IC defers to authority
Is Frank Wren an idiot? Let's be straight: There's your question after today's big trade, in which the Bravos sent 27-year-old shortstop Yunel Escobar and lousy pitcher Jo-Jo Reyes to Toronto in exchange for 33-year-old shortstop Alex Gonzalez and a pair of interesting, iffy prospects.
I assume that Wren is actually, like, aware that Escobar is a plus defender who came into the year with a fairly Jeteresque .301/.375/.426 career batting line, and also aware that however extraordinarily bad he's been at the plate this year, odds are that this is going to change. (I'm presuming here that because the Braves aren't regarded as slimebags and value their reputation, if there were some truly unfixable cause of Escobar's struggles they would have told their opposites in Toronto, who would have passed on the player.) He's also probably aware that Gonzalez is just some guy.
Operating on these assumptions, we can stipulate that Wren isn't an idiot. Why, then, would he make such an odd trade? It doesn't seem mysterious from here. Escobar acted, by most accounts, like a huge jackass in Atlanta and was playing horrible baseball of a quality Gonzalez can easily match even if he doesn't hit another 17 home runs in the second half. If you tell the GM of a team with the best record in the league, one very much playing for a last title for one of the all-time great managers, that he can get rid of a huge jackass without it costing him on the field during a pennant run, and that he can get interesting prospects in the bargain, there's no real reason for him not to do it.
Contrary to myth, certain kinds of jackassery—interestingly they're the kind of which Escobar has been accused, like truly not hustling and not listening to specific instruction—really can be harmful to a ballclub. They undermine the authority of the coaching staff, which matters to a team largely built around developing young players and training them in a system. They don't make the player a devil, but they do reduce his actual value and give the team an incentive to get rid of him, killing the chicken to scare the monkeys and all that.
Just how much of a jackass Escobar actually is (or, more precisely, how much of a jackass the Braves think he is) I have no idea at all, but that a 27-year-old who's been doing a passable Derek Jeter impression for three years has been turfed is a decent tell. If I were a Toronto fan I'd be delighted today. But if I were a Braves fan I'd be shrugging indifferently at worst.
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Reader Comments (7)
Excellent.
Yunel Escobar punched his ticket out of town during the 7/10 game against the Mets (I wish I could find video of the game or plays). Round about the 3rd inning, I was watching the game with my buddy and told him that Escobar was crap this year and looks like he wants to be sent to the minors.
In the 6th, Escobar lost a popup in the wind that Ike Davis, speedster that he is, turned into a double.
In the same inning, Escobar fields a grounder from Francoeur, then throws a lollipop to Glaus which pulls him off the bag. Francoeur runs into his hand and jams it. I was not sure if Glaus was more upset with Frenchy for running into him, or Escobar for the throw.
Immediately after the inning, I said, "He is so traded."
Whoops... I meant the 7/9 game.
Not sure I'm digging the idea that the Braves, by definition, correctly valued Escobar's play and then we can deduct how much of a jackass he is from that. We might get a correct answer from that, sure, but that kind of inferred reasoning is making a huge statement about Wren and co.'s player valuation skills. I'd like to think that statement is correct, but we don't really know that at all. This is the guy that traded Joey Devine for Mark Kotsay(who hit surprisingly well for the Braves that season, incidentally, but still sucked).
@2
Those incidents certainly looked bad, but it's worth noting that making a bad throw/losing a pop up in the lights are things that happen to everybody. Escobar doesn't do himself any favors in terms of body language and such, but in the aggregate he's an excellent defender, and a couple poorly timed gaffes don't change that; nor do they necessarily mean he has a bad attitude, either - which is not to say he doesn't, but there seems to be a lot of confirmation bias flying around lately.
I do tend to assume, unless I have reason to think otherwise, that GMs value major league players more or less correctly. These guys have computers and can check Fangraphs or B-Ref like anyone else. This isn't always a correct assumption, but it generally works as an analytical premise.
Along those lines, there was a neat post at Beyond the Boxscore calculating that the trade cost the Braves about $6.5 m in surplus value, and that making some pretty damn generous assumptions about how bad Escobar is going to be and how good Gonzalez is going to be. Which is interesting in that it puts a ballpark value on bad attitude. And to be honest, it doesn't seem out of line.
I obviously can't quantify the potential cost incurred by keeping Escobar, having him undermine the coaches, and then having other young players tune them out a bit because they see him getting away with not listening to them. I'd suggest, though, that it's potentially quite a lot higher than 1.5 wins' worth of value, and that in this sense there may be legitimate and actual addition by subtraction here.
For what it's worth as well, Keith Law isn't a big fan of the deal because he's not sure bad-bodied Escobar is worth the prospects the Jays gave up!
I really have no reason to dispute any of that (except Law, since they prospects are pretty fringy as far I can tell. Curious). But - and there's always a "but", right? - through a similar vein of reasoning, I tend to think just like GM's can generally value players correctly, MLB players can generally move past any bad attitudes and realize that just because one player is a dick doesn't mean they shouldn't listen to their coaches.
Tangentially, yes, of course all GM's have the resources to value players' MLB track records accurately, but obviously a number of them don't, and I don't have a ton of reason to have a position on Wren in that regard one way or another. He's done some good things, (Troy Glaus) some bad things, (Mark Kotsay) and some things that turned out bad but I'm not sure are really his fault (trading Teixiera for Kotchman and Marek instead of taking the draft picks).
Fair enough, and 'a major league GM did it, qed' is a pretty silly line of argument. To bring up the famous example, though, I doubt Whitey Herzog ever really regretted getting rid of Keith Hernandez. Good organizations are demonstrably willing to get rid of talented players they feel are undermining their system and seem not always to suffer for it, so as much as I figure that well paid athletes can be counted on to ignore the example of the bad seed, I'll defer in a case like this.
As to Wren, it sure is hard to get a read on him, isn't it?