Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
December 17, 2007
Flipping Mulder

Melissa Lockard looks at the long term rewards of drafting Mark Mulder.

That is quite a lot for one draft pick, especially when one considers that all of the above-mentioned talent has thus far only cost the A's roughly $20 million over a 10 year span.

Just in case you thought Moneyball was dead.


Posted by David Pinto at 03:10 PM | Players | TrackBack (0)
Comments

They drafted a consensus top-of-the-first-round guy. He developed well (and early). They got a few good years out of him and flipped him for a nice package, including a major league ready SP with a lot of upside. Said SP fulfilled much of that potential, and was flipped for good prospects. What does this have to do with Moneyball? I doubt there's many organizations that couldn't tell a similar story.

And any money saved on this series of drafts and deals was subsequently wasted on Chavez, Kendall, Kotsay, Rhodes, etc.

Posted by: gordon at December 17, 2007 06:58 PM

Seriously, I'd like to hear of another player being turned into so many other good, cheap players. Especially if the new kids pan out.

Geez, Barton has only had a cup of coffee so far and he was a big part of the original trade. What if he and Gonzales both pan out as expected?

Posted by: MH at December 17, 2007 07:32 PM

Right... if the kids pan out. To date, drafting Mulder has resulted in four good years of Mulder, three good years of Haren, two decent years of Calero and a good month of Barton. It was a good draft pick, a good deal, and *maybe* a second good deal. Spend enough time, and I'm sure you could piece together similar series of a draft and trades pulled off by other organizations. These moves by the A's have lots of potential, but I'm not ready to bump the AJ Pierzynski or Heathcliff Slocumb deals off the pedestal yet.

And the Mulder deal wouldn't look nearly as good if Mulder had remained healthy. Maybe the A's had some foresight there, or maybe they just got lucky.

Posted by: gordon at December 17, 2007 09:49 PM
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