Trade Review: Moose and Urban

Moose is Loose receives:
SP Ryan Vogelsong SF
SP Trevor Cahill ARI
19th rounder

Urban Achievers receives:
OF BJ Upton TB
SP John Danks CHW
13th rounder

I had serious doubts about Vogelsong going into the season, namely that all signs and most statistics pointed to fluke – similar to the seasons of guys like Phil Humber and Josh Collmenter. 34-year-old journeymen just don’t have continued success after flopping early on and playing in other countries for five years. But its not unprecedented, as Colby Lewis took a similar path, and Vogelsong seems to be more like Lewis than the other two. He’s been great and it makes the first trade involving Vogelsong earlier in the season (BPhillips, JWilliams, 24th to One Nut for ZCozart, Vogelsong, and 19th rounder to Urban) look a lot better than I originally thought (and deemed “lopsided”). This is a good move for Brian because he had the OF depth to deal off Upton and received two very solid and relatively stable producers to fill the middle of his rotation – something his team severly lacked before. Danks needs to be healthy and productive for a few weeks before he could even be considered as a matchup play at this point. The six round difference is not insignificant when you look at the value in each round – 13th ceiling: Prado, CLewis; floor: injured closers; and 19th ceiling: VWorley, Zambrano, floor: JVazquez, JSanchez, BPeacock, Danks – so it was certainly was not a steal for Brian, but it was worthwhile given his needs and considered in tandem with the previous trade.

For Dan, it was a great move. Upton, while frustrating and volatile, has keeper talent and is in a contract year. While he was injured to start the year, I expect significant improvement in short order. If you pick out his top performances in the five categories throughout his career (five full seasons), you get a line of 89/24/82/44/.386. I highly doubt you’ll ever see that all in one season, but he’s still just 27 and the potential for a top-20 year has always been there. In exchange for guys that are in no way keepers in Vogelsong and Cahill, that’s a fine return, but it also doesn’t seriously hurt his chances to compete this year. At this point, teams in the bottom third should really be playing for today still keeping an eye toward the future – and this trade does that for Dan. The pick upgrade is a nice touch.

For those who are “out of it” I encourage you to stay involved. It not only allows you to stay competitive and make a playoff run, but there’s always value on the wire, which can help your team. Casten did this well last year. He sold off spare parts early, acquired more, then sold it off again, and made the playoffs. Now he’s easily one of the top two teams. A good example would be Corey Luebke. He picked him up as a speculative free agent after he was moved to the rotation after success in the bullpen, then traded him to me for a four round upgrade (16th to 12th).