The Worst Deal Ever?

In case you hadn't noticed, relief pitchers are hot commodities around trade deadline these days. Consider the haul the Yankees made off with for a few months of Aroldis Chapman last season. Or what Washington had to relinquish just a week ago for two good-but-not-great bullpen arms.

Now consider Tommy Kahnle, formerly of the White Sox. In 36 innings this season he has walked 7 and whiffed 60. He hasn't allowed a homer in three years (102 innings). Advanced defensive stats say his 2.50 ERA vastly understates his actual value.

Finally, consider that the team controls Kahnle at below-market rates until 2020. That's quite an asset right?

Here's what the White Sox received in return for sending him to the Yankees:

1. The #30 prospect, now at Low-A ball (here in Charleston). Not the Yankees' top prospect, whom they received as part of the package for Chapman.
2. Two other guys.

Seems a little light, right? I mean, the contenders all need bullpen help. There's lots of demand for someone like Kahnle. He's good and cheap and will stick around for awhile. And Chicago let him go for three guys who might never sniff the Majors.

But that's not the big problem with this trade. 

The big problem is that Kahnle isn't even the best player in the deal. He accompanied the closer he'd been setting up in Chicago, David Robertson. Robertson, the former Yankee closer, owns 123 saves the last 3+ seasons and is signed through next year.

For these three Minor leaguers, only one of whom is really anything to look at, the Yankees didn't just get one top-of-the-line bullpen arm. They got two. 

But wait, it gets worse.

Chicago also picked up the albatross contract of Tyler Clippard, owed about $6 million more this season before he becomes a free agent. Clippard has no value to the rebuilding White Sox and was thrown in as a salary dump for the Yankees.

So on top of giving away two first-rate relievers in high demand on the trade market for very little return, White Sox brass also did Yankee brass a $6 million favor.

This sounds like the worst deal since Lincoln agreed to those free theater tickets. 

And it just gets worse.

You've probably heard that Greg Bird is out for the season. The flotsam and jetsam the Yankees have inserted at first have left them with the worst performance at that position in the AL. If they're going to make any kind of playoff run, they need someone to play first.

So the White Sox sweetened a sugar-coated deal by adding Todd Frazier to the mix. Frazier doesn't hit for average, but he's a Jersey guy who walks plenty and socks home runs and can slide over to third when Joe Girardi gets tired of watching Chase Headley not hit.

So to recap:

• The Yankees received a closer everyone was after.
• The Yankees received a set-up guy who could be an incredible asset for three years after this one.
• The Yankees received salary relief by dumping Tyler Clippard and his 4.95 ERA out of the pen.
• The Yankees filled a desperate need at first with the acquisition of Todd Frazier.

• The White Sox received New York's 2016 first-round draft pick.
• The White Sox received some organization filler who might possibly turn into something but probably won't.

The days of stupid GMs left us with the firing of Ed Wade in 2005. In fact, most GMs have a GM as their boss, often called a president of baseball operations, and they make decisions as a team using a combination of scouting and advanced statistical analysis. So the White Sox front office must know something I don't. But on the surface, this appears to be significantly less return than Chicago could have received elsewhere, or by swapping out these assets separately.

Finally, consider one more thing, the Yankees' bullpen:
Tommy Kahnle
Adam Warren
David Robertson
Dellin Betances
Aroldis Chapman

I know the bullpen has struggled in the Bronx in recent weeks, but holy smokes that's a lot of heat. C.C. Sabathia never has to pitch another sixth inning again.

Trading Away A Division Title

The Los Angeles Angels -- or the Anaheim Angels, but not both -- have been nipping at the heels of the Texas Rangers for the last American League playoff spot. Currently they are 3.5 games shy of the division crown. Think they miss Mike Napoli now?

During the off-season, the Angels flipped their slugging backstop, along with fourth outfielder Juan Rivera, to Toronto for outfielder Vernon Wells. At the time I inveighed against the deal from the L.A. perspective, but I didn't know the half of it. Back then, the focus was on Wells' $126 million/seven-year contract, which was choking Toronto like a hippo in a snake. 

The Blue Jays were giddy simply to remove the last three years of Wells from their throat. That they got something useful in return was like winning a three-way parlay. That they got better players than Wells and shed payroll must have left even Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos scratching his head. Here's what Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal aptly said about the deal at the time: “Most teams try to get younger, cheaper and better. The Angels got older, more expensive and possibly worse.”

Then Anthopoulos added insult and more injury to L.A. by using Napoli as a chip to improve his bullpen, sending Napoli to the Angels' arch-nemesis in Dallas for reliever Frank Francisco. And now the Rangers are riding Napoli's bat to beat the Angels for the division.

For his $18 million, Wells is hitting .221/.256/.398 and proving that he's no longer, at 32, a center fielder with the glove or an outfielder with the bat. At the same time, the catchers replacing Napoli (Jeff Mathis and rookie Hank Conger), are hitting at about a Double-A level, costing the team three runs relative to a replacement player. (Mathis has consumed more than half the plate appearances from the catching position and contributed .177/.227/.256 with more strikeouts than total bases.)

For his part, Napoli has delivered .289/.386/.572 and added nearly four wins to the Rangers while spending about half his time at first base and DH. Did you catch that? Napoli is plus four wins and his replacements on the Angels are minus a fraction. That's more than the difference between the two clubs' positions.

It's not that simple, of course. For one thing, the Angels didn't like Napoli's defense and didn't see a place for him at first or DH. They thought they had Kendry Morales at first base. Though he's hurt, Rookie of the Year candidate Mark Trumbo has filled in ably (.256/.296/.480) while Bobby Abreu has been the definition of adequacy (.252/.356/.355) at DH.

For another thing, Texas still could use the right-handed yumminess provided by Francisco, who's served as closer in Toronto this year. That takes back half a win or so on the Napoli deal.

But there's still this: $18 million for a fourth outfielder. The Angels will still owe Wells another $36 million of Arte Moreno's money over the next two years as his skills further decline.

All in all, the Wells deal was every bit the disaster for the Angels that any sentient fan could have predicted. At the very least, it's likely going to cost L.A. a playoff spot this year, and with a mound triumverate of Dan Haren, Jered Weaver and Ervin Santana, they would have been a dangerous draw.

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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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