After a long sojourn, Jeremy returns with his first post of the year.

Hello Friends in the baseball blogosphere! Sorry it has been so long – I am sure my tens of fans out there…ok, 10 fans…fine, friends and family have been anxiously awaiting my return. It has been crazy managing the day job, the evening job, the family and the house hunting with the three strat-o-matic leagues, two roto leagues and writing. Looks like writing lost for a while…but now I am back and raring to go.

SOME THINGS THAT HAVE CHANGED OVER THIS TIME
John McCain was dead in the water and Rudy Giuliani was steamrolling to the nomination.
Eli Manning was getting shipped out of town on a rail, with Tom Coughlin right next to him.
TV had writers and American Gladiators was a distant memory.
The Twins were getting a great package from the Yankees that included Phil Hughes.

Things do change, don’t they! Although it looks the writers are coming back, Rudy surely isn’t and the Twins will welcome Kevin Mulvey instead.

Today’s topic – compensation deals.

In our roto leagues, we have a rule regarding interleague MLB trades – you get what comes over. So, in the AL-only league, the team that had Johan Santana is now the proud owner of the package of non-Fernando Martinez prospects that the Mets shipped out to Minnesota. However, sometimes there are multiple teams involved in these deals and that can lead to some insanity.

Our AL-only league started back in 1994 and the first time that this trading problem became an issue was when Andy Benes was traded to Seattle. Now – some of you readers may have more memories of Elaine Benes, but Andy was a pretty solid pitcher and was in his Age 27-season. He was dealt for Ron Villone and Marc Newfield – a dynamic duo to say the least, but at the time, not bad young prospects (Ed. Note-Sadly I was a huge Newfield fan-Pat). Two different teams owned Villone and Newfield and could not figure out who got Benes. I wound up having to give both teams compensation picks in our annual supplemental draft (we are a carryover league) and Benes became a free agent to be claimed. This was not a good solution and we needed a new idea.

So we came up with the theory of discovering the primary player being sent out of the league and that team comes up with a way of compensating the other for a) the player lost and b) a percentage of the worth of the player coming over. Obviously, this is totally subjective and hard to measure. However, it has worked somewhat well over time.

This year – we trades in succession that included three or more teams. We had three teams involved a few times before, but never four. Here’s how these trades were settled.

1 – Miguel Cabrera – Traded for several players, but for our purposes only Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller and Eulogio De La Cruz were on teams. It was decided that Maybin was the primary focus of the deal, but Miller was not far behind. As the owner of Maybin, I began talks with the owner of Miller to figure things out, believing that it was best to get the big part of the deal taken care of before compensating the other team involved where we can both get in on taking care of that third club.

After negotiations back and forth, I came up with an offer. Something I observed about this owner is that he does not enjoy the early give and take of trading where both teams usually try to pull a fast one. So in order to get this done and get Cabrera, I decided to shoot past the early stages and make a quick strike, late stage offer to end it. It worked. I sent him a 1st rd pick (likely a good prospect), Fausto Carmona (I had some pitching depth), Adam Miller and Garrett Olson. He gave up the rights to Cabrera.

The way I looked at it – if I was offered Miguel Cabrera for Carmona and four good prospects, would I do it? I would have to say yes to that. Using different logic, if he was offered Carmona and three good prospects for Andrew Miller, he would do it too. Now we both combined to take care of the remaining 10% or so of the Cabrera claim that fell to the team with De La Cruz. We did not think it deserved any substantial picks, but to make up for the player and the small portion of the great player, we each sent two picks to the third team. They would gladly have traded De La Cruz for four picks if offered – and can easily replace De La Cruz with one of those selections and get three other guys to boot. In my opinion – all three of us made out well here.

2 – Dan Haren – This one was messy. Four involved teams – one with Carlos Gonzalez, one with Chris Carter, one with Dana Eveland (me), and one that had Aaron Cunningham AND Greg Smith. It was very difficult to figure out who had the most here. Was it Gonzalez? The skilled, but flawed prospect that got the most press? Was it Carter, the underrated powerful prospect that may have the best shot at MLB success? Was it the combination of Cunningham and Smith who each may have decent careers, or was it Eveland, the still-young lefty that is likely the only player that will make Oakland’s team this year.

Needless to say, this negotiation dragged on – especially as teams realized that whoever finishes compensating the other three teams would likely have overpaid for Haren in the long run. Pitchers leaving Oakland for the NL have had some tough going recently and Arizona has a less forgiving park than Oakland. As the Gonzalez team began to question their desire to get Haren – as they were given first crack at it, other teams began to consider making an offer.

Considering that I did not have an ace starter on a staff “anchored” by Oliver Perez and Greg Maddux, I decided that perhaps overpaying for Haren would be worth it. However, I did not have many picks to give in upcoming years and would have to base my offer on lots of future picks (less valuable due to the uncertainty of placement in the draft and what players would be available).

The end result – Gonzalez teams got 2008 1st rd pick and get 2010 & 2011 1st rd pick, 2010 2nd rd pick and Brandon Ryan.Cunningham/Smith got 2008 1st rd pick, 3rd rd pick and 2009 5th rd pick. I got these two teams to switch 1st rd picks. Cunningham/Smith getting the better one this year from Gonzalez team in exchange for them getting a future one from me. Carter team got 2009 2nd rd pick, 2008 5th rd pick and 2010 6th rd pick.

And I as the Eveland owner gave up, 2010 & 2011 1st rd picks, 2009 & 2010 2nd rd picks, 2008 3rd rd pick, 2008 & 2009 5th rd picks, 2010 6th rd pick and Brandon Ryan and gets Haren and Robertson.

So – I get the SP I needed, but I gave up four good picks (likely good to great prospects or good players), a decent pick (probably a role player), three bad picks (mediocre prospects or filler MLB players) and Ryan. It may turn out to be a lot, but I got the player and the deal got done. The other teams didn’t do too badly when you consider that Gonzalez was worth at best one 1st rd pick, and they got multiple 1sts in return. Cunningham/Smith would never see the 1st rd in the real world. Carter was probably worth a 2nd rd pick at some point soon, maybe not this year. In all – a risky trade for me, but a good trade for everyone.

Bottom line – there is not a perfect solution to these problems and each deal is likely going to be different. As long as the teams involved (and we still have our NL league deciding between the Mulvey owner and the Gomez/Humber owner on Santana) negotiate in good faith and remember to consider what I mentioned earlier – compensate for player lost and percentage of player claimed – and keep in mind their own bottom line, it works well.

Occasionally, as commissioner I have to step in and make a ruling if all teams involved agree that they are deadlocked. However, that is usually a solution that nobody li
kes! Similar to how many Republicans seem to feel about McCain.

See how we tied that all back together…just like a bow on a package of prospects for Santana. I did it again.