Dan Haren has reportedly been traded to the Anaheim Angels, for Joe Saunders and three others. Pat Corbin, Rafael Rodriguez, and a player to be named later per one report.
I'm floored, if this is true...
The once exception is if the player to be named later is Mike Trout. If he signed after July 25 of last year (he was a 2009 draftee), he can't be traded yet, and would have to be a player to be named later.
But Saunders has no value, and the other guys in the deal aren't overwhelming. Trout has to be the centerpiece of this deal, or else the D-Backs got screwed.
UPDATE -- Trout signed on July 2, 2009, so he wouldn't have to be a Player to be Named Later to be included in this deal.
UPDATE II -- I went to see where Haren was in FanGraphs' top 50 trade value series, and was surprised to see that he didn't make the cut. Here's Dave Cameron's explanation:
The other name pitcher who didn’t make the cut was Dan Haren. While his ERA is higher than usual this year, his underlying performance shows that he’s still one of the better pitchers in the game, and he’s proven to be a durable workhorse. However, when I talked with folks in MLB about him, the reaction to what they’d give up for him was surprisingly lukewarm.
The main issue that was brought up is that he’s a guy whose best skill is command and has achieved most of his success in the National League. There’s a good amount of skepticism about NL arms without top-shelf stuff, and Haren was lumped into that category. Combine that with his escalating salaries (he’s due $40 million over the next three seasons), and I just couldn’t get anyone in the game to get very excited about giving up premium talent to acquire him.
I was pretty surprised, honestly. He started out in the 30s on my original list, but by the end of the weekend, he just missed the cut. The sense that I got in Anaheim was that guys like us like him more than major league teams do.