Marlins Trade Heaney, Hernandez, Barnes, Hatcher to Dodgers for Gordon, Haren, Rojas

[BigGameFish]

That does really suck that we get nothing if Haren retires. But it's awesome that Dodgers are paying for both players' salaries for next season.

[Bobbob1313]

Marlins had 5 starters with a better FIP than Haren last season, and Koehler was basically even. He's not good........
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Would be fun if Dodgers were paying them $12.5 million and then the Marlins were willing to go for a $90 million payroll.

Also, "they're going to use it to get a first baseman," so no Headley.

So, Morse?

[Erick]

Is this team really struggling this much financially? They need the Dodgers to take on 12.5 million to acquire a 1B/SP? Lol.

[BigGameFish]

FanGraphs article on Gordon:

"It’s not often that a player we failed to even rank in the preseason finishes third in overall value at his position. But that’s exactly what Dee Gordon did, earning the third highest dollar value among second basemen this year. If someone told you that Gordon would earn nearly $3 more than Robinson Cano this year before the season began, you would have laughed in his face. But maybe it shouldn’t have been so shocking.


After the Dodgers signed Alexander Guerrero out of Cuba, the assumption was that he, not Gordon, would open the season as the Dodgers starting second baseman. But the team was concerned about his defense during Spring Training and they therefore decided to start Guerrero in the minors to open the year. We figured this would be a rather short-term stay, so Gordon would man second base for maybe a month, keeping the seat warm for Guerrero’s eventual promotion. While Guerrero did perform well offensively during his stay in the minors, he missed significant time due to an unfortunate ear incident and that guaranteed he would have no chance to unseat Gordon.

Even though Gordon figured to only start for about a month, there was a possibility he would still only be a platoon guy, though on the strong side of a platoon, partnering with the right-handed Justin Turner. That never materialized though, as Gordon ended up recording 141 plate appearances against southpaws and actually posted a better wOBA against them than versus righties.

Gordon is no stranger to the sleeper label. Unfortunately, he has never delivered on that promise to fantasy owners because of both defensive issues and the BABIP dragons. In 2011, he flashed his fantasy potential, batting .304 and stealing 24 bases over just 233 plate appearances. But a terrible -20.8 UZR/150 meant that the Dodgers simply couldn’t afford to make him their every day shortstop. And without a whole lot of real life offensive value, it was difficult to justify keeping him in the lineup.

It seemed clear that Gordon needed a position change and he ended up performing much better at second base. Of course, he still finished with a negative UZR, but he was still dramatically better than he had been at shortstop. And he ended up posting the highest wOBA of his short career, thanks to a rebound in BABIP. And that BABIP was driven by a much improved IFFB%. Smartly, Gordon takes full advantage of his speed and complete lack of power by slapping the ball on the ground. But he had a pop-up problem in the past. He got that under control finally and actually posted a lower than average mark. His batted ball profile looks a lot closer to Juan Pierre‘s now, which is where it needs to be. He’ll need a high BABIP though because he strikes out far more than Pierre ever did.

Gordon ended up leading baseball with 64 steals, which wasn’t really surprising, except for the fact that he came to the plate enough times to even attempt that many steals. But we knew that if given the playing time, this was his upside. However, looking toward next year, there is great risk. Guerrero is still around. Gordon still provides no defensive value. And he needed a .346 BABIP just to get to a .312 wOBA. It wouldn’t be that shocking to see Guerrero tearing it up again in the minors and Gordon struggling through April with a .280 BABIP, offering nothing positive to the Dodgers aside from his base running when he does manage to get on base.

In my experience, Pierre-type players are typically undervalued, and Gordon has a short history of disappointing. So it’s hard to envision him being overvalued in fantasy leagues, but he’s still someone I will likely shy away from. I doubt he’ll be undervalued and he carries real playing time risk, so I would look elsewhere at the position."
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Early season fantasy article on Gordon from FanGraphs (speaks to the conerns some of you have):

"Last week, I unveiled the May Tiered Rankings for the second base position, and readers quickly zeroed in on my rankings of Dee Gordon and Aaron Hill. They believed I had placed both of them too low. One intrepid reader even took the time to pound at the keyboard and ask exasperatingly, “WHAT DOES DEE HAVE TO DO!”

While I appreciate the lack of question mark at the end of the sentence – as it would’ve resulted in an uncouth double punctuation — it’s clearly a question about which this individual feels passionately and desires a sincere answer. After all, Dee Gordon is hitting .331/.364/.441 with 24 steals. He’s the number-one ranked second baseman in ESPN leagues and the number-three overall player, behind only the Colorado duo of Charlie Blackmon and Troy Tulowitzki.

How the [insert choice expletive here] could I possibly rank Dee Gordon as a fourth-tier second baseman?


If my tiered rankings merely sought to reflect what had happened throughout the first month-plus of the season, Dee Gordon would’ve clearly been a top-tier second baseman. However, I’m attempting to treat my tiered rankings as a forward-looking exercise, which means one thing regarding the 26-year-old second baseman: what’s changed? In other words, what reason do I have to believe Dee Gordon will continue to be a top-tier fantasy option and not revert to become the same guy who hit .256/.301/.312 over the previous three seasons (669 PA)?

We can look at some standard peripheral numbers and understand nothing has changed much in terms of plate discipline. His 4.5% walk rate is lower than his career average and illustrates his free-swinging ways. However, he’s also making more contact than ever before. His 88.8% contact rate is the highest of his career and roughly equivalent to his contact rate in 2011, when he also hit over .300. But we also have to note he’s sporting a .388 BABIP, and no matter how fast one is on the basepaths, fantasy owners should expect that number to decline throughout the remainder of the season.

Granted, declining to his career average of a .323 BABIP — which should be taken with a grain of salt because of the sample size — would approximately make him a .270-.275 hitter throughout the remainder of the year. With his stolen base totals, that’s not a throwaway batting average by any means. It’s just no longer elite. And if we’re talking about someone with a .270 batting average, lots of stolen bases, decent run totals, no power, and no runs batted in, we’re not talking about an elite fantasy second baseman. At the most, we’re talking about a second baseman who can carry a single category, but who is a serious liability in a couple others. With that in mind, I think placing him somewhere in the 8-to-12 range for second basemen throughout the rest of the season is fair.

Digging deeper, I’m not convinced anything has significantly changed in terms of his approach and his ultimate outcomes. He’s hitting more ground balls and fewer fly balls, which is likely a positive development, but he’s still the same hitter he’s always been.

Check out his spray chart from 2011 through 2013:



Gordon used the whole field relatively well from 2011 to 2013, though he tended to pull the baseball on the infield and hit the ball to the opposite field in the outfield. Now, if we look at his spray chart from this season, we see the overarching trends remain static.



The most interesting aspect of the spray chart is the lack of hard-hit balls to right field. He has a couple deep to the gap in right-center, but to the dead-pull side, Gordon has hit three non-ground balls to right field. It’s great to use the opposite field, but that’s not the same thing as using the whole field. In other words, I’m not seeing anything markedly different in his spray chart than what we’ve seen over his previous three seasons in Los Angeles.

With that said, there’s movement here. His plate discipline has improved slightly, though I do think too much is being made of this as it’s not significantly different than his plate discipline numbers from a year ago. He’s said to be making better overall contact with the baseball, which seems to ring true and can be seen in his career-high ISO of .110 and his career-high 24.3% line-drive rate. However, those are all slight movements. The biggest difference is the .388 BABIP, and I’m not sure we can throw that out the window because he’s made slight improvements in other areas. The overall hitting profile and plate discipline is similar, so at best, I’m only comfortable expecting him to be slightly better than his career numbers — which is why I’m suggesting a .270-to-.275 batting average going forward is reasonable to expect.

Of course, Gordon could absolutely continue to outperform expectations. That’s always possible. When attempting to rank second basemen or attempting to project future performance, however, I’m not sure it’s helpful to assume overproduction.

Fantasy owners also have to consider the fact that Alex Guerrero is also looming in the background at Triple-A. In limited work, he’s hitting .341/.398/.588 with four homers and a .247 ISO. If Dee Gordon does struggle for a significant stretch, it’s not difficult to see the contending Dodgers turn to Guerrero for increased offensive production. He signed a four-year, $28 million contract and is performing well in Triple-A. It won’t take much for him to get a chance, even if it’s simply splitting time with Gordon in some kind of pseudo-platoon role.

That’s something else no one is talking about. Gordon is at the risk of becoming a straight-up platoon hitter at this point. I don’t want to place too much weight on such a small sample, but the difference is striking this year.

AVG OBP SLG OPS BB% K%
vs. LHP .182 .182 .242 .424 0.0% 18.2%
vs. RHP .375 .413 .500 .913 5.8% 14.9%
The Dodgers are certainly not ignorant of this fact. If he begins to struggle over the next couple months — or if he simply continues to struggle this much against lefties — the organization could bring up Guerrero to be the second baseman against lefties. Gordon would still be the strong side of any platoon that could emerge, but such an arrangement would obviously be detrimental to any fantasy value.

If I were to boil down this article into something more succinct, it’d be this: I’m not yet convinced Dee Gordon is anything significantly different than what we saw from 2011 to 2013, and he has competition standing tall behind him in Triple-A should he struggle for a stretch. I’m not going to rank a guy in the top-five when I’m not sold in the increased performance and when he’s not guaranteed the everyday role throughout the remainder of the season.

That’s far from advocating for owners to sell on Dee Gordon. If I’m an owner searching for second base help on the trade market, though, I’m not going to be willing to meet the high price tag that it will inevitably require to acquire Gordon in a trade. I’m not counting out the 26-year-old speedster. I just have significant questions that are lingering, and that’s leading me to leave him ranked about 10th or 11th in my tiered rankings."
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And a last one if you're still interested. Some kind comments from Mattingly. From "True Blue LA":

"What went right

Quite a lot went right for Gordon, who entered spring training in February a man without a position but with an open mind. The former shortstop played winter ball in two different counties last offseason and at two different positions, second base and center field, in hopes of gaining at least a utility spot with the Dodgers in 2014.




Gordon did much more than that, first beating out $28 million free agent import Alex Guerrero for the starting second base job.

In his first full major league season, and at a new position, all Gordon did was lead the major leagues in stolen bases (64 steals, at a 77-percent clip), triples (12, matching the highest mark by a Dodger in 44 years), infield hits (62, 22 more than any other player) and bunt hits (20).

Gordon's 64 steals tied for the fifth-most in a single season by a Dodger since 1900, including 21 steals in May, matching Maury Wills in 1965 for the most steals by a Dodger in May.

Gordon hit .289/.326/.378 with a 101 OPS+, a .312 wOBA and 101 wRC+, and made his first All-Star team as a reserve.

He even improved against southpaws in 2014, hitting .295/.340/.379 in 141 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers after hitting .216/.262/.284 in 204 PA against them from 2011-2013.

What went wrong

Gordon had only four walks against 47 strikeouts in 258 plate appearances after the All-Star break, fueling a paltry .300 on-base percentage despite a .284 batting average. Gordon's strikeout rate increased from 15.3 percent before the break to 18.2 percent after. His walk rate decreased from 6.9 percent before the break to just 1.6 percent after.

He only had two walks in his final 52 games.

Manager Don Mattingly chalked up the second-half decline to fatigue for Gordon, who with 148 games and 650 plate appearances surpassed his professional career highs by 15 games and 36 PA, and 92 more plate appearances than in any of the previous three seasons.

"I think Dee got worn down a little bit as the season wore on mentally. I think there was advancement in those areas for him," Mattingly said. "I think this season is going to be great for Dee. I think there is more to come. There are better days ahead, on-base wise, hitting-wise, and I think his swing still has more in it.

"This was the first time he has really played a full season at the major league level. I think when he gets away from this for a little bit and gets some time to start thinking about it, it's going to give him a confidence. ... I think Dee's going to come back even a better player than this year."

2014 particulars

Age: 26 as of June 30

Salary: $515,000

Game of the year

On May 3 in Miami, Gordon set a career high with five hits and stole three bases in an 11-inning win over the Marlins. Gordon was 5-for-6 with two runs scored, with hits in each of his first four times to the plate, including a pair of RBI singles. Gordon is the only Dodgers player in the modern era (since 1900) with at least five hits and three steals in one game.

Roster status

With two years, 154 days of major league service time, Gordon will be eligible for arbitration this winter as a "Super Two," among the top 22 percent in service time among major league players with at least two years but not yet three years of accrued time."

[emkayseven]

So I misunderstood it. It isn't that the Dodgers are paying Haren's salary. The Dodgers are GIVING the Marlins $10 million. So if I understand correctly, if we trade Haren, we get $10 million still, and the receiving team would pay Haren's salary. If Haren retires, we have $10 million for free.

So we basically sold off some prospects then.

[thatnewguy]

Basically. The worst thing that could happen now is if Haren actually pitches for us next season.

[emkayseven]

Basically. The worst thing that could happen now is if Haren actually pitches for us next season.

Ignoring the monetary aspect, I agree

[Beef]

Gonna read what this long thread is all about. I'm guessing it's something different than the sad to see Miggy go BUT OHMYGOSH WE GOT MILLER AND MAYBIN WEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

[MiamiHomer]

Joe Frisaro @JoeFrisaro
I've heard INF Miguel Rojas is also headed to #Marlins from #Dodgers and Miami will receive financial compensation if Haren retires

...

[BigGameFish]

Basically. The worst thing that could happen now is if Haren actually pitches for us next season.

Lol

I too would take $10mil rather than have him pitch.

[emkayseven]

...

so then we get $10 million PLUS more money?

[BigGameFish]

INF Miguel Rojas also part of deal from Dodgers.
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Maybe we can move Haren for a decent bullpen arm.

[Erick]

To be fair to Rojas, his defensive metrics were great last year. Too bad he'll never make the roster as Solano will forever have his spot.

[thatnewguy]

He'd be really good as a late-game sub for McGehee.

[Beef]

I got halfway thru.

Let me just say. I am going to miss Barnes, Hernandez and Hatcher. A lot.