Falvey's Deadline Deals: Winners, Losers, and Nothingburgers

I'd agree with your assessment on these. Not really a whole lot to be proud of on any of them. Romo was ok for a little while, but he was just about toast when we got him. Fulmer wasn't anything special. Decent, that's all. The rest were losers. Falvey needs to do better. 

Good article.  Well researched and thought out.  Falvey needs to do much better in the trade department.

The issue I have with this is you are only using comparison bWAR, which is a poor way to assess a trade.  Specifically, look at the Mahle for Steer and CES trade.  Steer has decent bWAR, but we do not know if he would have had a chance to put up that bWAR with Twins.  He is limited on defense to either 2nd, 1st, or LF for most part.  At the time, Polanco was starter at 2nd, Arraez was 1st base/LF guy, really similar defense profile to Steer.  Miranda was 1st/DH guy coming doing good rookie year.  AK was still thought to be possible 1st base when healthy, and DH/LF was Larnach, Wallner on prospect list, and Nick Gordon was doing okay filling in left.  Also, in minors we had Julien, Lee, and Martin who were ranked high prospects than Steer.  

Would Steer have even made our 40 man?  Who was he going to clearly be ahead of?  Yes, as things played out he may have been able to do 2nd or 1st last year because of injuries and the like, or some LF too.  However, that is not certain.  Same is for many of the other position players that were traded in these deals, we have no clue how much they would have played for us, because you need to see who they would have played instead of. 

Yeah, overall we have not got a ton of our "buying" moves, but most of them were not big time moves where we gave up big time prospects either.  The worst and what was the biggest swing was Lopez.  He as having career year at the time and we overpaid for a guy that made transition to pen and was doing great.  That is the only one where we could use Cano, who figured it out in Baltimor and Pavich right now.  Outside of those 2 I am not sure anyone else would make contributions much at MLB level for us.  

Only 2 of those trade were really significant in terms of cost to us.  Lopez and Mahle trades.  I cant fault the Mahle trade at all.  it was a solid trade with prospects that were redundant in our system.  

On Jaime Garcia trade we should also include the sell since we only kept him that one start so the return on trading him should also count against what we gave up to get him.  

Not going to worry about the order.  It doesn't matter.  This is completely embarrassing.  And unacceptable.

I think it’s smart to note that deadline sellers overwhelmingly win the WAR game thanks to duration. The Twins could have a 10+ WAR swing in the Nelson Cruz trade for Joe Ryan when it’s all said and done, but the trade from the Rays side will always make sense when trying to win that year, The bigger question is does the asset brought in fulfill the role needed IMO. 

I think it’s also important to address that 40 man crunch candidates that we have offloaded in trades have resulted in some of the guys in the article being shipped out. The Falvey era has led to an infusion of major league quality players on the farm and that has made the 40 man discussions that much harder in recent years. Even looking at MLB Pipeline’s Top 30, that is a deep list of good players that we can’t possibly fit on a 40 man. Leveraging those tweeners from our depth helps a lot with these trades but also is a necessity of the prospect development improvement of the Falvey era.

Wait, wasn't the Joe Ryan for Nelson Cruz deal also a trade deadline deal? Edit, nevermind, the article is only about the twins buying at the deadline. All of the trades made sense at the time- I liked the Mahle trade quite a bit. Obviously it didn't turn out the way the twins wanted purely bc Mahle couldn't stay healthy. 

2 hours ago, Trov said:

The issue I have with this is you are only using comparison bWAR, which is a poor way to assess a trade.  Specifically, look at the Mahle for Steer and CES trade.  Steer has decent bWAR, but we do not know if he would have had a chance to put up that bWAR with Twins.  He is limited on defense to either 2nd, 1st, or LF for most part.  At the time, Polanco was starter at 2nd, Arraez was 1st base/LF guy, really similar defense profile to Steer.  Miranda was 1st/DH guy coming doing good rookie year.  AK was still thought to be possible 1st base when healthy, and DH/LF was Larnach, Wallner on prospect list, and Nick Gordon was doing okay filling in left.  Also, in minors we had Julien, Lee, and Martin who were ranked high prospects than Steer.  

Would Steer have even made our 40 man?  Who was he going to clearly be ahead of?  Yes, as things played out he may have been able to do 2nd or 1st last year because of injuries and the like, or some LF too.  However, that is not certain.  Same is for many of the other position players that were traded in these deals, we have no clue how much they would have played for us, because you need to see who they would have played instead of. 

Yeah, overall we have not got a ton of our "buying" moves, but most of them were not big time moves where we gave up big time prospects either.  The worst and what was the biggest swing was Lopez.  He as having career year at the time and we overpaid for a guy that made transition to pen and was doing great.  That is the only one where we could use Cano, who figured it out in Baltimor and Pavich right now.  Outside of those 2 I am not sure anyone else would make contributions much at MLB level for us.  

WAR is an incomplete story, agreed.  It is hard to say what Steer or Enc-Strand would have done with the Twins.  However it is also incomplete in another way... Steer is likely going to double or triple his current WAR going forward, as he looks like a long term part of the Reds plans.  Thus, this trade will only look worse with time..

42 minutes ago, Greggory Masterson said:

I understand this criticism, and the reason I added a writeup and additional statistics like playing time is because I don't believe WAR is the singular best way to evaluate the trades. However, I'm not fully on board with the "he was blocked" defense. Yes, Steer would have trouble cracking Minnesota's roster, but he still was a valuable trade chip that could have been part of a package for any number of assets. In the end, he was traded for Mahle, so those two should be compared. In another world, Steer could have been traded for someone better or worse than Mahle. Just because he was blocked doesn't mean we can write off his value to other teams is what I'm trying to say.

I fully agree Steer could have been used in potential other trade, and sucks Mahle got hurt right away for us.  However, without knowing what other options there were with Steer hard to determine that as well. 

59 minutes ago, Road trip said:

WAR is an incomplete story, agreed.  It is hard to say what Steer or Enc-Strand would have done with the Twins.  However it is also incomplete in another way... Steer is likely going to double or triple his current WAR going forward, as he looks like a long term part of the Reds plans.  Thus, this trade will only look worse with time..

Steer may or may not be part of Reds long term plan.  He is getting at bats, but still not locked into a position.  He has played half LF and half 1B mainly.  I disagree with the claim the trade will only look worse as time passes, unless you are only looking at WAR.  You need to also remember, Steer was not on 40 man that year, he would have had to be put on 40 man the next year, which may have cost a different prospect.  Additionally, if we keep Steer and he does what he is doing, slightly above average hitter, do we feel different players are tradable then?  Would we trade Julien away, and what if Julien turns out to be the better player down the road, unless the player or players we get in return of Julien int he hypothetical were that much better would it have been better to keep Steer.  Each move affects other moves.  If we keep Steer and CES, and do not trade them elsewhere, do we lose them in rule 5, do we lose someone else in rule 5, or do we trade away a different player to allow them to get playing time, or do we just leave them in AAA? 

I am not saying we clearly got the raw end of the trade being we almost nothing from Mahle, but my point is to say the trades on the list were bad because we got less bWAR from the players coming versus going out is not a good way to evaluate a trade as a whole. I used Steer as an example because he has been the most productive for a guy we sent out mostly. 

I can understand the Mahle & Jorge Lopez trades, There was no way to know that Lopez would turn out the way he did, This FO seems to have the bad luck of getting damaged goods. Aren't they examining them well enough? At the deadline, it always seems like a seller's market & with the new post-season format, there are a lot more buyers than sellers. IMO the selection is poor & very expensive. To be buyers you have to be very smart to find that hidden jewel & very lucky. Since it's a seller's market, IMO we can unload our rentals & still be a better team. Use that money to pick up a high-end SP & or RP rental.

2 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

While I agree with the general idea here, that 2022 Twins team finished with 78 wins. Billy Hamilton, Caleb Hamilton, Tim Beckham, Mark Contreras, Kyle Garlick, Jake Cave, Gilberto Celestino, and Jermaine Palacios were getting ABs for that team (plus a few horrible catchers, but Steer obviously wouldn't have taken those ABs). There were chances to get Steer looks on that team if he hadn't been traded. Then going into 2023 they likely don't sign Donovan Solano as a 1B/2B option because Steer is taking those ABs. Jordan Luplow, Andrew Stevenson, and Kyle Garlick got ABs for the Twins last year. 

I agree that simply looking at WAR can distort things because of opportunity, but I don't agree with the idea that the Twins had no place for Spencer Steer. He would have made the 40-man in September of 2022 if he were still with the Twins and would've taken Solano's 450 PAs last year. That doesn't make it unreasonable to trade him, but he would've had a role with the Twins pretty easily.

In regards tot he 2022 numbers, assuming we would have added him to 40 man and called up in September, if he had similar numbers, Steer slashed .211/.306/.632 for OPS+ of 74.  Guessing that would not have added much wins for us.  Assuming he does replace Solano on the 2023 roster, again not clear that would have happened being we had other guys on roster ranked ahead of him on prospect list as well.  Lets assume he would have broke camp and got all the at-bats Solano got. Steer would have produced more offense, as he had more slugging and much more HR, but he got on base less often, and his defense was worse.  Overall, it would have been net gain, but not a huge increase.  Additionally, we do not know how this would have affected other moves the team made.  Maybe Julien never gets a call up because Steer is playing instead if he is on team, and he had higher OPS+ then Steer last year.  Would Steer have been possible upgrade last year over who we used, possible, but would we have just went with him out of camp like Reds did, doubtful. There is good chance he would have stayed in AAA all year, depending what he was doing down there. 

it makes me sad that we are always looking for the Berrio type if pitcher and Arraez type of hitter.  SWR probably won't be a Berrios but maybe.  Austin Martin to me could go either way.  Arraez for Pablo is starting to look ominous.  I understand they didn't want go wait and get nothing on Berrios but I have to think if they wanted they could have figure it out.

As for this year I hope they don't let one of our good players go.  It is still very possible to catch Cleveland and then getting a starting pitcher is necessary but I wish they could buy a player.  

If they can't win the ALC they will probably play NYY in the first round and that would not be worth a player of value.

How come u didn't mention the trade that sent Nelson Cruz to Tampa for joe Ryan. That was definitely a good trade and was a deadline deal

4 hours ago, Greggory Masterson said:

Garcia was a difficult one--I have a separate list with his sell included, but it's not relevant to the Twins this year, because they will almost assuredly not be sellers. But I wanted to evaluate the moves in isolation, whether they made a good move for Garcia in the first place

Yes but with Garcia you kind of have to because he was only here a week and then traded.  We ended up in the playoffs so that trade could technically be a buy trade.  You still have to consider what we got vs what we gave up.  And I forget what we got when we traded Garcia away but we need to include that when considering the trade to get him to begin with 

With the new playoff format I don’t view the trade deadline as the best way to fill holes. Supply is less and demand is greater. IMO it makes last off season an even bigger bungle as we had opportunities but just screwed it up. 

I wasn't a big fan of the Lopez trade. Mostly due to lack of a track record of success. But that was a big need on the team, so I get it. I liked the Mahle trade a lot and if another Mahle type is available the deadline I'd be all for doing that type of trade again. How many 1B, DH and LF prospects do we need? Povich may turn out to be a back-end starter. That may be the one guy that stings a little.

I'll take a starter, even with injury worries, for blocked prospect 10 time out of 10.

The rest seem like depth trades, No Andew Millers on that list.

On 7/5/2024 at 12:42 PM, SwainZag said:

On the other hand SWR has been better in less innings than Berrios at only 23 years old.  Berrios leads the league in HR allowed this year, while his K/9 has shrunk to 6.4.  On top of that, he's owed $85 million over the next 4 years. 

Berrios give 6-7 solid inning each start.  He also has been injury free.  They have the money!