Trade Review - Angry Pirates & Colon No Like Salad

The Angry Pirates receive:

1B Freddie Freeman, 11th rounder, 12th rounder

Colon No Like Salad receive:

1B Brett Wallace, 5th rounder, 8th rounder

This trade is interesting in that it is sooo not interesting. Freeman is the better of the young first basemen and the younger one (Wallace is 25 in August, Freeman is 22 in September). Freeman has 30 more at bats and 11 more rbi (21 vs. 32) and 5 more homers, while both have scored 32 runs and have basically no speed. Wallace’s OBP of .380 was really the only contribution of any value to this point, despite hitting fifth in a surprisingly decent offense. He really has no business being a starting first baseman in High & Tight and is borderline waiver material. Freeman, meanwhile, struggled early on but is starting to show some power. He has good long-term potential, but his performance so far leaves something to be desired from an offensively oriented position.

Draft picks are difficult to fully grasp in terms of value because your essentially just delaying the consequences for a short-term gain. Some highlights from the 2011 fifth round – Axford, Kuroda, Hellickson, Papelbon, Garza, Torii Hunter, FCordero JZimmerman, Chacin, and James Shields. Worst pick of this round was Furcal, who went to Urban with the top pick, and the recently dropped Vlad and Ian Desmond, as well as the ever-frustrating Brett Myers. The 8th round had some great steals in Gaby Sanchez and Michael Pineda, along with massive busts (RFranklin, ALaRoche, JSantana, Broxton, Fowler). Meanwhile it was a lot of hit and miss in the 11th and 12th with Bedard, Moreland, Kimbrel, Tabata, and LMorrison proving exceptional and Asdrubal obviously a very good for Lars. But the picks were mostly unsuccessful, with Colvin, Pelfrey, IStewart, BCecil, DLee, Veneble, Ruiz, RSoriano, Lidge among them. Needless to say, the later picks in the deal are crapshoot territory, while the fifth rounder (technically, the 11th) next year may ultimately prove to be the best player in this deal.

In terms of players for this season, Kyle definitely got the better one and it makes his team immediately better. But not THAT much better to make it was worth the picks, which makes it a win for Russ in my mind. It would be different if I considered Freeman keeper worthy, but with his production to this point and the depth of hearty statistics available at first, he’s not there yet.