Friday, July 31, 2009

Peavy Accepts Trade to White Sox

Friday July 31, 2009

Moments before the trading deadline today, Jake Peavy finally accepted a trade to the Chicago White Sox.

So what changed between May and now?
  • Is it the fact that the White Sox now have a winning record?
  • Is it the fact that including Peavy's injury, the Padres were on pace to absolutely smash the MLB record they set for injuries in 2008?
  • Was it the good young pitchers the Padres have had traded for and brought up like Mat Latos, Tim Stauffer and Sean Gallagher? Did Peavy feel the Padres could make due without him now?
I don't know what changed in Jake Peavy's head. I didn't like this trade for the Padres in May. Now I am just glad its over.

Regardless of the payroll limitations the team may have, with Peavy gone and Giles coming off the books at the end of 2009, the Padres can now:
  1. Keep players like Gonzalez, Bell, Young and Eckstein for 2010.
  2. Go after some mid level free agents to compliment the good young players like Headley, Gwynn, Hundley, Blanks, and Cabrera that they have now.
  3. Prepare for a bright future.
In this trade the Padres got back a #4 - 5 type starter in Clayton Richard and a future closer/possible front line starter in Aaron Poreda and a real good young prospect that is in A ball for Peavy.

Overall the Padres got what Baseball America ranked as the White Sox 2, 3 and 12th best prospects for 2009 and a hard throwing 6'8", 26 year old reliever that has 22 appearances in his rookie season this year.

Would I have liked to have seen more coming back the Padres way in this trade? Of course. But the Padres did not get a bad haul considering the no win situation they were in.

This trade also frees up alot of payroll.

In 2010 the Padres have salary committed to just Young and Gonzalez. Of the players likely to be coming back, only Bell, Kouzmanoff, Correia, Baek and Adams are arbitration eligible players. The rest of the players are either on one year deals or are not eligible for arbitration.

The way I see it that leaves the Padres with a Payroll of about $25 - 26 million.
  • $11 million for Chris Young and Adrian Gonzalez.
  • About $6.5 million for Bell, Kouzmanoff and the other arbitrration eligibles.
  • About $2 - $2.5 million to bring back Eckstein and Gaudin.
  • and $7.2 million for 16 guys at or about the major league minimum like:
    Headley, Hundley, Cabrera, Gwynn, Blanks, Venable, Latos, Stuaffer, Burke, Gregerson, Mujica, Perdomo, Gallagher, and now Richard and Poreda.
We will probably still see Kouzmanoff traded in the off season and with the pickup of a mid level free agent outfielder or two, the Padres would be set and still be under $35 million.

Bring on 2010.

4 comments:

  1. Swingingfriar198/01/2009 2:46 PM

    Do you not think the Padres would make an effort to keep Correia after this season?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lorenzo sez...

    Won't a payroll that low force the Marlins to share the Yankees' money they've been getting?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Correia is worth hanging onto as a #4-#5 starter. He is one of the arbitration eligible players that I counted into the $ figures.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lorenzo,

    The Padres will get a larger share of a shrinking revenue sharing at the end of the 2009 for having a lower payroll this season and at the end of next season regardless.

    The $26,862,702 in luxury tax the Yankees paid in 2008 and the $1,305,220 the Tigers paid did not go to the teams with the lowest payroll or revenue.

    It is placed in a Industry Growth Fund that MLB uses for player benefits and to promote the growth of baseball around the world.

    The revenue sharing that all lower revenue teams receive comes from a different pool of money. All 30 teams pay in 31% of their local revenue from tickets and media and that is evenly shared by all 30 teams. Larger revenue teams pay in more so the smaller market teams so it theoretically should help smaller revenue teams to be more competitive.

    MLB also contributes a part of the General Fund from revenues on The MLB Channel, MLB.com, MLB.TV, and media contracts with the largest percentages going to the smaller revenue teams.

    ReplyDelete