The above link takes you to a recap of the Tampa Bay Rays trade of Matt Garza, Fernando Perez, and a Player to be named later to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for four prospects and outfielder Sam Fuld.
SportsReaction
As has been the case in my last two trade reviews I noted that I didn’t really care about the prospects being exchanged because the players going back to the other teams were young, great, and able to significantly help their new teams now and in the future. With this trade, though, I will be forced to look at the prospects because while Matt Garza is a very valuable player, he’s not on level with the players in those previous reviews (Zack Greinke or Adrian Gonzalez).
Garza is very good though. Take a look at each of his full time seasons (all with the Rays) using traditional statistics, Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), and WAR:
Year | W-L | ERA | K/9 | BB/9 | FIP | WAR |
2008 | 11-9 | 3.70 | 6.24 | 2.88 | 4.14 | 2.9 |
2009 | 8-12 | 3.95 | 8.38 | 3.50 | 4.17 | 3.2 |
2010 | 15-10 | 3.91 | 6.6 | 2.77 | 4.42 | 1.8 |
Garza will be entering his age 27 season in 2011 meaning we can expect improvement from him in the upcoming seasons…and now that he’s going to be pitching in the National League, his raw numbers (K, BB, HR allowed, and ERA) should get a big boost.
But, when adjusted for everything under the sun—including league—as WAR does, Garza doesn’t look like he’s going to be worth anything more than four wins in the coming years--again, very good, but not great. So was it worth it for the Cubs to give up four prospects?
Instead of trying to answer this question by looking at each individual prospect, let’s take a look at them as a group, and how good they are, and make a judgment that way.
Here are the prospects the Cubs traded away, thier basic information and their rank within the Cubs farm system according to Minorleagueball.com (by John Sickels):
Org. Rank | Player | Position | Age | Grade |
#3 | RHP | 22 | B+ | |
#4 | SS | 20 | B | |
#8 | OF | 24 | B- | |
#15 | C | 26 | C+ |
***Also included is 29 year old outfielder Sam Fuld and all of his 155 plate appearances at the Major League level. He successfully cancels out the Fernando Perez, the other player going to the Cubs here.***
When first looking at the ranks of those prospects it’s easy to say the Cubs gave up way too much here—I mean, three of your top ten prospects seems like a lot; but when you look at each of their grades that view changes. None received a grade of A so, in my opinion, they are all “crapshoots.”
And it’s not like Garza is expensive. He won’t be a free agent until after the 2013 season (as per baseball-reference.com) and it's not likely the arbitration process will severely overpay him in that period compared to his value (around $5 MM going rate per win).
This deal was simply the Rays dumping salary as they did by not resigning Carl Crawford, Rafael Soriano, or Carlos Pena. While there is a theory out there that the Rays actually got better with this trade because they will now slot top prospect Jeremy Hellickson into Garza’s old spot, I’m not buying it.
The Cubs made a great deal here by getting a very good, young, inexpensive player, and not giving up any grade A prospects in the process.
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