Days like today are the reason why we started this blog.
For the cave dwellers, Cliff Lee has been traded to the Philaelphia Phillies for four minor leaguers: Carlos Carrasco (RP), Jason Knapp (RP), Jason Donald (SS), and Lou Marson (C).
Immediately after the trade was made, Cleveland.com commenters lit up the page with scorn, Dennis Manaloff wrote the obligatory, detestable, woe is me “Only in Cleveland” article, Bill Livingston got paid to call Progressive Field “Regressive Field,” and ESPN reported that the Indians got four of the Phillies top ten prospects according to Baseball America.
Where should I begin?
Okay, I’ll say this first: the Indians were not going to win the World Series solely because of Cliff Lee. Not this year, obviously, but not next year either. No baseball player, especially a pitcher that only participates in the season every five or six days, is going to determine the success of a team. We saw this last year. Lee won 22 of the 31 games he started, and the Indians were a .500 team (81-81).
For the Indians to contend next year, a lot of things were going to have to happen: Westbrook was going to have to be healthy and effective. Carmona, Perez, Lewis, and Smith were going to have to return to form. A fourth and a fifth starter were going to have to be signed or discovered (Laffey? Sowers? Huff?).
Taking all of that into consideration, the $9M the Indians had to spend to keep Lee - after increasing payroll this season and the team actually performing worse - was too much of a risk in a medium-sized market in this economy. This isn’t a matter of the Dolans being cheap - it’s a matter of a business losing money in a sports industry without a salary cap, where the Yankees can actually spend $52M for than every other team in baseball (as they are in 2009).
If Dan Gilbert owned the Indians, the team would be in a similar situation.
The only way for a team like the Indians to compete is to consistently stockpile players in the minor leagues that can replenish their major league roster when their stars, if they’re fortunate enough to have them, go and play for the 5 or 6 teams that can dictate the highest end of the market for free agents.
This is where Shapiro and company have made their mistakes. As has been reported elsewhere, the Indians minor league teams are bereft of pitchers.
Or, rather, they were. It’s fair to be critical of Shapiro - I certainly have been on the Kerry Wood signing and on not firing Eric Wedge - but in the past couple of weeks he’s added four potential major league pitchers to the depth chart for three players that were contributing to a team that is currently 18 games under .500.
These are the facts. Not all of them make me smile, but they’re important to understand when trying to determine how the organization got to the place it is today.
As for the players the Indians received in the deal…who knows - until they’re playing in the majors, stuck in the minors, traded to other teams, or out of baseball altogether we won’t know for sure. But these are the risks a team like the Indians has to take.
We know why they traded for Knapp and Carrasco; I don’t know why they needed another SS and C, unless Victor Martinez or Jhonny Peralta are on their way out the door. Martinez probably is, but there are also certain dynamics that go into fielding a minor league team that don’t have a lot to do with the major league team they’re associated with. These I won’t pretend to understand.
The big complaint is - and will continue to be - that Knapp, the supposed “centerpiece” of the deal - is only 18 years old and probably at least two or three years away. Jayson Stark of ESPN, however, reported earlier today that the Indians have loads of research that suggests teams most often get fleeced in these kinds of trades when they try to deal for big league ready prospects. Those are, more often than not, the guys that don’t pan out. I suspect this is because the fact that they’re prepared to contribute right away, or at least soon, makes GM’s and scouts see them as more attractive than they really are.
Of course, the flip side of this is that it’s harder to judge actual production and how it translates to the major leagues when looking at Single-A numbers.
Briefly, in looking at the stats, here are the figures I would focus on:
For the pitchers, ignore wins and losses and ERA. Those are relatively arbitrary numbers that rely too heavily on other people’s performance (the offense, the fielders, chance).
Knapp is an absolute monster in SO/9 with 11.5 and his HR/9 at .6 is very good as well. 3.9 BB/9 could be a bit better, but it’s not bad. Obviously, these numbers aren’t proof of anything since we’re talking about an 18 year old kid - but I’d rather they look like this than something worse.
Carrasco comes in at 8.0 SO/9, 3.6 BB/9, and .9 HR/9 through 6 seasons - and he’s only 22.
In comparison, Lee - for his career - averages 6.7 SO/9, 2.6 BB/9 and 1.0 HR/9. The year he won the Cy Young he was 6.9 SO/9, 1.4 BB/9, and .5 HR/9. The last two stats are, appropriately, filthy.
Donald, the SS, has a career minor league OPS of .806 (a C on the Bill James scale) and the C Marson has an OPS of .760 (a high D on the Bill James scale).
Let’s hope those guys were brought in for their defense or something the scouts see that the numbers don’t.
This should give us some frame of reference for now. Yet, we all know that “right now” doesn’t matter for the Indians - at least not after this season really got under way - what matters is the future, most likely beyond the 2010 season, and for that reason, Lee needed to be traded.
And I’ll write the same thing when Martinez is dealt before the deadline on Friday.
