Let’s trade Madison Bumgarner
Posted By Jeff Fletcher on July 6, 2009 6:50 pm
Just about any discussion about Giants trades eventually gets around to the fact that Madison Bumgarner is untouchable. While I don’t dispute that the Giants and their fans both believe this, let’s look at the phrase “untouchable” for a moment.
No one is untouchable.
It is simply ridiculous to suggest than someone who has been a professional for two years, and never pitched above Double-A is untouchable. Bumgarner may turn out to be another Tim Lincecum, but he may also turn out to be another Homer Bailey. Bailey was a high school pitcher picked No. 7 overall (Bumgarner was No. 10) and he was highly touted as a minor leaguer. He got to the majors and he’s been, well, meh. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good.
Although it may be heresy to suggest it around AT&T Park, Bumgarner just may end up being Homer Bailey, and it wouldn’t be that big of an upset.
Point is, no one is a sure thing, so no one should be “untouchable.”
So, just for fun, I have an assignment for you. I want you guys to come up with what you think would be some fair trades involving Madison Bumgarner. Remember, I said “fair,” so don’t give me Hanley Ramirez for Bumgarner, straight up.
How ’bout something like this…
Jonathan Sanchez and Bumgarner for Lance Berkman.
Berkman is a switch-hitter who can play first base or the outfield. He’s one of the best, most consistent, offensive performers in the game, .300/.412./.558 for his career. He’s signed for $14.5 million this year and in 2010, with an option for $15 million in 2011. The problem with him is he’s 33. Of course, the Giants would only be buying two and a half years of him, at most. He’d be 35 by then, just the right time to get rid of a guy.
I know, some of you are thinking: “No, we can’t trade Bumgarner without getting a young stud, like Ryan Braun.” Keep dreaming. No one is going to trade a young productive major leaguer unless they get one in return. (Want to trade Matt Cain?) If the Giants are trading prospects and fringe guys, they are going to have to get someone older and more expensive.
The trick is to find someone who is good enough to make an impact, but old enough and expensive enough that their current team would want to unload them, but also signed for at least one full season beyond this one.
It is not easy to find such a guy, which is why Bumgarner’s not going to be traded, but give it a shot. It’s a fun game.
(EDIT: As I’m rethinking this the next day, the Giants may need to throw in one more player to make this deal work. Maybe a middling upper level position player prospect, a guy like Eugenio Velez. Also, the Astros need to lose a few more games to drop out of the race.)
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What about a Lincecum/Ishikawa for a Peavy/Adrian Gonzalez?
Never say never on any trade. The one thing that I constantly hear from Giants fans is that they need to get a hitter. I hear Matt Holliday’s name thrown around quite a bit.
Now how to you get Holliday or other impact hitter at the deadline? You make a trade. Those guys don’t come cheap. What trade chips do the Giants have? Their best prospects are pitchers, Posey not withstanding. They don’t have anyone on their active roster that is particularly exciting to trade partners with the exception of Sanchez and maybe Schierholtz. With Sanchez being the only impact bat they have he isn’t going anywhere as that would tend to be a wash.
The basics of any trade, especially nowaways with more and more GMs being pretty savvy, is that you have to give up value in one area, usually an area of surplus for you, in order to gain value in an area that you lack. You simply don’t see a lot of lopsided trades anymore. They sometimes work out that way after the fact is prospects don’t pan out but at the outset they usually make sense for both parties these days.
I do think that if the Giants were going to trade Bumgarner they should have already brought him up and gotten him a couple of starts at least to showcase him.
Bumgarner and Sanchez for Victor Martinez and a Indians prospect. V-Mart is a free agent after 2010, but he hits for power and average, can play first, and back up Bengie Molina. Eric Wedge says that Ryan Garko should see more playing time, indicating that V-Mart is available.
Imagine a rotation of Lincecum, Halladay, Cain, and maybe RJ in the playoffs. Granted the Giants would have to make the playoffs, but J.P. Riccardi has said that they are considering trading Halladay now more than they ever have before.
I don’t know if Bumgarner and Sanchez would do it, but maybe a second tier prospect thrown in that mix could get it done if Toronto rules itself out. Of course the hitting isn’t addressed, but who cares with automatic wins pitching everyday.
It would look similar to the deal the Tigers did with the Marlins when they aquired M. Cabrera for A.Miller and C.Maybin, and maybe more too as I am not sure of the exact trade but my recollection is that the aforementioned were the centerpieces of the deal. Cabrera was alot younger than Berkman but he was coming up on his big money years so Florida got as much as they could. At this point neither player has blosssomed into anything resembling a young star, although at the time of the trade they were held in the highest esteem, simialr to MB, which backs up your Homer Bailey / Mad Bum anology. Prospects, even at the highest level, are no locks for stardom. That being said, I would seek a similar-type player as Cabrera – young / youngish, coming up against his “Big Money” years, and on a team who cannot / will not pay him. Such teams exist but they don’t all have A-Level talent like Cabrera. And when they do come available, there typically is no lack of suitors for them as they are so rare, which means you have to offer a better deal than the other teams in the running, so you are going to pay max value to aquire a Cabrera-type player. Do you have any that come to mind that fit the described scenario? I like this type of discusion.
I forgot that Willis was part of it too. Detroit gave up alot and Willis is not panning out but I think they maybe had to take Willis to get the deal done, so you can subtract maybe 1 or 2 of the 6 players from the deal, but basically even before Willis started having real issues this deal was basically 6 prospects, 2 very high level and the other 4 all legit prospects, to land Cabrera. And I think Detroit gave him something like 8 years at around 160 Mil so he did not come cheap in any sense of the word, but he’s still well under 30 yrs old and a legit .300 / 30 / 100 slugger, and they are pretty rare.
On another note, I like the idea of aquiring F. Sanchez alot, as 2B is clearly a position that is upgradeable. He’s not the big RH Bat in the 4 Hole that we could sooo use right now, but he adds a legit bat into the lineup, and fields his position really well it appears too. I would see if maybe their choice of Frandsen or Downs or Noonan, plus a Mid-Level Arm like Sosa or J. Martinez or one of the High A or AA Lefties like G. Clark or S. Barnes or Tanner, and if they see any potential in him, let them see what they can get from F. Lew, and try to make that work. I don’t like letting Burris or Crawford go, especially since they can both play SS, and Edgar is only a short-term fix for us there. We also need to hang onto Pucetas if at all possible, as we have very little depth with SP who are close to being able to fill in a back of the rotation slot, although TBL ( The Big Lebowski ) is a very pleasant surprise so far.
In the beginning, I thought this blog actually provided a good source of info for Giants inside news.
The more I read this blog every day, the worthless it seems.
This latest post is about as useful as toilet paper.
Don’t quit your day job.
Oh wait, this is probably your day job.
I am sorry.
Nate is a JagBag. ‘Nuff said.
“I know, some of you are thinking: “No, we can’t trade Bumgarner without getting a young stud, like Ryan Braun.” Keep dreaming. No one is going to trade a young productive major leaguer unless they get one in return. (Want to trade Matt Cain?) If the Giants are trading prospects and fringe guys, they are going to have to get someone older and more expensive.”
This is basically why Bumgarner is untouchable. Of course there are players I’d be willing to trade him for, but realistically, there are no players available to trade for that I’d include Bumgarner for. It would have to be a Hanley Ramirez caliber player (well, maybe not Ramirez caliber, but very good, young, and under control like Ramirez). Maybe Bumgarner, Sosa, Villalona, an outfielder (Lewis/Schierholtz or whoever they want in that mold), and another decent prospect like Neal for Hanley. Probably not enough to get the trade done, but it should at least be enough to get the conversation started.
But someone like Berkman or Holliday that’s either not that good, not that young, or not locked up long term (or some combination)? No thanks. Bumgarner is untouchable in a deal for a guy like that.
“What about a Lincecum/Ishikawa for a Peavy/Adrian Gonzalez?”
Are you out of your mind? Lincecum is better than Peavy and Gonzalez combined. The list of players I would even give a second thought to trading Lincecum for is 3 players long, and I still probably wouldn’t pull the trigger on any of them (Pujols, Hanley, Longoria).
B, I think you’ve confused Bumgarner with Lincecum and Cain. Lincecum and Cain obviously you would not trade unless you got back a Hanley/Longoria type big leaguer in return, but Bumgarner is a p-r-o-s-p-e-c-t.
Lincecum and Cain have been proven winners in the majors. Bumgarner has never thrown a pitch above Double A.
He’s not a sure thing, not by a longshot. You want to think he is, but he’s not. He may be one of the best prospects in baseball, but that still just makes him a prospect. Prospects go bad or get hurt all the time.
Do you know who Baseball America’s top four pitching prospects were in 2007? Philip Hughes, Homer Bailey, Andrew Miller and Tim Lincecum. All of them were rated about where Bumgarner is now, or better. One became a Cy Young winner, one is a semi-dependable back-of-the-rotation starter (Miller), and two are still bouncing between Triple-A and the majors, looking nothing like future frontline starters.
I think that’s a reasonable range of expectations with Bumgarner.
I’m not saying the Giants should be looking to trade Bumgarner, and I’m not saying that I necessarily think he’s overrated. All I’m saying is you need to be realistic about prospects and realize that it is very common for them to turn out to be not as good as you thought. So if you have a chance at a significant impact player right now, even if he comes with the risk of age and a high salary, it’s worth considering. There is a risk in not making that deal, too. The risk is that the guy you keep flames out.
Personally I think the Giants have a nice opportunity to do something this year because of the overall weakness of the NL. If they could get an impact bat who they could keep beyond this year (not Adam LaRoche), I think they’d be crazy not to at least consider trading Bumgarner to do it.
Of course you’re right, Jeff about prospects and Bumgarner. The thing is, he’s the best pitching prospect in the minor leagues (and top 3-5 prospect overall). It’s not that I think he’s sure to become a Cy Young winner or anything, it’s that prospects like that are the centerpieces in trades for big time players, not old guys or one year rentals. His value is great enough to be the centerpiece for a deal for someone like Miguel Cabrera (young, exceptional, under control), not an aging Lance Berkman or one year rental like Holliday or something. Obviously he wouldn’t be the only piece in a deal for a guy like that – the Marlins got Maybin and Miller + more – but he’d be the starting point in a deal like that.
Also keep in mind that while the chances of the prospect hitting his ceiling aren’t nearly as high as we’d like to think, the value of the guy that does is enormous. Because baseball has been set up to screw young players over (financially), those 6 team controlled years for a prospect that turns into a real player give the team a HUGE amount of value. Fangraphs valuations of players has a 3-4 WAR player (think Matt Cain, so pretty good but not amazing) valued at ~$16 million per season. Cain, the previous two seasons made a combined $1.1 million, and is making $2.65 million this season (based on Cot’s contracts). In those 3 seasons he’s going to be worth around $50 million to the Giants. Those numbers put into perspective why prospects are so valuable, despite the rates of success you pointed out, and why we shouldn’t trade Bumgarner unless it’s a big time player that has all 3 of those attributes (young, good, locked up) I talked about earlier.
*Just a note – to be fair Cain’s contract numbers I stated were the earlier part of the club’s control (and don’t accurately portray how much the Giants will pay him on average over all 6 club controlled seasons); Next season he’s scheduled to make $4.25 million and then $6.25 million the following season.
B, good discussion.
I want to make a few more points. I’m not talking about the Giants using Bumgarner to get an old washed up overpriced guy like Magglio Ordonez. Guys like Lance Berkman and Victor Martinez are still among the most productive players in the majors. They are also switch-hitters who fit the Giants positional need. It is because of their contract status (signed through 2010, and in Berkman’s case, with an option for 2011) that you could even think of acquiring them, and also that you think of doing it without emptying out your entire farm system.
As for your scenario of getting a Hanley Ramirez type, it just isn’t happening for any amount of players. Ramirez is already signed through about 2013 or 2014, so you’ll have to pry his contract out of Larry Beinfest’s cold, dead hand. Miguel Cabrera, by contrast, never agreed to a long-term deal with the Marlins. That’s why they traded him. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one impact young player without a long-term deal: Tim Lincecum.
The kind of guys I think would be appropriate, and realistic, in a deal involving Bumgarner are a very small fraternity. Adrian Gonzalez would be another one, if the Padres would trade him within the division. (If the Giants were interested in saying: “Screw offense, let’s just get more pitching,” you could throw Roy Halladay in there.)
I’m talking All-Star, impact players in their prime.
Take a look at the National League right now. See where the Giants would stack up with the other teams if you put a Berkman/Martinez/Gonzalez in the middle of their lineup.
Anyway, it’s a moot point now, because I don’t think it’s happening. The Astros aren’t trading Berkman while they’re in the race. The Padres aren’t trading Adrian Gonzalez or their fans would set the ballpark on fire. Martinez is the only one who is semi-reasonable.
By the way, this year Baseball America ranked Bumgarner 4th among pitchers. Price, Hanson, Anderson, Bumgarner, Feliz, Cahill. Keith Law had him 3rd: Price, Feliz, Bumgarner, Hanson. The Scouting Book (which updates its list throughout the year) has him 5th: Price, Strasburg, Cahill, Tillman, Bumgarner.
Good points, Jeff, it sounds like our views are closer than we originally thought. You’re probably right about Hanley, he’s the 2nd best position player in baseball already at his age, so he’s pretty much completely unavailable. I’m not sure who would be. Going after Gonzalez should depend on how likely our FO thinks his improvement this year is sustainable. He’s been a good player for a few years, but this year he’s taken it up another notch or two (and his low BABIP makes it seem more than just a fluke or lucky stretch – his numbers should be even better). I’m a ltitle more leery of Victor Martinez – he’s not nearly as great of a hitter if he ends up at 1B, and I don’t see any reason we would need a C (given Molina this year, and the options of Sandoval/Posey in the future). In the end, though, I see your point about impact players now and for the future and think it’s pretty close to my line of thought.
As for your last point, I was using the same rankings as you. I just took into account the fact that Bumgarner has continued doing well at a higher minor league level, and now Price, Hanson, Cahill, and Anderson are all in the show, and Strasburg is still unsigned.
Let me throw out another angle to the argument.
You raise a good point about how so often ‘uber’ prospects end up not quite working out in the majors. It’s one reason I’ve tended to agree that the draft so often is overhyped; OCG over on MCC has often made the (very) valid point that the only consistent prospects to even make the majors end up being in the first round, and the percentages only really start working in the top ten. Hence, if you have a shot to trade them for a consistently good player that you can a. afford and b. will stay consistently good, you do so, especially if that need is greater.
Here’s where I think you’re wrong, though.
The Giants have about all of one major organizational advantage besides owning their own ballpark: they have a knack for really developing pitchers. As long as the Giants think A/B have a chance to be really special, I’m willing to go along with that judgment a lot more than BA or BP or anyone else’s. (This contrasts to their opinion of their position players being ‘special’, which usually translates them to adding ‘education regarding making contact and showing any sort of patience’ to that phrase.)
I’d also agree with B’s point about WAR and contract size. Some of the discussions that speculated the Giants are one of the few teams that have the prospects to land Halladay tend to forget that there is a rather major financial impact to locking up talented players over any length of time. Can’t afford to pay Lincecum, Cain, Zito, and Halladay all at the same time unless you want to purchase Scott McClain’s contract back from Japan.