Hugh2

Completely incomparable. Sale is about 1/2 the financial cost as Hamels, a better pitcher, and 4 years younger on the right side of his prime. Apples to Oranges.

If anything that trade is too light. It took 2 top 100 prospects, one arguably a top 25 to get a reliever. The premium for a TOTRS, who is arguably one of the best pitchers in baseball is going to be significant. Remember, the White Sox have the right to walk away from a deal here. They are the sellers, and everyone in the league would want Sale if he was available....they hold the chips, not us.

The better the player, the better the return demanded. Also, and this is remarkably important here, is that quantity will never make up for quality in trades. That last point rings more and more true the better the player you are trading for. With that in mind, I think we have to acknowledge that a trade for Sale starts with someone like Bogaerts or Betts. Although if they believe in a guy like E-Rod, you might be able to center a deal around him if it is also headlined by Moncada. If Sale was for sale (pun totally intended) it probably looks something like EROD/Moncada/Kopech/Devers.

Keep your eyes on Joe Kelly. I always thought he had more potential as a reliever since the day we traded for him. More time is needed to trust him but the early results in Pawtucket are promising. He by no means would be the first failed starter to become a relief pitcher. Actually some of the best closers in history were just failed starters.

DFA him.

you're giving up more potential future value than the present value you're getting. Which makes sense, if I was going to give you $1 today....I'd expect to be paid back more than $1 dollar 5 years from now. Espinoza has the potential to return a heck of a lot more value than Pomeranz will to us and he has too because that value will not only be realized in the future but it comes with a risk premium as well. The term "overpay" is a bit misleading, or misunderstood by some because they are not factoring in that time value and risk premium associated with the player.

The Padres probably asked for Espinoza plus as well, perhaps. What a team asks for is a negotiation tool, in the end they'll take the highest bid, Moncada/Espinoza is probably the "buy now" price.

I don't think it does make up the disparity, there is not much value in a guy who can only pitch half a season, especially when you have no one to come in and fill the void. If there is any validation to your argument then consider this....Clay is pitching like garbage now and hasn't had a season where he's been healthy AND good in quiet some time. Santana substantially adds more value to the back of the rotation than Clay does. Not only because I think he can stay healthy, but because Clay looks to be done and is probably garbage going forward.

Yes it's pretty confusing with the same first and last name and even middle names that are only a couple letters off. I do believe Alexander was considered the better prospect and still may but Alejandro definitely closed the gap between the two of them. He might of been higher in some teams eyes, perhaps he was their preference.

If you exclude their rookie seasons because they were both 22 year olds who spent time in the minors then Santana has average about 60 IP more than Clay per year. That is about 1/3 a season, and is significant.

If they didn't make the Ziegler trade it would be funny to see Luis Basabe, next to Luis Basabe. Probably.

In their defense I think they have a good system of slapping a projection with a ceiling/floor ranking. For example they have Groome at a 6 with a (3-7) range, but when you actually read the scouting reports they often use the terminology "potential to be" when saying a guy is likely going to be this or that. A lot can happen from now and into the future.

I also heard that it was confirmed on multiple guns. Wasn't just one gun, still pretty insane....how fast is the changeup? 92 MPH???

And only being able to pitch a partial season drastically reduces his value as a starter.

This is the one thing people are missing with him. Yes, he hit 105 the other day but him throwing 100 MPH wasn't exactly new information. We've already known he has the plus fastball but he still needs to develop his secondaries and improve his command, without much more development he might end up better suited for the pen. However we aren't anywhere near there yet, he has reportedly cleaned up his delivery and given the improvements he's made with his time in the system it's not unreasonable to project he can make those adjustments. But he still has to do it!!!

Although it does seem like they been more cautious with slapping the 7 or 8 on prospects lately. They had no problem slapping an 8 on the 2-8 scale on Bogaerts when he was in A ball and it's not like they got burned by him. The only prospect who I think really burned them in recent years (or at least the most) was Will Middlebrooks, but they will tell you he headlined a much weaker system. If Will Middlebrooks was 4-5 years younger when he was #1 on the site....my guess is he'd probably be in the 5-6 range on the site now.

Well it is a prospect site, they tend to focus on their guys more. Sometimes podcasts do go more in depth into MLB players but remember they don't have a MLB scouting team so the information there is going to be likely what we all have access too. In terms of all their guys being "2nd division starters" I'd argue that more often than not prospects are nothing more than that. Right now they have 4 players projecting to be impactful everyday players, with 3 more having that kind of ceiling. This doesn't mean more guys aren't there, there was a time when Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts weren't on anyones top 20 and didn't really have any projections. Projecting prospects is an inexact science. What I like about Soxprospects is their honesty, you'd expect them to be homers but sometimes they are more cautious with their guys than other organizations. I remember they were more down on Lars Anderson than most others in the industry, and they never projected Owens to be anything more than a #4 maybe #3 starter. I don't think they are any better than BA, BP, or anyone else but the reason I trust them so much is the simple fact that they have more eyes, more often on our guys than anyone else with the obvious caveat of the teams scouts. They are usually pretty fair, and sox fans who like to follow the minors are lucky to have a resource like them.

4 of the 5 best ERA seasons? Yes if you include Clays first season when he started 3 games, and the other 3 seasons where he started 14, 16, and 18 games. Out of those seasons where he had a good ERA in only one of them he started a substantial amount of games when he threw 28. Clay has a career ERA that is .16 under Santana. They are nowhere even close to being the same pitcher, Santana has 2X the amount of innings pitched and it only looks close if you go back several years because for the first time in his life he missed substantial time. So unless your argument is that Santana is now going to be an injury risk....I don't see where else this conversation needs to go. Santana > Clay....and it's not really that close.

Santana has almost double, as in almost 1000 more IP than Buchholz in just 2 more years in the league. That gap doesn't look as extreme because if you only go back a few years Santanas 2015 and 108 IP weight heavily on his average. But here's the thing in his 12 year career Santana has a very good track record of staying healthy and staying in a rotation, he got hurt one year and looks healthy again. Meanwhile, Buchholz has a season like that every other year. I honestly don't even think it's close, Santana is easily worth his contract and Clay is worth nothing at this point. I honestly am inclined to not believe this rumor because the Twins could probably do much better. If there is a trade where Santana is price and the big piece is Clay then that is about as close to a no brainer as you get to make.

Exactly, there is real tangible value in a guy who can stay healthy and in the rotation. Clay hasn't been barely been able to stay healthy, and he hasn't been healthy and good in a very long time. Clay has made more than 18 starts 2 times since 2010 and even then he only made 28 with 173 IP. Those two years he started more than 18 games in 2012 and 2014 he was horrible. His ERA/FIP/ERA+ was 4.56/4.65/92 and 5.35/4.01/75 This year he is sporting a 5.91/6.03/76 Pretty much every year Clay has either been injured 1/2 the year or a disaster in the rotation. You can not really stress enough the type of value of having consistency brings to a rotation.

I do agree that a 3 year recent sample size can be more telling than a 6 year. One caveat to the "larger the sample the better" rule is the longer you go out the more likely you are including good stats to a guy who is declining, or stats when he started out and struggled while he's in his prime. However, as with everything, context is needed. That one year Santana was hurt weighs down a 3 year sample size more than a 6 year and besides that one half season missed Santana has a remarkedly better track record than Clay. If Santana could be had for Clay, that's as about as easy a yes as you can get. I suspect it would take a bit more but Santana is an easy upgrade over Clay.

agree, I'd do this trade all day. I have to believe something else is going the twins way, I would say a lower level prospect outside the top ten but after the past year with DD I don't feel safe making those predictions anymore. Still, I don't think it would take much more if the Twins are looking for salary relief.

Santana's IP the last 5 years: 228 2/3 178 211 196 108 Buchholz IP the last 5 years: 82 2/3 189.1 108 170 113 Santana is on pace for about 180 IP this year. Consistency goes a long long way, There's been less variation in his numbers as well where Clay has had a couple really good runs and then been absolutely awful at times. If healthy, Santana is a much much better option in the back of the rotation for a reasonable cost.

In hindsight they aren't exciting, but that's the problem with baseball, no one has a crystal ball and everyone is right/wrong at times in hindsight. They both had red flags but had really good potential too. You make that trade multiple times and sometimes you end up with a really really good pitcher. The fact that they were afterthoughts from being able to dump Crawford and Beckett, and that allowed us to go out and sign Drew, Victorino, and Napoli and win a WS makes it an overall great trade in hindsight. In a parallel universe somewhere, Crawford might of bounced back with Beckett and the Drew/Victorino/Napoli tandem skips their 2013 performance and goes right to 2014 and it's the worse trade in a long time.

Well I know how I'm spending my morning. http://news.soxprospects.com/2016/07/podcast-ep-102-groome-signs-dave-deals.html