Thoughts on the Felipe / Austin trade

"Here's the thing. Reds fans have certain blind spots. Everyone says that a team's fans overvalue it's players, and I agree to an extent, but I also think a team's fans undervalue what the team has in abundance, and overvalue what it lacks. We all are massively overvaluing relief pitching."

How are we massively overvaluing relief pitching? This teams bullpen has probably cost out somewhere around 10 games, and it was only getting worse. In the beginning of the year Coffey and Weathers were getting people out, in the middle Coffey and Hammond where doing a decent job, but for about the lst month there was not 1 pitcher who you could count on to get people out. It was amazingly bad.

Kearns was a power hitting outfielder who Ks alot. We have 2 of those. Deno and Freel will bring a contact/speed game which is something we need. He is a player who in his 5 years has never played over 112 games, and at this point in his career has been a bust.

I loved (in a normal way) Felipe. He and Edwin were/are my favorite players. However he is the worst defense SS in baseball and has a pedestrian OPS. Before last year he had never hit over .260, and he is going back down to career norms this year.

We are one of the best offensive teams in baseball and one of the worst bullpen/defensive teams in baseball. Wayne traded a strength for a need. To get good pitching (especially relief) you are going to have to give up better hitters. Pitchers have so much more value then pitchers do.

Look at the guys we acquired. Bray is a 23 year old rookie who was pitching damn well for the Natties. This kid could be a staple in our bullpen. Majewski is a guy with a rubber arm he has a solid ERA this year, and a good one for his career. He also is 26 years old. Combine the both and if you can get just 6 innings out of your starters (we have been getting more from Arroyo and Harang) and you have a lead, you have a very good chance at winning.

Just look at tonight. Up 9-3 going to the 9th,and Eddy has to come in to get a save. That should never happen. We did our best job after having a 9-0 lead in Atlanta trying to blow that. Go back to Detroit where Weathers blew the save, and Pujols walk off in May. You can raddle of a countless amount of games that the bullpen has blown.

You are focusing way to much on Royce Clayton in this deal. Royce was probably the least important player on this deal. Listen there was no way we were going to contend with Lopez/EE/Dunn playing on the left side. With Clayton/Castro you can hide some of Edwin's growing pains on the defensive side of the ball (i think he will develop into a good defensive player) with good defensive SS. It almost came down to having to deal Lopez or Edwin. Edwin is already a better hitter then Felipe, and is going to develop into a better fielder. Wayne made the right move on who he traded.

And that doesn't even mention Thompson and Harris who are 2 of their better prospects.

We probably gave up more "talent", but who knows if AK and FeLo will ever live up to it. We filled 2 glaring needs, and I honestly think we a better team then we were 24 hours ago.

Do you think other GMs placed any kind of value on him?  Maybe in the offseason, but I can't see him having much value at this point.  And unless he put up numbers like he did last year, he doesn't belong in the Dave Concepcion/Barry Larkin conversation.

Also, I'm not getting worked up over this.  It would be silly for me to act like Krivsky could have gotten more, but elected not to.

Yes, Royce Clayton sucks.  Hopefully, as with Womack, we won't have to put up with him for very long.

I don't buy the line about Krivsky turning us into the Twins.  He signed Dunn to a 2 year deal with an option for a 3rd that only the Reds can pick up.

And can we stop calling these guys middle relievers?  Majewski can pitch the 8th inning, and Bray might be our closer in a couple years.  Our bullpen should be a strength now.  We control these guys for a long time.  You won't see guys like this traded for less than what we gave up.

  For over two months, all I've read on the blogs is how bad the Reds relief corps is.  Weathers needs to go!  Standridge Sucks! Mercker is horrible!  Yan Yawns!!!   We've all been bitching about Krivsky needs to do something!!!
   All Right!! He Did It!!  The man is not stupid.  He's been working on something for weeks to strengthen the bull pen.  He probably felt this was the best deal he could get!!  
   Let's see what happens!!!   We'll have plenty of time to flame Krivsky if it doesn't work out!!

I'm with you JD.  This trade Blows, with a capital B.  What a joke.

Kearns is still young and he was finally coming into his own.  Felipe Lopez is a potential stud at first base.

I said this over at my blog, but if Jim Bowden would have made deals like this for us, he'd still have a job.

Blade
http://www.redscuttingedge.com

Krivsky said this trade was not about the future, but I believe it was.  Lopez and Kearns are going to command a bunch of money in arbitration.  They are both putting up numbers to support big dollars.  I do not think Kearns or Lopez fit in with Narron's personality or style.  I think Narron and Krivsky want to build a team comprised of "their" players.  This move will free up a great deal of future dollars.  The Reds are never going to spend like the Yankees, Sox (either one), or even the Cards.  We got some good arms and a cheap, fundamentally sound SS.  Don't forget Brendan Harris.  Scout must feel he can play 2B in the majors.  Maybe BP moves to SS next year and Harris ends up at 2B.  Give this trade some time to evolve.  I'm sure people hated it when we traded Reds HOF inductee Lee May in '72 and that worked out well.

Ill give it some time, but AK and FeLo have been in MLB for 3-4 yrs each and they're only 25 and 26 yrs old.  Both can, and will, develop further.  

I don't remember getting a huge bounty when the Reds unloaded Sullivan and Williamson a couple years back.  A 25 year old all-star SS on pace for 45 steals or a 26 year old corner OF with 30/100, quasi Gold Glove potential?  

I expected way more for these two chips.  I wonder what the Yanks would have offered, if only they had more organizational prospects, for Felo and AK.

Royce is inconsequential, as is Harris.  This is AK/FeLo for Bray/Majewski/Thomspon.

I'll be watching Thompson closely.  I sure hope he develops into more than Scott Scudder/Jay Tibbs.  He needs to be Brett Tomko/Bill Gullickson/True Creature-ish to break even, IMO.

First of all JD, love this website.  Thanks so much for giving us Reds fans a place to talk and keep up on things.  I appreciate your efforts.  
Showing my age a little bit, but I got up this morning thinking about 1977 when we moved Doggie and McEnaney for Woody Fryman and Dale Murray.  I was only ten at the time but I was heart broken.  'Course that was all about getting Driessen a place to play along with Dick Wagner's incompetence.  

I don't think Reds fans are as attached to Felipe and Austin as they were to Doggie.  I also know these relievers are much younger and more talented than Fryman and Murray.  I remember seeing Fryman on the mound thinking he was a grandpa and wondering why in the world didn't we want Tony around.  Still boggles my mind to this day....
Although they sounded like great team mates and good guys, I don't believe Austin and Felipe have that same stature as Reds players.  

In my heart I believe in Krivsky's plan.  It might be difficult at times and lord knows us Reds fans have been through some difficult times and are ready for a quick fix/turnaround, but again, "whats wrong with the Twins approach"?  The Bowden "name guy" style didn't work and Obrien was in over his head.  Did Krivsky take a risk?  You bet.  But we do have some other outfielders, and if we're all being honest, Felipe was never really a true all-star....and no where near in the class with Barry and Davey.

Just heard Marty talking to Jim Scott.  Said he liked the trade and that he never saw Felipe as a "winning" shortstop.  I talked last night to my high school buddy Kevin Goldstein from Baseball Prospectus.  He was just blasting the trade, along with veteran writers he was getting emails from.  The basis of their negativity was trading two everyday players for guys pitching 2-4 days a week.  'Course, Kevin has always been about #'s, even in middle school tracking Carew when he was with the Angels.  And I reminded him that Lopez cannot consistently pick up the ball and that Austin, until this year, hasn't been able to stay healthy.  Not a good sign for a couple of 26 year old ballplayers. Then again, maybe now is the time for Austin to get on a healthy roll.  If so, good for him.  

I like what topsixrows had to say.  Bowden was always into the name guys and Austin and Felipe are definitely recognizeable players and they did have substance.  However, we needed arms.  Heck, maybe with a little positive energy from us fans, these guys along with Coffey and everday Eddie can make up a new form of the Nasty Boys?  Wouldn't that be something..to get to the 7th and know we got it in the bag.  How comforting is that?

Denorfia is ready to replace Kearns NOW with same production, decent fielding.

If he can show up and play well, I think this thing can work. And that would be fantastic! I mean, to make a trade that EVERYONE pans and have it work out.

The good teams are not afraid to lose players, because they've got guys in their system that can replace them. If Denorfia is that guy, then Krivsky looks pretty smart.

I looked at losses since the beginning of June.  We are 16-20 since then.  7 of these 20 losses are directly related to the bullpen sucking:  6/12 vs. Mil, 6/17 vs. CWS, 6/27 vs. KC, 7/2 vs. Cle, 7/3 vs. Mil, 7/5 vs. Mil, and 7/6 vs. Atl.  Now, let's say we have a good bullpen that can hold 80% of the time, that gives us 5 or 6 of those losses back and we're either 21-15 or 22-14 since the beginning of June.  Not to mention 3 of those losses are against Milwaukee who is breathing down our necks.  If these new bullpen guys can help us do that, I think we're in good shape.  Obviously, that's a big "if", but I'm going to stay positive until proven otherwise.  

I think we'll be laughing when Kearns sits out next year with an ingrown toenail and when Lopez stays a .225 hitter for the rest of his career.

O'Brien was in over his head?  Bailey, Bruce, Ward, Wood, LeCure, Fisher, Syzmanski, Avery, Stevens (traded for Phillips), Chick (traded for Guardado), Germano, Ramirez, Hancock (compare his numbers to Majewski's).  That's a lot of value to add to the club in two years.  Also look at the amount of change brought in the ballclub because players either were allowed to finish their careers or immensely overvalued non-tradables were released or moved.  Gone:  Larkin, Graves, Jiminez, Casey, not to mention Miley and Gullett.  This is not to be critical of any of those people, just to say that change was needed and O'Brien brought it.  As far as I can see, he made only one bad move, overpaying for Milton, and I'd say he made that mistake because of unrealistic pressures to win now.

Like JD, I wanted to wait to weigh in. I was hoping I was missing something.

My initial reaction was, "That's it???"

After thinking about it, I still feel that way. If this somehow gets the Reds a World Series, then and only then do I like the deal. Honestly, the playoffs aren't even good enough for me.

What would Kearns and Lopez go for on the free agent market right now? Well, if Furcal got 13 million, Lopez would get at least half of that. And Kearns would get at least that much.

What would Bray and Majewski go for? Well, not more than Eyre and Howry, the guys the Cubs gave 3 million per year to.

Salary on the market equals value. The Reds grossly overpaid.

Could Krivsky not have called every GM and said Kearns and Lopez are going to be traded, and not gotten more than this? Off the top of my head, I'd think the Cubs would have given up a couple good relievers (Williamson, Eyre?) and a Rich Hill type for what the Reds gave up.

Fantasy leagues mirror the real thing in some ways, and I always hate the logic of those who say to me, "Well, you have two good 1b, so trade me one for a crappy SS, because that's what you need." If you have depth, fine, trade it. Sure, the Reds can fill the holes with Denorfia and Freel, etc. But get FAIR VALUE.

This is abominable.

Clearly this is for the here and now.  Krivsky, like all Reds fans, was sick of losing leads past the 7th-8th innings...and chose to do something about it.  

I do question who the SS of the future will be.  But you know what, this management team cares and they will put together a team capable of winning, whether its by trade or free agency.  How refreshing is it to have an owner who is willing and a GM who knows what it takes to have a winner on the field.  

The toughest part of this trade is Kearns.  However if it means Freel can get on the field a little more, great.  

As for the Tigers comparison, we do still have Griffey, Dunn, Arroyo, Milton.  Thats a lot of money right there to help draw the fans.  Their hitting continued to be a strength and the pen was a big weakness.  They had to do something to give us a chance THIS YEAR in a weak national league.  

some of us(I'm pretty sure I was one of them) mentioned this as early as last week.  Felo wasn't going to bring much back in a trade.  I even made mention of other possible shortstops on the trade market before Lopez such as Izturis, Lugo, and even maybe O Cabrera. Besides that what teams need shortstops? Somebody name more than 3 teams that don't have better shortstop options than Felo. Simply put when you look at it FeLo just wasn't valuable: he wasn't going to bring back anything. Last year was the abberattion FeLo won't ever put up numbers like that again.  I hope Castro starts because it actually will be better defense.

I'll ignore Wagner becuase I think the organization gave up on him.

I think its tough giving up Kearns. While an everday player may have more "value" than a set-up man, relievers are hard to come by this year. Thus more scarce jacking up their value. Look how much $$ Farnsworth got to be a set-up man.  That and Kearns is replaceable. Denfornia will be a fine replacement until Bruce is ready for his projected position RF.

I'm one that doesn't believe FeLo was the shortstop of the future anyway.

Well said.  I'm a Columbus boy so I wanted nothing more than to see Westerville raised O'brien succeed.  Lets hope the Milton signing turns out well in the end.

We all care like Krivsky and the new owner.
We're just showing it in different ways.
War Reds!

I like this trade, even though I agree that, in some objective sense, the players we got are less valuable than the players we gave up. But this year, a.) all trades "cost" more because there are more contenders than usual, b.) middle relievers are particularly costly, and c.) middle relievers are particularly valuable to the Reds, who are four games out of first place, and have had thirteen blown saves. So while in some platonic ideal universe, this might be a bad deal, situationally speaking, it's a good one. And this is not the time to "plan for the future." Several Reds (Arroyo, Ross) are having career years, we don't have any major injury problems, and the National League is historically bad. Next season, our current players will probably play worse, one or two key parts (*cough*Griffey*cough) will have major injury problems, and the rest of the league will be better (they could hardly be worse). Even after losing Kearns and Lopez, none of the position players we're sending out there are complete jokes, whereas nearly all of our relief pitchers were. A mere absence of weaknesses is good enough to win in the NL this year. Next year will just have to wait.

JD, I thank you for running this site. You have no responsibility to do anything but be passionate about the Cincinnati Reds. I believe you are. Good for you.

I, too, hate this trade. But it is because I'm assuming that the trade value of Kearns/Lopez/Wagner is greater than what we got. Right now, that assumption seems obvious. Possibly in the coming weeks, when the Cardinals trade Pujols for Logan Kensing and the A's trade Bobby Crosby and Dan Johnson for Ken Ray, we'll look back on this trade and say, "Damn. We got a deal." I doubt it.

I also think that we're emotionally attached to these players because we've been waiting on them for the past three years. Waiting to see if they'd pan out, waiting to see if they'd get traded, waiting to see if they'd be all-stars. At the end of our wait, they pan-out, we're in contention and then suddenly after years of injury and disappointment they're deal to Bowden for a few guys who've never even been on our radar.

It's a tough pill to swallow. Let's hope it's chock full of vitamins.

So I say this. Bitch. Moan. This trade may be the trade that looks awful when it happens looks awful one year from now and looks awful twenty years from now. Most don't. This one may. But while we bitch and moan, let's hold out that little bit of hope that we're wrong.

Right now, unfortunately, the best case senario seems to be: The middle relief helps. The Reds make the playoffs. We've solidified our bullpen for the next two years. Lopez and Kearns become free agents at the end of next year and would have been  unaffordable anyway. We save some money to buy a starter in the off-season. Bruce and Votto are in the starting line-up come 2008.  

Let's hope for that.

Keep your peckers up everybody.  

Here is a link to an article by Aaron Gleeman at THT.  He calls it the most one-sided trade since Kazmir-Zambrano.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/bowden-1-krivsky-0/

Kearns is a slightly above average MLB RF, which by definition is not easily replaceable.  I have no problem with him being traded, but for middle relief?  Given what they gave up, why couldn't they have pried Chad Cordero from the Nats?  That would have given the Reds a bona fide closer.

The real reason the trade sucks is that the Reds were probably around 30% to make the playoffs before the trade.  Has that number gone up significantly?  Even if they make it, they are going to be big dogs to the Mets or anyone from the AL.

This trade does not make them a WS team realistically.  It does hurt the team beyond this year.  FeLo had no future with the Reds beyond 2008, but that's no reason to give him away.  We could do a lot worse than Kearns in RF.  The people defending this trade are underrating what we gave up, or overrating what we got back.

Solid corner OF's can be signed in free agency every offseason.  They do, however, usually come at the cost of a first or second round pick in the following amateur draft.

I have to say I'm pretty neutral to the trade at the moment, I don't think it improves our chances to get into the playoffs unless Denorfia shows us the hitting he's had in AAA, which I don't think will happen.

Austin Kearns OR Felipe Lopez, I certainly would have traded either of those guys for either Majewski or Bray, not both for both.  I think it downgrades our offense too much.  Lopez to the Nats for Bray+Harris would've been fine.  BP/Freel/Harris sharing SS and 2B would have worked.  Kearns to the Nats for Bray+Thompson would've been easier to digest, slide Freel/Denorfia into RF.  But both is a big pill to swallow.

The problem I see with this trade is the reason people are saying it is a good trade: the future.  Who's at SS?  What if Junior gets injured?  Where's our RH power going to come from, Aurilia and EE?  EE sure, not Aurilia.  I hope some of the money saved on future arby salaries goes towards the offense, the starting rotation and the bullpen seems to be more solid than they have been in a while!

Remember the Reds saved 7 million dollars on the Casey trade.  Williams was irrelevant; the important thing was getting rid of a ridiculously overpaid first baseman.  How O'Brien ever got the Pirates to do it is beyond me.  Would you want to pay 8+ million for what Casey's done this year?  Krivsky was also really lucky O'Brien did the heavy lifting of making that trade because it put him in a much stronger position to make the Pena for Arroyo trade (Why? Because we didn't need to make the trade.  It's when you too obviously need to make a deal that you get screwed, as we have just seen)

If this trade destroyed the Reds' future, than it must have secured the Nats' future. Does anybody think that's the case? If you're a Nats fan, are you saying "We just traded away our best pitching prospect, plus some decent relievers, and got back a RF with injury history and a .260 batting shortstop that can't make a throw to first, we're all set now!" Give me a break. We didn't really lose much offense, since we can only send out 8 position players a night regardless, the defense averaged out (better infield, worse outfield), and we improved the one weakness in our team that guaranteed us missing the playoffs this year. Because if you think we were going to make the playoffs with that bullpen, well, I think you're crazy. Now, we at least have a chance. And what is it people are complaining about? That we don't know who will be playing shortstop in 2008? I can live with that.

How much cash are the Giants going to get?

To me, the bottom line was best expressed by Greg. You must get fair value in any trade. I think this is true regardless of circumstance, with the possible exception of a team that is literally one player away from the trophy (which the Reds clearly are not).I think we can crunch numbers and project stats and debate gluts vs. needs until we're blue in the face. In fact we should do this, this is what makes us such passionate fans.

Nobody likes to see good young players leave, but I usually don't have much problem with a trade as long as it meets two conditions: 1) it makes our team better (at least according to reasonable expectations), and 2) we could not have made a significantly better deal elsewhere. This 2nd condition is basically about maximizing assets -- something any business must do.

I'm not sure about the first condition. I think we may have lost some balance in the batting order. Hope the minor leaguers pan out. And the bullpen sure as hell better improve in a hurry.

As for the second condition, that's what bugs me. Krivsky ostensibly made this deal now  to avoid the higher prices at the deadline. My feeling is that he just set the market for middle relievers, and set it ridiculously high. With several teams desperate for offense, it seems like he could have been the guy who waited for a good deal. Instead, he's the guy who gave a good deal.