Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Teixeira is an Angel

Mark Teixeira has been traded to the Angels. I called it (see post below).

2 comments:

Ross said...

The Teixeira trade is interesting. Everyone has to concede that it makes the Angels one of elite teams in baseball this year. As much as I tend to dislike Steve Phillips' commentary on all things GM-ish [My favorite part of Moneyball is when Beane talks him out of picking Swisher in the first round.] he had some good insight on the downside of this trade for the Angels.

Paraphrasing him: Teixeira is an age prime .280 hitting first baseman with great defensive glove who is probably going to hit 30 HRs a year with 100 rbis. Kotchman is a younger player with a similar glove who this year will probably hit 15-20 hrs with 70-80 rbis. Is Teixeira better than Kotchman and will he continue to be better for the next 4 yrs? In the words of Stringer Bell, "No Doubt." But is he significantly better than Kotchman? Not really. Both play great defense at first and Teixeira is probably good for 10 more hrs and 30 more rbis each year for the next 4 yrs. Plus at the end of this year Boras and Teixeira will want a 20mil for 6-8yrs contract and the contracts for Lackey, and K-rod will be up. At season's end the Angel's front office is going to have to make some tough decisions.

a) Do they pay everyone and take the luxury tax hit? Knowing the Angels probably not.

b)So instead, do they part ways with Krod or Lackey? That would be tough to swallow considering they are two of the more important reasons why the Angels have dominated the AL west in recent years.

c) Do they not sign Teixeira? That would seem foolish since they just spent a good young mlb player now, and a decent pitching prospect in to get him. If they are going to spend talent on the guy they should keep him an angel as long as they can.

So Phillip's point was that really having a 3/4 version of Teixeira, Kotchman, that only needs to be paid 1.5 million next year actually was a nice position to be in and the Angels passed on that position by trading Kotchman for Teixeira.

As I said, I often take Phillips with a grain of salt but this opinion of his struck me as pretty interesting.

Scott said...

That's an interesting analysis of the trade. I think the Angels are only thinking of this year though. They know their lineup has the potential to be shut down in the playoffs by really good pitching. They saw what Tex has done over the past couple of years and made a bold move to help them win right now. We'll see how it works out.

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