Tyler Kepner recently wrote a blog post on Ross Ohlendorf and the trade that sent him to the Pirates, and Rob Neyer quickly caught on and riffed off of it, focusing instead on Jose Tabata:
Granted, the equation would look quite a bit different if Marte hadn’t fallen apart the moment the Yankees got him, and if Nady hadn’t missed most of this season with a serious elbow injury.
But even if both players had done exactly what we’d expected — Marte a serviceable lefty reliever, Nady an average (at best) American League outfielder — this deal still would have been a steal for the Pirates.
Or it would probably have been a steal, anyway. That’s what happens when you trade two marginal veterans for a quartet of talented young players. Ohlendorf’s good enough to start for the Yankees, right now. Karstens may yet find himself as a reliever. McCutchen may soon be as good as Ohlendorf. And Tabata … well, he’s the real prize, isn’t he?Between the ages of 16 and 19, Tabata was routinely the youngest player in his league, and he routinely batted .300 (while drawing plenty of walks for a teenager). Everybody said Tabata couldn’t miss. Said he was the Yankees’ best prospect. Said they wouldn’t trade him, because he was their Center Fielder of the Future.
And then he got off to a lousy start in Class AA last year. He was still just a teenager, and probably was yet again the youngest player in his league. But he got off to a lousy start, and the Yankees needed Xavier Nady. Well, they didn’t need Xavier Nady. Nobody in the history of baseball has needed a player like Xavier Nady. (Not until after the fact, anyway. If the Yankees had qualified for the playoffs last season, afterward it would have seemed like they had indeed needed him.)
So the Yankees essentially traded Jose Tabata, so recently their very best prospect, to the Pirates for Xavier Nady. Someday, historians will read that sentence and snicker.
I love Rob, but there is a whole lot of WRONG in this little blogpost. Firstly, the idea that no one ever needs Xavier Nady is a bit silly, in that Nady is not a replacement level player, just a league average player. He was better than anything the Yankees had readily available, and therefore represented an improvement for the club. For a team that was in a playoff race at the time, the marginal improvement from Justin Christian to Xavier Nady was significant, and I am not sure how Rob can represent it as being anything but a net positive. Adding a lefty reliever like Marte was similarly a drastic improvement over the options the Yankees had at that moment, although the marginal upgrade was likely less than the one gained from adding an everyday player like Nady.
Additionally, let’s not rush to anoint these “talented young players” as stars quite yet. McCutchen has made one start and profiles as, at-best, a back of the rotation guy, while Karstens is the very definition of replacement level. Ohlendorf has improved, but he still has an ERA just under 4 in the AL Central, with a FIP of 4.74, and a K/9 of 5.57. He may turn into a good pitcher, but the performances of Brad Penny and John Smoltz in the NL after being awful in the AL East suggests that the level of competition is incredibly different in the two leagues. The three pitchers are exactly the kind of assets an organization with plenty of pitching in its system should be giving up to get pieces that can help in a pennant race. The key here is Tabata, who took a step forward this year but still has yet to flash the power that would make him an elite prospect.
While the Yankees were quick to give up on Tabata, it is important to note that he had a huge attitude problem with the Yankees that many felt would torpedo his career. Furthermore, you need to give up something of value to complete most trades, and Tabata represented that value here. He had enough question marks about reaching his talent that it made for a good gamble by the Yankees. Most analysts felt that the Yankees made a good or even great deal, and cited the unknowns regarding Tabata as their primary reasons for reaching that conclusion. Just to quote one pundit at the time of the trade:
I wasn’t thrilled with the Xavier Nady deal, from the Pirates’ perspective. Jose Tabata’s star seems to have fallen (though of course he’s still young).
Who said that? Why, Rob Neyer, of course.
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7 Responses to Neyer On The Nady-Marte Trade
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TIQ IQ
looks like a slow news day and neyer was in a hurry to put something in print, but didn’t have the time to originate the subject.
sounds similar to the suggestion one of the espn bb experts made that the yanks should offer damon and matsui the same contract in the off season and whoever accepts first they keep, stay guessing rumor monger you’re no gm material.
There were good reasons to trade Tabata. At the time the Yankees were fresh off of trying to break 2 or 3 rookies into their rotation and saw what a bad idea it was. Then they looked down the road and thought of breaking in two outfielders, Jackson and Tabata, into the lineup at the same time and realize it was probably not a great idea.
Oh yeah, and Tabata was doing the worst of the two, and he had just freshly quit on the Yankees. He walked off the field in the middle of a game and tried to quit baseball altogether.
And his wife, twice his age, was getting set to steal a baby and try to pass it off as her own.
Tabata had value, but not with the Yankees. He had crossed the Rubicon in terms of bad behavior, so he had to be shipped off. What I recall from last year is how good a deal it seemed for the Yankees. But for the injuries, it would still look OK for the Yankees. By the way, does anyone know how Nady is recovering from the injury?
Excellent post. Neyer’s comments on that deal are really just dripping with fail. You should create a calendar item to remind yourself to come back to this topic like once a year, maybe during the offseason when news is a bit slow. I think it’ll be very interesting to see how Neyer’s comments look in a couple of years. It’s surprising that Neyer would be so narrow-minded about this issue, and so self-contradictory.
Since his blog moved from beyond the pay wall, it seems like he has felt the pressure to put out 5-7 posts a day, as opposed to 1-3 in the old format. It has meant less effort is going into each post. He’s still excellent, but I bet that article never gets written if he has some more time to research the post.
Since when is Ohlendorf good enough to start for the Yankees right now? I mean he may be a marginal improvement over Mitre and even that is debatable, he was terrible with the Yankees and a 4 ERA in the NL with the Pirates has to equal that of a 6 or 7 ERA in the Al East, I know I for one would not be comfortable having Ohlendorf start games for the Yankees, and Karstens was also terrible with the Yankees and hasn’t seen much real improvement with a NL club no big loss with either.
Outcomes Assessment: Views and Perspectives. ,