Your Doug Fister Trade Feelings
by Matthew on Oct 14, 2011 1:01 PM PDT
in Seattle Mariners Polling
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PrintOn 30 July of this year, the Mariners and Tigers agreed to a trade with Seattle sending Doug Fister and David Pauley to the Tigers for Chance Ruffin, Francisco Martinez, Charlie Furbush and Casper Wells.
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I thought Fister was a young, 3ish WAR pitcher who was under team control for the next 4 years when the M's traded him
At the time of the trade, I didn’t think the M’s got enough value back as I didn’t know enough about Wells or Furbush and didn’t know if they were expected to be league averagish contributors and thought Martinez was too far away and too swing happy. Wells played much better than I expected until he started having his issues and Furbush pitched about as expected. Meanwhile Fister has been on a tear.
Maybe I should have selected unsure then and unsure now, but really, I wasn’t a big fan of the return then as no one jumped out at me and it seemed like Fister was sold for 80% of market and with as well as he’s pitched since the trade and Well’s issues, it’s hard for me to like now.
Then again, Fister could have his arm fall off next year, Wells could be healthy and great, Furbush could be a 4th/5th starter, and Martinez could be the everyday 3B by the end of the season. Who knows? Baseball and all that.
I really liked it then even though I was super bummed to see Fister go
Now I wish that the PTBNL had been that wunderkid 3B instead of that pitcher so that’s why I voted unsure. Oh well!
At the time I like that we were trading from a position of strenght to fill holes.
But I never though I would miss an ok middle of the rotation starter this much.
by wetzelcoal on Oct 14, 2011 1:29 PM PDT reply actions 1 recs
On balance I liked it then and I like it now...
…but I love it for Doug Fister. The guy was just getting screwed by the Ms offense and now he’s a key cog in a World Series run. Sometimes the baseball gods take note of hard luck and sprinkle down a little justice once and awhile.
by mkd on Oct 14, 2011 1:31 PM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Agree and I'm happy for Fister
I’m glad he’s having success in Detroit and wish him a great future….
I think we have plenty of good prospects coming up and we need space to start a couple next year.
Looks like Danny H and Blake Beavan should take 2 of the 3 remaining spots. So we don’t really have much room in the Rotation (as 4 spots are pretty much taken). Furbush or maybe they sign FA starter or someone else steps up in the spring to take the 5th spot.
So I think it’s a win for us, just having an open spot in the rotation for another top prospect or free agent signing. It’ll be a bonus if any of the players we got in the trade can be productive regulars.
Oops....I forgot about Vargas in the rotation
So we should have 2 lefty’s in the rotation and 3 righty’s (assuming Beavan can hold down the 5th spot).
It all comes down to Francisco Martinez.
The upside of the other guys is limited. Furbush looks like a 5 starter/long reliever, Ruffin is limited by the fact that he is a reliever, Casper looks like an average LF. If Francisco Martinez can become a competent major league third baseman I like this deal for Seattle.
On the other hand, if our promising minor league SP arms pan out, then the trade could still be worth with just a little improvement from Wells. But the key is Martinez in my opinion.
The eventual outcome does have some bearing.
Maybe the Tigers saw something in Fister that lead them to believe his best days were ahead of him.
Maybe the Mariners saw something in Martinez that the blogosphere consensus opinion didn’t.
Trades should be evaluated by information known at the time, but we don’t know all the information that the involved teams know.
M's fan newly relocated to SF My homepage
Hey! I like this discussion.
I think you are correct that if there is information you don’t know that was true/present at the time of the trade, and you find it out later, then it’s fair to reevaluate a trade. However, the scenario you’ve just described is still basing it on a potential future outcome. The Mariners “saw something” in Martinez, meaning that most likely he hasn’t put it into action yet. Fister “may have his best days ahead of him” meaning that he hasn’t started them yet. These all imply the future, so it is unfair to evaluate the trade “at the time” based on those ideas.
...and now I'm here
I think he's talking about differences in expected performance.
Indeed, we should be evaluating deals on expected performance, and when that performance occurs is also important. However, if the Tigers had information that the Mariners didn’t, and reasonably projected a higher performance for Fister than the Mariners (and Fister meets that talent level), they came out of the trade on top, ceteris paribus.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps Twitter: @d_quazzo
by perfectstrat on Oct 14, 2011 4:20 PM PDT up reply actions
Guesses are still guesses. When Betancourt was traded to the Royals, they probably "Saw something in him too"
Had Betancourt become great, would we give credit to the Royals for their perceptiveness? Of course not, it was just a guess they had because there was little evidence to back it up. Having an idea of future performance and having evidence of a very likely future performance are not really the same thing, especially because for the former, there is no way to know that what they saw is what contributed to that success. What if they saw something in Fister, he came to Detroit, and he actually changed something and that’s why he did better. Do you give the Tigers credit for that? You can, but you shouldn’t, because what they saw is not what lead to his increase in performance.
There is a limit to how much credit you can give any organization for its choices, especially with regard to player talent which – contrary to what many believe – is a dynamic, not static. I do think it’s possible to give credit to organizations that see something in other people, but that credit needs to be limited, and shouldn’t largely affect judgment if there is already ample evidence to support an opinion at the time of the trade.
...and now I'm here
If anything, I'd say the trade most open to post hoc interpretation is going to be the Bedard trade.
Chih-Hsien Chiang’s progress/diabetes was actually a true unknown, so how it plays out (ie, whether his improved performance really was due to managing his diabetes) is a fair thing to evaluate later.
...and now I'm here
As lailaihei noted, we have no way of knowing what the teams "see" or know at the time of the trade.
But there is a big difference between guesses and reliable information that can lead to a bolstered projection of a player’s abilities. I think we are arguing the same point here.
"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps Twitter: @d_quazzo
by perfectstrat on Oct 14, 2011 4:43 PM PDT up reply actions
As I mentioned below, every team always thinks they know more about a player, otherwise they wouldn't make the trade.
Unless there is evidence to back it up, there’s no way to know or believe that to be true, and so giving them credit/not giving that credit would be a fool’s errand.
...and now I'm here
Unless, of course, there's actual evidence that can prove they knew more, and that turns into direct and measurable action.
I even brought that up myself a while back, discussing that if you knew your team traded for a player with a .200 BA, but they had the option of getting the player with the .300 BA, and you knew nothing else about them, you give the trade thumbs down. If you find out later that the guy with the .200 BA hits a home run as every hit and the guy with a .300 BA only gets singles, and you find all this out later, it’s fair to change your opinion of the trade. I don’t think results based analysis of these trades is the worst thing in the world.
But if we’re basing it off things like development, “stepping their game up,” and other completely immeasurable and unprovable scouting, then you’re talking about things that can’t be proven, and so it would be a bad idea to give the teams credit for “knowing” something they can’t know.
...and now I'm here
I don't know, maybe I'm talking out my ass.
...and now I'm here
I guess what I'm saying is that although we, as fans, value trades in our head based on expected future performance...
If organizations have 10% more relevant information than we do, then what we may see as a “fair trade given what we knew at the time” might actually have been lopsided given what one of the organizations knew.
Especially when it comes to prospects; teams know a lot more about their own prospects than other teams do.
So maybe some of that is revealed in the results? Perhaps a very, very skilled hitting coach has been working with Martinez, but Martinez is physically incapable of having better than terrible pitch recognition. This would be information private from the Mariners, known to the Tigers, and the results coming in over the next few years could show it to be true. So I don’t think we can completely discount results when evaluating trades.
M's fan newly relocated to SF My homepage
A) How would we ever become privy to that rationale on Detroit's part?
B) Why is it fair to punish the Mariners for not having information private to Detroit?
I think you absolutely can and should discount speculation when doing an evaluation.
I'm not advocating speculation about private information as a way to evaluate trades.
I’m saying that results shouldn’t be ignored; we shouldn’t value the success of trades 100% on what we consider all known knowledge of the time.
M's fan newly relocated to SF My homepage
You're giving too much credit for any team that clearly "wins" by the results of any trade.
In addition to what Matthew said, you, personally, will never ever know how or why Martinez does or does not develop, or who should get credit for it. You will never, ever know this, ever. So if he does really well, or he does really poorly, you’re making a subjective judgment on who knows what and how, and who should get credit for it. You can’t do that and evaluate trades well.
In addition, once again, you’re still talking about future performance. No one knows, without a doubt, that something will or won’t happen. What they have is information in the past that they can analyze and guesses about future performance. What if the Mariners saw, without a doubt, that Casper Well was going to develop into the greatest hitter of this generation, but then they didn’t know he’d get vertigo. Who gets credit where?
a) It’s impossible for the Mariners to know, with any certainty, that he was going to become the greatest hitter ever.
b) It’s impossible for Detroit to know, with any certainty, that Casper Wells was going to develop vertigo.
You can’t know that a player is going to have terrible pitch recognition forever, just as you can’t know when a player is likely to step up their game. All you can do is assume based on numbers and scouting, and those are things that we – in general – already know about each player, albeit to a lesser degree than most teams, and – in addition – since scouting isn’t an exact science anyway, the teams are guessing as well, and guessing is still guessing.
I do think it’s possible for things you learn in the future to change how you evaluate a trade in the past. For example, if you found out that one of the reasons Martinez couldn’t hit a curveball is because he was going blind in his left eye, and the Mariners knew this, and we find this out and the Mariners fix his eye and suddenly he’s assloads better, then you can give credit to the Mariners because they did know something that we didn’t know and we learned it later. If, on the other hand, some time in 2 years he starts to hit curveballs better and walk more, you don’t give credit to the Mariners because there is no way they knew with any certainty that that was going to happen. All they had is a guess, the same guesses that we make here.
This is long and rambly.
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Also, one last note.
Every team thinks it won its trade otherwise it wouldn’t have made the trade. Always. Mariners think/thought that all the prospects we got are going to be more valuable to the team than Fister. Detroit thinks/thought that Fister was going to be more valuable to them then the prospects. You make the assumption that if a player develops there’s a chance that the team “knew more about him” and that’s why they traded for him. Well, ever team always thinks they know more about every player. Lots of times they’re wrong. If you gave each team that “won” based on results credit for knowing that ahead of time then you’re essentially always giving results based analysis on every trade. And if you’re not, then you’re picking and choosing when to give credit, which is entirely subjective.
...and now I'm here
I couldn't have said it better myself
We really will not know who “wins” this trade (or at least if it was a “win” for us) until we see what happens with Francisco.
Put the team on my back!
@bRoundy
I'm happy for Fister, though really sad to see him leave.
As for the returns we got, still too early to tell.
by truemsfan on Oct 14, 2011 1:37 PM PDT reply actions 2 recs
Liked the trade then, still like it now. I'm enjoying Fister's playoff run and I'm glad it has worked out for the Tigers.
I like the pieces we have and think it’s a fair trade on both sides. Maybe they pan out, maybe they don’t. Regardless, it was a completely logical move.
On a side note, it appears that Dave Dombrowski was pushing really hard to land Doug Fister even with Zduriencik declining multiple times. If only we weren’t so inept on the position-player side of things.
Win/Win
While keeping “Lil Dougle” around would have been nice. The M’s aren’t short on pitching. If Vargas’s new found ‘twist’ is indeed the real deal, with Felix, Pineda, Paxon, and Hultzen the rotation seems to be in good condition for the future. As for the returns from the trade while healthy Wells was a very nice surprise with some pop and a good glove. Furbush, beyond having a fun name, pitched well for the most part too. Ruffin can at least fill a role in the pen. Long relief maybe to get to Wilhelmsen/League on the back end. Hopefully Martinez can be a good fit at third. The team needs offense. Desperately. So some pitching is bound to go in order to make that happen.
We traded from a position of strength to fill a several needs.
If there’s one thing I’m not worried about with the Mariners, it’s starting pitching. Fister has kept the K-rate much higher than I expected, and he could end up being the best player involved in the deal pretty easily if he can maintain that. Still, with Furbush as a reasonable replacement, Wells as one of the best COF options in the system, Ruffin as a potential impact reliever, and most importantly Martinez as the best 3B prospect (that projects to stay there) in the system, I’m pretty happy with the return.
I don’t think holding onto Fister with the expectation that his gains were real would’ve been the right move. We used an opportunity to turn (what looked to be) a fungible asset into several important pieces. It’s basically what we did in the Putz trade, and that’s looking pretty good over the long run.
I think that this is an important take away from that article
What does seem certain is that the Tigers were the one team that wasn’t scared off when Zduriencik said no. Plenty of teams needed pitching, but no one else tried nearly as hard for Fister.
In the end, the Tigers thought they gave up a lot. They view Martinez as a future star at third base, think Ruffin has a chance to pitch very well in the big leagues and view Wells as a potential starting outfielder.
“I guess I’m old school,” Dombrowski said. “You don’t try to ‘win’ a trade.”
It sounds like both teams valued the players traded quite highly on both sides. I mean obviously the Detroit DM isn’t going to say I swindled those dumb motherfuckers so bad! But it sounds like he had a high value on the players he traded and the Mariners shared that assessment. Hopefully they’re all correct and this trade benefits both teams for years to come.
Also that Pauley stops crying and finds happiness with the Tigers
by ungoreatstefan on Oct 14, 2011 1:58 PM PDT up reply actions
"Unsure" is an awkward word for it
Because I know how I feel, it’s just staunchly between like and dislike. Given how long Fister is under team control, I think the Tigers win the trade. But it’s not like it was an awful trade or anything, unless Wells’ problems don’t ever go away. I do hope either Francisco Martinez or Carlos Triunfel end up as trade bait going forward, since they’re basically the same player. Chance Ruffin is promising, but unproven. Will Charlie Furbush ever be anything other than a back-of-the-rotation/swingman sort of pitcher? I can’t help but feel like the Mariners could have gotten a little more quality out of the deal, though Fister’s been much better as a Tiger than he ever was as a Mariner. I don’t know. I guess it’s a situation where I defer to the people being made millions of dollars to do this for a living.
If the trade becomes "awful" because of Wells' vertigo...
…then it wasn’t EVER awful. That’s not something that was known at the time.
We knew about the defense; we suspected the power…but the vertigo problems wasn’t something forseen or gambled upon. It’s like saying a trade was awful if the player we traded for was shot in a random accident.
by rtang on Oct 14, 2011 2:36 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Awkward phrasing
Didn’t mean to imply an if:then there. Just that it becomes much worse if we now have a collection (two is a collection!) of outfielders with chronic health problems.
Well, yeah....
…the outcome’s worse. And it’s true bad luck.
We can get tired of it, but we really can’t blame the team for stuff like that…
by rtang on Oct 14, 2011 2:43 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Liked it then, dislike it now.
Fister being awesome after the trade obviously has a big impact on that opinion… it’s not just that he’s seemingly gotten better, but that his doing so drove me to take a closer look at his numbers, and I think I really underrated him even at the time.
I do think Charlie Furbush is a way more interesting piece than he’s usually given credit for, though.
I fucking love Casper Wells so it's all gravy train here.
...and now I'm here
by CapSea on Oct 14, 2011 4:10 PM PDT reply actions 4 recs
There's still Fister jokes, just now they're national Fister jokes! In the ALCS!
M's fan newly relocated to SF My homepage
How come nobody ever puns with Fister's name in headlines?
I’m pretty sure Jeff does his series of posts just to point those out should they arise.
by thehemogoblin on Oct 14, 2011 6:43 PM PDT up reply actions
We traded Fister jokes for Furbush, Casper, and Chance jokes.
If you evaluate trades based on the removal of punny names we definitely lost this trade.
Doug Fister. :(
Unsure then and unsure now
I liked Fister a lot (and still do) but I also like Casper Wells more than a lot of people do, assuming his weird medical thing passes. But all in all, I like the players we got for him even if I don’t get the timing of it.
Fister is good but we needed the prospects
Casper looks like a Matt Joyce clone, Furbush is underrated (7 K/9 2.5 BB/9 lefty with a HR problem? 10 K/9 in the minors? potential), Ruffin is discounted because he’s a reliever but he has the most filthy stuff in our bullpen and he’s only 22, and finally F-Mart is Nick Franklin without the walks. Looks pretty good, just hope a few (or all) of them pan out.
It's my favorite trade ever if it was only based on it being called the Fister/Furbush trade but that's not all there is to it.
I hated it then and still do. God I love Doug Fister.
Yeah I'm not sure how reasonable my hatred of this trade is.
I’m pretty sure I would have hated any Doug Fister trade. But really, trading a known contributor who was still showing signs of improving and was going to be cheap and ours for a number of years for a handful of maybes… I think it’s not the kind of trade I would like even if it wasn’t Fister involved.
Doug Fister. :(
Liked the deal, concerned
The M’s had depth in pitching and badly needed hitting. Fister was the right guy to trade as his production could be expected to be replaced perhaps as soon as the end of 2012 by players in the minor league system. Caspar needs to get better though. If he doesn’t the M’s still have a major issue in the outfield to solve.
Disliked it then,
And dislike it even more now.
All the players we got have so much volatility, it really seems like we should have gotten at least one ‘sure thing’ player out of him.
Liked it then, but I'm a bit unsure now
I probably underrated Doug Fister a bit at the time. I was also hopeful we were going to acquire Smyly instead of Ruffin before we knew who the PTBNL was. It’s nice to know that the vertigo problems with Wells may have caused some negative results, but Wells still has some strikeout issues, and there are plenty of question marks with Furbush, Martinez and Ruffin that gives me some pause.
lots to like
The M’s traded from strength (mature SP) to address weaknesses (hitting, 3b, relief). They traded away the best player in the deal, which is a hard way to “win”, but the team desperately needed/needs to build out its depth. They didn’t touch the top 2 SPs, they didn’t touch the next 3 top of the rotation prospects (Hultzen, Walker, Paxton), and just for fun, their best prospects after that are all starting ptichers (Campos, Snow, etc.).
On top of all that, the fans were clamoring for offense.
It wasn’t a perfect trade (I’d be happier if Wells or Martinez was a touch more promising, happier with a 3rd hitting prospect rather than Furbush as a Beaven clone, etc.), but we don’t operate in a perfect world. I think the M’s are better off for having made the trade than not.
(Who is the M’s best position player prospect right now? Liddi? Catricala? Sadly, it might actually be Martinez.)
I'll be ecstatic if he takes the Tigers to the World Series
But, the truth is, we should have gotten more back for him.
I know, the haul we got was considered BIG for a middle of the rotation pitcher, BUT Fister is under club control for a long time, he’s insanely cheap, he’s durable, he can pitch under pressure and he’s been worth a whopping 5 WAR this year.
Seriously, the Detroit Tigers got a steal of a deal. Kind of like when the Yankees got Curtis Granderson from them.
"Perhaps the worst comment I've ever seen on LL." - sanford_and_son.
by Ride the Apocalypse on Oct 15, 2011 6:24 AM PDT reply actions
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