Attempting to rationalize the Swisher trade
By my estimation, there's only one real justification has in trading Nick Swisher to the Yankees for two underwhelming minor-league arms and a Juan Uribe who, to my knowledge, has no
self-promoting chant:
It's better to deal a guy a year too early than a year too late.
Since he's making only $5.3 million in 2009, there wasn't much of a risk keeping him around for the season ahead, even if he never returned to his prior greatness. But if he had a similar year -- especially if it resembled his second half more than his first -- his price over the last two years becomes that much harder to swallow. $16 million worth of the worst qualifying batting average in the league is pretty hard to move, I imagine.
And as much as bad luck struck him down in the first half, it's hard to classify him as anything but genuinely lousy in the second half of the season. Not only did he hit .191/.298/.427, but his strikeout rate (28 percent) was double his line drive rate (14 percent).
He looked genuinely out of sorts -- especially on the road, where he hit .198/.301/.294. He hit 19 of his 24 homers at U.S. Cellular Field. And it's not a Jose Valentin situation where his overall line suffers because he could no longer hit from one side of the plate, so there aren't any easy answers aside from intangibles.
Kenny Williams
has to be banking on Swisher never righting himself, doesn't he? I've run this trade against his other moves that appeared to be largely lopsided at first, and I'm not getting it, otherwise.
Freddy Garcia-Gavin Floyd: Like Floyd, Jeff Marquez is a former first-round pick. Unlike Floyd, Marquez was not selected in the top five. Nope, he was the
41st pick in the draft, so considering him a high-profile arm on draft slot alone is like doing the same for Lance Broadway (15th overall).
He throws harder than Broadway -- the scouting reports I've seen say 89-94 m.p.h. -- but to say he doesn't miss bats would be an understatement. Compare their strikeout rates in Triple-A as 23-year-olds:
- Broadway: 108 Ks in 155 innings
- Marquez: 33 Ks in 80 innings.
That's incredibly low; almost impossibly low for somebody who throws as hard as Marquez. Apparently he has no secondary pitch.
Williams compared Marquez to Jon Garland, but Garland had a much higher strikeout rate as a 20-year-old in Charlotte than Marquez did three years later. Any comparison here is a stretch. Based on what I've read, I'd peg Marquez as a Clayton Richard-type who throws with the wrong hand.
Garland also had the benefit of pitching with a defense that included Joe Crede and Juan Uribe in their primes. Wilson Betemit scores nearly as bad as Josh Fields, Alexei Ramirez had range issues as a second baseman, and Chris Getz doesn't cover an exceptional amount of ground if he ends up replacing Ramirez, either.
Baseball America's John Manuel said part of Marquez's struggles were due to a poor defense behind him:
I wouldn't say it's normal development; he's a sinker-slider guy, and he's affected by poor defense behind him, but he did not make the development steps that he started to make last year with his curveball and changeup. I was higher on him than most last year and he didn't quite make me look good this year, did he?
Well.
At any rate, Floyd disappointed in his first go-around with the Sox, but the move was still considered a success in 2007 because Garcia's arm fell off early in the season. If Swisher continues to head down the Brad Wilkerson Memorial Highway, then we have something here.
Carlos Lee-Scott Podsednik: Dealing Lee was a fairly unpopular move until fans saw what Williams did with the money from clearing Lee's salary, picking up some combination of Tadahito Iguchi, A.J. Pierzynski, Orlando Hernandez and/or Dustin Hermanson.
But if this move was all about freeing up cash, trading Jermaine Dye -- who is set to make about $6 million more than Swisher this year -- would've been the far more logical choice. And Dye, coming off a much better year, might have netted a similar haul.
Brandon McCarthy-John Danks: There's no advantage in potential. Marquez projects as a No. 4-5 starter if he's extremely lucky, and Betemit is Betemit. Jhonny Nunez is a more of an unknown quantity than Kanekoa Teixeira, since Nunez just became a reliever last year, but they don't appear to be too different to swing anything at this point, so Swisher's ability to rebound seems to be the biggest shot at upside at this point.
Reading this quote about Marquez's potential did give me pause:
"We will get him with our plan of attack, as well as picking up
[pitching coach Don] Cooper's acumen on peripheral things we found,"
Williams said. "It will help raise that ground-ball ratio and strikeout
ratio."
Because it reminded me of
similar sentiment upon the acquisition of one Matt Thornton:
When the pitching coach tells you 'I want this guy,' and 'Don't worry
about his ability to throw strikes,' and my scouts want the guy as
well, I'm going to do everything I can to get him."
But that only goes so far, too, because:
- Thornton was a lefty.
- Thornton could reach the high-90s with his fastball.
- Thornton was used in relief, and most importantly...
- Thornton only cost Joe Borchard.
Thornton-Borchard was pretty much an even trade on its face -- two high-upside first-round picks with humongous strengths and weaknesses, and neither finding any success in the big leagues.
This one? Not quite.
I get that Williams sold Swisher at his lowest possible value. But at the same time, Williams is acquiring Marquez and Betemit on their downswings as well. Marquez had a poor season at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (12 homers in 80 innings at
a pitcher-friendly park), and Betemit is
a half-priced Juan Uribe (he comes with only half the glove).
Somehow, a bad year for a former fringe All-Star is equivalent to bad years by a fringe prospect and an unremarkable utility infielder, and that's a big part of the reason why it seems like an awful deal on its face.
Here's the other part -- in order for this trade to truly make sense, Swisher's going to have to fail.
Swisher wasn't brought in last year to be an over-the-top piece -- he was presented as a long-term fixture with his affordable five-year contract. He might start out as a make-believe center fielder, but eventually he'd shift to a corner spot when Jermaine Dye left, and then possibly first base when Jim Thome headed out of town. With the ability to at least fake three positions, he seemed like a perfect transition piece.
The Sox's official Web site tries to frame the trade as a solution to the problem -- the secondary headline is "Sox ease glut, send Swisher to Yanks." But if they were concerned about freeing up the jam at the corner outfield/first base position, trading Swisher creates a new set of problems. Now they lack an immediate and affordable replacement for Dye or Thome next year, and there aren't any obvious solutions in the system.
If Swisher resembles the guy he was in Oakland next season in the Bronx, then the Sox automatically are in a gigantic hole, losing out on the excellent eye and good power he was supposed to provide for a few years while the Sox cycle younger. So the only way to truly recoup is value is to hope he never rediscovers his bat.
That doesn't make a trade particularly fun. Compare it to the trade that brought him to Chicago -- sure, he cost a hefty price in Fautino De Los Santos, Gio Gonalez and Ryan Sweeney (a package superior to Marquez, Betemit and Nunez, to pour salt in the wound), but if Swisher produced, the rest didn't really matter. No matter how much you may like Marquez, that's not the case this time.
I'm leery of emptying both barrels on any Williams trade because he has the habit of making a lot of people look foolish with their first reactions. But after going through the mental gymnastics, unless you can find anything else, it seems like the Sox are counting on Swisher's best baseball being behind him.
Even if he was in Ozzie Guillen's doghouse in September, this seems like too drastic of a move otherwise.
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Arizona Fall League roundup:- Peoria Javelinas 9, Peoria Saguaros 6
- Gordon Beckham went 2-for-5 and hit a solo homer, his third.
- Cole Armstrong singled and struck out in four at-bats. He picked off a runner at third.
- Jordan Danks hit a sac fly in his only plate appearance.
- Lucas Harrell allowed two runs on three hits over three innings, including a solo homer.
- Carlos Torres allowed a run over two-thirds of an inning.