Heating up the Hot Stove

Every year at the end of the NBA season, ESPN’s Sports Guy writes a column breaking down the trade value of the top forty players. It’s one of my favorite sports-related articles of the year. Unfortunately, nobody is doing anything similar for the other sports. So I’m going to rip it off. Here are the rules (some are Simmons’ and some are mine).

1) Suppose Team A proposes a straight-up trade with Team B of player A for player B. If Team A would make the trade, but Team B wouldn’t, player B is ranked higher, and vice versa.
2) Degrees matter. For example, if you considered a trade of Derek Jeter for Derrek Lee (yes, that is the correct spelling), it’s unlikely either team would do it, but the Yankees would think “hmmm, Derrek Lee is available,” while the Cubs would say, “Oh sure, we’ll through in Mark Prior and pay for a new stadium, too!” and then hang up and laugh. Actually this is the Cubs, so you never know…lets move on.
3) Salaries matter. Would you rather have Alex Rodriguez for $25.7 million or Hank Blaylock for $800,000?
4) Age matters. Would you rather have Curt Schilling for the next two years or Mark Buehrle for the next ten?
5) For the sake of this column only, we’re assuming the following things, none of which are actually true:
a. Every team is trying to be at least somewhat competitive. So we’re not penalizing guys who have big contracts on bad teams that would likely be looking to dump them (unless they’re actually bad contracts).
b. On the other hand, every team is trying to be at least reasonably responsible with their money. So the numerous players with bad contracts for big market teams don’t get a free pass just because the teams they’re on can afford a few contracts like that.
c. No players have no-trade clauses, and nobody is threatening to do anything ridiculous to either force or prevent a trade. If you want to be a GM, apply for the job. Otherwise, just play.
d. No trades where the team giving up a player picks up part of his contract. I’ve always thought that was bogus anyway. Could you imagine this happening in anything other than professional baseball? If you want someone on your team, pay him.
6) I didn’t consider minor leaguers for this column, even though there are probably a few who would crack the list. In order to be in my top fifty, you have to have at least done something at the major league level.

GROUP F: AVAILABLE FOR THE RIGHT PRICE:

These are all good players, and many of them are key components of good teams, but all of them have one or two issues (age, salary, injury concerns, pending court cases, etc) that would prevent somebody from giving up the farm for them.

50. Bartolo Colon
Unlike a lot of White Sox fans, I was totally ok with Bartolo Colon winning the AL Cy Young this year. He had a very solid season, and nobody else was really lights-out for the whole year. However, he did pitch for the Sox for a couple years, and I never once thought, “This game’s in the bag, Bartolo Colon is pitching.” A franchise pitcher needs to at least have stretches where you have that feeling. Plus, as of two months ago he couldn’t move his pitching arm.
49. Ivan Rodriguez
Wait, you mean signing Pudge didn’t make the Tigers immediately respectable? Who knew? Still, after watching the playoffs in 2003, I have to say this guy would improve almost any team in baseball’s chances in a playoff series. Why aren’t there rumors about Pudge getting traded to a contender every year? Oh, wait, I remember now, that would be because the Yankees and Red Sox already have catchers.
48. Vernon Wells
A solid player who can do a little bit of everything, although he’s encroaching into “so many people think he’s underrated that he’s actually overrated” territory.
47. Alfonso Soriano
Yes, he’s supposedly making about $10 million next year, which is a lot for a .268 hitter. And the whole “potential MVP and ten-time all-star” buzz quickly died down after he left New York (I was as surprised as you were). But there just isn’t exactly a plethora of second basemen who can give you 35+ homers a year, and even fewer that can steal bases and won’t kill you defensively.
46. Alex Rodriguez
Has there ever been a situation in baseball quite like A-Rod’s? I mean, he’s clearly one of the best all-around players in the game, and yet, his failures in big situations have become so reliable that fans of his own team aren’t surprised or even really upset by them anymore. It’s also a little disturbing that every team he’s left has improved significantly immediately after his departure. The biggest problem is still his contract, however. If it was something remotely reasonable, there’d be some .500 team that would take a shot on this guy, but it doesn’t really make sense to spend $25 million on one player unless you already have a borderline playoff-calibur team, and if you do, you’re probably looking for somebody that you won’t consider benching after the playoffs start. Incidentally, if you thought the Vikings going from “Sexy Super Bowl Pick” to “One of the Worst Teams in the NFL” to “Surprise Playoff Contender” (and coming soon…“Vikings Team That Blew it in December Again!”) in one season, consider A-Rod’s career. Over the course of eleven years, he’s been a “Promising, Somewhat Over Hyped Prospect,” “Up-and-coming Franchise Player,” “Overpaid Star on a Crappy Team,” “Possible Franchise Savior,” “Arch-villain,” and now “Superstar That Inexplicably Always Screws Up/Disappears at the Worst Possible Time.” To make matters worse, the Yankees are probably the worst team in any sport to be on for a player in that last phase.
45. Victor Martinez
A promising young hitter at a key position where there aren’t a ton of great hitters. He’s gotten so much buzz in the last couple of years that you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you that he had fewer RBIs last season than Geoff Jenkins, Emil Brown, Felipe Lopez, Pedro Feliz, and the power-hitting Carl Crawford, fewer home runs than Shawn Green, Jhonny Peralta, and Rod Barajas, and a lower OBP than Placido Polanco, David Wright, and the always disciplined Adam Dunn. He actually put up solid #s for a 6 hitter, but I just don’t see him as a middle of the order guy. Actually, I really don’t get the whole Cleveland thing period. 6 all-stars on a sub .500 team a couple of years ago? And the manager didn’t get fired? They were supposed to make up 15 games on a team with four #1 starters? Really? Did they move to New York three years ago? How did I miss that? I mean, I realize that they were loaded in the 90s, and that they hadn’t been good for a while before that, but can we please get over this? And yet, I know there will be people picking them to win the AL Central next year, despite the fact that the AL Central includes the most dominant team of the decade so far, a perennial playoff team due for a rebound year, and neither of them are the Indians (Although this did result in one of my favorite ironic television scheduling moments of the year, when Outside the Lines ran a thirty-minute piece on the resurgent Indians about three hours after they were eliminated from the AL Central Race and while they were in full late-season collapse mode. In context, I thought it was hilarious.).
44. Ichiro
Just had a downright awful year by his standards (and not a great season for most leadoff hitters), I won’t even tell you what his stats were. Still, how could I remove him from the list entirely when he practices hitting balls off of a trampoline so that he can get better at fishing pitches out of the dirt? Unless you somehow think walks from a leadoff hitter are helpful, what’s not to like about that? Plus, American sports needs more one-name only guys.
43. John Lackey
Not a guy you’d think of as an elite starter, but he’s 27, he’s probably not going to get a ridiculous contract, and last season he was 14-5 with 209 IP, a 3.44 ERA, and 199 strikeouts (which is only one less than 200). Plus, he’s a former World Series hero and was supposed to be the next Greg Maddux three years ago. That counts for something.
42. Freddy Garcia
Had he not been part of a championship team in Chicago (which ensures legendary status for multiple decades), he probably never would have been fully appreciated here since almost all of his best starts have been on the road, he usually gives up three runs in the first inning, and too many people liked the players that were traded for him (Jeremy Reed, who was then a hot prospect, and Miguel Olivo, who was referred to as “a crazy man” by Ozzie Guillen, which is the baseball equivalent of Randy Moss’s statement that he wouldn’t play with Terrell Owens because TO has too much baggage). Still, his reputation as a big-game pitcher is pretty much ensured for the rest of his career. And he looks like The Rock. That counts for something, too. Especially at a position where intimidation is helpful.

GROUP E: RUMOR MILL FODDER

These, for the most part, are the guys who are at the level where they’re perpetually rumored to be traded, especially if their teams are out of it early in the season. You know, those guys who are good enough that they could help a contender, but not so good that their fans would start a riot if they got shipped out for prospects and cash.

41. Brandon Webb
Any young pitcher that can go 14-12 for a team as bad as the Diamondbacks is worth giving a shot in my book. Tends to get overlooked since he’s not a big strikeout guy and he hasn’t been around for that long. Oh, and because he plays for Arizona.
40. Billy Wagner
He’s the opposite of Bobby Jenks. Instead of being intimidating because he’s a fastball-chucking behemoth, he’s intimidating because he looks like a little evil leprechaun/gremlin/elf whipping fastballs and sliders over the plate. Here’s where you have to apply one of the video game boss rules for intimidation: most bosses are at least three times as big as the hero, so when you run across some little guy, you know there’s something tricky going on.
39. Scott Rolen
I’m aware that he completely disappeared in the 2004 World Series and hasn’t really been heard from since. I’m not faulting him for that Series, the Red Sox were destined to win, so it was a little bit of an odd situation. Also, it’s not really fair to evaluate a player based on four bad games (provided that the player does not have a $25 million contract). The only thing that concerns me is that the Cardinals didn’t seem to get worse at all when he got hurt.
38. Chad Cordero
I kind of felt sorry for Expos fans. First the team leaves after being terrible for years, and then it immediately becomes relevant. Then I realized that there weren’t any Expos fans, and if there were, most of them were from Quebec.
37. Hank Blaylock
He’s pretty much a younger, cheaper version of JOOOEEEE!!!! CREEEEDEEEE!!!!!, (as Hawk calls him now) except that he’s not a World Series and ALCS hero, and I feel like he has slightly less letdown potential. Of course, if Crede has anything remotely close to the season that many Sox fans are expecting next year, I’m going to look like an idiot for putting Blaylock here instead.
36. Joe Mauer
Definitely a little overrated, as a .294 hitter with little power, and picking him ahead of Prior was Isaiah Thomas-esque, but he’s the type of catcher who can impact an entire team’s defense, and guys like that who won’t kill you at the plate are rare. Ok, I hate hearing this guy get hyped, so that’s quite enough.
35. Scott Podsednik
Could easily run for Mayor of Chicago and win right now. And Mayor Daley, being a huge Sox fan, wouldn’t even have him whacked. Seemed to have recovered from the nagging injuries by the playoffs, so it’s not a major concern at this point. In fact, the White Sox attempt to reinvent baseball for the post-steroids era (which was probably at least half unintentional, remember that the lineup was originally being built around Thomas and Konerko) would not have even come close to working without Pods wreaking havoc on the bases.
34. Eric Gagne
If you have any doubt about how valuable Gagne is to the Dodgers, you clearly didn’t watch Yhency Brazoban (10 losses and 21 saves) trying to close out games.
33. Jake Peavy
Another guy firmly in “so many people think he’s underrated that he’s overrated” territory, except that I could easily see him being the #1 starter for a championship team. He’s not there yet, though, and he’s not breaking into the top thirty until he gets there.
32. Zach Duke
“Phenom” is usually synonymous with “overrated,” but 8-2 on a crappy team with a 1.81 ERA…damn.
31. Josh Beckett
A proven playoff ace whose regular season career has been decidedly unspectacular. Actually, this may be a little high, since there Marlins apparently consider his trade value to be equivalent to nothing.

COMING SOON: The top thirty