Kendall “Upgrade” Too Costly for Brewers
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Published by Adam White on November 22, 2007 03:30 pm under Free Agents, Brewers, trade analysis
The Milwaukee Brewers have signed Jason Kendall to a one-year deal (terms not yet announced). Let’s look at this deal in its entirety, which comprises trading last year’s starter Johnny Estrada to the Mets for Guillermo Mota. Is the “upgrade” from Estrada to Kendall worth the cost?
Offensively, I’d rather have Estrada, despite his horrendous walk total (just 12 last year). Based on their recent performance, I see them producing the following in 2008:
Kendall: .270/.350/.340
Estrada: .285/.320/.410
I’ll take Estrada and his higher slugging percentage, even with the lower on-base percentage. After all, Estrada is so slow, the lower on-base percentage is going to have less of a negative effect on Estrada than on most players.
Defensively, I think last year’s terrible throwing out percentage by Estrada was an anomaly. I expect him to perform better in this category than Kendall for 2008. Still, I would rather have Kendall behind the plate.
So in my opinion, I think Kendall and Estrada are a wash. So what did it cost the Brewers to make an equal exchange?
From a salary perspective, the Brewers added both Kendall and Mota at $4.0M (estimated by DugoutCentral) and $3.2M respectively for 2008. Estrada’s salary for 2008 will be somewhere around $4.0M. At this point in his career, Mota is not an effective pitcher and his performance should be equaled by a AAA pitcher or lower level free agent signing. Figure that type of pitching performance would cost the Brewers about $1.0M to acquire.
That means the financial cost of replacing Estrada with Kendall is:
$4.0M for Kendall + $3.2M for Mota - $4.0M for Estrada - $1.0M for Mota replacement = $2.2M
Now to the draft pick. Because Kendall is a Type B free agent, the Brewers lose their second round draft pick for the 2008 draft. What is the potential cost of losing this draft pick? Let’s see if the Brewers’ recent draft history helps us figure this out.
- 2007 no pick
- 2006 Brent Brewer
- 2005 no pick
- 2004 Yovani Gallardo
- 2003 Tony Gwynn
- 2002 Josh Murray
- 2001 JJ Hardy
- 2000 no pick
So what does this tell us? The draft is somewhat of a crapshoot, but if you are confident in your team’s ability to draft (and shouldn’t you be if you’re a GM?), you should be very hesitant to give up your second round pick.
In my mind, $2.2M plus a second round draft pick is too much to give up for the upgrade from Estrada to Kendall.
