Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 19, 2007
Knowns and Unknowns

U.S.S Mariner discusses two ways to look at trades:

1) Each trade should be evaluated on what's known at the time. If a trade turns out much better than expected, or much worse, that shouldn't affect our opinion of the trade.

2) Each trade should be evaluated on the results of the trade. If a trade looks like it's an amazing rip-off, even if at the time everyone acknowledges it as such, but the victim turns out the winner due to unforseen circumstances, the victim's still the victor.

Obviously, in practice it doesn't work out that way. Members of the first camp are willing to concede that results are why you make trades, and members of the second camp might well admit that you make the best deal you can and then it's a bit of a crapshoot.

I tend to use number 1, mostly because my interest in evaluating a trade is at the time it happens. But Zumsteg makes an important point. While any trade might work out good or bad by sheer luck, the long term track record of the GM might give us a clue at the moment of the deal:

Take the Braves. For a long time, the Braves ran up an almost unblemished record of giving up pitching prospects in trades that turned into dogs. Every trade, it would look like they might even have given up too much, and those guys would turn to dust. It starts to look suspect: that they knew so much that they gave up pitchers where they knew the perceived value far exceeded the actual value.

And this is where I think the people grinding an axe about the M's trades in the last... uh, forever... have a good point. As much as we can say that the Garcia-for-Reed trade looked great at the time (and we did, you can look it up), or they got good value dumping guys off left and right during the last three seasons, the total of everything they've received in trade is Mike Morse, Jeremy Reed, and Jon Huber. As a group of trades, you've got to look at that and wince.

So if the Mariners trade Ichiro, the trade might look good on paper, but be aware of Bavasi's track record.


Posted by David Pinto at 07:34 AM | Trades | TrackBack (0)
Comments

This is true of decisionmaking generally - there's always a fight over evaluating decisions based on what's known at the time (or what we think is known at the time) vs. results. It's a recurring issue in politics and in business. Naturally, it's an issue in sports as well.

Posted by: Crank at March 20, 2007 11:28 AM
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