Aggregate 2: The Attack of the Clones

For those of you who haven’t read Moneyball, an extremely entertaining book about exploiting market inefficiencies (who knew economics could be fun?), there is a moment where William Beane talks about replacing players. Now baseball traditionalism, an autonomous collective governed by an anonymous panel of insiders, much like that movie Skulls or the American government (was that too scathing for a sports blog?), suggests that when you trade a player, who does perchance exceed your payroll expectations, said player should parlay into a player of equal or better value in return (run-on sentence?). In other words/lay man’s terms, if you trade some dude, the (main) dude you get back, should be, like, good and stuff. William says this is not the case. Rather, the aggregate should replace the traded player.

To use the Star Trek model, we’ll take an example then an analogy… The Cleveland Native Americans trade Carsten Charles Sabathia. Trading a very good pitcher, whose value was boosted by a bullshit award based on wins, should net you something valuable in return, no? Enter his almighty Matt Laporta. The guy can frickin’ hit (career .285/.382./577 in the minors), but how can his mere 210 lbs. replace Sabathia’s 670 lbs. of Cy Young-winning fastball? Well…there were some other people involved—namely Zach Jackson (a #5 starter or a long reliever), Rob Bryson (reliever with 11.45 K/9 in the minors, who could become the overvalued “closer”), and a player to be named later. Of the rumored four PTBNLs, two have been made public—Michael Brantley (CF with a .399 career OBP in the minors) and Taylor Green (a slugging 3^rd basemen, who would become a Jeff Kent type 2^nd basemen). When you put Laporta, Jackson, Bryson and Brantley or Green together, does not the total, the aggregate, replace monsieur Carsten Sabathia? 4 average-to-decent players for one very good player. For Star Trek fans, it’s like a math problem. You’ve got 10 and you trade 10 for 5+3+3+4. 5 isn’t better than 10, but 5+3+3+4=15. 15>10. I took collegiate mathematics. The aggregate of 15 is more valuable than the singularity of 10.

Now, after that painstaking, protracted preface, we come to my true subject—Matt Holliday. The guy probably won’t take the hometown discount; he’s probably looking for a huge contract—and for good reason. The most valuable left fielder in baseball should be paid a lot of money. His 5+ years/$100 mil+, however, is out of the Rockies price range. Hence, that contract, which expires at the end of 2009, will only help the Rockies, in their business endeavors, for so long. In our milieu, sport is a business and wins are its currency.

How many wins can we extract from Holliday? Well, I, the preeminent authority on all of existence, am here to tell you. Just joking—my theory is that Holliday will win us more games if he is not a Rockie. Confusing? Heck, frickin’ yes.

Back to the aggregate, which was my subject about 80 paragraphs ago—Holliday will leave the Rockies. It's inevitable. It’s about time we got something good for him instead of watching him walk away—just walk away with your lives.

Adam Dunn is but 28-years of oldness. He is approximately 2 months older than Holliday. He is approximately .004 worse than Holliday in terms of career EqA. Ergo, he is approximately not much worse than Holliday at hitting. But he approximately seems much worse because of Holliday’s batting average. Dunn also will, in free agency, be valued approximately as much as Holliday is in his current contract ($9.5 mil/yr). So… if you trade Holliday, and sign Dunn for about 4 years (up to his dropoff in production years—32+), you get good prospects for Holliday and you pay about the same price for his replacement. Yes, Dunn is a lesser fielder. And, yes, Dunn is a slightly lesser hitter. But does not the aggregate replace Holliday? For Holliday you could get ace starting pitchers, great hitters, lockdown relievers, whatever. And, on top of that, you still have Dunn getting on base at a .380 clip, hitting 40 homers, and, for you situational hitting enthusiasts, posting 100 RsBI. None of the replacement Keanu Reeves (players) is as good as Holliday, but with all of them combined (Dunn + whatever good prospects you’d get for 6 years at a discount price), you have something more valuable than but one Big Daddy. You've got future talent and a Big Donkey.