Holliday Rumors Not Going Away

Buster Olney Unsure Deal Is Possible

We might as well get used to hearing the Indians and Rockies trade rumors, at least until Matt Holliday and/or Garrett Atkins are dealt elsewhere or the Indians make a different deal. Otherwise, these rumors are going to keep swirling. And why shouldn’t they? A deal between the Indians and Rockies just makes too much sense for both teams to not happen, or to not at least talk about.

One person, though, who isn’t so sure a deal makes sense for the Rockies is ESPN’s Buster Olney. In his blog today, Buster writes about some potential complications involving trading a franchise player like Matt Holliday,  

“Teixeira went to the Braves in a good ol’ fashioned blockbuster, and the perception of most rival executives is that the deal was a great one for the Rangers, who got the young players, and a lousy deal for the Braves; Teixeira has not been the difference-maker they had hoped he would be in the standings. Some rival executives now shudder at the thought they might have met the Marlins’ asking price in the offseason for Miguel Cabrera.

So O’Dowd might have a very tough time getting the kind of offers he might have expected three or four years ago, or even last summer, for someone with Holliday’s resume — the left fielder was the runner-up for the NL MVP last year.

And the offers might even be further depressed by doubts about what kind of player that Holliday will be outside of Coors Field, doubts fueled by numbers.

From 2005-07, Holliday was Lou Gehrig in while playing in Denver, a staggering force of offense: a .370 batting average, a .676 slugging percentage, with 59 homers in 863 at-bats.

On the road, the numbers indicate that he has been more Wally Pipp than Gehrig: a .281 batting average, a .466 slugging percentage (that’s more than 200 points lower on the road than at home), and an OPS of .809, which is more than 300 points lower than his home OPS.

Nothing that happened in the first two months of this season would lead you to believe that this home-road thing for Holliday is any different — his OPS at home is nearly 50 percent higher at home than in Coors Field.

So if you are the Cleveland Indians or the St. Louis Cardinals or some other team looking at ways you can upgrade your offense, you would look at those numbers and have to assume that unless you could suddenly find a way to place your city on a mile’s worth of foundation, Holliday would be a solid but unspectacular .285 hitter with decent pop. Maybe some team would see more in Holliday than that and give the Rockies a generous offer, but probably not.

For the Rockies, of course, Holliday means so much more than that. He is their Superman, even if he would be Clark Kent for other teams; it would be very, very difficult for them to cast away Superman for a Clark Kent package.

……..

There is one more possible play for the Rockies. They could keep Holliday through 2009, keep him as the centerpiece of their lineup, and gamble that when he becomes a free agent, other teams will be conservative in their offers to him because of his home/road splits. Colorado could gamble that there will be no mega-deal offer for Holliday elsewhere after 2009, while keeping its own competitive offer on the table — in the hope that Holliday, perhaps cajoled by teammates, will decide that he really likes playing with the Rockies.

He really is worth more to the Rockies than he is to any other team, but Colorado might have a very different idea of what that price is than Boras.”

From Buster’s standpoint, he’s right that the landscape of how to build a winning a franchise in today’s MLB is significantly different than what it was just a few years ago. Teams like the A’s, Marlins, Rays, and to an extent, the Indians, have shown that you don’t need a mammoth payroll to win. Sure, it helps, but by building through drafting, scouting, and development are cheaper alternatives to building a winner. Even the Red Sox and Yankees, despite their bloated payrolls, have started shifting more towards in-house development vs high-priced superstar building (as evidenced by their refusal to give up key parts in the off-season for Johan Santana).

So in this climate, you could say that trading Holliday for prospects may be difficult. But the Indians can offer more than prospects. They can offer major league ready talent…..guys who are being effective pitchers today in the majors. Despite their recent dicey starts, guys like Aaron Laffey and Cliff Lee are cheap pieces to the puzzle that can help any major league team start winning immediately.

The only reason the Indians are able to part with these guys is because of their wealth of starting pitchers up and down this system. Sure, the Indians staff is banged up right now and the depth has been liquidated in large part, but none the less, there is still a deal between the Indians and Rockies to be made. Who knows if the Indians would be able to re-sign Holliday in the off-season? That shouldn’t matter, as long as the Indians keep hanging around the 5 GB mark in the AL Central. Adding a guy like Holliday, even with his road splits this year in his career, would be a significant bump to this lackluster Cleveland offense and could be enough to help the Indians start winning games at a pace more representative of their Expected Win Pct. And if the Indians can just find a way to get into the post-season, even if they have to trade a Cliff Lee (or Aaron Laffey) to get there, one would still have to believe that a playoff rotation of Sabathia, Carmona, Westbrook, and Laffey (or Lee) would make the Indians one heck of a difficult out in the post-season.