midwest. As a very relevant note, Jackson was due to be a free agent right after the 2011 season; he was a rental.

At age 37, Dotel was having a mediocre relief season, putting up a 4.63 FIP in his 29.1 innings with the Jays before really turning it on in the second half for the Redbirds. Patterson was a 31-year-old outfielder who hadn’t provided any value for a major league club since 2007. The lefty reliever Rzepczynski was a 25-year-old who was taken out of the rotation and plugged into the relief corps in 2011.

For the pitching-hungry Cardinals who were in a tight three-team NL Central race at the time (remember when the Brewers were good?), this was a trade to get some depth in the rotation and the bullpen. However, for a young 24-year-old outfielder with three more relatively cheap years under team control, only getting a decent rental starting pitcher and an average lefty reliever seems like the most underwhelming return in this entire exercise. There’s a reason fans and executives were down on this trade for the Cardinals to begin with, and it still looks bizarrely underwhelming four years later. But then again, Tony La Russa and company won the franchise’s 11th title that year, so what do we know?

The 2011 Trade Value list would end up involving some of the most unusual trades we’ve seen, whether it was the shocking depreciation of Youkilis’s value or the only slightly less shocking lack of return the Cardinals were able to acquire for Rasmus. Overall, it seems that Dave had Jimenez about right, Rasmus much too high, and couldn’t foresee the declines that Youkilis and Cahill would have that lowered their values.

Next time, we’ll wrap this whole thing up with three more trades, all polarizing and fascinating in their own way. One outfielder was almost traded to the Pacific Northwest for a strong package before vetoing the deal himself and joining his brother farther east. Then we had one of the most talked-about and discussed trades in recent years, with a mid-market franchise deciding to go all-in and acquiring a frontline starter for multiple top prospects, getting widely slammed across baseball for doing so. And lastly, off the 2014 rankings, we were all caught off guard when a rising superstar 3rd baseman got dealt for a haul seemingly headlined by… no one.