Something for Nothing Can Kill You

When it comes to the Yankees-Braves trade of Javier Vazquez for Melky Cabrera, the big winner was...the Boston Red Sox.

We knew going in that Cabrera was a pine-rider for the Yankees with fourth outfielder upside. We thought Vazquez was Atlanta's best trade bait given the team's rotation depth and his non-repeatable '09 performance. That is, until he was swapped for a spare part, which could presumably have been had for a lesser light from the mound corps.

In any case, the Sox can thank Brian Cashman and Frank Wren for keeping them within five games of NY in the standings. Whereas Cabrera and his bleak.191/.287/.225 (three XBH) would simply be clogging up the dugout in the Bronx, the Braves would be pitching Vazquez and his 9.78 ERA, at least for a while. So while Cabrera is killing Atlanta's already-inept offense, he's replacing a dumpster fire on the defensive side. For the Yankees, it's subtraction by addition, since they gave up nothing to make their pitching staff worse.

Put another way, New York got something negative for nothing. They bartered a player who wasn't going to contribute, for a star, and managed to be worse off in the process.

Neither of these guys is this bad, but their prospects are pretty poor. Vazquez seems to be allergic to the Big Apple -- his previous stint in pinstripes didn't agree with his ERA either -- and Cabrera's career .378 SLG just doesn't scream "hot second half!" 

So while everything else goes wrong in Beantown, they're still within striking distance of their arch-rivals, and they can thank the gods of irony for that. After all, flipping Melky for Vazquez was about as slam-dunk a trade as you could make.
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Not Miguel Cabrera, Mind You

Veteran righty Jason Marquis just signed a $15 million, two-year deal with the Nationals to eat 200 innings with below-average results for an up-and-coming staff. Another veteran rightly, Javier Vazquez, just fetched Melky Cabrera for the Braves in a trade with the Yankees.

What do these two statements have in common? Evidentally, nothing.

In a time when arms are worth their weight in highly-enriched uranium, the Braves parlayed an above-average starter with a below-market contract -- he's due $9 million/year -- for... Melky Cabrera? Is there any commodity more abundant in baseball than fourth outfielders? Didn't they just cut Ryan Church and trade Jeff Francoeur? What, Ryan Spillborghs wasn't available? The Royals wouldn't part with Willie Bloomquist? Gabe Kapler's demanding his own conditioning coach?

This is a miserable waste of a valuable commodity by Atlanta. Frank Wren must have had a plane to catch when he made this deal, because a #3 starter should fetch real value, not the third trombone in the nobody parade.

There were some prospects in this deal, so maybe one of them is the second coming of Joe Dimaggio. Even then, the Braves' plan was supposed to be to flip one of their surplus quality starters for a big banging outfielder who could solidify a gelatin lineup and challenge the Phillies for the division title NOW. What they got was Melky Cabrera, all .274/.336/.416 of him. (That would be the numbers from his best year -- last -- which  marked year five of the "Melky the Future Star" show.) The Braves needed a hitter, not another edition of Garret Anderson.

Here's another data point in the argument against us Yankee haters. Credit Brian Cashman yet again for conning a perfectly respectable GM into giving him a good starter -- Vazquez has been worth 13 wins over the last three years relative to a replacement level pitcher -- in exchange for a replaceable part. This deal had little to do with New York's advantages, monetary or otherwise, and everything to do with Atlanta misjudging the value of a precious commodity.

Melky Cabrera!