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December 22, 2015Playing for Potatoes: Akron – Utah State Preview
December 22, 2015Salacious audacity! Writing an entire post about how the Cleveland Indians should not trade their best starting pitchers seems to be common sense. Yet rumors have continued to percolate upon the MLB hot stove that any time a team is looking for an elite starting pitcher, the Indians are willing to listen. Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar have already been linked to the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays, and Arizona Diamondbacks in the past few weeks. Dreaming big of sluggers such as Yasiel Puig or A.J. Pollock can be addicitive fun. But the truth remains that it would be a mistake for the Indians to trade one of their proven elite starting pitchers.
So, it seems prudent to lay out the reasoning with which to politely respond after relatives start banging the table for Puig after a bit too much eggnog this weekend.
Big Market Bullies
The Los Angeles Angels bring in $150 million per season from their local television deal. The Los Angeles Dodgers bring in $334 million per season in their deal. When you take a gander at their seemingly exorbitant payrolls, realize their local television deals are completely bankrolling them.
The Cleveland Indians, meanwhile, have a local television deal pays them $40 million per year, which leaves them at an initial deficit compared to the big market teams, even though the Indians have one of the lowest payrolls in MLB. Complain the Dolans are being cheap if you will, but the Guggenheim group who own the Dodgers are the real cheapskates, as even after the luxury tax and revenue sharing they are putting money in the bank before even touching their gate sales, merchandise, et cetera.
With rich teams in the marketplace and starting pitching a scarce resource, the price for it is high on the open market. Zack Greinke is averaging $34.5 million over the next six seasons. David Price is just behind him, making $31 million each season for the next seven years. Even less than stellar pitchers such as Rick Porcello, Jeff Samardzjia, and Homer Bailey are making between $17 and $20 million each season over the next four to five years. Given their market restraints, the Indians simply cannot play in those shark-infested waters.1
Deal with it
I am not complaining about the dollar disparities here, just explaining them. The Indians front office knows the situation and is tasked with figuring out a plan to deal with it, which is why stability in the organization is key as long-term planning is needed. The MLB CBA allows cost-controlled MLB talent to be kept for up to six years through the arbitration process. Teams needing to keep their budget minimal need to acquire and keep as many elite players on these low-budget contracts as possible. Drafting and acquiring good minor league prospects through trades becomes paramount to MLB success.
One of the front office’s principal plans of attack was to develop a group of starting pitchers with a very particular set of skills. Skills they would acquired over a very long development arc. Skills that make them a nightmare for hitters. The Indians started seeing glimpses of these skills in Corey Kluber and Danny Salazar in 2013. Salazar fell back a little in 2014, but Kluber won the AL Cy Young Award and Carlos Carrasco started dominating late that year. Trevor Bauer then started strong in 2015, but fell back as the season progressed, while Cody Anderson and Josh Tomlin thrived.
In a league desperate for starting pitching, the Indians find themselves with three great options with another three promising ones behind them. There are few teams in MLB not envious of the Indians current rotation.
Indians rotational value
The Indians could roll out Kluber, Carrasco, Salazar, Bauer, and Anderson, while relying on Tomlin in 2016 and their farm system in subsequent seasons to fill out any injury replacement needs. Such a staff has locked the contention window open for the forseeable future and could make less money than Zack Greinke in each of those seasons as well.
However, while the Indians have been competitive under Terry Francona as they have finished above .500 each of the past three seasons, one of the key components behind the idea of trading a starting pitcher such as Carlos Carrasco is to boost a competitive team to a contending team.
Fangraph’s August Fagerstrom already wrote an in-depth article attempting to assess Carrasco’s trade value in light of the recent trade rumors. In it, he noted Kluber and Carrasco are both current top-10 starting pitchers (in all of MLB) and both project to continue to be top-10 starters. Although the Indians are listening to other teams’ attempts to pry away their starting pitching, he does not believe it will happen.
My feeling has been that if Antonetti gets what he perceives to be a completely fair and just offer for Carrasco, it won’t be enough. That a deal will only get done if the Indians are confident they’re winning the trade.
Which is why you just don’t see guys of Carrasco’s profile get traded very often. When you take the risk of dealing a player of Carrasco’s caliber, fair isn’t enough. You need to be blown away. And being blown away typically requires one too many parts than your trading partner is comfortable letting go.
Danny Salazar is a tier below the value of Carrasco and Kluber, with Bauer and Anderson another rung lower, but the value of having all five pitchers locked into reasonable contracts over the next four years has the rare added benefit of sustainable success from one of the lowest-payroll teams in MLB. Josh Tomlin is more attainable by other teams as he is older, has a shorter track record of success, and only has one more year left on his contract. However, it is difficult to imagine he would garner more back in trade than he gives the Indians as the injury or regression insurance arm.
Keep on keeping on
When you hear the Indians are listening to offers on their starting pitching, realize that the other teams are doing the talking. Sure, if a Bartolo Colon trade comes along, then Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff would be willing to pull the trigger. But such a trade is once in a generation, and we already had ours. So enjoy the fact the Indians possess one of the best young rotations in baseball and dream up other ways the team might fix the holes remaining in the lineup.
- Congratulations, you saw I could not resist the Samardzjia pun. [↩]
109 Comments
Agree with your last line. At some point, they just have to pull the trigger on a big, expensive bat though. Even with Frazier or Zimmer, they will need more power.
mg you know I love your stuff, but in 2015 the words ‘thank’ and “Browns” should never be seen in the same sentence……
Interesting. I trust Tony Lastoria to have his stuff correct, it is just weird spotrac would have it wrong.
and, there it is. nice catch. really strange of them. thank you for the correction.
small sample sizes and such. we’ll see. he’s likely a platoon guy, but there are worse fates.
no worries. I had just seen that they were both 5 years away from free agency in numerous articles so I was confident I was correct. Looks like Bauer missed being a free agent a year sooner by 14 days and Salazar by 12. (As you know, players need 172 days for a full service year. Bauer has 158 and Salazar 160).
“Or send Perez and a bag of balls to Texas for Beltre and some cash.”
There’s no way that Texas would do this.
“For a city that sold out 9 straight years”
For a city that has finished in the bottom third in attendance, even when making the playoffs for the most recent 10 years, though?
Yes, the Bartolo Colon trade was once in a generation but the Indians muffed that one too when Wedge let Brandon Phillips get away for nothing. That really hurt us and Wedgie is to blame.
What would a package for Carrasco or Salazar look like? IMO it would have to be a stud outfielder (.280 & 20 hrs) and a near ready quality pitching prospect plus say a A ball level quality prospect. The question is – how much more valuable to a team would say Carasco be than that type of outfielder?