FanPost

Peavy and Trading for #1 Starters

 

Based on the discussion of trading for Peavy, it seems that people broke out into maybe four categories:

1) No – I like our prospects better.

2) No – the Rangers aren’t close enough where one player is going to make the difference (I’m in this).

3) Yes – we need a #1 starter.

4) Yes – but tweak the trade a bit and give the Padres lesser prospects.

 

My comment was - look at Seattle and what happened to them when they traded for an ace* without truly being competitive.  Contrast that to the Mets, Brewers and D-Backs.  Which got me thinking – what might be the effect of trading for an ace?

 

(The word “ace” is used in a general sense.  I don’t care if you think player X is not a true “ace.”)

 

Spurdy-nasty already compared the performance of #1s to the prospects given, but what about the teams?  He had already provided a list of #1s obtained with prospects, so I figured I’d look at the teams in general.  So I looked at three years prior to the acquisition of the ace and when available, three years after to see if there was any trend, an up-tick in the record.  This would be for Seattle-Bedard 08; Mets-Santana 08; D-Backs-Haren 08; Boston-Beckett 06; Cards-Mulder 05; Braves-Hudson 05.  Here they are:

 

Team    08         07         06         05         04         03         02

M's    61-101 88-74    78-84    69-53

Mets  89-73   88-74    97-65    83-79

AZ      82-80   90-72    76-86    77-85

RSox 95-67   96-66    86-76    95-67   98-64    95-67

Cards             78-84    83-78   100-62 105-57   85-77    97-65

Braves            84-78    79-83    90-72   96-66   101-61  101-59

 

Nothing discernible.  Now, for each player and team there’s a different story.  Bedard and Mulder were injured, but isn’t that one of the risks?  D-Backs bad offense finally showed up in the record.  Braves probably had already started their downward trend before getting Hudson.  But we have six aces on six different teams so that should be a big enough sample to see something so I just combined the teams’ win-loss records for three years before acquiring the ace to the teams performance after for three years (when available). 

 

Before getting the ace, their combined records were 1619-1295 or a .55559 winning percentage.  After getting their ace, their records were 1023-920 for a .52561 winning percentage.  Even if you remove Seattle’s abysmal 2008, the after-winning percentage is still .54015.

 

With this limited sample, it doesn’t appear that adding an ace adds many wins.  Of course I’m not saying that it makes a team worse but maybe the benefits aren’t as dramatic as one would think.  Maybe this just reinforces spurdynasty’s results that show the win-shares gained are often exceeded by those lost.  I’m sure you could throw various other traded aces into the mix and get a somewhat different result but I simply used these players because spurdynasty had and I had no idea what the result would be.

 

However, the records of the individual teams might provide a rationale behind trading for an ace.  I think there are three teams that acquired the ace to provide the incremental boost to get them over the hump – Seattle (misguided as it was), Mets and D-Backs.  The other rationale is to maintain a level of competition and/or provide an incremental boost for short-series competition – Red Sox, Cards and Atlanta (maybe the D-Backs could fit into this category as well).  What we don’t see are any teams that haven’t been competitive or over .500 which makes me wonder if there’s any reason to even discuss the Rangers trading for an ace.