Scouting the Trade Market: Follow Up

This year's trade deadline was one of the most active in recent memory. Maybe it was a bit short on blockbusters, but the volume was breathtaking. There were way too many deals to review all of them. Since this is a Giants oriented blog, we'll tackle the Giants trades first. Perhaps none of the deadline deals created as much controversy among the internet connected fanbase than the Giants two moves.

I did a Scouting the Draft post in July 16 and focused on the need for the Giants to acquire a hitter. As the trade deadline approached, the Giants priorities changed a bit with the injuries to Runzler and Affeldt, and acquiring a lefthanded reliever became a necessity as opposed to a priority. The Giants offense also be put up one of the best performances in all of baseball in July, so the need for a bat seemed to diminish. Not that Brian Sabean would have turned down a good hitter for the right price, but it became something he could afford to be picky about.

The hottest rumor as the deadline approached had the Giants on the verge of acquiring Jose Bautista from the Blue Jays. I'm glad this deal didn't happen. Bautista ended up not getting traded at all, so I would deduce that the asking price was probably high. Bautista is having a career year, has a relatively low batting average and plays in a relatively hitting friendly environment. He had post-trade regression written all over him. Plus, it would have risked disrupting an offense that seems to have really jelled in the last month.

Adam Dunn rumors persisted right up until the end. Again, Dunn ended up not getting traded at all. The word in the blogosphere was that the Nats asking price was exorbitant. No question that Dunn's bat would be a huge upgrade whether he played 1B or LF, but with Dunn, you sacrifice almost as much on D as you gain on offense. He is definitely not worth creating another hole in the pitching rotation for.

Lesser hitters than Dunn or Bautista might not have been an upgrade for a Giants offense that is performing quite well now.

Let's take a look at the trades that did get done:

Giants acquired LHP Javier Lopez from the Pittsburgh Pirates for John Bowker and Joe Martinez:

I don't happen to think the Giants overpayed nearly as much as some other Giants oriented blogs would have you believe. Even if they did overpay, this was a trade they had to make. The injuries to Runzler and Affeldt left the Giants without a LHP in the bullpen. Now, good teams have done OK without a lefty in the pen before. The 2002 Angels come to mind and several of Bruce Bochy's San Diego Padre teams were sans LHP's. While the Giants pen has done well this year, it is in no way comparable to those Angel and Padre teams. The Giants RHP's, for the most part, are just not as adept at getting LH batters out. The incident that brought the need home for me occured Friday night when Bochy had to resort to bringing in Jonathan Sanchez to face Andre Ethier and James Loney in the 9'th inning with runners on base and Brian Wilson not available. I shudder to think at what might have happened had he been forced to use Casilla, Romo or Ray in that situation. Javier Lopez is a proven effective LOOGY at the MLB level and gives Bochy a nice option when he has to get a LH batter out in a tight situation. Now it will be up to him to use him in the right situations. Here is a list of Batting Average Against/OBP Against versus LH batters for Lopez and the rest of the Giants bullpen:

Brian Wilson: .228/.322.
Sergio Romo: .264/.339.
Guillermo Mota: .269/.385.
Denny Bautista: .178/.333.
Chris Ray: .250/.324.
Santiago Casilla: .214/.371
Javier Lopez: .204/.323.

Javier Lopez will help the Giants in certain situations against LH batters.

The big objection raised on most Giants oriented blogs to this trade has been that the Giants gave up too much for a marginal upgrade in the bullpen. Let's take a look at that. First of all, in this race, a marginal upgrade may well be the difference between making the playoffs and not making them, so let's not discount the importance of marginal upgrades. Runzler and Affeldt may be only out 3 more weeks, but 3 2 weeks is an eternity in a race like this, which we have already seen. Here's the nitty gritty:

1. Joe Martinez alone would not have landed Javier Lopez or any other LH pitcher. Martinez is what he is, an older minor league pitcher who is as good as he's going to get. It's amazing, actually, that he got as high as he did given the marginal stuff he was physically limited to.

2. The Giants are not giving up their future by giving up on John Bowker. I'm really not sure why some of the other Giants oriented blogs melted down over this. It really degenerated into an irrational mob mentality on at least one very well known site. The most impassioned argument seems to be that the Giants make decisions based on small sample sizes and Bowker was never given a chance large enough. John Bowker was given 475 MLB AB's by the Giants including 326 in 2008 when after a hot start, he slumped so badly that he got shipped back to the minors! Since then, his performance has been much closer to the slump of 2008 than the hot start in multiple opportunities. It's not just the numbers either. If you watched him play on a regular basis, you would know that he has a huge hole in his swing that 90% of MLB RHP's can easily exploit. Specifically he has never shown the abillity to recognize, hit or lay off the sliders or curveballs aimed at his back foot. He just swings over them, over and over and over again. I don't know if there just aren't enough pitchers in AAA who can throw that pitch, but the vast majority of MLB RHP's have no problem with it at all, and that's a big problem for Johnny Bowker. Maybe the Pirates can afford to give him enough AB's to learn that skill in the majors, but with the Giants in the middle of a fight for a playoff spot, they could not. This is not simply about a sample size where if given enough AB's he will regress to a better mean. It's about lacking a specific skill that will take time to learn. The Giants could not afford to risk losing a playoff spot just to give Bowker that time.

Had the Giants given up Brandon Belt, Thomas Neal, Zack Wheeler or even Francisco Peguero for Javier Lopez, there would be good reason to break out the pitchforks. Joe Martinez and John Bowker? Not so much!

The Giants acquired RHP Ramon Ramirez from Boston for RHP Dan Turpen:

This might not have been as much of a necessity as acquiring a LHP, but Turpen's future ceiling is a serviceable middle reliever with likely no more than a 50% chance of ever achieving that ceiling. Ramirez put up a couple of sub 3 ERA seasons in 2008 and 2009. His numbers this year are not as impressive, but there are two mitigating factors to consider: 1. His secondary stats are not that much different than in the past 2 years while his BABIP(Batting Average on Balls In Play) is significantly higher suggesting that a lot of the difference is due to luck and he can be expected to regress to a better mean by the end of the season. 2. This hypothesis is supported by his primary numbers which have gotten progressively better as the season has progressed. Here are Ramirez' ERA's by month:

April- 6.75
May- 4.82
June- 3.18
July- 3.27
Post All-Star Game- 2.70.

It's a bit curious as to why the Red Sox essentially dumped Ramirez at the deadline when they are in a playoff race themselves and had a stated goal of uprgrading the bullpen. The Red Sox failed to make any other deals. Michael Bowden and Feliz Doubront would not seem to give them the kind of internal upgrade that should have made trading Ramirez addition by subtraction. Turpen is certainly not a future star in the making. This trade remains a curiosity from Boston's standpoint. Hopefully, they don't know something about Ramirez that the Giants don't.

The Giants may not be done trading. There will undoubtedly be some big name hitters who clear waivers and are thus eligible to be traded after the deadline. Postseason rosters are set on September 1, so any further trades would likely take place between now and then.

Summary: The Giants marginally upgraded their bullpen, which could be decisive in a tight pennant race, without mortgaging any significant part of their future. They failed to land the almost mythical "big bat" which might have made them clear favorites for a playoff berth. Again, they did not create a hole in the current starting rotation and they did not mortgage their future. I would give Brian Sabean an initial grade of B for this year's trading deadline. Sometimes the best trades are the ones that are not made. Of course, it sometimes takes years to fully evalutate these trades.