Trade Review: Grumpy and Urban

Urban Receives
OF Bryce Harper WAS
SP Bud Norris HOU

Grumpy receives:
SP CC Sabathia NYY
OF Chris Young ARI

I think this is massive overreaction by Casten and a clear step forward for Dan, who has acquired the most productive 19 year old we’ve seen since ARod. Someone who could assume a Pujols-like stranglehold on one of the top-three fantasy players in the league as early as next year. He has been hyped like few others and he has lived up to the hype. Given his current rate of production over 155 abs, if you stretched that across 600 abs you get 116/27/73/15/.384 – so, like Alex Gordon in 2011, only nine years younger.  Take ARod’s stats through approximately this many at bats in his career (just about to turn 20) and his projected line over 600 was 63/21/80/16/.264. We all know what ARod went on to do, obviously with the help of some PEDs and at a much shallower position, but this is what Harper is capable of:  super--dare I add “duper”--stardom.

CC, meanwhile, is just not having a great season. Sure, a legit, steady-performing ace, most likely worth keeping at least for the next couple years. But outside of his exemplary K numbers (92 in 92.1 ip), that 3.70/1.27/8 qs is imminently replaceable. It’s actually about half of Bud Norris’ production total from last year (176/3.77/1.33/16 qs). As far as aces go, his 22 qs in 33 starts in 2011 (67%) was pretty low compared to most and in line with guys like Beckett, Latos, CWilson, Garza types – decent but not fantastic. In a league that doesn’t count wins, CC is a light drop in K production away from being only a low-level keeper (keep in mind guys like Cain and Bumgarner were not kept last year). 

I fully expect Harper to outproduce Young in all categories this year, with a potentially large outperformance in OBP (Young’s career OBP is .320). Meanwhile, the difference between CC and Norris might not be that great. Don’t get me wrong, CC is very steady and Norris is not – an underrated attribute in a starter. But, prior to his May 26th start, Norris’ 4.81 ERA was 3.14 and he was one of the more dependable starters in the league. He’s got a sprained knee, but I expect his ERA will settle back down to something under last year, in the 3.60 vicinity. CC’s should be a bit better, but not significantly. Both will likely post a 9.0 k/9. Norris’ WHIP could be much worse than CC’s, but how much of a difference is 1.45  vs. 1.25 really going to make? I would’ve made him take Brad Lincoln.

Casten’s team is better, don’t get me wrong, but not substantially. I think Casten took a bit of shine off his brilliance in keeping Harper despite the widespread belief that he wouldn’t be up and this productive in 2012, thus making the equivalent of a sixth round pick on him look foolish. I know his pitching has gone to hell in a handbasket here pretty quickly, which is certainly frustrating, but I thought he could get more for Harper – even if it was a few weeks down the road. I just think the difference between CC and Bud and Young’s history of 80/20/80/20 seasons isn’t enough for the Next Big Thing, who very well could be the Current Big Thing.  Meanwhile, I like what Dan’s doing with Harper, Jennings, and Moustakas as nice young core of keepers, with guys like Gio, BUpton, and Choo to fill in behind (though improvement may be coming there as well). He also benefits from the fact that there’s a possibility that, not only does he get one of the best young players in quite some time, but the guys he received both could outperform the guys he gave up in 2012 and he remains in the race while preparing for the future.