The Freddy Garcia Trade One Year Later

I stumbled across an old comment posted by my old WSI friend Flight regarding the purported success of the Freddy Garcia acquisition which altered the direction of the franchise last summer and decided to write a series of blog entries reexamining the move. At the time of the trade and in the following months I was extremely outspoken in opposition of the deal, creating dissension which eventually led to my partially voluntary exile from WSI. My criticism of the trade centered around the following issues 1) Jeremy Reed should have been untouchable. While no player is actually untouchable (certainly Reed should have been available for Mark Prior or Joe Mauer) I held the opinion that due to Reed's status as one of the 5 or so top prospects in the game (Baseball Prospectus rated Reed baseball's second best prospect behind Mauer heading into the 2004 season) and readiness to play at the major league level it was unacceptable to peddle Reed in a standard deadline deal. Including Olivo in the deal who was hitting .270/.316/.496 at the time meant the Sox were trading away two future starters and quite possibly two future all-stars for that matter. While Michael Morse did not appear to have a future as bright as Reed and Olivo it seemed unnecessary to include him as a throw in. In short, I believed the team parted with too much young talent and my hopes of transitioning to a young team centered around Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Reed, and Olivo were dashed. 2) The club further overpaid by dealing for Garcia at the peak of his value and paying for a top of the rotation starter when Garcia would more closely represent a number two starter once he left the cavernous dimensions of Safeco Field and regressed to his career norms. 3) By trading two and possibly three future fixtures in the lineup for a pitcher signed only through the remainder of the season, the Sox took on too large of a risk. Unless the team won the World Series the entire deal would be for naught as Garcia could have just as easily been signed in the off season for the price of a first round draft pick (who turned out to be Lance Broadway) at the absolute most. The best approach to winning a World Series is to build a strong team with relatively young, inexpensive players tied into long term deals who will be in contention every season barring catastrophe. Since five and seven game playoff series are largely based on luck, going all out in an attempt to succeed in the playoffs in one season is a dicey proposition because even if one assembles the best team, the odds of winning it all are slim. The greatest odds of winning the World Series can be obtained by making the playoffs as often as possible with a very good team as opposed to making the playoffs once with a great team. I will discuss each of the three different accusations I leveled at Kenny Williams in separate entries beginning today with analysis of the three players the Sox sent to Seattle.

I have no doubt that at this point it would be highly embarrassing to go back and read some of the posts I made at WSI praising Miguel Olivo at the time of the deal. To state that Olivo has been dreadful for Seattle since the trade would be an understatement of epic proportions. Furthermore, Olivo somehow seems to continue to play worse and worse all the time. He's already seen time at AAA Tacoma this season and at his current rate he will be auctioning off Richie Sexson autographed baseballs on EBay for a living in no time. The inclination is to say that Miggy's 2004 performance for the Sox was simply a fluke bolstered by a few weeks of blistering hitting towards the beginning of the season. Still, Olivo has not even sniffed his unappealing yet far from worthless, above replacement level numbers of .237/.287/.360 from 2003. This seems to be a situation where some unforeseen and drastic mental, physical, or skill level deterioration renders a player a complete shell of his former self (think Fernando Tatis metamorphosizing from perennial all-star to a poor man's Joe Crede overnight). Olivo is still just 26 so the possibility of a rebound does exist but I certainly wouldn't bank on it.

A 6-5 power hitting shortstop, Morse has always been more a curiosity than someone expected to turn into a star down the line. The fact that he's hitting .330/.404/.426 for the M's in nearly 100 at bats comes as a shock to everyone, most likely even Morse himself. The fact that he was hitting .253/.317/.407 at Tacoma upon his promotion provides a pretty strong indication that his hot hitting won't last for long. However, combined with his position the impressive month makes Morse a player worth keeping an eye on in the future.

The key to the deal amongst the three players the Sox dealt is and always has been Jeremy Reed. At the time of the move I insisted that the odds of Reed failing to become at least an above average major league starter were close to non-existent, a claim heavily disputed by many Sox fans. While a lot of baseball fans consider any young player without substantial major league experience an enormous gamble who very well may make absolutely no worthwhile contribution at the major league level, I was adamant that such a belief structure was overly simplistic and did not apply to Jeremy Reed for a number of reasons. First of all, Reed's performance in the minor leagues was not merely outstanding, it was borderline historic. Batting .409/.474/.591 in 242 at bats in AA is virtually unheard of and immediately renders comparisons to over 99% of prospects a baseball fan has encountered in his life completely and utterly obsolete. Another factor working in Reed's favor is that while he was by no means tearing up the International League at the time of the trade the fact that his dominance had come at AA and he had not collapsed at AAA seemed to guarantee he was capable of having a long major league career. For Reed to be incapable of holding down a job as at least an above average reserve outfielder for many years would require him to regress considerably from the level at which he had already been playing during his time in AA and AAA. The only other factor capable of completely derailing Reed's Major League career and resulting in the complete failure many insisted was a realistic possibility was the occurrence a career threatening injury. Yet another failure baseball fans often make when labeling all prospects gambles is failing to distinguish between hitters and pitchers. While the whole "there is no such thing as a pitching prospect" line is a tad overwrought for my taste, the reality is that an extremely large portion of pitching prospects who never pan out are ravaged by injuries. While Tommy John surgery has revolutionized baseball, labrum surgery is still more or less the kiss of death and occurs rather frequently. Just looking at the White Sox organization, the failed pitching prospects who went under the knife such as Danny Wright, Jon Rauch, Corwin Malone, Jason Stumm, and Kris Honel seem to outnumber pitching prospects who fell by the wayside due purely to performance issues such as Brian West, Josh Stewart, Dennis Ulacia and Aaron Myette (the latter group also appears to be composed of prospects with less impressive performance records compared to the first group). The odds of a position player ending or seriously altering his career due to injury are a fraction of what the same figure is for pitchers. Sure you have an occasional Rusty Greer who is eventually driven out of commission as various moderate injuries pile up and eventually become insurmountable or a Jermaine Dye who suffers a freak injury and never fully regains his athleticism, but these occurrences are quite rare. At the time of the deal I was convinced that the only way for Reed not to become a capable every day player would be for the highly unlikely to occur in the form of severe regression at the age of 23 or a incredibly unlucky injury not to the mention the fact that at 23 the odds generally favor significant improvement over the course of a player's next four or five seasons.

The accuracy of labeling the first half of Reed's 2005 season a disappointment is dependent on one's audience. In my experience the majority of White Sox fans avoid praising prospects traded out of the organization at all costs. At the same time, I have no idea whether M's fans are pleased to have an often exciting young player manning center field or are frustrated the team has not yet reaped substantial rewards from a deal in which the consensus was that the Sox gave up a good deal of young talent. Personally I will admit to expecting a bit more from Reed in his first full season. Hitting .259/.330/.357 is enough to easily hold down a starting job for the time being, but Reed's walks are down some from the start of the season, a player capable of hitting .400 in AA should hit at least .280 in the show, and while he appears Ruthian next to Scott Podsednik, Jeremy's power numbers leave a great deal to be desired. On the bright side for Seattle, Reed is still just 24 and this is probably the worst he will ever hit in a Mariners uniform. A line of .290/.370/.400 next season is not unfathomable and would constitute a highly impressive stat line for a 25 year old center fielder. The most interesting development in Reed's career this season has been his defense in center field. While he was in the White Sox organization there was constant talk that as a converted first basemen, allowing Reed to patrol center field at the Major League Level would be a dicey proposition. On this account, Jeremy has resoundingly proven the naysayers wrong at this juncture. A staple of Sports Center's top 10, Reed boasts an impressive defensive rate of 104 (100 is average, 105 or higher is generally approaching gold glove territory) using Clay Davenports' defensive metrics. Not only does this strong defensive performance indicate that Reed will continue to help his team win games with his glove in the future, even more importantly it renders Reed's bat far more valuable. While a corner outfielder holds little value if he can't slug .500 or at least .450 combined with an OBP above .360, a slick fielding center fielder who gets on base is a huge asset even if he can't hit double digit home runs. Will Reed meet become this type of unheralded force along the lines of Mark Kotsay, soar to all-star status, reach an untimely demise similar to teammate Miguel Olivo, or simply remain a merely adequate center fielder? As they say, only time will tell.