The wisdom of trading "prospects" (part 3)
It's not every day you see a team load up with a future Hall of Famer.
I’ve been a Detroit Tigers fan since I was a kid, and, after living through the sucktastic 43-119 season in 2003 I was as thrilled as anyone when they shocked the world to win the 2006 American League pennant. (Don’t be surprised if that comeback is the subject of a future post.)
Today’s trade, which puts the wrap on my three-part series, was another in the “let’s get this team over the hump” vein. It was like the very first one I detailed a couple weeks ago.
After that 2006 pennant-winning season, the Tigers fell back to earth a little bit in 2007, finishing a respectable 88-74 but eight games in arrears to Cleveland in the AL Central and six back of the Yankees for the AL wild card. So they were indeed trying to get back over the hump.
On the other hand, the Florida Marlins languished once again near the bottom of the National League in three dubious categories: record, attendance, and payroll. Without a whole lot of hope to improve the first category because of the second two, the Marlins were in the familiar position of trading assets away in order to build for a future group who might help them build their major league team with young, controllable talent - hopefully in time for the team to peak at the opening of their future baseball-only stadium in the works at the time. The site, which then housed the Orange Bowl stadium, had become available when the Orange Bowl’s last major tenant, the Miami Hurricanes college football team, announced they would stop using the aging facility after the 2007 season.
As it stood, the Marlins’ biggest asset was 4-time All-Star and 2-time Silver Slugger, outfielder/third baseman Miguel Cabrera, who had just completed his age-24 season but had seen his salary jump to $7.4 million in his first season of arbitration. Add to that pitcher Dontrelle Willis, a previous two-time All-Star and 2003 NL Rookie of the Year who had become very hittable in 2007 but was still just 25 years old - he put another $6.4 million in the arbitrated salary kitty for the season - and you had the elements of a classic salary dump: between the two they made up almost half of the shoestringing Marlins’ payroll, and, especially in the case of Cabrera, were likely looking at big raises in arbitration, let alone free agency down the road.
Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski was reasonably familiar with the Marlins’ plight, having had been through a similar fire sale with the team after the 1997 World Series and helping to rebuild the Marlins with the players who won the 2003 title (he had already left for Detroit by that point, joining the Tigers prior to the 2002 season.) He also knew Cabrera, as the Marlins had signed Miguel during his tenure, so the needs of both teams could be met: the Tigers would build up with a viable infielder and starting pitcher while the Marlins could get young, controllable players who would be the building blocks for a team they hoped would be peaking when the new stadium opened, assuring better attendance.
So the Tigers got Cabrera and Willis, taking nearly $14 million of salary off the Marlins’ hands. In return, the Tigers sent six players to the Marlins, four of whom had some major league experience: pitchers Frankie De La Cruz and Andrew Miller, catcher Mike Rabelo, and outfielder Cameron Maybin. Two other pitchers, Dallas Trahern, who had reached AAA Toledo in 2017, and Burke Badenhop, who had made it to AA Erie in the Tigers’ system, were also included. Maybin and Miller were the Tigers’ 1st round picks in the 2005 and 2006 drafts - and were considered among the top 10 prospects in all of baseball - so Dombrowski wasn’t afraid to raid his stockpile of young players to meet the Marlins’ demands, outbidding the Angels and Dodgers, among others, to make the deal.
While people knew Cabrera was good, they may not have seen him as an eventual Triple Crown winner (2012) and two-time MVP (2012 and 2013.) Add eight more All-Star appearances, five Silver Slugger awards, and a period of dominance where he was arguably the best player in baseball from 2010-16, helping to lead the Tigers to four straight AL Central titles in 2011-14 and the 2012 pennant, and there’s no doubt Miggy exceeded expectations. Even in his declining years he’s put butts in the seats as he successfully chased down the 500 home run and 3,000 hit mark in late 2021 and early 2022, respectively. While the soon-to-be 40-year-old Cabrera is playing out the string as a .250 average singles hitter, there’s no doubt he’ll have a grand retirement tour this season. Perhaps the only thing missing on his HOF resume is a second World Series title to bookend the one he won with the Marlins in 2003, but hope springs eternal.
Despite the last few seasons of struggle as age and injury have diminished his skills and relegated him to DH duty, Miguel’s overall WAR with the Tigers is still at 49.5. (It was over 50 until last season.) Miggy remains a tremendous piece of the trade.
Unfortunately, whatever Dontrelle Willis lost between his near-Cy Young 2005 season and his pedestrian at best 2007 season was never found again. Over 2 1/2 seasons with the Olde English D, the D-train was on the siding more often than not, putting together less than a season’s worth of starts (24 total) and struggling to a 2-8 record and 6.86 ERA before being traded to Arizona in mid-2010 for another struggling pitcher, Billy Buckner. Buckner never made it back to the majors for the Tigers, lasting less than two months at AAA before being released. (Billy would have a brief MLB comeback in 2013-14.) Overall, Willis was a deduction of (-1.2) WAR, bringing the total so far to 48.3 WAR - likely to be in the 47 range by the time Cabrera finishes his retirement tour after this season.
Out of the six players the Marlins received in return, only pitcher Dallas Trahern never played for the team. Trahern lost most of 2009 and all of 2010 to injury and never could come back, finishing his career in 2011 at the AA level despite two separate cracks at AAA.
Blake Badenhop - who I found is native to my home area of Northwest Ohio - carved out a modestly successful eight-season career at the MLB level between 2008-15, spending his first four seasons with the Marlins and accruing a WAR of 1.6 before being sent to Tampa Bay in exchange for minor league catcher Jake Jeffries, who never made it to the big leagues. So the adjusted WAR total for the Marlins is now 1.6.
Frankie De La Cruz, a veteran of six major league appearances for Detroit in 2007, made a like number of appearances for Florida in 2008 before having his contract sold to the San Diego Padres during spring training in 2009. De La Cruz would similarly struggle for the Padres before eventually returning to tbe Show for a comparatively successful 13-inning swan song for the 2013 Milwaukee Brewers. Because those six Florida appearances netted nine innings of 18.00 ERA pitching, Frankie’s (-0.9) WAR set the Marlins back to an overall 0.7 WAR from the trade.
A similar short MLB career was in the cards for catcher Mike Rabelo, who was the graybeard of the group with 51 games behind the dish for the 2007 Tigers as their backup catcher. Given the chance to play for the Marlins, he began 2008 at A ball, but quickly joined Florida to share catching duties with 2007 Marlins backup Matt Treanor for a time. By mid-season, though, Rabelo’s .202 average put him back in the minors to stay, and he was let go after the 2009 season - only to sign as a free agent back with the Tigers to close out his playing career with a brief stint at AAA Toledo in 2010. Since then, he became a minor league manager in the Tigers’ system and more recently a coach for the Pirates, but as for this trade Rabelo provides another (-0.2) deduction, knocking the Marlins down to an overall 0.5 WAR.
Yet those two players who were top 10 prospects, they created value for the Marlins, right? Well, Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller indeed had long MLB careers that didn’t end until 2021, but most of their careers occurred long after both left south Florida.
Maybin spent his three seasons as Marlins property bouncing back and forth between the majors and minors, as perhaps befits a player toiling in his age-21 to age-23 seasons. Cameron - who accrued 1.9 WAR in his first of two stints in Miami, as he would eventually work his way back there for part of a season in 2018 - was still young enough to be considered a prospect when he was packaged in a November, 2010 deal with the San Diego Padres that brought pitchers Edward Mujica and Ryan Webb east to Florida. Mujica, who compiled a 1.8 WAR in Miami in 2011-12, was dealt in turn to St. Louis for minor league infielder Zack Cox. While Mujica made his lone All-Star appearance the very next season in St. Louis, Cox could not crack the major league lineup in four seasons of trying for the Marlins. Meanwhile, Webb added 2.4 WAR for the Marlins from 2011-13 before being lost to free agency and signing with Baltimore. Maybin’s branch was the most fruitful for the Marlins in terms of WAR, picking up 6.1 WAR for the cause and bringing the total to 6.6 WAR.
The Marlins spent three seasons with Miller doing what the Tigers did - trying to make him into a successful starter but failing to the tune of (-0.9) WAR. (As if the 10-20 record and 5.89 ERA he had for Florida wasn’t proof enough.) Exasperated, they sent Miller on after the 2010 season to Boston for a LOOGY with a limited record of success named Dustin Richardson. Dustin was a guy who barely lasted two months before being waived by the Marlins and spending the next nine seasons in and out of affiliated ball unsuccessfully trying to get back to the bigs. Meanwhile, after the 2011 season the Red Sox told Miller “let’s forget about this starting thing” and made him into a bullpen weapon who eventually was traded twice to playoff-contending teams (the Orioles in 2014 and the Indians in 2016) and pitched in the playoffs seven straight years for four different teams (Baltmore, New York Yankees, Cleveland, and St. Louis.) Unfortunately, his deduction from the Marlins’ WAR total leaves them at 5.7 WAR strewn about a total of 11 players who came to the Marlins as a result of the initial and subsequent trades.
It’s also funny that every last player in this trade not named Miguel Cabrera is finished with playing baseball; in fact, the Marlins were through with every one of those they received for Cabrera and Willis before they opened their new stadium in 2012. If building the team using those players was the plan, it was a miserable failure.
Sometimes this is what you get when you receive prospects for proven quantities. Out of three trades I detailed in this series, though, we have a lopsided win for the team receiving prospects, a wash (at least to date), and a big win for the team who got the known quantities. It’s the beauty of baseball and the hot stove that we can debate the worth of all these.