Time to Trade Manny Machado

That sentiment is something I imagine no one said.  Well, maybe, the extreme Chicken Little types who had there sensibilities assaulted when Manny angrily attempted to fling a bat at the opposition a few weeks back.  However, I was intrigued by an article another writer on this site produced discussing what kind of package we could expect from a Nelson Cruz deal.  It was a topic we had covered before and one that went by with little fan fare.

However, this time a few people completely freaked out.  I will share a couple examples:

A commenter referring to himself as 18-1 shared: I think the author is the one who thinks the OS will fall. The AL lEast is theirs to win. What team on paper has better talent?......I will make sure to stop reading blog.

Another commenter going only by Anonymous delivered his letter of reading resignation: This article just made me stop reading Camden Depot. It's been a good ride.

I was somewhat surprised that a single article could impact a reader to such an extent.  I assume if you ignore all of the conditional language of the first two paragraphs that set up the post, then you might be upset over how much Cruz is valued or that anyone is discussing a trade with a team sitting in first.  I would suggest though that such a situation is burn and salt the earth kind of thing.  However, with that in mind, I fully support any gross overreactions in the comments below.

So, trading Manny Machado?  I am going to take a different approach here.  We will not be looking to see what grand package of prospects one could get for Machado.  What we will be doing instead in trying to figure out who we would have to add to Machado to get the best future value player in baseball, Mike Trout.  Yes, the Orioles would never trade Machado.  Yes, the Angels would never trade Trout.  That is not the point here.  This is an exercise in characterizing value of two different commodities.  Put your torches and pitchforks away.

The first thing we try to do is establish how much a player is worth.  For Manny, he is likely to be a Super 2 player this offseason, so he will see arbitration.  For Super 2s, the expectation is that they will receive about 20% of what they would expect to get in Free Agency.  Yes, there are exceptions, but this rule holds pretty firm.  Each following season sees a bump of about 20%, but cost outlay over his four remaining team controlled years is likely to be 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% of his expected "true" value.

A decent way to look at value is to use a projection model to predict Machado's future performance and multiply that with what we think the cost per win will be in the future.  Here is Machado's table according to OLIVER.

Machado	Arb	wOBA	fWAR	$/win	Salary
2015	20%	.341	4.3	5.75	4.9
2016	40%	.347	4.6	6	11
2017	60%	.350	4.8	6.25	18
2018	80%	.351	4.8	6.5	25
	Total	113.5
	Actual	58.9
	Surplus	54.6

That simple analysis suggests that Machado, in his control years, provides the Orioles with nearly 55 MM worth in value.  That is amazing value and his performance so far this year suggests that the team might want to think about solidifying his contract in hopes to avoid what the 50th percentile projection suggests.  Now, what does this approach say about Trout?

Trout	wOBA	fWAR	$/win	Salary
2015	.434	10	5.75	5.2
2016	.441	10.4	6	15.2
2017	.442	10.4	6.25	19.2
2018	.444	10.5	6.5	33.2
2019		8	6.75	33.2
2020		8	7	33.2
	Total	363.2
	Actual	139.2
	Surplus	224

Oliver only goes to 2018, so I took the liberty to suggest that Trout's performance decreases by more than 20% simply to provide a conservative value that benefits the Orioles in this exercise.  The difference in surplus value between the two players is about 170 MM.

How many Orioles prospects make up 170 MM in cost difference?

Using Matt Perez' top 100 prospect outcome work and doing some work with Wang's original work, we get a table of surplus value below.

	Value (MM)
Rank	Pitcher	Position
Top 20	40	50
Second 20	25	35
Third 20	20	30
Fourth 20	20	25
Final 20	15	20

That leaves us with this collection to try to make up 170 MM in value using a mix of Baseball Prospectus' pre-season top 100 list and mid-season update.

Player	Group	Value (MM)
Kevin Gausman	Top 20 SP	40
Dylan Bundy	Top 20 SP	40
Hunter Harvey	2nd 20 SP	25
Eduardo Rodriguez	Final 20 SP	15
Jonathan Schoop	Final 20 Po	20
	Total	140

That leaves the Orioles package of Machado, Gausman, Bundy, Harvey, Rodriguez, and Schoop about 30 MM short of Mike Trout.  Well, we could add Adam Jones to the package.  Trout naturally would fill his position.  Jones has 62 MM left on his deal after this season and, using OLIVER, looks to be worth about 25 MM more than that.  This leaves the deal 5 MM short, which is more or less a push.  If you want to make up that amount, then Mike Wright could be added to the mix.

Final Deal

Orioles get	Value		Angels get	Value
Mike Trout	225		Manny Machado	55
			Kevin Gausman	40
			Dylan Bundy	40
			Hunter Harvey	25
			Adam Jones	25
			Jonathan Schoop	20
			Eduardo Rodriguez	15
			Mike Wright	5
Total	225		Total	225

The take home from this is that there is an absurd amount of value tied up in Mike Trout.