Henderson Alvarez, SP

[Jay]

If this organization was aware of this when they acquired him they're idiots. Seeing how it says years, I'm guessing that was the case.

[emkayseven]

wonderful

[Miamarlin21]

According to Frisaro, the Marlins were indeed aware of Alvarez's condition when they acquired him.

[Nick]

I don't think I've ever used my UCL so I think he'll be ok.

[Mainge]

Considering how good he's been with us, I don't think they're idiots for getting him.

[Nick]

Probably the best player in that trade.

[Jay]

Considering how good he's been with us, I don't think they're idiots for getting him.

I think when you're operating on such a thin margin of error and you acquire a pitcher with a 90% UCL tear (correct me if I'm wrong but that means it's hanging together by a thread not just a minor tear), you're not operating correctly.

[Mainge]

I think when you acquire a starting pitcher with a 127 ERA+ while he's making the minimum, you're doing pretty damn well.

[Jay]

I think when you acquire a starting pitcher with a 127 ERA+ while he's making the minimum, you're doing pretty damn well.

Where are you getting that number? BR has him as 121 in 2011 (10 starts) and 87 in 2012 (31 starts). When it's basically a certainty he's going to go down with a significant injury in the future and he was certainly not a stud pitcher at that point in his career. It could be argued fairly easily he was back end of the rotation filler at that point.

[Mainge]

His 2013 and 2014 with us. Don't care what he did in 2012 as a Blue Jay.

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Like, we acquired hm and then he went on to put up that ERA+ with us while making the minimum. How is that stupid? Yeah that is definitely a red flag for future injury but it's not a certainty. Roy Halladay pitched much of his career with a similar injury.

You think the front office is kicking themselves for drafting Jose Fernandez? He's injured too.

With our margin for error, I think you acquire good players whenever you can; even if they have warts.

[Jay]

But we're talking about acquiring a player who is a huge injury concern that isn't a guarantee to be even a back-end rotation guy. You can't evaluate their process based on his performance in 2013 and 2014; it's based on information known at the time. This wasn't like the Blue Jays acquiring JJ who was clearly a good pitcher.

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You couldn't exactly project Alvarez to have the 2013 and 2014 he had with the information at hand.

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I remember quite a few people being annoyed with Alvarez being the main guy in the deal.

[Mainge]

I mean, why not? Scouting is a thing. I'm a numbers guy as much as anyone; but physical scouting is also a part of that process. They identified a player that they thought had considerable upside and got him. He grew into that upside.

Ergo the Marlins are stupid? No chance. There's plenty of legitimate things you can criticize the Marlins for. This is not one of them.

[Jay]

Cause there is a significantly higher risk associated with him if he had a 90% UCL tear at the time. There's such a high risk there and when restructuring a team to compete extremely quickly you can't afford such a high risk player when other options could easily be pursued.
We're talking about one player involved in the deal. That trade involved 5 major leagues leaving for 3 major leaguers (one being a back up catcher) and 4 prospects. And then the one player with acquired with the proven track record was traded the following month for one prospect. There was plenty of criticism at the time of the trade and this information about a basically guaranteed injury certainly adds to that.

And sure I believe bringing in scouting information to get a more complete picture makes sense (I don't have access to enough of this information to judge on it and the information I have is different than the FO so judging based on this information is somewhat misguided.). It's like the qualitative data of baseball research. The problem is it seems the FO solely relies on scouting data and doesn't consider anything else. And when you look at the history of data analysis quantitative analysis will provide more accurate predictions than qualitative data much more frequently. For an organization with one of the smallest margins of error in the league they need to be accurate when predicting future success.

[Mainge]

I do not see how that makes acquiring Alvarez stupid, but whatever. We're just going in circles now.

[Jay]

I do not see how that makes acquiring Alvarez stupid, but whatever. We're just going in circles now.

Cause you're viewing his performance in isolation. Every player given up in that trade has given value with the exception of Johnson to their teams whereas the only player acquired that's provided value is Alvarez. The trade was a one stop salary dump. The fact that they acquired one player that's provided value isn't a surprise. The problem is that one player was a ticking time bomb for TJ surgery and wasn't that great prior to the trade to begin with. The team wasn't expected to compete in 2013 and then once Jose went down in 2014 the team could be viewed as not a serious contender. All the value Alvarez has provided was wasted in a non-competitive seasons. Now when the team actually is competitive those 60+ starts have warn down his UCL and he can't be counted on. Someone posted his UCL had a 90% tear meaning he's going to need surgery at some point or stop pitching; it'd be a different thing if it's a 10% tear. It just shows they have no foresight even if they can evaluate players well (which most evidence shows they can't; they might be good at scouting but that's just one aspect).