Too Early for Trade Talk?
The Trade Ranking System

In any sort of trade, the first reaction of any observer is to try to figure out who “won” the trade. Usually, analysts go about that task by projecting forward the impact that a player will have on a team, but it is an inexact science to say the least. It seemed to me that it would be useful to find a way to at least classify trades, because trading a group of prospects for a rental player is hardly comparable to swapping out depth in the OF to solidify the bullpen, for example. There is still a place for the traditional notion of winning a trade- the long-term evaluative comparison of who did what for whom- but that comparison has to be divorced from the immediate classification of the type of trade. Therefore, I came up with a tree diagram to classify and even rank the trades as they are made while leaving room for longer-term win-loss valuation.

Notes:

-I plan on using this format to evaluate trades in the future with slight modifications as I find ways to improve, so it is worth explaining in greater detail. “Filled a Need” and “D/N Fill a Need” are straightforward categories. It may seem that the latter category would be irrelevant since no team would ever make a trade that did not fill a need, but most prospect acquisitions and many salary dumps may fit in this category. For example, Arizona did well in the Javier Vazquez trade to pick up OF prospect Chris Young and El Duque, but did not fulfill a need, per se.

-“Had to trade” and “D/N have to trade” is a little bit more difficult. I rank “D/N have to trade” higher because flexibility is generally better. While one might argue that the success of those required is a better reflection, I think there is an inherent advantage in being able to keep the player and his value if no great offer comes about. Think about the Jim Thome trade: the Phillies could not get full value from both Thome and Howard on the same team, so they had to trade one of them. Perhaps of Howard had failed miserably, they would have had less urgency to trade Thome and they would have been able to better leverage themselves in trade or keep Thome and test his health if they chose to. Across the whole spectrum, filling a need is more important than dealing from versatility; everything on top is more important than everything beneath and everything on the left is better than everything on the right.

-At this point, we can rank trades as they are made. Moving across the boxes immediately above the red line, call the trades A, B, C and D. Therefore, the best trade is one where the team trades from a position of depth and fills a need. Consider the Twins trading A.J. Pierzynski a couple of years ago. Ryan thought Mauer was ready so C became a position of depth. He traded from that position of depth to shore up the back end of the bullpen in acquiring Nathan, who was coming off a solid season as a setup man in San Fran. I’ll revisit this trade again later, but it is easy to see that its reputation matches its ranking. On the other end, the worst trade is one where the team had to trade someone and did not fill a need in return.

-The next level is whether the acquired player(s) succeeded or failed, which could easily alter the previous equation in the long term. If a player who does not fill a need and came over in a necessary trade blows up upon arrival, it obviously becomes better than, say, if Nathan, Bonser and Liriano had all bombed. I’m also ranking the players acquired on when they succeeded. The Nathan/Liriano trade has worked out in the short and long term by immediately providing a closer for several years and giving them a great reliever (starter to be) in Liriano. Having both is certainly the most beneficial, but after that I rank short term success over long term success because the present value is more beneficial than the potential for future value. Think of another recent Twins trade, swapping Matt Lawton for Rick Reed at the deadline in 2001. Reed had a great 2002, but struggled down the stretch in 2001 and could not help the team get in the playoffs. If Reed had flourished and helped the Twins catch the Indians in 2001, he would have easily been worth Lawton, but the delayed gratification makes it more worthwhile. Factor in long term injury risk, player depreciation and escalating salaries as players pass through arbitration, and having short term success is clearly better.

-My original graph had another two-pronged extension on the end of every thread that evaluates whether the player sent in the trade succeeded or failed. In addition to the sour grapes reaction, there is the importance of the lost performance (the A’s would look much worse for trading Tim Hudson if he had won the Cy Young for the Braves). There is also the minor factor of another team having the other player’s performance. Trades do not usually happen within a division, which attests to the fact that teams do not want the players they deal to give their rivals a comparative advantage. Taken this way, there are 32 different types of trades, which we can call A1-8, B1-8, C1-8 and D1-8, but only in the long term. A1 is the best type of trade, one where the team did not have to trade their player, where their return filled a need, the acquisitions succeeded in the short and long term and the player they dealt failed. This entire list describes the Nathan/Liriano trade to a T. The worst type of trade, though, is one where the team did not fill a need in dealing a player they had to deal, where the acquisition did not succeed and the player they dealt succeeded. The worst type of trade would be D8, like the Phillies trading Placido Polanco to free up an IF jam, getting a redundant right handed reliever in return who pitched merely adequately while the team missed the playoffs and Polanco flourished. These things have a funny way of compounding themselves. While Liriano has so far surprisingly overcome his injury history in an otherwise brilliant trade, Ugeth Urbina is on trial for setting people on fire. To recap, trades can be categorized A-D immediately after they are completed for both teams (one team can have an A trade and another a D trade in the same deal), and can be further ranked as 1-8 based on the long term outcomes for all players involved.