metafour

Isn't that expected when one team trades an MVP caliber player for a package mostly revolving around younger players/prospects? Whether or not the "gap closes" is irrelevant. The trade was made to improve the team NOW, most notably because the core of Bautista/Encarnacion/Reyes/etc. is only going to be counted on for ~2 or so more reasons realistically. The beauty behind the Donaldson deal is that he's not even an old/declining player, thus there is no reason to believe that he won't be well above average even 3-4 years from now. By the way: present value is worth more than future value in baseball just like money now is worth more than money in the future in finance.

Exactly. Advanced statistics can suggest that in the future his results will be poor. They can not tell you that what he has already done is "poor". They can suggest that he was "lucky", but "lucky" and "poor" are two separate things. Luck is a part of baseball, if you "luck" your way to a win, it is still a win. To suggest that he "hasn't gotten it done" would be glossing over what has actually transpired on the field. Pages back some of you tried to paint his 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 5 BB start as "poor". Really? That is a WHIP of 1.00, and if you want to paint his 2 hits as being the result of defense, he was actually incredibly unlucky in the sense that he had a whopping 7 pitches thrown inside the strike-zone that were called as balls, versus only 1 pitch out of the zone that was called a strike. So how many of those 5 walks were the result of the ump swinging a two-point play by calling a clear strike as a ball?

Your "hypothetical futures" are beyond the point of reason, in an obvious effort to paint a negative outcome to fit YOUR perceived opinion of the trade. There is no logical reason to assume that Donaldson's value will significantly diminish from ages 30-32 to the point where the trade looks "bad" for us. Your second hypothetical outcome about him "being mad" playing for a losing team isn't even worth anything, as you are literally making a wild guess that not only will we be bad in the future, but that being bad would somehow negatively affect Donaldson. Even if we are bad and Donaldson is upset, so what? Is he going to stop trying to play his best? Is he going to demand a trade? Neither of those outcomes are realistic, and making predictive assumptions on those factors is so stupid that it is the equivalent of me arguing that maybe Brett Lawrie hates Mexican food so much that two years from now he has a breakdown and demands a trade out of Oakland. Its a possibility! We gotta consider it! Hey, and maybe Franklin Barreto wraps his sports car around a tree like Oscar Tavares and they get zero value out of him...it could happen!

For the idiots that were under the assumption that 1 year of restriction vs. 2 years of restriction was "insignificant" because of a potential Intl Draft:

I get the feeling that you're literally just spewing s*** in order to make some sort of stink. Of course the players that the A's traded for have some sort of upside, if they didn't it would make absolutely no sense to trade an MVP caliber player in his prime on a hilariously team-friendly contract, now would it? What the f*** are you even proposing, that the only time you can ever make a trade is when the opposing team gets literally zero value in return? You have to win a trade 10 to 0 otherwise "the guys you traded away could haunt you!!"? You aren't fooling anyone with your agenda. I love how your two potential outcomes on Donaldson are that he either falls apart completely at only age 30-32, or that he somehow goes psychotic on a losing team "if" he's still elite...because apparently not only are you a world-renowned psychologist, but you're also apparently a psychic what with your ability to predict where this Jays team will be 2-3 years from now. Bravo.

They couldn't hit it hard last season when he was only walking 2.45/9 in relief either, with a 6.5% swinging strike rate while throwing nearly 90% fastballs. 90% fastballs, 66% groundball rate, .157 BABIP. Why couldn't they just hit it hard?

His BB/9 was down to 2.57 in his last four starts which spanned 28 innings (42% of his overall season innings). His ERA over those outings was subsequently 2.89. He's got the fastball to be a positive starter as long as his walk rate is manageable, even with poor strikeout rates.

...except that we can conclude that he's the worst starter in the league, right?

lol.......

Because a small sample is all we have. If you look at his profile from last season pitching out of relief, its the exact same thing except even better (as you'd expect coming from 1-2 inning outings). Obviously you'd need a bigger sample to conclude it as an actual "skill", but given the obvious talent in his arm, its not outrageous to assume that a guy throwing nearly 95mph with a two-seam/sinker is able to induce poor contact.

"Garbage" MLB starters put up the following batted ball stats? BABIP: .260 (T 16th among MLB starters) GB/FB: 2.56 (T 7th among MLB starters) GB%: 58.1% (4th among MLB starters) LD%: 19.2% (26th among MLB starters) Hard Contact%: 24.1% (T 15th among MLB starters) LOB%: 80.4% (10th among MLB starters) You can't simply look at K, BB, and Swinging Strike rates and form some sort of all-conclusive judgement. Nobody on here is arguing that Sanchez is pitching at an elite level, but to go out and make statements such as "he's the worst starter in the league" is an absolute joke. If you're going to act like some sort of Bill James wannabe, you can at least go into ALL of his advanced stats and try and decipher why "the worst starter in MLB" is currently fielding a 3.55 ERA despite battling atrocious K/BB rates for the majority of the season. Let me guess, its all "luck"? Potentially....or he is simply incredibly hard to hit, as evidenced by his well above-average batted ball profiles. What do we know about balls hit in play? Line drives are bad (Sanchez is above-average in this regard), ground balls are good (Sanchez is elite in this regard), and his elite hard-contact percentage means that all of those ground balls he induces are easily fieldable by the infielders behind him, because ultimately it is going to be the hard hit groundballs that will make it past defenders. Pitchers who are hard to hit DO exist. These guys CAN get away with putting balls in play, because they typically induce contact that is easy to field. FIP and xFIP has no answer for these pitchers.

Whether or not 27 is the "peak" or not, there is zero reason to believe that he will all of a sudden fall apart at only 30-32 years of age. Guys like Adrian Beltre were still elite players well into their mid 30's, even Scott Rolen despite injuries was well above average in his 30's. 30-32 isn't 'old' at all. To use that as your argument is just looking for some sort of excuse.

Go jerk off to spreadsheets. 7 IP, 2 H, 0 R start is "bad" because he didn't strike enough guys out LOL.

"Oh noez, the walks/strikeout isn't 10 to 1....s*** start". You retards do realize that pitchers like Sanchez can get away with things that your typical pitcher can't get away with, right? Baseball isn't played in a computer simulation.

http://i.gyazo.com/199581152b02cd0eac9d072e59c6a4a3.png

The one in which we're paying $9 million for Maicer Izturis to barely ever play. Rogers is cheap, but they're not that f***ing cheap. This trade was made to reduce penalties to one year instead of two which is a big deal.

How is that nothing LOL? Its the driving force behind the trade. You seriously think we're pinching pennies over a million dollars for Rogers LOL?

It saves us from the two-year penalty. Worth it? Not up to me to decide....

I think its simply a situation wherein the player now is worth more than the guys next year. Ultimately you can't control what other teams do next year anyway, so you take the top guy now because if 10 other teams all decide they want to go on a spending spree next year then what do you do?

It is obvious that the international directors league wide don't really see the penalties as being anywhere near as morbid as the fans do. Most of these guys are very comfortable with finding players for $300K and below, to the point where they'll gladly live with that reality in exchange for what they believe is a special talent. I think its obvious that Rogers wouldn't fund an "all-in" spending strategy at this point in time anyway, so that alternative really isn't even worth discussing.

If you can get Marco Estrada out of a 5th round pick, then you won. I don't agree with your premise however. He can have legitimate MLB success throwing 89-92 if his fastball has movement. Estrada's problem is that his fastball is flat.

This deal was reported to being as high as ~$4.5 million at one point. Anything up to that number shouldn't be a surprise at all.

They won't. Everyone already knows who's going where. Its not like we're going to all of a sudden flip 5 other guys at the last minute who had deals in place with other teams for months.

Classic.