I'm not going to bother speculating on whether or not a deal will go down, but if you've been paying any attention to things at all this afternoon, you've heard that the Marlins are interested in dealing Jeremy Hermida and a couple of others as part of a complicated trade for Manny Ramirez. And regardless of whether or not anything actually happens, the fact that they're even willing to consider this speaks volumes as to how nutso they really are.
With a pair of $20m club options on the horizon, it's unlikely that Manny would be any more than a rental. And as an everyday LF, he just...he isn't very good.
A little quick and dirty number-crunching projects Manny to have a .384 wOBA the rest of the way, against Hermida's .332 (give or take a few points for both). If you assume ~200 remaining plate appearances, that comes out to an offensive difference of nine runs. Were a trade to go down today, you could reasonably expect Manny Ramirez to improve Florida's offense by about nine runs over the final third of the year.
But offense is only half of the equation. The advanced defensive metrics consider Hermida to be a roughly average corner outfielder, while Manny tends to fall somewhere in the -30 < x < -20 range. So, assuming there's nothing all that wonky about how the metrics deal with the Green Monster and Manny really is that bad, we're talking about a ~7-10 run difference the other way. You know what falls between 7 and 10? 9.
If there's any truth to these whispers, then the Marlins are thinking about trading three more guaranteed years of Jeremy Hermida, along with a couple prospects, to make themselves not better. Like, at all. At most, we're talking a handful of runs for a team in third place.
You have to really, really, really believe in Manny's drawing power for this to even begin making the slightest lick of sense from Florida's perspective. It's a bad idea. It's a really bad idea. I'm all for the Marlins trying to make a big splash, but sweet baby Jesus, there are better ways.