Angels Get Worse
Good news for the Mariners today – the Angels have voluntarily made their team worse, sending SS Orlando Cabrera to the White Sox for RHP Jon Garland.
Despite his reputation, Garland is just a generic #4 starter. I’m not sure there’s a team in the AL that needed Jon Garland less than the Angels, who already have a quality rotation and some good young arms in the upper levels of their farm system. Meanwhile, the Angels don’t have any obvious candiates to replace Cabrera at shortstop – Erick Aybar is probably the frontrunner, but that’s a pretty big downgrade for a LAA offense that already had problems scoring runs at times.
This is a nice move by Kenny Williams, giving his team a legitimate major league shortstop and selling high on Garland, who should be easily replaced by any one of the number of decent backend starters the White Sox didn’t have room for before this deal.
The reference to Uggla was based upon a story from one of the Miami-area papers, which said that the Marlins might put Uggla in the deal if it improved the quality/increased the number of players being offered by the Angels. Since Kendrick is a must-have for Florida (so the stories state), Uggla would then replace Kendrick in the lineup at 2B. This is not to value him on a par, just to keep track of all the many moving pieces in a proposed deal like this one.
Since the Garland trade, the Angels now have a surplus of starters, and either Santana or Saunders is considered attractive to the Marlins who need another strong starter, and this might take the number of players from 4 in exchange down to 3.
The Angels could also trade for Tejada for less given up in talent, since the Angels would be taking Tejada’s contract in the deal, saving the Orioles a ton of money for the next two years. Put Figgins at third and Tejada at short, or Tejada at third and Aybar at short. Wood stays in the organization, as does Kendrick, which makes the cost (Adenhart and Saunders or Santana for Tejada) easier to swallow for the long term.
As for OC, he was beloved as an Angel, but realistically he wasn’t expected to repeat his 2007 season and I doubt he was going to be re-signed by the team. This was his maximum value, and as such represents a chance to make a series of moves which lead to adding other players to the team.
I don’t get this depth angle….are we to believe that because the Angels added depth to their back end, they can now afford to trade an arm from the top of their rotation?
To me this just screams of deciding that Colon isn’t coming back and making replacing him with another “proven” name a top priority. In other words, the Angels overvalued Garland and created another hole in the mistaken belief they were plugging one that everybody seems to believe is the most important in the universe…
Even if the Garland deal is a precursor, it is still a bad deal. If you sell your old car because you plan on getting a new car but only get 75% of its value in return, it is a bad deal no matter how good of a deal you get on the new car.
Ya know, for us wanna-be GM’s, this is a really a good exercise.
I fully admit that I have not been able to find any good info (not small sample size) on the defense ability at SS for Figgins, Wood, Izturis, Aybar, or Kendrick…but I can not imagine that some combination of these guys – possibly with the addition of a Wilson Valdez type who can be found cheap – would be cost more than 3 wins per year versus having O. Cabrera at SS. Now is Garland worth 3 wins over Moseley or whoever would have been the 4th starter…certainly not.
HOWEVER, if you can now package a young pitcher or three with one or more of the position players above and get M.Cabrera or H. Ramirez or even a J. Santana or Kazmir or other young stud pitcher…I think you have improved your team a lot more than 3 wins…
From Baseball America:
Even after trading away Cabrera the Angels have several options at shortstop with Erick Aybar, Maicer Izturis and Brandon Wood. To pick up a middle-of-the-rotation starter like Garland is an impressive haul. The White Sox pick up Cabrera just a week and a half after signing incumbent Juan Uribe to a one-year deal. The Cabrera trade means that Uribe will either be moving to second base or will become a trade chip for a future deal.
well if baseball america said it….. it’s amazing how being drunk on pitchin impairs the intellect…