Blasphemy!

It’s a lot of fun for a sports fan to play general manager. In a way, I think that concept is largely responsible for the proliferation of sports blogs, as most people don’t write about what it would be like to play for a team or how good the play by play is on a daily basis. Fortunately, bloggers are not confined to the realities of player movements: friendships, chemistry, contracts, inter-organizational relationships and so on. Therefore, we can propose ridiculous trades and insist that they are good ideas. That’s precisely the topic of today’s column: proposing and defending a ridiculous Twins’ trade. I might get around to a full-fledged off-season blueprint in a couple of weeks, but for now, my only proposal is that the Twins sell high on one of their few peak performers, Joe Nathan.

First, the case from the Twins’ perspective. With a ridiculously deep bullpen, the Twins are dealing from a position of strength in a time when nearly every contending team is short on pitching, particularly in the pen. Take this year’s trade deadline, for example. The notoriously flakey J.C. Romero had cobbled together a strong year to follow up on a season in which he was demoted to AAA, and almost fetched them a solid bat or two from Boston, even though he is wholly expendable for the Twins. I still think Ryan should look to trade Romero, as the bullpen would be strong even if they subtracted two of its more proven members. Without Romero or Nathan, the Twins are left with Rincon to close, Crain to set up, Liriano as a situational lefty (Rincon and Crain are also exceptional against lefties, although not left-handed themselves, and Liriano seems primed for a bullpen grooming role similar to the one Santana undertook. If they aren’t ready to hand him a rotation spot, he might as well be useful to the team now that his service clock is ticking towards arbitration), Guerrier, and a pick ‘em from the bunch of Bowyer, Balfour, Bonser, Gassner and Durbin. Assuming the front office wants to continue using the dominant bullpen model, all of these pitchers have live arms and plenty of value to the team.

Nathan finished 12th in all of baseball last year in Reliever Win Expectancy Added (WXRL), with Crain in 16th and Rincon in 23rd. But Crain was actually better than Nathan, falling behind due to his use in lower leverage situations, and Rincon was just behind. Given that Crain and Rincon are young enough to still see improvement, and that Nathan is on the wrong side of 30 and a bit more expensive, it seems natural that he would be the one to deal. I deem Rincon the closer over Crain due to the difference in K-rates (9.82 to 2.82) and the usual proclivity for closers with canon arms. As noted earlier, Crain was also ridiculously hit-lucky this season, seeing only a .222 batting average on balls in play, the lowest among pitchers with as many IP (abnormally low BABIP usually predicts regression in overall performance). If you’re curious, Nathan had a .270 BABIP, a little low, but not alarming.

There’s also the argument to be made about the market for relief pitching, especially relief pitching with the shiny closer label. Historically, the Twins have sent a completely spent Rick Aguilera to the Cubs for Kyle Lohse and Hector Carrasco to the Red Sox for Lew Ford. More recently, the Braves gave up big-time prospect Jose Capellan for Danny Kolb, who doesn’t even come close to Nathan’s qualifications. In the 2003 season, the Marlins sacrificed a former number one overall pick in Adrian Gonzalez and two other solid prospects for half a season of Ugi Urbina as an 8th inning guy. In other words, the Twins could score big by dealing a top-notch closer.

There is definitely a strong counterargument to be made about the deep free agent class of closers, including Billy Wagner, B.J. Ryan, Todd Jones, Trevor Hoffman, Bob Wickman, Kyle Farnsworth and Urbina (assuming he beats that murder rap. Yes, murder). But with that surplus of players comes an inflated market, disproportionately skewed towards big-market teams. Both New York teams, Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego, Baltimore, Cleveland and Atlanta are looking for late inning relievers, all with the (perceived) incentive of playing for the postseason. Once the first couple of dominos fall- probably Wagner and Ryan signing for $8 mil or more- Nathan’s accomplishments are going to look pretty amazing for only $2.5 mil. If the Twins are willing to take on a little salary in return, they could be in for a pretty impressive windfall.

Earlier I mentioned WXRL, or how many wins a reliever is worth over the course of a season. It’s probably not surprising to most that relievers do not contribute all that much in their workloads that are 1/3 the size of a starter’s, but would it surprise you to learn that Nathan added less wins last season than Doug Davis, Bruce Chen or Aaron Harang? Nathan was worth a total of 4.4 marginal wins over replacement level for the Twins; the closest full-time starter was Jeff Suppan at 4.3 marginal wins. And if you compare production to position players, it only looks worse. The 12th best reliever in all of baseball was worth slightly less than Randy Winn or Matt Holliday, two decidedly average outfielders who don’t even have full job security. Trading Nathan for a bat to replace Jacque Jones or the gaping holes in the IF would be trading up at least a couple of wins. Billy Beane has made a killing off of racking up save totals then trading the pitcher for more valuable assets. Doug Melvin did the same in Milwaukee, now Terry Ryan has the opportunity to make the same very astute move.