Before Sunday, there had only been two really big trades this year: Bengie Molina and Cliff Lee. The fact that both trades involved the Texas Rangers says a lot about their hopes of supplanting the Anaheim Angels from their three-year term of AL West champions. Sunday's big trade says a lot about how the Angels feel about the matter.
I developed a pretty decent system of bullet-points for analyzing trades for my brief coverage of the Cliff Lee deal, and I'm going to stick with it until it fails to cover something important or essential about the trade. So without further ado, here we go:
1. Who Is Involved?
Right-handed starting pitcher Dan Haren from the Arizona Diamondbacks. A second round draft pick by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2001, Haren fast-tracked it through the minors, starting 14 games for the big club just three years after being drafted out of Pepperdine University. He pitched out of the bullpen for the 2004 World Series-losing Cardinals, then became the prize piece in a trade with the Oakland Athletics for former "Big Three" member Mark Mulder.People thought Billy Beane was daft to trade a proven veteran for an untested starter who had torn up the lower minor league levels, but shown just pedestrian numbers in Triple-A. But Haren landed in the 2005 rotation right off the bat, and didn't disappoint for the next three years. His strikeout rate climbed steadily each year, he helped the A's win their first postseason series in 16 years (2006), and he was named to his first All-Star team (2007).
When free agency was looming, he helped the A's once again - by netting them a boatload of prospects in a trade with Arizona. Of the six players acquired in the offseason deal, lefty Brett Anderson is excelling with the A's, slugger Chris Carter is looming on the horizon, and outfielders Carlos Gonzalez and Aaron Cunningham are blossoming into real offensive threats... for the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres, respectively. In these tumultuous post-Moneyball days, the Beane receiveth and the Beane tradeth away...
Once with the Diamondbacks, Haren found his groove, reaching 200 strikeout's and an All-Star team in each of the next two seasons. Call it maturity, call it weaker competition in the National League, but Haren was on his way to stardom. 2010, though: different story. The strikeouts are still coming (his rate of 9.0 per nine innings is the highest of his career), but his hits/home runs allowed - while they've always been high - are now bordering on astronomical. His 161 hits allowed led the league at the time of the trade, and he's now sitting pretty on 23 home runs allowed (after allowing 27 all last year).
2. Where Is He Going?
Strictly speaking, he's going to Anaheim, even though the team that plays there is constantly trying to trick the public into believing they play in Los Angeles. (I really wish he was going to the team that actually does play in Los Angeles, but that's another story.) The Angels are hoping that moving from hitter friendly Chase Field in Phoenix to slightly less hitter friendly Angel Stadium in Anaheim will help drop that 4.60 ERA. They're also banking on an improvement in luck-related numbers: Haren's 2010 BAbip (batting average on balls in play*) of .341 is significantly higher than his career average of .296.
* A pitcher generally has very little control over which balls put in play turn into hits and which turn into outs. It has a little bit to do with line drive/fly ball/ground ball rates, but historically, BAbip tends to gravitate towards a mean of .300 all across the majors. That's why sabermetricians generally attribute a major rise or fall in this department to luck.
They're also playing the intangibles, working on the assumption that heading to a contending team will help Haren improve his focus, as it apparently did for Scott Kazmir last year. But Haren's under team control for potentially three (very expensive) years, so they hope the comparison to Kazmir doesn't hold beyond his brilliant down-the-stretch performance.3. What They Gave Up To Get Him:
Lefty starter Joe Saunders, who has struggled to a similar ERA as Haren, but who doesn't have nearly as impressive a track record. He has one All-Star season, but he's finished with an ERA under 4.40 exactly once, and has struck out fewer than two batters for every walk in his career. (By way of comparison, Haren's career average is nearly 4.) The good news: he's owed less than half Haren's 2010 salary, and that percentage is only going down as Haren reaches the end of his backloaded 4-year contract.
Patrick Corbin is a fairly respectable lefty starter prospect, who's made 20 solid starts (3.87 ERA, 8.0 K/9) in two different levels of Class-A ball. Rafael Rodriguez is a reliever who's had just over twice as many games in the majors (19) as years in the minors (9). He got a fairly early start, so for all that experience, he's only 25 years old.
There's also a player to be named later (PTBNL), who, I have it on good authority, is 18-year-old lefty starter Tyler Skaggs, a first-round pick by the Angels in last year's draft and Corbin's teammate. Looks like interim GM Jerry Dipoto (a former pitcher) is really hell-bent on stocking his minor league system with young arms.
4. Predictions
The D-Backs' season is basically over (22 games out of first in the NL West), so the impact for them will be in the future. The Angels are right on the cusp of contending (7 games behind the first place Rangers). They have three solid starters (famous All-Star snub Jered Weaver, the resurgent Ervin Santana, and the enigmatic Joel Pineiro) and a below-average offense since losing Kendry Morales for the year. We'll see if trading to their strengths rather than complementing their weaknesses will work out for Mike Scioscia's club, which always seems to outperform projections.
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