Athletics & Braves & Brewers
Submitted by: honey badger
Athletics
| Name | Age | Level | P1 | P2 | Availability | Years | AFV | Salary | Surplus | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Muller | 24 | Majors | SP | LHRP | Low | 6 | 11.4 | 4.3 | 7.1 | 5.7 | 7.1 | 8.5 |
| Esteury Ruiz | 23 | Majors | OF | Medium | 6 | 5.6 | 0.7 | 4.9 | 3.9 | 4.9 | 5.9 | |
| Royber Salinas | Minors | RHP | 2.5 | 2 | 2.5 | 3 | ||||||
| Freddy Tarnok | Minors | RHP | 2.2 | 1.8 | 2.2 | 2.6 | ||||||
| Devin Williams | 27 | Majors | RHRP | Low | 3 | 55.9 | 22.4 | 33.5 | 26.8 | 33.5 | 40.3 |
Total Value:
50.2
Braves
| Name | Age | Level | P1 | P2 | Availability | Years | AFV | Salary | Surplus | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sean Murphy | 27 | Majors | C | Low | 3 | 75.8 | 24.5 | 51.3 | 41 | 51.3 | 61.5 |
Total Value:
51.3
Brewers
| Name | Age | Level | P1 | P2 | Availability | Years | AFV | Salary | Surplus | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| William Contreras | 24 | Majors | C | Medium | 5 | 56.2 | 18.8 | 37.3 | 29.9 | 37.3 | 44.8 | |
| Joel Payamps | 28 | Majors | RHRP | High | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Total Value:
37.3
Comments
70This is the actual trade after you swap Williams (33.5 value) with Pina (-2.2 value). Brewers would have to send the A's 35M to "even it out" and the trade was still not accepted. Good job Oakland.
Thanks for posting. Williams is not in the deal, so he's only included here to represent the gap in values. This is baffling for Oakland. We've seen them use different models before, but this is quite a stretch. There isn't a player coming back to them that profiles as a lead piece -- only secondaries.
It's like they're using the OOTP trade simulator with the sliders maxed to Favor Rookies...
John Fisher going full "Major League" to move the A's to Las Vegas is just about the only rational explanation I can come up with. This must be infuriating for Oakland fans. :(
Ugh.
this is really unbelievable. I'm sorry man. I'd tell you to go burn down the stadium, but then the terrorists would win.
I do believe they will rue this trade.
You are probably the most confused person on here... I actually feel like the A's are going to try and get a WC spot in 23/24... Though your GM put his job on the line with this deal...
The A's are worse that last season and need to make up about 30 games in the standings. It's going to be a while.
I'm not going to disagree but they wanted guys who are MLB ready for Murphy... Something tells me they want to speed up the timeline more than make sense on paper...
Confused? No. Disappointed? Yes. And if Forst wants to contend for a WC spot in 23/24 then he should have either kept Murphy or traded him for better players.
Starting to feel like Major League here. Owner trying to kill attendance so they can move to a new city.
I'm not sure Billy Beane should be running a club anymore. He has traded A LOT away in the last 2 years, and they don't have much to show for it. This is an awful, awful return. Holy hell.
For the record, this one's on David Forst. He's the guy running the A's now.
Mr. Oatmeal, Billy stepped into an advisor role earlier in the offseason. I wonder how much, if any, influence he had on this deal.
SELL THE TEAM
Great work adding Williams to the deal. I tried to run it with the Brewers just paying Oakland 30M but the system doesn't allow that. What an incredible move for the Brewers. And this doesn't even factor in the chances the brewers vaunted catching defense development system can turn Contreras into a playable catcher!
If this is Oakland's final get for Murphy, Cleveland front office should take turns kicking each other in the a$$. Then open it to the public !
Funny, the A's have caused a net negative effect on a dozen teams that weren't even involved in the trade. Haha!
Rays front office too
Wow Oakland must have lost its mind this is a terrible return. Could be one of the worst trades I've ever seen initially.
The Athletics ownership and management went down to the Haight Ave and Ashbury Ave corner to buy some LSD. While on their acid trip, they have great trade vision. They made a mega-trade then they realized it was a bad acid trip.
How is there one down-vote for the Brewers? That person needs to be banned from this site permanently (kidding) for not understanding how this works? Hahaha.
Two thoughts: 1) It's David Forst. 2) They may have not read the comments explaining that Williams is not really part of the deal.
So Oakland demanded Nootbaar, Donovan and gracefo from cards which is like 80 value total and instead get back this shit sandwich
I would love to know what offers they rejected. I would have been embarrassed to even propose this trade as my initial offer. John, Grover and all other A’s fans - I’m really sorry.
Thanks. This is a double L.
Thank you for your condolences.
I am sorry too for Oakland fans. Just think that they wanted Espino plus from the Guardians.
Brewers obviously the big winner here since they gave up nothing of value. Braves did well turning Contreras and spare parts into Murphy. However, I don't really get the need for the braves to do this using valuable trade chips to upgrade at a position they already had covered when they still have holes at short and LF. Braves must be pretty confident they are signing Swanson or Correa to do this IMO.
I am happy that the Cards signed Contreras, but definitely preferred Murphy. It will be a long time before Mozeliek or Girsch deals with them again. Not sure what the Brewers brought to the table here to get Contreras.
I don't think MIL is getting enough credit. Considering who they gave up for what they got back, this is an absolute STEAL for them
MIL doesn't get credit for stealing from a begging blind man. We all see they got an absolute STEAL from Oakland. The question we all want answered is why did Oakland demand a great return from St. Louis and then settle for such an awful return from MIL/ATL?
What is the story about Justin Yeager? Does he have value, as he was not in the equation above.
0.8 -- not a needle mover.
thanks One odd thing about this deal is A's getting Pina. The A's got Vogt last year for about 850K. Why take Pina at 4+ million, when there will be some veteran catcher come late Jan, looking for a deal, and you do not need to add them to the 40 man roster until the end of spring training, if you do it right. Hell, you could likely get Pina as Atlanta wants to DFA him.
I think it's less about the A's and more about the Braves. The Braves likely wanted Pina in the deal. Typically, a negative value like his results in more prospect capital, but the entire trade lacks prospect capital so I don't know.
I tried to put this together to post on the site when it was first reported, but the system obviously wouldn’t take the proposal. How Milwaukee pulled this off is astonishing. However, Contreras seems like another poor defense, all bat player for the Brew Crew (Braun, Fielder, Weeks, Hiura, etc.)
Brewers are confusing! They get rid of Renfroe, Wong, Hader... I'm thinking they are in rebuild mode shooting for 3 to 4 years from being a contender... then THIS?! They got one foot in rebuild and one foot in win now. They are confused! I can respect the Nationals for being full send rebuild. But the Brewers just don't make any sense!
They must be crazy high on Esteury Ruiz, because I don't see how this makes any sense for Oakland. It's not even a "quantity instead of quality" return. The best player going back to Oakland is either Ruiz, who relies on insane BABIP numbers in the minors, Muller, who is a AAAA player at best, or Royber Salinas who legitimately has no idea where the baseball is going when it leaves his hands. Not that I feel bad for Oakland. But imagine not even getting the second best player in the trade.
Maybe they see him as the second coming of Rickey Henderson with his power and elite speed. I do think it is amusing they were asking for 2 players who were individually better than Murphy and controllable for longer using WAR from Cleveland, at which point they said no and ended up with this mess.
What players were they asking for from Cleveland?
I confused Cleveland with the Cardinals. Also, it turns out that the players were Nootbaar (2.2 WAR last season), Donovan (4.1 WAR last season), AND Gordon Graceffo (top 100), with the following numbers last season in the minors 2.97 3.23 26 26 0 1 0 0 139.1 103 50 46 17 28 0 139 5 1 9 544 0.940 6.7 1.1 1.8 9.0 4.96. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/12/sean-murphy-trade-rumors-athletics-asking-price-nootbaar-donovan-cardinals.html I am not sure when this was, but here is the quote: "Per Goold, the Athletics’ ask in talks with the Cardinals included outfielder Lars Nootbaar, third-place Rookie of the Year finisher Brendan Donovan, and a near-MLB pitching prospect such as Gordon Graceffo."
It still doesn't make sense though. Assuming they are high on Esteury Ruiz, they should still ask for and get an additional major piece (or two) like Frelick, Weimer, Turang, or Mitchell. They can literally trade these players that they don't want for someone else. And if the A's don't value catchers like the rest of the league does, WHY DO THEY KEEP DRAFTING CATCHERS?! This trade cannot be defended.
Why would the A's be asking for anything more from the Brewers though? They sent one pitcher with negligible value to Milwaukee in this deal... if the Brewers were including anything else, it would/should be going to Atlanta... and it definitely wouldn't be TWO from the group you listed. The A's didn't extract the value from the Braves that they needed to. Milwaukee definitely wins though, as they probably could have justified sending Ruiz and another prospect to ATL for Contreras alone.
Because gap is between the A's and the Brewers (Williams is in the above version to represent that gap, as the model wouldn't allow it otherwise. He's not really in the deal.)
Athletics gave up 51.1M in value and received 14.5M. (36.6M loss) Braves gave up 49.1M in value and received 51.1M. (2M gain) Brewers gave up 2.2M in value and received 37.3M (35.1M gain) If you're going strictly off the numbers here, the Brewers owe the A's roughly 35M in prospect value. Frelick has the highest value at only 22.8M, which is still 12.2M shy.
It’s worse than the trade value gap. The A’s didn’t receive a single player who profiles as a good everyday player if he fully develops. That’s shocking.
Brewers got totally blessed here
I agree they're probably pretty high on Ruiz, he's undervalued here because of the rule changes, but still.
It’s gotta be the pitching, Forst must be higher on Muller, Tarnok & Salinas then their represented values here. These three have to all work out. For Atlanta, trading Muller feels a lot like trading Waters….eghhhh
If Forst values these pitchers much higher, he still should have gotten at least one of the Brewers top prospects (or a combination of prospects). The trade would still be "fair" from the Brewers perspective, and everyone else's. The only way it makes sense is if EVERY team values these pitchers higher. But, if that's the case, the Braves just massively overpaid for Murphy. And that doesn't make sense either. It's like there was a buy two, get two free sale on prime rib at the grocery store. They paid for two prime rib, but opted to pass on the two free prime rib because they only went to the store to get two.
Oh, don't confuse me for defending this trade. It's hilariously terrible. I'm genuinely curious to see which player they thought was the "big fish" here.
Reality check! You need to add at least one high-value player to the other side of this trade for it to be accepted, and make sure there’s not too many.
Indeed.
Braves upgraded at C with d'Arnaud being age 34 and 8M , Braves hold option in 2024. Murphy is 28 and entering ABR 1. Sort of comparable to Olson (younger, less money) replacing Freeman. Maybe better too. Contreras was collateral damage. Murphy for Contreras ,really, in that tandem of C, DH. I am not sure about SS signing. Might not be relevant. Maybe you are right on. It does feel like they have something else up their sleeve.
I want to caution a lot of you by saying you may have too much faith in this site's ability to accurately calculate value for pitching prospects that aren't big fish. The Hader, Montas, and this trade have all had questionable value returns primarily with these lower valued pitchers. Looking at those trades leads me to believe that there is an issue with how this site calculates the value of lower-mid level pitching prospects, specifically with Oakland and Milwaukee. It's also very likely is that there is so much variance around MLB on how each team views pitching, it would make it a total crapshoot for any site being able to accurately predict values on these types of prospects. This isn't me defending the trade; the returns look bad. However, this site has recently had mismatched value with these types of pitching prospects with 2 of the 3 teams involved in this trade.
John can defend his site better than I, but I don't recall the site struggling with industry trades recently. The problem here is Oakland. Oakland didn't get a single top 100 prospect in this deal, let alone the top 25 prospect many expected. Even if the site did struggle valuing pitching prospects (and I don't think it does), there is just too much of a value gap in this deal to make up because it doesn't have a headliner. This trade has been panned by every sports site I've been to as well. BTV's methodology isn't the problem here.
Thanks for the feedback -- always appreciated. Respectfully, though, I'm having a hard time following you here. The pitching prospects in this deal came from the Braves, who gave up about as much value as they got. That's not where the issue was. The problem is that the Brewers got 5 years of an all-star catcher, plus two throw-ins, and only gave up Ruiz. That means the problem is that the A's overvalued Ruiz relative to the industry consensus. The Hader deal was pretty close, and there have been a whole bunch of other trades involving pitching prospects that were fair according to our model as welll. So I'm not seeing evidence that there's a problem there. I am, however, seeing lots of evidence that the A's general valuation models are out of sync with ours (and the industry's as a whole).
I did a pretty poor job of explaining my point, but it's basically that there is mismatch with this model and Oakland, particularly with these types of pitchers. I incorrectly thought Royber Salinas was a Brewers prospect, so the Brewers being included as a mismatched team is probably wrong. I still can't wrap my head around why the Brewers took Lamet just to immediately DFA him.
As a Brewers fan, I still can't believe the deal. Kept hitting refresh even after Passan said it was finalized. Here is the really amazing thing. After not winning the outright deal for Murphy, GM Arnold pivots to Braves because both sides know that the Braves have lost leverage on trading Contreras AND THEN he still gets a RP from BOTH sides. I am guessing that OAK must be in love with Ruiz but to have the 'stones' to ask for additional players back is just mind boggling. I am giddy with excitement.
As much as I hate seeing Oakland (seemingly) get burned in this trade, I'd love to know what happened behind the scenes. Do they just love Ruiz that much and see something everyone else doesn't? Did they play their hand too hard and burn bridges (I wouldn't think so for a player of Murphy's caliber)? Wasn't Atlanta out of the running? How did they get back in and with this deal? Fingers crossed the A's are right in their evals of these players and it works out for them.
I was thinking the same thing. I'd love to find out the breakdown of this trade and how it came to fruition from all three perspectives. I do think the A's lost badly in this trade, but there's a incredibly small chance this could be one of the first moves made with a different valuation model, like Moneyball. But even if that is the case, they still should have asked for more. As unlikely as it is, imagine looking back on this trade in five years if this changes everything again.
Exactly on that last point. This is a trade to keep in mind as we move forward to see how it actually shook out for all parties involved in the years to come. Something tells me Oakland will make out better than it all seems right now.
Braves fan here. We love Wild Bill, but this is a sell-high move by AA, in a year with new rules that will make sending Contreras out behind the plate every day even more challenging. He threw out 14% of base runners last year, and while he made progress for sure behind the plate (Sal Fasano is an incredible C coach), he’s really a DH that can catch. Ironically, in that way he pairs much better with Murphy than d’Arnaud does, but TDA wasn’t too far off of Contreras’ wRC+. On the bat side, I worry about the Ks with Contreras as he gets more everyday at-bats. I certainly agree all around that I would have preferred that we extract more value…but if this is Contreras’ peak value, converting him and arms we won’t ever use for Murphy is good business.
NEWSLETTER? SURE, SIGN ME UP!
someone make it make sense
The answer is: Matt Arnold is a genius.
Better Call Saul couldn't defend this level of stupidity.
I proposed a 3 team trade yesterday that would have been so much more equitable between the A's, Angels and the Tigers. The Tigers could have at least sent the A's a hell of a lot better pitching options than they got from the Braves. The Cards must be really steamed and the Brewers must be over the moon. This is mind boggling to try to comprehend.
Good job Matt Arnold!