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Wednesday, August 05, 2009Defending Cincinnati’s Rolen trade
Despite the frantic trading deadline already just about a week over, people continue to express their bafflement at the Cincinnati Reds' trade of 3B Edwin Encarnacion and minor league hurlers Josh Roenicke and Zach Stewart to the Toronto Blue Jays for 3B Scott Rolen. Oh sure, the Reds gave up a sizeable chunk of assets that can help them down the road: Roenicke has a great chance to morph into a closer while Stewart would rank the Reds' second best prospect if he was still with the club. As for EdE, he is a butcher in third base but could have long-term success as a middle of the order hitter at first base or left field. However, the Reds simply had to move EdE if they wanted Rolen: EdE is making $2 million this year and this spikes up to $4.75 million next year. The Reds even got cash as part of the deal, so all of a sudden, Rolen's $11 million contract next year doesn't look all that bad: subtract $4.75 million from that deal and guess that the Jays sent over $2 million, and Rolen costs $4.25 million, less than what Encarnacion makes. All of a sudden, that trade starts looking better from the Reds' perspective. Now, let's turn to how the Reds feel Rolen can help. Rolen is an absolute wizard at third base, which should have a major, major impact on the Reds' UZR/150, which is already sixth-best in the bigs. Where the boost will come from is helping their ranking in errors: 21st. Rolen has made only five errors on the year while the Reds as a whole check in at 15 all told at third. Rolen also can help with the stick: moving to Great American Ball Park will see some of his hits fly out of the park more often. People are quoting his unsustainable .370 BABIP as a reason to think his .320 average with the Blue Jays will come down, but we know that measuring BABIP for batters is foolish. Using the simple xBABIP calculator, we find that his xBABIP is .308, meaning his .320 batting average is not insanely lucky -- it's only slightly lucky. If I had to pick between Rolen and Encarnacion for the rest of the year and even for 2010, I'm picking Rolen, especially with Encarnacion needing to move off of third. What the Reds did was take a commodity that wasn't helping them and turn it into someone who can actually contribute and push the Reds to contend. Losing Edison Volquez to Tommy John surgery was a major blow, but to compete next year, Roenicke and Stewart weren't going to help. With the Cardinals potentially losing Matt Holliday, the NL Central next year is up for grabs, and the Reds just positioned themselves as a viable candidate to win the division next year. Some of you may think that they should have held off on the trade to try to win in the future, but there is never any guarantee for that. When you have a club that can win, you go for it. And the Reds understand that. The value of patienceThe game of baseball is seemingly getting younger. Teams are putting more of an emphasis on player development, as they realize the value of young cost-controlled players versus aging free agents. With young players comes inexperience, and sometimes an inability to immediately hit or pitch effectively at the major league level. This causes some fans and teams to give up on these players, seemingly convinced that a bad stretch of play indicates a lack of talent. In short, it doesn't. Yankees triple-A beat writer Chad Jennings of the Scranton Times-Tribune penned a good piece on his blog about having patience with young players. The article originally focuses on White Sox third baseman Gordon Beckham, and how you have to deal with his early struggles if you want to enjoy his current success. Some fans don't have the patience for player development, and that's fine. They don't want to sit through Beckham hitting .071 with no RBIs through his first eight major league games, I get that. They don't want to deal with Beckham hitting .267 through his first month, fair enough. But without patience, those fans don't get to enjoy Beckham hitting .330 with a .526 slugging percentage in his second big league month. They don't get to enjoy Rick Porcello going 5-0 in May if they aren't willing to watch him go 1-3 in April. They don't get Colby Rasmus hitting .333 in June unless they deal with him hitting .212 in May. They don't get four straight wins from Tommy Hanson without sticking with him after seven runs through six innings in his major league debut. To add to that, Robinson Cano hit just .237/.255/.376 in his first 26 major league games, only to narrowly lose out on the batting title the very next season, while slugging .525 . Player development at the major league level isn't just for teams like the Nationals and Pirates. Good teams who don't develop players at the major league level don't stay good for very long. Good teams who develop their young players do. The White Sox are a team in contention that dealt with Beckham's struggles and now they are reaping the benefits. Jennings goes on to say, "it's impossible to champion the idea of player development without also being willing to deal with some bumps along the way." I couldn't agree more. Not every player is going to win the MVP in his rookie season like Ichiro!, or Fred Lynn. Even the special players struggle. Alex Rodriguez hit .224/.257/.352 his first two seasons in the majors, spanning 65 games. Justin Upton struggled in 2007, hitting .221/.283/.364 across 43 games that season. Craig Biggio? .211/.254/.350 his first season. That's a combined 158 games of veritable suckitude from three players with Hall-of-Fame talent. Clearly these players were better than their first stretch of games (or in A-Rod's case, first two stretches) indicated. I'm sure people at the time were saying, "What's all the hype about?" You don't want to be that person. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
