The blog at BattersBox.ca consistently provides better analysis of baseball moves and developments than the largest newspapers in an urban region with over 5 million people. Recently, one of their threads pointed me to an article on USS Mariner called "Letting Ichiro Leave For Nothing."
The author, Dave, has looked at 34 baseball players from 2000-2006 that were all all-star talents who were traded in the midst of a highly productive season, were free agents at the end of the year, were unlikely to re-sign with the club, and would be classified as Type A Free Agents (2 high draft choices as compensation picks if the player left via free agency). Then he looked at 21 more Type A free agents who were allowed to walk in return for those 2 draft picks.
Bottom line?
Many teams would be better off letting their all-stars walk, and taking the draft picks.
Over the last 7 years, the 41 prospects & players coming back for the 34 qualifying "rental players" traded before the deadline have yielded 2 all-stars, 6 solid players, and 33 flame outs or marginal players with very low value. That's about 1 in 20 odds for all stars, and 1 in 7 for solid players. If you get 3-4 players back for your all-star, do the math.
And the 42 draft picks from the 21 Type "A" free agents let go?
3 have been big successes, 4 have been good enough, 3 others are among the most valuable young players in the game today, we’ll have to wait a few years to figure out the fate of 4 more because it's too early, and 27 of the picks could be labeled as busts, even though a couple still have a shot to turn into major league role players down the road.
These draft picks have trade value in blue chips for all stars deals in a couple of years (vid. Detroit's trade for Cabrera & Willis this off-season), something that's harder to do with prospects in the high minor leagues because their value is much more certain by then.
Which leads to my question.
Why isn't this the kind of column turned out by our paid media folks, who never let an opportunity slip by to congratulate themselves on their supposedly higher standards?