The Fundamental Logic of Not Making Trades

Time to distract myself from national tragedy with... the probable impending trade of the New York Mets' best and most awesome player! ...oh well, it's something, at least.

Trades are weird. You'd kind of think trades wouldn't happen People talk about two teams "agreeing" to a trade, but really, what happens in a trade is a disagreement. Team X thinks that Player Package A is superior to Player Package B, while Team Y thinks that B is superior to A. So they swap, and everyone's happy. Perforce, this involves either teams disagreeing on the "absolute" values, so to speak, of the players involved or teams giving different "relative" values to different types of player. The impending negotiations between the Mets and the Blue Jays regarding R.A. Dickey are a marvelous case study.


The Toronto Blue Jays are currently in possession of two young right-handed power-hitting catchers. J.P. Arencibia has been in the Major Leagues for parts of the last three years. His first game in the majors was astounding: he hit the very first pitch he saw over the fence for a two-run home run, then doubled in his second at-bat, singled in his third at-bat, and then hit another home run, also on the first pitch, in his fourth at bat. Finally, in his fifth and last at-bat of the game, he flew out to foul territory in right field, going a mere 4-for-5 on the night with a double and two home runs. He hit for more than a cycle. Since then, things have been a bit less awesome: on his career, Arencibia is 183 for 825, a .222 batting average, with just a .275 on-base percentage and a .433 slugging percentage. He's a below-average hitter, and a below-average player overall even considering that he's a catcher. He is slightly above replacement level, though, and has hit 43 home runs in those 825 at-bats, which is not a bad rate. Arencibia is 26 years old.


Travis d'Arnaud is the Jays' other catching prospect. He hasn't made it to the majors yet. Last year in AAA, though, he hit .333/.380/.595 while hitting 16 home runs in just 279 at-bats over 67 games. (I am not entirely sure why he only played in 67 games last year.) For his whole minor league career, d'Arnaud sports a .286/.343/.474 batting line, which would be substantially above-average at any position in the majors but especially behind the plate. He's got considerable doubles power as well as major home-run pop, too: 133 doubles against 66 homers in his career. d'Arnaud is 23 years old, and understandably considered a better prospect than Arencibia.

The Blue Jays also have a bit of a surfeit of outfielders, with Jose Bautista and newly-signed Melky Cabrera guaranteed the starting corner spots, Colby Rasmus likely to be the primary center fielder, and the following speed-and-defense center field-capable outfielders also on the roster: Emilio Bonifacio, Rajai Davis, and Anthony Gose. That's not just too many outfielders, any one of whom could be an everyday player on a mediocre team, to fit in a lineup, it's too many to fit on a roster. So it looks like Toronto has a substantial surplus both of young catching prospects and of center fielders. Those are the two positions the Mets would most desperately love to fill. Trade possibilities, yes?

The trouble is, or appears to be, that the Mets and the Blue Jays agree on how the various player packages should be valued relative to each other. The Mets would probably deal R.A. Dickey for d'Arnaud and Gose, but the Blue Jays wouldn't want to give that package up. The Jays, meanwhile, would love to get Dickey in exchange for Arencibia and Gose, but the Mets don't think it's worth it. In other words, the two sides agree that it's d'Arnaud + Gose > Dickey > Arencibia and Gose. So no deal. Or, at least, maybe no deal, and a deal has not yet been made. Perhaps the Jays will fold on including d'Arnaud, and something will happen. Who knows. (Side note: if that deal is made, I will be so rooting for the Blue Jays next year. Reyes and Dickey on the same team, against the Yankees? Sign me up!)

So even in a case where one team has a surplus exactly where the other team has a deficit, the fundamental logic of not making trades can still apply. I would expect the rise of objective value-measuring statistics to make this more and more the case. It's easier to define the "objective value" of a player, so even if the player would be underutilized on my team, and is therefore worth less to me than to you, I can still with good reason demand to be compensated for the full objective value of what I'm giving up. But you'll insist on the same thing, and we're back where we started, agreeing about which packages are better and therefore unable to agree on an exchange. I would guess this is what's holding up trade efforts with the Angels. They have something the Mets could use, namely Peter Bourjos, as outlined in my previous post. Bourjos is almost certain to be underutilized on the Angels, and fully utilized on the Mets, so in theory there should be a trade wherein the Mets give up something worth more than Bourjos' value to the 2013 Angels but less than his value to the 2013 Mets. I think something like Daniel Murphy and Collin McHugh might meet that description; if the Angels want all pitching, all the time, maybe swap Dillon Gee in for McHugh, or throw in some fringy relief prospects like Elvin Ramirez. Who knows. But the Angels could look at such a deal and say, hey, we're getting robbed. We want to be paid for the full potential value of Bourjos to a team that would use him a lot, even though he's not worth that much to us. Give us Dickey! And the Mets will, quite rightly, say no, he's not worth Dickey, nice try. In a sense we run into conflict between the desire to improve and the desire to maximize: the trade I outlined and would advocate for between the Angels and the Mets would improve both teams, but it would not allow the Angels to get a maximal return for Bourjos. And so no trade gets done, and the best is the enemy of the better.

Unfortunately (for a Mets fan right now) the force of the above logic is to prove that no trade can ever happen, and this is quite clearly not the case. I continue to think that trades are kind of odd, and that that trade which makes sense for both teams is a very rare animal. But trades do happen, and it looks like Dickey will be traded this weekend. Oh well. They'd just better make sure they maximize their return for him!