With less than two weeks before baseball's trade deadline, most of the talk in the sports world is about who will be buyers and who will be sellers in the trade market. To put it another way, who will concede defeat and try to get some younger prospects for their veterans, and who wants to forfeit some prospects for the chance to win this year. This leads me to wonder, though, if it's ever truly worth it to be a seller. Let's examine this a bit.
Quick, name me one team that's won the World Series in the last 10 years after being a seller. If you said the 2002 Florida Marlins, you're correct, but that franchise was terrible for years after it sold off its 1998 championship team. The fact is, while most teams never really come to fruition on the prospects' development, and often those players move on before the team has a chance to win, there are actually a few instances of young teams finding success. The Marlins are the only team that I can say took the approach of selling off its players for prospects and turned that into an actual championship, though.
Sure, you can argue that other small market teams such as the Twins, A's and last year's Diamondbacks and Rockies all have had success, at least making the postseason. But only the Rockies have played in the World Series (and you can make the argument that that was a bit of a fluke), not including the 2001 D-backs that won it all, because that was a BIG payroll team at the time. In fact, that team cost the Diamondbacks so much financially that they went into significant debt and that was basically the reason the team turned to the youth movement it currently enjoys.
Meanwhile, the Twins and A's, who have both made numerous postseason appearances in the last decade, have only won a combined 1 playoff series since the days of Kirby Puckett and The Bash Brothers (Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire in Oakland), and that was in 2006 when they faced off against each other in the first round. The A's swept the Twins then went on to lose to the Tigers in the ALCS.
Anyway, let's get back on topic here. To be a buyer or a seller. The teams mentioned above lead me to believe that being a seller on a regular basis is not likely to net you a title, or even a chance at the title. The flip side is the idea of being a buyer, giving up your prospects for the veterans to give you a chance to win now. The best example of a team like that is the New York Yankees.
Since their last World Series title in 2000, the Yankees have been the ultimate buyer in the MLB. They have routinely spent astronomical amounts of money on free agents in the offseason, and they have made numerous trades during the season to bring in veterans at the expense of their farm system (the latest example being the Bobby Abreu acquisition). This strategy has clearly not worked, in my opinion, despite the fact that they are in the postseason every year over that stretch. The Yanks have not won the title since 2000, and haven't even been in the Series since losing to the Marlins in 2002.
All this seems to lead me to one conclusion, and it may sound wishy-washy but it's the truth: teams need to be more in tune to when it's the right time to be a buyer or a seller, and be willing to take the chance accordingly. Largely, it appears that teams that make the big splash at the trade deadline are rarely the teams that go on to win the title. When was the last time a team made a major mid-season acquisition and won the championship that year? Um, I can't think of one. Teams are better off making the big moves in the offseason, because it's unlikely that one or two players can turn a decent team into a great team, and team chemistry and cohesion are major factors in winning a title. Recently, teams that have made big runs are the ones that bring up one of their big-time prospects to the Majors (see Jacoby Elsbury with the Red Sox in 2007, Miguel Cabrera with the Marlins in 2002).
On the other hand, teams would be well-advised to make the moves in the offseason when they have a chance. Where would the Red Sox be if they hadn't traded for Curt Schilling in 2003, or Josh Beckett in 2005? Would the Cardinals have won a World Series if they hadn't traded for Chris Carpenter? Who knows, but maybe the Twins or Rockies or A's win a title of they had used some of their minor league talent as bargaining chips to bring in proven players as opposed to using their veterans to fetch still more unproven prospects.
In the end, I think it's clear that a mixture of veteran players and talented youngsters are the key to postseason success, and this infatuation with minor league prospects makes Billy Beane look good, but eventually you have to take some chances and make a run. If you always build for the future, it may never come.
What do you think? Do Major League teams use their farm systems the way they should? Is there a right or a wrong way to use them?
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4 comments:
I think you may be overlooking one key point in the question of whether to be a buyer or a seller, and that is money. Most teams that are "sellers" are selling off their players because they very likely will lose the player to free agency because they won't have the money to keep them around, and thus they decide it's better to get something for them than nothing.
The main reason small-market teams like the A's and Twins fail in the playoffs is because their approach to team management works well for winning enough regular season games to make the playoffs, but it does not work as well for winning playoff series. I attribute this to having 3-4 decent starting pitchers, rather than the two aces that will win you a postseason series. For the A's, who value OBP, their strategy of getting guys on base and waiting for the big home run works only when there's a large sampling number, like 162 regular season games, but when it comes down to 7 or even 5 games, there's a lot more luck involved.
There's also the issue of youth, which I think makes a difference in the postseason. Teams without veteran leaders don't win the World Series. The Marlins in '03 (which was the year they won the WS, not '02) had Pudge Rodriguez (12), Jeff Conine (12), Derek Lee (6), Mike Lowell (5) and Ugueth Urbina (8) (years experience in parens). Of their starters, only Cabrera and Juan Pierre had fewer than 5 years experience in '03. I think it does take a balance of youth and experience to make it in the postseason, which is something small-market teams have to keep in mind when they sell off their players at the deadline.
Sorry, I forgot about the Giants-Angels series in 2002.
Clearly we agree that the balance of youth and experience is important, but that's the Catch-22 of small and even mid-market clubs. To use the old saying, you have to have your cake and eat it too. You have to be able to trade veterans for youngsters, and then go out and buy veterans to replace those you lost. It takes a lot of money to pull that off. Without the money, you end up stuck in one of two places: perpetual youth like the A's and Twins, or tied to a small number of players like the Rockies (Helton) and Mariners (Ichiro). When you surround those players with talent, you may have a great team, but your window is tiny before the young talent becomes too expensive. The Mariners tried to buy their way to a title this year, and it blew up. The Rockies tried to ride the momentum from last year instead of building with a key free agent or two, and it's been underwhelming to say the least.
The fact is, money is the key in baseball as it is in all pro sports these days. You could say this is a reason for a salary cap, but many could argue that salary caps lead to lots of mediocre teams and no great ones. So, how do you fix the system?
Personally, I've never bought into the "lots of mediocre teams and no good ones". Arguing that because all teams are competitive, then none of them are really good, is nonsense. People seem only to think that great teams are those that are able to demolish all opposition. If every team (or most teams) are competitive, it does not mean that the team that comes out on top is less than a team in a previous year that demolished everyone. It simply means that the earlier team had no significant competition against which to prove itself.
Perhaps you could argue that there's only a limited pool of talented players from which to pick, and that if the pool is distributed evenly, then no single team can be a great team, but I'd argue that a team is more than the sum of its players' talent. There have been plenty of very talent-laden teams that have done nothing, and plenty of teams of only decent players who have achieved great things. I think a great team is one that has overcome adversity to reach the top, not one that has simply destroyed everything in its path. There's never been a sports movie made about a team that dominated every game and had no trouble winning the championship.
I'd rather watch a league in which every team had a chance to win, than one whose champion was inevitable. You could argue that, without any Goliaths, there could be no Davids, but as last year's Super Bowl will attest, even in the parity-obsessed NFL, there can be Goliaths.
To answer your question, I don't know that it's the system that needs fixing. I think it's the approach of individual organizations that need tweaking. I think baseball's system works pretty well. As the Yankees' post-season drought has shown, you can't just throw money around and expect to win. The Red Sox have succeeded because they've had a farm system to go along with their money for free agent acquisitions. I think if anything, baseball needs to do something to get the Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals to do more than just take up space. I think baseball would benefit from a promotion/relegation system similar to European soccer leagues. This would mean uncoupling the minor league teams from their major league overlords, but I think that would be a boon for the minor leagues because their teams would all have a shot at maybe one day making it to the top level. Imagine how teams would have to approach rebuilding in the majors if they had to worry about being relegated to AAA if they finished last. Last-place teams would have to think long and hard about whether to become a "seller" at the trade deadline, possibly sacrificing their only chance at avoiding relegation.
But, of course, that kind of change is so radical it would never happen. As it stands, the MLB has a monopoly on professional baseball and it has no incentive to allow competition from the minor leagues. So, just like a college football playoff system, it's doomed to remain nothing more than something to dream about.
Say, you ought to write a full post laying out how a relegation system could work while still using the current teams as they're presently comprised. Would AA, A and rookie leagues turn into the AAA affiliates of both MLB and current AAA teams? Do you allow current MLB teams to yank their youngsters up to the majors before the system goes in place, perhaps in exchange for a player on the current roster like an unrefusable trade?
You could definitely say that the NFL is great throughout, and not just mediocre throughout. It's hard to argue that the Chargers, Pats, Colts, Cowboys and Packers weren't all legitimately great teams, and that the Giants became a great team as the year progressed. Yes, the Pats dominated early on, but by mid-season their domination was basically gone and rarely won by more than 10. The big thing with the salary cap is that is helps separate the best organizations from the worst, and also gives the worst organizations a chance to improve and eventually become great.
If you look at the NFL, there are virtually no teams that haven't been in the postseason in the last 5-10 years, and those that haven't (Lions, Cardinals, Texans, etc.) are or were poorly run in that span. Even the Cards and Texans were .500 last, clearly on the come. How many baseball teams have missed the playoffs each year over the last 10? Far more to choose from there.
The people that hate salary caps the most are the ones whose teams are the best and generally have the most money. Ask an average Yankees fan (or Hank Stienbrenner) and they'll tell you that all revenue sharing is ridiculous, and there shouldn't be a luxury tax, either.
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