To Trade or Not To Trade, That is the Question

By Blaidd Drwg

Dave Cameron recently suggested that the Mariners should consider trading Michael Pineda. While I don’t necessarily disagree with him, I do think that his expectations on the players in return are a little, how would you say it, generous. Cameron writes:

The Reds have an excess prospect at nearly every position the Mariners have a massive hole, and could offer something like a package built around a switch-hitting catcher with power (Yasmani Grandal), a line-drive hitting first baseman who might be able to play left field or could DH (Yonder Alonso), a third baseman with legitimate power (Todd Frazier), and throw in a decent back-end starter (Travis Wood) to help the M’s compensate for losing a member of their rotation.

Of the guys he lists, John Sickles ranks Alonso as the Reds #3 prospect, Grandal as their #5 prospect and Frazier as their #7 prospect. As much as I think this would be a windfall for the Mariners, I seriously doubt that the Reds would be insane enough to move 3 of their top 7 prospects for a guy who, while he has the makings of a great pitcher, has thrown just over 100 innings in the majors. I would think that the Mariners would have to move at least one prospect in addition to Pineda in a deal like that.

Something else that Cameron writes bothers me a little:

Alonso, Frazier, and Wood could step right onto the big league roster, and given who they’d be replacing, the M’s might actually be better this year even after trading Pineda away.

Lets look at these players individually:
Alonso – He has a 298/363/476 slash line with 1 1/2 seasons under his belt in AAA. He doesn’t hit for much power (despite being 6’ 2” and 240 lbs) and doesn’t have great command of the strike zone. He would replace the revolving door that is at DH for the Mariners, but I doubt that he would be significantly better than Cust/Carp/whoever else. The one red flag for me, he is from Cuba and his “listed” age is 24. He might really be 24 and have some room for improvement, but if history holds for Cuban defectors, we could be looking at him at his career peak right now.

Grandal – Another Cuban (the Reds sure do like them, there is a bit of irony in them constantly taking Cubans and that can be found here, just scroll down to the newspaper article) who has put up some impressive numbers in the minors (897 career OPS). I would temper my expectations about being able to plug him in the lineup right now (and Cameron admits that) – he has exactly 27 plate appearances at AA (and only 1 walk in those 27 appearances) and his MiLB stats last season came from playing in Arizona and Bakersfield – 2 places the ball travels a bit. I really doubt that a guy with 300 PA in the minors and very limited experience at AA would be able to out produce the hack Miguel Olivo they are putting out there most days (and I am not a great fan of Olivo). I would guess he is probably 2 years away from the majors at the earliest.

Frazier – He is 25, has some mid range power, has improved his walk rate dramatically so far this year, but looks like he might be a slightly above average MLB hitter based on his stats in AAA. There are some health concerns on Frazier, but the biggest concern to me would be his fielding – he is a bit of a butcher with the glove, sporting a .950 fielding percentage at 3B in his AAA career. I have a feeling he is probably destined for the OF if he makes it to the majors. That being said, his bat is probably better than Chone Figgins or Adam Kennedy at this point, but how much would defense suffer if he was plugged into 3B right now? Besides, the Mariners have Alex Liddi in AAA right now and he basically would be Frazier with more power and a slightly better glove, so why bother at this point.

Wood – He is a relatively young, power arm who is better than anyone the M’s currently have in AAA, so he probably would be roughly equivalent to Jason Vargas with more strikeouts.

I know this is just one suggestion for a deal that could be made, but if you were Z, would you make it?