Analysis of the second of my trades this year in the high stakes league.

I have talked about this deal before, but had some more to say about it. After making the McCann trade, I then needed to do something about my AL power. Given that I was a contender, and had a weak AL power offense, I had to get a power bat.

As an aside, when going into the auction this year it was clear that there was very little AL power available, and very few AL outfielders available. There are a few ways to deal with this: one is to save money, bid large on the guys that are available and scrounge for pitchers. This is what most guys in the league did, and it usually isn’t that bad a strategy, as long as you have good judgment, and if most people aren’t doing the same thing, especially in an auction. This year though, it probably wasn’t a winning strategy.

Here are the AL OF auctioned and their prices. You can guess for yourself how many of them have been profitable so far:

Ichiro 37
Vernon Wells 35
Manny Ramirez 39
Gary Sheffield 33
Johnny Damon 30
Hideki Matsui 33
Bobby Abreu 33
Torii Hunter 26
Carl Crawford 38

Arguably none are profitable; most are in the red, and only Hunter, Ichiro and Sheffield are probably even. This will be an offseason topic, but for now I can say you will usually do better by coming up with an alternate strategy rather than paying big money for older power hitters.

For what its worth, I auctioned Crawford. As I pointed out in my earlier post on my roster, linked here, I needed AL power. This was because of my alternate strategy in the AL, namely to target batting average and steals and not power. I simply wasn’t willing to pay for power, and drafting batting average can be a surprisingly strong alternate strategy; try it some time. You will get ABs, and these guys can usually be dealt when hot. In deep leagues, drafting for at-bats and batting average will almost always reap profits simply because the players are undervalued as compared to power and speed demons.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I went through the Ortiz trade in the linked post so I won’t repeat it here. However, one item that I didn’t mention previously is how I went about trying to get Lincecum in the McCann deal.

When a player’s potential is out of line with his overall current package a trade is warranted if you are committed to winning. If you are a contender, just forget about next year and win now!! You never know what can happen next year. Cory Schwartz frequently makes this point on mlb.com’s fantasy 411 show, and it is an excellent one.

Lincecum was a special case, since he had huge talent, but no matter how talented he is, the fact is that as a contender, you must trade him. You simply cannot look back on players like him; trade young stud pitchers for valuable reliable everyday hitters every time. My goal was to hope for a hot start and then deal him. But first I had to acquire him.

Lincecum, as talented as he is, was rushed to the majors and wasn’t likely to be an Ace out of the box (though right now I am not so happy with this position, since he has been surprisingly solid, but wild). Most people thought that he could actually be an Ace or a top starter right out of the box; most of the comparisons were to Francisco Liriano. But the fact is that the Liriano’s of the world are very rare, and given how fast Lincecum moved it is very likely that he will have growing pains and streakiness.

So, how to get Lincecum?? Since he was such a hot commodity, it was clear that I needed to have some negative publicity about him. So I went on a 10-day “negative publicity” campaign to his owner, who is a close pal who is always willing to talk baseball. This owner is no fool. In fact I have spoken about him before in the context of dealing Eric Byrnes, and he is sharp and a tough negotiator.

Essentially every day I was emailing him with any scrap of news I could find; stuff on his unorthodox delivery, stuff on his college workload etc. One useful nugget was the group of players that had similar K/PA numbers.

Here is the list. Ignoring Lincecum, 4 were mediocre to non-existent in the Majors, Kazmir has been a disappointment, and the rest are all good. In a way this is sobering; if you asked Lincecum owners whether he would be a disappointment if he turned out like Josh Beckett what would they say?? I bet most would say yes, and Beckett is clearly the best on this list:

Pitcher Year K%
Tim Lincecum 2006 30.9%
Scott Kazmir 2002 28.6%
Ryan Anderson 2000 28.5%
Brad Lidge 2001 27.4%
Josh Beckett 2001 26.8%
Jesse Foppert 2002 25.9%
Juan Pena 1999 25.9%
Rich Hill 2005 25.5%
Francisco Liriano 2005 25.5%
Paul Abbott 1997 25.3%

Before you start emailing me; note that i am NOT saying that this list has any relevance in reality; Lincecum not only was number one on the list but far better than every other pitcher. However, for negotiation purposes, even under a best case scenario there was only a 50% chance or so that Lincecum turned into a even an above-average pitcher. I thought he could easily go the way of someone like Andy Benes; another hugely heralded pitcher who took some time to become valuable and had an excellent but perhaps disappointing career.

Eventually, I wore his owner down and got him to at least broach the topic of trading Lincecum. Did my propaganda have any effect? I will never know. But the process is what matters right?? Lincecum was called up shortly thereafter.

After his first three starts, Lincecum looked for all the world like the next Francisco Liriano. After his debut his next three starts were all of ace quality.

As I indicated in the prior post in this series, I didn’t wait on Mike Sweeney, as you can see: I acquired David Ortiz, Matt Morris and Cliff Floyd, for Tim Lincecum, Stephen Drew and Mike Sweeney. Like many trades made in good faith, this is overall a fair trade; I got what I wanted at a price that was fairly low, given my opinion of Drew. The other owner got a great keeper, and got to roll the dice on Drew, and though it didn’t work out, it could have, and he still can keep Drew next year.

As far as Floyd and Morris; both are the type of players than a contender has in its second rank. Floyd is a solid everyday bat who will hit for a decent batting average. Morris is an innings eater with a good history and who is undervalued due to injury concerns. Both were cheap; Morris was only 8 so if he had a good season he was definitely keepable and tradeable. As always, I acquired him with the thought that I would trade him if he did much better than projected, and this is exactly what I did.

Floyd so far has been a disappointment; the BA has been ok, but he has no power at all, and has been hurt (surprise surprise). Nevertheless you can do much worse in a very deep league than him, especially for the end of your roster. My NL OF wasn’t looking too good at this point, and needed fixing. However, you can’t always fix your problems; sometimes you have to look at other ways to improve your team than trying to shore up weaknesses. More on that later.

The ledger so far looked like this, in terms of key players:

Gone: Stephen Drew, Tim Lincecum, Brian McCann, Michael Cuddyer
Coming: Francisco Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Cliff Floyd, Matt Morris.

Overall this looks good; despite Ortiz’ power “struggles,” Drew has been a disaster, I re-aquired Cuddyer, McCann has disappointed. Lincecum has been very good, so his owner is very happy. K-Rod has been great, Floyd pretty much stinks. Morris got me 5 wins and an ERA under 3.00 before I traded him.
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