{"id":501,"date":"2010-12-19T10:45:26","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T15:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=501"},"modified":"2013-02-07T11:05:29","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T16:05:29","slug":"the-reported-price-for-greinke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=501","title":{"rendered":"The reported price for Greinke (updated)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Zack Greinke at the Royal's photo day 2010. Photo by Harry How\/Getty Images North America<\/p><\/div>\n

12\/19\/10 update: this article is essentially moot: Zack Greinke <\/strong>was dealt to Milwaukee<\/a> along with infielder Yuniesky Betancourt <\/strong>for four players (outfielder Lorenzo Cain<\/a><\/strong>, shortstop Alcides Escobar<\/a><\/strong> and pitching prospects Jake Odorizzi <\/strong>and Jeremy Jeffress<\/a><\/strong> (who played HS ball in South Boston ironically enough).\u00a0 I’m not familiar enough with the Milwaukee prospects to offer opinion one way or the other; here’s some opinions on the trade from FanGraphs<\/a>, Ken Rosenthal<\/a><\/strong>, Jerry Crasnick<\/a>, Joe Sheehan<\/a><\/strong>, and Keith Law<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Also from beat writers Kilgore<\/a><\/strong> and Zuckerman<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And, according to Jon Heyman<\/strong> via twitter<\/a>, the Nats were close to a deal for Greinke in a deal that may or may not have included Storen <\/strong>and Espinosa<\/strong>.\u00a0 Read more below.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

About 6 weeks ago the question of a possible Nat’s trade for Zack Greinke<\/strong> came up in a Keith Law<\/strong> chat<\/a> (link is ESPN insider only) and the trade proposal was <\/strong><\/em>Zimmermann, Espinosa, Burgess<\/strong> and Detwiler<\/strong>.\u00a0 I wrote about<\/a> this theoretical deal at the time, saying it was too much to give up.<\/p>\n

A glass-is-half empty analysis of these four players (which was apparently the opinion of Law, since he thought this would be a good deal for Washington) is something along the lines of the following: Zimmermann is promising pitcher but has yet to really produce consistently at the major league level.\u00a0 Espinosa is also promising but is replaceable by our up-and-coming 2nd base prospects Lombardozzi<\/strong> and Kobernus<\/strong>.\u00a0 Burgess<\/strong> has been solidly improving as he’s progressed through the system but he’s still the toolsy\/high promise player that Jim Bowden<\/strong> adored but which has never really panned out.\u00a0 Lastly Detwiler<\/strong> has shown flashes of dominance but lost pretty much the entirety of 2010 to injury and is getting pushed further and further down the rotation depth chart.<\/p>\n

The glass-is-half full opinion of these four players is simple: they represent the bulk of our farm system’s player development over the past few\u00a0 years.\u00a0 These four players represent the absolute cream of our drafting crop<\/a> over the past few\u00a0 years; a #1, a supplemental #1, a #2 and a #3 round draft pick.<\/p>\n

Now today, we are hearing the TRUE bounty that Greinke would cost, and it is similarly heavy.\u00a0\u00a0 Greinke has hired new agents and apparently demanded a trade<\/a>.\u00a0 He also has a limited clause in his contract that allows him to block trades to certain teams, and the Nats are on that list.\u00a0 According to Buster Olney<\/strong> though, the Royals and Nats have been talking and he discovered<\/a> the actual price it would take (another ESPN insider link): Zimmerman, Espinosa and <\/strong>new closer Drew Storen<\/strong>.\u00a0 On 12\/24\/10, KLaw reported<\/a> that the offer was Zimmermann, Storen, Norris.\u00a0 Wow that would have been quite the bounty.<\/p>\n

This trade option replaces the unknown players (Detwiler and Burgess) with the known quantity (Storen), and only seems slightly less palatable than the Law chat proposal.\u00a0 Can the Nats possibly give up 3 of their planned “starting 14” players (the 8 out-field players, the 5 rotation guys and the closer) next year for Greinke?<\/p>\n

Here’s my problem: Greinke had the makings of looking like an otherwise solid pitcher with a one-year wonder season that won him the Cy Young in 2009.\u00a0 Is he really an “Ace” in this league?\u00a0 His 2010 season<\/a> was unremarkable (an ERA+ of exactly 100, meaning he performed at the mlb average), but now scouts are surmising that he was tired of his team going nowhere and he was “bored” most of the year.\u00a0 But the fact remains there is no guarantee he returns to his 2009 performance.<\/p>\n

If i’m Rizzo, I say no to this deal.<\/p>\n

One last note about possibly overvaluing “prospects.”\u00a0 Storen, Espinosa and Zimmermann are not prospects; they’ve graduated to becoming “promising young players.”\u00a0 They have all made the majors, they’ve all competed at the highest levels and the Nats have a decent idea of what they can do.\u00a0 Guys like Detwiler (because of his injury history) and players who have never reached the majors (Burgess as mentioned in this post) are the real “prospects” in question.\u00a0 Teams and Fans overvalue prospects in a pseudo-parental relationship because they’ve watched the players grow up and grow.\u00a0 But as Rosenthal pointed out (in the linked article above), prospects mostly flame out or don’t become major leaguers.\u00a0 That’s the difference; teams MUST be willing to part with prospects to get real players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12\/19\/10 update: this article is essentially moot: Zack Greinke was dealt to Milwaukee along with infielder Yuniesky Betancourt for four players (outfielder Lorenzo Cain, shortstop Alcides Escobar and pitching prospects Jake Odorizzi and Jeremy Jeffress (who played HS ball in South Boston ironically enough).\u00a0 I’m not familiar enough with the Milwaukee prospects to offer opinion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[111,1487,363,135,369,52,1491,1304,1488,1489,507,373,302,43,110,312,277,301,1490,129,51,142,1486,254],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-adam-kilgore","tag-alcides-escobar","tag-buster-olney","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-derek-norris","tag-drew-storen","tag-erik-kobernus","tag-jake-odorizzi","tag-jeremy-jeffress","tag-jerry-crasnick","tag-jim-bowden","tag-joe-sheehan","tag-jon-heyman","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-keith-law","tag-ken-rosenthal","tag-lorenzo-cain","tag-mark-zuckerman","tag-michael-gurgess","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-ross-detwiler","tag-steve-lombardozzi","tag-yuniesky-betancourt","tag-zack-greinke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}