Cano-Diaz-Kelenic Revisited

[Centerfield]

I still hold out hope that Rosario can turn into a very good player, even if the likelihood of him being a star is a little more remote than maybe it was in the past. He has great natural power. And maybe someday he can put it all together. He's still only 23. Younger than Alonso, McNeil and Smith.



As of right now, comparisons to Lindor may be a but unfair. Lindor, when I watch him play, is a tremendous athlete gifted with tremendous body control. I'm not sure I see the same thing with Rosario. If I had to make a comparison, I'd maybe go with Jason Heyward. Also a physical freak, but maybe just a little lacking in coordination over his long limbs.



I don't know. I still like Amed a lot. And I still wouldn't trade him for JT Realmuto.

[Centerfield]

On second thought, I think my logic behind the "bad contract" swap is incorrect. I think it's actually worse than I originally thought. It's not right to compare where the clubs ended up without taking into account where they started.



Effectively, the Mariners started out with $120 million of bad money, and ended up eating $38 million (because the contracts they took back from the Mets were, as we said at the time, moveable). That's a net benefit to them of $82 million.



At the time, MLB TradeRumors estimated the value of Edwin Diaz (elite closer, cost-controlled) at about $60-80 million. So if you take the high-end, Cano, Diaz and $20 million to the Mets for Swarzak and Bruce, is a pretty even trade. If you take the low-end, it's still a win for the Mariners, before you ever throw in Kelenic, Dunn or Batista.



Adding those prospects take it into WTF territory, which is why so many of us are still upset months afterwards.



Now, the obvious flaw here in my logic is that I assigned value to the Swarzak and Bruce contracts without assigning any value to Cano. Swarzak and Bruce have since been moved, so whether or not we think DiPoto got max value, we have a figure to work with. So now we are left with Cano. What value can you assign to him? It's hard to say. On the one hand, we could speculate that if DiPoto ate enough money, he could have moved Cano on his own. For instance, if the Mariners ate $100 million of that deal, someone would have taken Robinson Cano for 5 years, $20 million. The problem is that Cano had, and retains, a full no-trade clause. He was known to prefer NY, but not linked anywhere else. In other words, we might have been his only possible landing spot, putting his value at a flat zero. We know we can't move him now. Even if we found anyone crazy enough to take him on, he still has that NTC, and can nix any deal. So I think a case can be made that Robinson Cano was sunk cost. $120 million of sunk cost, and the Mets just provided $82 million in relief.



Just insane.

[ashie62]

Most of us liked the trade at the time. Unfortunately it just blew up the wrong way, as of now

[Benjamin Grimm]

I think that old thread demonstrates that most of us did not like the trade at the time. We may have hoped it would turn out well, but were more than a little skeptical.