As they did throughout last week's winter meetings, rumors continue to swirl today about a potential trade between the Boston Red Sox and San Diego Padres.
The proposed swap would send San Diego's two-time All-Star first baseman, Adrian Gonzalez, to Boston in exchange for what would presumably be a package of top prospects.
No deal is imminent, but the general agreement among major sports news outlets is that Boston paved the road toward an eventual trade by signing free agents Mike Cameron and John Lackey earlier this week.
Cameron and Lackey could make either outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury or starting pitcher Clay Buchholz expendable, and either would make an attractive centerpiece in a blockbuster deal.
The greatest impetus for the rumors, however, may be the flawed conventional wisdom of the modern hot stove league.
For the past half-decade, it has been collectively assumed by all of baseball that some three or four cash-strapped teams would unload their best player to the highest bidder in order to avoid losing that player without recompense to free agency.
That status quo has already manifested itself in the trades of erstwhile Toronto ace Roy Halladay to the Phillies and of the Detroit Tigers' All-Star center fielder Curtis Granderson to the Yankees. Unfortunately for fans of small-market teams specifically, and for competitive balance in the game generally, it is sometimes an unnecessary evolutionary digression for those low-money clubs.
This has never been truer than it is at this moment for the Padres. Gonzalez, who will turn 28 next May, made the National League All-Star team and won the NL Gold Glove at first base for the second consecutive year in 2009. For the first time, the prodigious power hitter swatted 40 home runs, after he posted 36 in 2008.
Gonzalez has never posted an on-base plus slugging figure below .849 over a full season, and his .958 mark this season was good enough for fifth in the National League. He drew 119 walks in 2009, the most in the NL, and some 45 more than he had taken the previous year. At the same time, he cut his strikeouts from 142 to 109.
All of these statistics came despite playing his home games in one of the league's worst hitter's parks, San Diego's Petco Park. He hit 28 of his 40 homers on the road and had a .306/.402/.643 line away from San Diego. In the cavernous Petco, he managed a far less impressive .234/.413/.446 line.
The logic behind Boston acquiring Gonzalez, then, is clear: Already among the top power hitters in the game, Gonzalez could become one of the best of this generation at Fenway Park, where home runs happen a full 20 percent more often, and where 19 percent more runs score. At the same time, he provides top-shelf defense at first base.
Yet Gonzalez has (essentially) two years remaining on his current contract. In 2010, he will make just $4.75 million. Then, if San Diego so chooses (and one can only presume that they would), they can pick up a club option for 2011 at only $5.5 million. That may not be bargain-basement, but it does not break GM Jed Hoyer's bank either.
Fangraphs.com has a neat and useful tool wherein they use advanced, comprehensive measures of overall player contribution to estimate that player's monetary value to a team in a given season, taking into consideration replacement level, position, and offensive and defensive performance. It is by no means a perfect system, but it helps.
According to their system, Gonzalez's value in 2009 was an astronomical $28.4 million. Even if that figure falls back to his previous range of $14-16 million, it will far outstrip San Diego's $10.25-million commitment for the next two seasons.
If they desperately need to move money, they should look to unload right-handed starter Chris Young, to whom they have more money and more years committed despite a strong corps of pitching prospects and young arms.
Boston will make every effort to pry Gonzalez loose from the Padres, and Hoyer would do well to listen, in case Red Sox GM Theo Epstein bids himself up into some absurd offer involving Ellsbury, Buchholz, and more.
In the meantime, though, many small-market teams would be wise to re-evaluate the criteria by which they arrive at the decision to trade their star young players.
San Diego, especially, must be careful not to let Gonzalez go simply because it is expected of them.
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