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Sunday, November 13, 2011

Looking back at the Hanley Ramirez trade and should there be another one

After the 2005 season, when Theo Epstein was in that contract dispute, the Marlins and Red Sox made a huge trade. Often considered the brain child of Larry Luchino, here is how the trade has panned out.

Red Sox Got:

Mike Lowell: 12.3 WAR 55.5 million 4512 WASP
Josh Beckett: 19.3 WAR 61.2 million 3171 WASP
Guillermo Mota: Never played for Red Sox, was involved in a complicated deal to Indians

Marlins Got:
Jesus Delgado: Threw 2 innings, 0 WAR
Harvey Garcia: .1 WAR in 8 innings $390,000
Anibal Sanchez: 10.9 WAR 6.1 million 562 WASP
Hanley Ramirez: 29.3 WAR 24.7 million 843 WASP

So the Marlins (has) racked up a 40.3 WAR from the trade, while the Red Sox registered a 31.6 WAR from the players they received. To add insult to Red Sox nation, the Red Sox had to spend 116.7 for that 31.6 WAR (3693 WASP, over the Halladay Standard), while the Marlins only had to spend 31.19 million, for an amazing 774 WASP.

Now for the question the Marlins front office today: Should they trade Hanley Ramirez?

Ramirez' salary is about to go up to 15 million dollars in 2011. Over the past 3 years, he has a 3.7 WAR average including an extremely frustrating .5 WAR season in 2011. This is worth 11.1 million according to the Halladay Standard. So certainly according to WAR, it is time to cut ties with Hanley for the Marlins. Ramirez has a career .380 OBP, but in 2011 it was just .333. His Slugging was also laughably low below career average at .379 (career average of .506) and a PPG of 1.41 (1.64). However, as one would expect, he suffered from a low BABIP at .275 (when his career BABIP is .339). He certainly didn't hit the ball as hard as he previously had, as his ISO was just .136 (his career average is .200), he hit an extra base hit just 6.8% of the time, and homered just 2.6% of the time (around league average, his career average is 3.6%). Certainly there was something wrong with Hanley in 2011, he wasn't the same player that he had been. So this leads to a bunch of hard questions like: What role did his injuries play? Will he recover from these injuries? Is he now more injure-prone? Is this just the new Hanley? Won't he actually be undervalued in the trade market because of 2011, making it smarter to just hang out to him and hope for the best? I don't know the answer to these questions, but at his salary, the Marlins have to at least shop Hanley. If they don't get a good offer, they can keep him, but moving him would probably be best (they probably should have done it at the deadline).

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