Twins, Rockies Talk Tulowitzki

 

1. You outbid all 29 other GMs for the guy's services. No one else wanted him at that particular price. Now you want one of them to take him off your hands, without any additional concessions from you?
2. You paid market rate for a player, for which you sacrificed no players in return. Now you want a fellow GM to give you players, for that same contract?
3. You trade a player in his first year. Then you ask future free agents to commit to you without a no-trade clause, and expect them to listen?

For all these reasons, I agree, trades of this sort can be expected to be rare.

 

Regarding #3, I would like to introduce a new term.  That should be called being “Marlin-ed”.

A friend of a friend works for the Twins and this was a huge concern when we received calls about Willingham 3 months after he signed his deal and why we didn’t seriously consider moving him.

Were teams looking to trade value for him, though, or just trying to "help" the cheap last place Twins save a few bucks?

I think he had a ton of value.  At the deadline he had .271 avg, .951 OPS and 27 HR.  2 years @ $7M a year left.

No doubt he was having a good year, and was a fair value for us going forward on that contract -- but were other teams offering much of anything to take on that contract at that time?  Better players were moved for not much in return in July 2012 (Hunter Pence and Hanley Ramirez), plus some lesser options moved for basically nothing at all.

 

Teams generally don't pay extra for extra years of control at the deadline -- they can deal with those extra years better in the offseason.  It's what makes the Hamels situation unique, because he is signed long term but also viewed as an elite player for the rest of 2015 too.  Even in his career year, Willingham wasn't seen as an elite pick-up -- the extra years on his deal were neutral value at best in a trade deadline scenario.

I think it is tough to impossible to know what teams were able to part with.  In the rental phase I think teams don't really care at all about the salary in most instances.  The pro-rated amount is usually not too bad.

In the case of Willingham I think his contract probably had some value.   Prior to hitting FA he had 29 HR but that was quite a bit higher than the previous years.  Then he had 27 on 7/31.  So that type of pop, 125-140 OPS+ could slide into the DH spot if teams had doubts about him in LF.  Generally I agree with you but this situation was a little unique. It seems like if he had hit FA after that year he would have received more than 2/14 

Willingham was 33 years old, well established, and pretty consistent in his career.  If no one was prepared to offer substantially better than 3/21 the previous offseason, I doubt they'd be willing to surrender something worthwhile to take on that contract 4 months later just because he almost doubled his HR/FB rate for a half season.  (And sure enough that rate returned to slightly below his career rate for the last 2 months of 2012, and the full 2013-2014 seasons.)

 

Should we have just shipped him off to Miami for the Carlos Lee trade return?  Or to Detroit for Lester Oliveros 2.0?

I think you maybe short changing his 2012 a bit.  His BABIP was actually below his career clip.  His oWAR ended the year at 4.7.  That is a decent guy to slide in as your DH.  He won a silver slugger and at the deadline he was on a pace of 43 HR.    He ended 8th in OPS and WAR in the AL.  3rd in RBI.  6th in adjusted OPS+.  7th in HR. He won a silver slugger.

In 2014 after a steep decline he was moved for a prospect that was 9th in the Royals system pre-season and 16th at the time of the deal.  That is a system that minorleagueball had 6th best at the time.  I am guessing Josh would have fetched a top 10 prospect in a good system. Teams knew he was going to come off the peak, but I don’t know how his stock would not have risen from the prior offseason.

Am I the only one underwhelmed by the return the Rockies got?

The pitchers are good (Hoffman is way up from preseason) but the Reyes part makes me wonder. He seems to have negative value with that contract. Rockies do clear $50 mil overall though.

Got to admit, I didn't think the Rockies were all that serious about trading Tulo unless they were blown away. It is an OK trade for them, but certainly doesn't blow anyone away.

Neither of the pitchers Col received is any kind of mega prospect, either.

Have to believe the inclusion of Reyes means the Twins could have gotten Tulowitski for a reasonable return by taking on more salary.

I expected to be disappointed, and in that regard anyway, I'm not disappointed.

Sure in that they aren't Buxton or Sano. But would have been equivalent of Berrios and May, perhaps even slightly better. I'm not sure how Reyes is valued but can't be much.

Twins surely could have done it but would have clobbered their meager pitching depth.