The Braves-Padres talk went something like this:
Towers: Frank, how are you?
Wren: Good, Kevin. How are things on the West Coast?
Towers: Well, the weather’s nice but I’ve been told to slash and burn the payroll.
Wren: Really? That’s a tough assignment. I might be able to take Jake Peavy off your hands.
Towers: That’s why I was calling actually.
Towers: See, I’m looking for a young SS and was wondering about the availability of Escobar.
Wren: Escobar’s a great player. We love having him around but he’s not untouchable.
Towers: Great to hear that. I’d also like your top pitching prospect and 2 others.
…click…
Towers: Frank. Frank? …
Every winter you hear about a big name veteran who might be moved. Every winter the team wants one thing back in return — a young cost controlled SS. Guess what? Every GM in baseball wants one of those. For the most part, teams have figured out that it’s usually a bad idea to trade those guys. So when rumors that the Padres wanted a young SS in return for Peavy sprang up, I shrugged. Of course they do. At the end of the day, if they’re really determined to move Peavy, they’re going to take the best package, whch may or may not include a SS.
With the acquisition of Javier Vazquez, the Braves appear to be less interested in Peavy than before. Yunel Escobar and Kelly Johnson are less likely to be moved with the departure of Lillibridge and Tommy Hanson seems all but untouchable. The Cubs continue their tepid discussions as the team gets sold and Peavy remains a Padre. Should the Cardinals get involved if they weren’t already? Could they assemble a package for the Padres that would make the trade amenable?
The answer to the second question is an easy yes. Include Colby Rasmus and that deal gets done yesterday. There’s a less likely, though not impossible chance that they could assemble a package around other players that’s more quantity than quality (read: it doesn’t includ Rasmus). Thinking along the lines of what the A’s got back from the Diamondbacks for a package of similarity. Haren’s not quite as good a pitcher but he was signed to a lesser contract as well.
Starting with some major league talent in Skip Schumaker offers the Padres some immediate cheap help to their lineup. If there’s no interest in him, turn to the farm system. Bryan Anderson is, in spite of my appreciation for offensive catchers, expendable. He’s a line drive hitter with good contact skills which would fair better in the cavernous PETCO than a HR oriented catcher. The Padres lack an obvious backstop (Nick Hundley is not an everyday catcher) so there’s a seeming match there. Tapping from deep outfield stock, the Cardinals could offer two of Daryl Jones, Jon Jay, Joe Mather or Tyler Henley (an underrated prospect, imo). Add in a middle infielder as well — one of David Freese, Allen Craig or Pete Kozma
Teams are always looking for pitching, which is perhaps the weakest area of the Cardinals’ farm. Two of Mitchell Bogs, Jess Todd, Clayton Mortensen, PJ Walters and Tyler Herron. Again, this isn’t a strong group that includes a pitcher of Tommy Hanson’s caliber or an ace in the making.
Package: Bryan Anderson, Allen Craig, Skip Schumaker, Daryl Jones, Mitchell Boggs and PJ Walters
Return: Jake Peavy
Swap names in and out as you’d like but a) it’s going to take that many prospects and b) the Padres aren’t going to eat any salary.
What is Peavy projected to do in 2009? 3.45 FIP in 169 innings. I’m going to bump that to 3.75 since he won’t have the benefit of PETCO.
Peavy:3.75 * 169 = 70 runs
Replacement: 5.50 * 160 + 5.00 * 9 = 103 runs
Peavy is about a 3.3 WAR player next year. The Cardinals would get about a 3 win upgrade over someone like Pineiro, maybe 3.5 over Boggs for a full season. Peavy makes 8M in ’09 with raises to 15M, 16M and 17M for ’10-’12. There’s a club option for 22M with a 4M buyout in 2013. Peavy’s worth about 15M next year but the median you could hope for would be him holding par moving forward from ’10-’12 (that option should never be picked up). If you want to assign percentiles for upside think of Peavy as 90%:- 5WAR, 75% – 4WAR, 50% – 3WAR, 25% – 2WAR, 10% – 1WAR. There’s no obvious discount in the contract though and the deal reminds me a lot of the Chris Carpenter contract that was at or near market value.
Should the Cardinals make a trade like that? I don’t know. The loss of those prospects, while hefty, doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the size of Peavy’s contract and his balky elbow or shoulder this past season. The 800-pound gorilaa in the room (who is about 550 pounds shy of actually being an 800-pound gorilla) is the upcoming Albert Pujols contract. The Cardinals have quite a few big money contracts on their hands as is (Carpenter, Lohse, Wainwright) and adding another strikes me as the hair that breaks the camel’s back.
There’s an argument to be made for acquiring Peavy, however, and it’s not an uncompelling one.
Entries (RSS)
No to Peavy
He’s a great pitcher, but I have visions of Mark Mulder dancing in my head
If it’s Anderson and a couple of others, maybe. No way if they include Rasmus!
Carlos Gomez and Chris O’Leary both think that Peavy is a pretty big injury risk going forward. I would hope that the organiZATion, as the hockey guys say, has learned something from the great Carpenter Extension of 2006. If you’re that intent on throwing money at a high-risk, high-reward starter then just back up the truck for Burnett and keep all the prospects.
The thing that I think people don’t realize is that peavy is not an innings eater, and as nasty as he is I not sure adding him really helps our club. I think our bullpen will be much improved, I however don’t think adding a starter that had recorded something like 15 outs over last two years past the 7th inning is a good thing, that taxes these young kids who are not used to heavier work loads, mclellan comes to mind. We just don’t need a guy who consistintly reaches a 100 pitches around the 5 or 6 inning, we have piñata and wellemeyer for that, And to me peavy looks like his arm is going to fall off a la K-rod in that max effort delivery
Heh…”hyperventilating prospect geeks”…
Joe Strauss knows us so well…
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/round-two/round-two/2008/12/whats-next-on-cards-checklist/
Yeah, I don’t get Strauss and his weird attitude towards the farm or anyone who follows it. Weird.
Forget Peavy, go get Halladay!
i found this today and thought it was good. nothing new mind you but pretty cool that wallace is getting a lot of attention.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/waiting-for-wallace/
Money are very important nowadays, so the padres cannot ask for too much return if they are not willing to eat some money. Schumaker+Boggs would already be more than enough for that salary dump. Being Mozielak, I would try to add Anderson and leave at least 3M$ of salary to the padres, this should be bearable due to pinero and glaus salaries off the book next year, the first replaced by Garcia and the second by Freese/Wallace.
GO CARDS!!!
It’s funny that Strauss would put down, let’s call it “prospect appreciation”, while talking about Mark Mulder. It seems to me that if we had kept those prospects (OK, mostly just Dan Haren) and never made that trade, we’d have been a lot better off.
Carpenter, Wainwright, Haren? Yes, please.
If we didn’t already have the Carpenter contract hanging around our necks, taking a shot at Peavy would be intriguing assuming he could be had for one guy off our ML roster like Schumaker and prospects not named Rasmus. Walt handcuffed us. Were maxed out on the injury risk starting pitcher credit cards.
“Hyperventilating prospect geeks can’t even cite Jaime Garcia and Mike Parisi”
Let’s be clear. Strauss doesn’t read up on the farm. He’s not familiar with it nor does he want to take the time to invest in it. That’s fine. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But he certainly wasn’t reading here because we never cited Garcia and certainly not Parisi as ready for big league starting duty. The reason we “prospect geeks” can’t cite anyone is because the Cardinals, as an organization, royally blow at developing starting pitching.
Garcia should still turn out to be a mid-rotation starter (perhaps better) but his timetable is moved backwards by a year.
Danny Haren was not regarded the same as Colby Rasmus—the centerpiece of any Peavy trade
This is random and not related to the topic, but I have a question. Back on the old futureredbirds.com site, there was a neat and funny little black smiley face in the right margin, just an inch or so to the right of FR Crew. Is there any way that a similar happy thing could be in the right margin of this site? I know that it is extremely unimportant, but I liked the character it added to the old site, FWIW. Thanks, and keep up the great work guys!
AZ, a “Herschel Walker” package of that size gives me the creeps…
That said, I really doubt it would take all those guys. If you built around Jones and added 2 players at need positions and one low-level, high-ceiling guy, it might do it.
Better yet, get a 3rd team involved. I’ve been chanting this for what seems like months now over on VEB.
Shi- Look down at the very bottom of the page, in the blue margin area.