Post Trade Deadline Thoughts

The Padres were unable to make any deadline beating deals following the Randy Wolf trade. This should come as no real surprise to anyone. It is easy to suggest trading veterans for prospects, but getting anything back of value is an entirely different proposition.

Greg Maddux was the Padre who frequented the rumor mills the most often. Greg is, even at this point in his career, a decent pitcher who could possibly step in and be the fifth starter for a few contending teams. Maddux has been a few runs worse than the average pitcher this season, and was intriguing to teams like the Phillies who have had problems with consistency of their rotations. Had Maddux not possessed a no-trade clause, the Padres may have been able to snag a prospect similar, or even slightly better in quality to what they received in the Randy Wolf trade-nothing special, but certainly a potentially useful player.

Unfortunately (or fortunately if you really like seeing Maddux pitch in San Diego), Maddux has a no-trade clause, and he had no interest in going anywhere except for a contender on the West Coast. Maddux’s wishes basically limited the potential market to only the Dodgers. The Dodgers, recognizing the Padres had little leverage over them, probably offered the Padres nothing but the assumption of the remainder of Maddux’s contract.

If this were any other business, I would imagine the Padres would have made that trade. With no shot at the playoffs, there is really little financial logic to continuing to pay Maddux’s not so cheap salary. Better to let the Dodgers do so, and pocket the savings as profit. However, baseball is unlike most other businesses in that the customers are able to analyze the company’s every move. Had the Padres merely given Maddux away, to a division rival no less, a good majority of the fans would have been incensed. For whatever reason, fans tend to not like seeing an owner put profit into his own pocket. Trading Maddux for what would appear to be nothing, would be sure to cause such a P.R. backlash that it was just not worth doing.

Other Padres rumored to possibly be dealt included Brian Giles, Cla Meredith, and Josh Bard, Khalil Greene, and Kevin Kouzmanoff. Below is a very brief discussion of the circumstances surrounding each of them…

Giles, has a relatively affordable option for next year, and is likely to be the team’s best option for RF in 2009. Trading him now would have created another hole to be filled in the off-season.

Meredith is not great, and would not have generated much of a return. With that said, he is a serviceable bullpen arm under team control for the next few years. I would guess he actually has more value to the Padres than what they could have received in a trade.

Trading Greene now would probably have amounted to selling at a low. He has been awful so far this season, but his past performance suggests he will play better going forward. Also, much like the problem of trading Giles, getting rid of Greene would open a huge hole at SS, and because there are so few good shortstops, both internally, and externally, it may take a while to find a good replacement.

Kouzmanoff is a league average third baseman who comes cheap. Headley can play 3B, but, unless a team were to offer a quality player who could fill a position of need (i.e. CF or 2B) in 2009, there was little reason to trade Kouz.

The only guy who I thought might have been traded was Bard. He, like many players on the Padres roster is between a replacement level and average level talent. At one point, I had read that the Marlins were interested in him. My initial thought was that trading him would not hurt the team too much, as a guy like Hundley could replace him without too big of a drop in overall production. At the same time, Bard is not a good enough player to fetch much in return, so keeping him around is not the worst thing that could have happened.

Easy as it is to argue the front office was complacent, and should have traded some veterans for prospects, when each of the possible trade candidates is examined individually, it becomes clear that the Padres would not have received much in return, or were actually better off from a baseball perspective keeping the player. Had any team actually made an enticing offer for any of the players mentioned above, I am sure the Padres would have jumped all over it.

Perhaps the best news the Padres received all day, was that the Dodgers acquired Manny Ramirez. In return for 2 months of Manny, they gave up two quality prospects, including a guy (LaRoche) who should have been starting at 3B for them all year. Since the Padres are not contending this year, it really does not matter how well the Dodgers finish the season. Removing players from the Dodger’s system who could have been useful to the team in the future can only benefit the Padres.

Finally, lets not forget, although the Padres were unable to pull off a deal today, Kevin Towers once said: “There are Better Deals in August...”