Cano-Diaz-Kelenic Revisited

[Centerfield]

And so you know it's not hindsight, the reaction poll from the original board:



http://www.thecranepool.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27584http://www.thecranepool.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27584



CPF voted overwhelmingly against it. 19 negative reactions to 9 positive ones. 1 neutral.



A lot of responses were qualified with "let's see if the Mets spend now" or something along those lines.



Clearly they did not.

[TransMonk]

I don't feel any differently about it now than I did then. I was hoping it would be part of other moves, but it really wasn't. Cano/Diaz was not going to push the team's talent over the top.



It's more of the same. This team can never fully commit to a rebuild or truly "go for it" from Opening Day.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

It was as stupid now as it was any of the other numerous times Omar wasted Fred's money on a closer. The Mets never learn

[smg58]

I think I said in a different thread that I was concerned that Diaz would have to give us four years like last season just for us to break even. Last night's game alone might rule that out for this year.



And I think part of the more optimistic discussion talk of the trade was predicated on the notion that Cano, while maybe not being worth his contract, would at least be worth something -- while Bruce and Swarzak would be worth basically nothing. Bruce, despite an unsustainably bad BABIP (.206) to this point, has outperformed Cano and stayed healthier.

[smg58]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: It was as stupid now as it was any of the other numerous times Omar wasted Fred's money on a closer. The Mets never learn

And we technically brought in two closers this offseason (which is turning out as well as when Minaya did it). Of course, Alderson's approach of underinvesting in the pen didn't really help much, either. Relievers tend to be a crap shoot, and even elite ones are not a safe bet to remain that way indefinitely. I don't know if there's a science to choosing relievers well. There is always going to be an element of luck to it. But I think that with relievers, more than any other position, you look for somebody who has an upside that's greater than their current market value rather than making the biggest splash.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I think Familia 1.0 and pre-trade Diaz demonstrated the best way to get closers is to make young guys with good arms closers, then use them to fleece other teams to erase whatever other mistakes you've made.



The Omar Way is to make the mistake by acquiring the closer in the first place.



If we're not knocking on the door in July I hope Brodie has the sense to flip Diaz for whatever he can bring back but good luck with that, Lunchie.

[Frayed Knot]

One of the things that needs to be considered here is who the alternatives were if it wasn't going to be Diaz & Familia on the back end.

Nice to hope for the young gun out of nowhere but there aren't a lot of those around and you don't often know who that might be until

you trip over him. Hansel Robles was busy blowing a 2-run save for the Angels a few hours prior to the Diaz mess just as an example.



The biggest alternative out there was Kimbrel, a popular choice as he would 'only cost money' (plus a draft slot). But he's also 31 y/o

and wanted a Six year deal. And while he may have backed off from that somewhat (hard to know at this point) he hasn't wound up

anywhere else to date either.



Look, we'll likely never see a worse closing job than the one last night -- not by Diaz, not by anyone -- but let's also not act like this was in any way predictable.

You're still allowed to dislike the trade of course. The plan for this one was to upgrade for the short term so if it winds up not even doing that than it's going to

really look bad. But let's also remember that the big 'prize' going the other way is, at the moment, in Low-A ball and there are likely at least three or more years and

a lot of maybes in between there and him even reaching the majors much less starring there.

[Centerfield]

There were tons of options for closers out there. Probably more than any other position. Ottavino, Britton, Andrew Miller and Dave Robertson. In addition to Familia and Kimbrel and the other name closers. We'd be just fine if we had Ottavino. Probably better. And more than a few on this board advocated for him.



As far as Kelenic, we have no idea what he'll be. But he has already demonstrated that he has the type of upside that you hold onto. Andres Jimenez has a good chance to be a good ballplayer. Kelenic has a chance to be a once in a generation talent.



And regardless of what he may end up, he is without a doubt a superstar prospect right now. And that means his trade value is high. And so if you trade him, the dumbest thing you can get back is a closer with a one year record of brilliance. Also, he's been moved to high A, after destroying low A.



As to whether this was predictable, sure it was. Diaz wasn't likely to repeat 2018 for the same reason as deGrom wasn't. That level is hard to maintain. But prior to last night's blowup, he was doing fine, pitching near career norms, and once he gets a few more inning under his belt, he'll move those numbers closer to the norm as well.



The crazy thing about Diaz is that he loses a lot of games. And I know W/L records don't mean a lot, especially for relievers, but that L last night moves him to 1-3 on the year and 5-17 lifetime! That's crazy.

[seawolf17]

I was "kinda like it" at the time, because young players are such a crapshoot and I honestly didn't think Cano would completely fall off the table. Alas.

[Gwreck]

I don't worry about Diaz that much. I think he's generally fine, and occasional bad games happen.



Cano being awful, however, is no surprise at all. 35 year hitters coming off PED suspensions are not good acquisitions.

[Frayed Knot]

There were tons of options for closers out there ... Ottavino, Britton, Andrew Miller and Dave Robertson. In addition to Familia and Kimbrel

Sure there were other options - I merely focused on the most popular one.

But do realize that those all involved the buying of north-of-30-y/o closers -- and in some cases never-really-been closers (Ottavino, Miller) and/or no-longer closers (Britton, Robertson) -- on the open market.

Certainly those were options but those are also the types of moves being linked to the Omar-type of strategy that's being dismissed in this thread as non-imaginative and as yesterday's news.

I'm just saying that all alternatives need to be considered here including the downside of other moves as well. BVW could have just resigned Familia and called it a day but there are those on this forum who

don't even like him as a set-up man right now, and of the others mentioned here, only Kimbrel (just turned 31 but also wanted six years) and Ottavino (32) are under age 34. There are all kinds of reasons

to worry about the gap between that and a 25 y/o with, yes, one stellar season behind him but also two other good ones and who comes with four years of team control at pre-FA money.



I also think you need to pump the brakes a bit on Kelenic.

He's a potentially very good player (he wouldn't have been drafted top-10 if he wasn't) who had, at the time of the deal, a nice 200 ABs under his belt in two stops at the rookie ball level [.286/.371/.468]*

which was enough to get him some back-half listings of the top-100 lists this past winter. That's a very nice start for a player out of HS but there's nothing to date that suggests he's a "once in a generation"

kind of player for whom teams would trade current/in-their-prime MVP/CY winners to get (as suggested in another thread).





I'm not necessarily defending the trade but I think it's defensible -- certainly in the face of standing pat while hoping someone worthy emerges out of the ether, and in some ways as compared to several

of the other options -- and that doesn't change because the main cog in it (as much as this was labeled from the outset as 'The Cano Trade', it was really the Diaz deal) has, like, the worst night ever.

Three-run/one-inning saves are blown at a rate of between 3 & 4 % of the time; doing so essentially without even getting an out (even though technically he got his first out seconds prior to the winning

run scoring) is a very tough act to pull off and we're unlikely to see it again for a long time, whether from him or anyone else.

Or maybe we'll see one again next Tuesday ... what do I know?









* btw, Dom Smith, a #7 overall pick, during his first season in two stops at rookie ball w/200-odd ABs: .301/.398/.439

Edited May 31, 2019 by Guest

[ashie62]

I liked it at the time



Alas, didnt think Cano was washed up



Many millions wasted

[HahnSolo]

Worth mentioning that part of that deal, Jay Bruce, has been dealt from Seattle to Philly. And Seattle is picking up $18 mill of the $21 mill owed to Bruce.



So same team deals Cano who's owed $120 million, and they pick up only $20 mill of that. Then deal Bruce who's owed $21 mill and they pick up $18 mill.



Ugh.

[MFS62]

I've read that the two happiest days of a boat owner's life are the day he gets it and the day he gets rid of it.

I'm ready for my second Cano happy day.



Later

[Vic Sage]

i voted "wtf" then, and i stand by that.

[A Boy Named Seo]

Here's the "Should we talk about Robinson Cano" trade thread, where the initial idea was so laughable that none of us took it seriously. It reads like a horror movie scene that you know is gonna end in a grisly murder, but the Mets foolishly walk into the pitch-black basement anyway.



http://www.thecranepool.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27564&hilit=Robinson+Canohttp://www.thecranepool.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27564&hilit=Robinson+Cano

[kcmets]

Flipping through that thread I got worried that I was going to find I said

something stoopid but on Page 8 I finally chimed in...

[bLOCKQUOTE]$60 million made this idea somewhat reasonable, $20 million makes this

a sucker deal in favor of SEA.[/bLOCKQUOTE]

[Centerfield]

That thread is amazing.



Everyone dismisses the move as stupid. No one would want 36 year old Cano.



Eventually, we come to grips with the fact BVW definitely wants 36 year old Cano.



We reject the initial trade rumors as giving up too much. Eventually, the trade gets worse. And then worse, and then by the end, it's a fucking nightmare.



At the end we all hold out some sliver of hope over the alleged $60 million coming back. It turns into $20 million and we all die.



And here we are, 7 months later, the trade having been every bit as bad as we had feared. But watching games anyway. It really says something about the psychology of being a sports fan. What we are doing makes no sense on any logical level.

[Guest 41Forever]

I think it's too soon to call it a disaster.



Looking back, I considered it a Cano trade, but now I think of it as a Diaz for Kelenic trade with a bunch of bad contracts headed in each direction. The Mariners already have shed Swarzak and are about to shed Bruce. Cano has sucked so far, but I don't think we're relying on him to carry the team. Kelenic is a great prospect. So was Rosario. You never know how those will turn out, obviously. Diaz has had great nights and a couple stinkers.

[smg58]

=Centerfield post_id=12078 time=1559748008 user_id=65]And here we are, 7 months later, the trade having been every bit as bad as we had feared. But watching games anyway. It really says something about the psychology of being a sports fan. What we are doing makes no sense on any logical level.

[Vic Sage]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: Here's the "Should we talk about Robinson Cano" trade thread, where the initial idea was so laughable that none of us took it seriously. It reads like a horror movie scene that you know is gonna end in a grisly murder, but the Mets foolishly walk into the pitch-black basement anyway. http://www.thecranepool.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27564&hilit=Robinson+Canohttp://www.thecranepool.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27564&hilit=Robinson+Cano

Here was my post in that thread and i do believe i nailed it:



i haven't said anything in this thread because i was hoping it was all just a horrible dream. But i just listened to parts of the press conference, so i guess it has happened.



I hated Cano when he was a MFY. I hated him as a Mariner. I hate him now. He's a low-effort guy with a history of late nights. He's getting heavier and slower and, without the `roids, his late 30s won't be pretty. And we're now stuck holding the $100m bag for him.



Sure, you can look at it as a Bruce+Swarzak/Cano+20m deal, and a Jelenic+Dunn+Bautista/Diaz deal, but both deals suck. I have no faith in Cano being significantly more useful than Bruce + Swarzak over the next 2 years, and then it seems likely he'll be a net negative in years 3-5, at $20m/year. Diaz is young and productive and will be relatively inexpensive overall (even including his arb years) but, as a RP, his production has a great degree of volatility. I am loathe to give up on a CF prospect with all-star potential (not to mention a promising pitching prospect to boot) for anybody except another everyday player that fills a need, much less a guy who is going to throw 60IP/year. Sure, prospects are prospects, not players, but he was a #6 overall pick just last year and every indicator is pointing up on this kid. Considering the number of decent BP arms on the market right now, this is a massive overpay, even to me, the former president of TITTS.



BVW has pushed his chips in the middle of the table but he's still a few chips short, so lets see if Jeffie buys him another stack.



... and Jeffie did NOT buy him another stack.

[Edgy MD]

Bruce last night: two homers and a double with 6 RBI.



I was down on this deal on the face of it, but now that I've seen Canó, it's hard to do anything but revile it.



If Canó was healthy, hitting like the top secondbaseman in the league, and somehow a wash on defense, I still wouldn't like this deal. As of now, the salary the Mets dumped is way outplaying the salary the Mariners dumped, and things look to get worse going forward. I guess I was originally hoping (for no good reason) that the second part of the deal was to flip Canó to Milwaukee or something.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

It really launched a new era of stupidity for the Mets didn't it? I guess that's the part I overlooked.

[Edgy MD]

It sure made the writers happy to have a wheeler-dealer to cover. But it made me miss Alderson's conservatism.

[Centerfield]

You know what's awesome? DiPoto turned around and dumped Swarzak and unloaded $5.6 of that $8 million salary.



Bruce was owed $28 million over 2 years. DiPoto unloaded him and ate $18 million. Savings of $10 million.



I said at the time that it's incorrect to write off Swarzak and Bruce as zero value, and it was true. We got $36 million in "relief" from that trade. DiPoto turned around and dumped approximately $16 million of that savings, meaning our net savings was $20 million.



We took on a $120 million bad contract for a net savings of $40 million. The $20 Seattle gave us and the $20 that was unloaded. So if you play "divide the trade", and just look at bad contract for bad contract, you effectively signed Robinson Cano to a 5 year, $80 million contract, for the his age 36-40 seasons. Well played.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Is it too late to get Chaim Bloom on the phone?

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Occam's Razor move was to pursue Manny Machado. Machado's a third baseman and the Mets have a hole at third. But that would require lotsa money. Which the Mets don't have even though they play in the nation's largest market. Plus, the Mets aren't an Occam's Razor kind of team. They're more of a Rube Goldberg contraption sort of team. So instead, true to their Rube Goldberg ways, they went after a 36 year old second baseman who missed the last half of the last season to fill their third base hole. This deal also involved moving some Mets out of position so that the second baseman could fill the third base hole.



The Madoff fraud scandal is now ten and a half years old. There's a whole generation of Mets fans who came on board after the Madoff scandal broke, who've rooted for the Mets all their lives and who've never seen the Mets play a single game in live real time at Shea Stadium. The only version of the Mets this generation of fans has ever witnessed is the Madoff defrauded financially ravaged version that exists today. The oldest of this generation of Mets fans are already in college, or maybe even married. Or both. Ten and a half years of this and with no end in sight. And the only reason the Wilpons are permitted to remain as owners of what should be the flagship NL franchise is because of baseball's cronyism and favoritism and because MLB chooses to bury this disgraceful scandal under the carpet and pretend that the Mets are just fine.



I now turn over this thread to Ceets so he can tell me how Machado's not having an MVP season so far and how dare I diss eff Wilpon.

[Centerfield]

I think it's too soon to call it a disaster. Looking back, I considered it a Cano trade, but now I think of it as a Diaz for Kelenic trade with a bunch of bad contracts headed in each direction. The Mariners already have shed Swarzak and are about to shed Bruce. Cano has sucked so far, but I don't think we're relying on him to carry the team. Kelenic is a great prospect. So was Rosario. You never know how those will turn out, obviously. Diaz has had great nights and a couple stinkers.

A lot to unfold there.



"A bunch of bad contracts headed in each direction". This isn't nearly as bad as "very fine people on both sides", but the gloss-over philosophy is the same. Let's look at these bad contracts.



Mariners Bad Contract:

Cano: 5 years - $120 Million

Total: $120 Million



Mets Bad Contracts:

Bruce: 2 years - $26 million

Swarzak: 1 year - $8 million

Total: $34 million



If we isolate this portion of the trade as "a bunch of bad contracts headed in each direction" then this portion of the trade is an unmitigated disaster for the Mets.



After the trade, the bad contracts looked like this:



Seattle Bad Contracts

Cano: $20 million (sent to Mets)

Bruce: 2 years - $26 million

Swarzak: 1 year - $8 million

Total: $54 Million



Mets Bad Contract:

Cano: 5 years - $10 Million

Total: $100 Million



It's already a landslide in favor of Seattle. But as I mentioned earlier, the contracts the Mets unloaded were not zero value contracts. DiPoto has been able to unload about $16 million of the Swarzak/Bruce deals. Meaning Seattle ends up:



Seattle Bad Contracts

Cano: $20 million (sent to Mets)

Bruce: $16 million (sent to Philly)

Swarzak: $2 million (sent to Atlanta)

Total: $38 Million



$100 million in bad money for the Mets compared to $38 million in bad money for the Mariners. A difference of $62 million! You know what you can get for $62 million? Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel and then waste the leftover $8 million on hookers and blow. Or you can throw in another $4 million and get Adam Ottavino (3 years, $27 million) and Zack Britton (3 years, $39 million) (total cost $66 million).



To be fair, there is still a chance that Cano can be productive for the Mets, while Seattle will clearly get no value for the players they unloaded. And there is a lesser chance that the Mets might be able to unload Cano, but the idea that they can unload now the last four years of a 37 year old PED user with a no trade clause...well. You get the idea.



This is why it's impossible (or incorrect) to view this portion of the trade as just an exchange of bad contracts. If you're going to separate different parts of the trade, each part should stand up on its own. Anyone who would make this trade, as isolated here, is foolish.



Edwin Diaz had to be included for this to even remotely make sense.

[Centerfield]

Let's keep going.

I think of it as a Diaz for Kelenic trade...Kelenic is a great prospect. So was Rosario. You never know how those will turn out, obviously. Diaz has had great nights and a couple stinkers.

Well, first off, even if you isolate it this way (which I illustrate above is not proper), it's a Diaz for Kelenic and Dunn and Bautista trade. I don't see why you would gloss over Dunn, a first round pick and a top 100 prospect. But let's leave that aside for the moment.



You compare Kelenic to Rosario. This is unfair, and frankly, a little lazy. I agree that Rosario was once a great prospect, but his numbers in the minors were nothing approaching Kelenic. Rosario's MiL OPS was .741. He hit 17 HR's over the course of 5 seasons in the system. Kelenic has an OPS of .915. He's already hit 19 HR's over last season and this. Rosario was always a "has the tools to one day be great" prospect. Like Lindor or Gregorious, who took time to find their hitting. Kelenic is a "already hitting the shit out of the ball" prospect. He's often called the best hitter in that draft. The last time we heard descriptions like that, it was Michael Conforto.



And none of this guarantees that Kelenic will turn into anything (or that Rosario will continue to struggle). But it's improper to lump Kelenic with Rosario, and especially improper to disregard Dunn and Bautista entirely.

[Edgy MD]

It's hard to even compare young foreign prospects to American counterparts, because they start earlier and get pushed harder. Before they even mature in many cases. When Rosario had first come up, it was clear he hadn't grown into his body yet. But he was in the high minors when Kelenic hadn't graduated from high school. And no, he wasn't flourishing. On the other hand, he was pretty much the top-rated prospect by the time he graduated.



I don't know what's going to come of Rosario, but he has a damn good chance this year to break the team record for homers by a shortstop. That's not nothing. (The record for plays to the backhand is probably out of his reach, though.)



But man, I can't really figure out the goal of that deal at all.