This post started out as an analysis of how the Blue Jays could have possibly made the playoffs this year if they had not traded Roy Halladay, but it evolved into something much bigger. I want to look at all of the trades in the last 12 months and determine how well the Jays did in each trade for this year only, and then see if they could have made the playoffs by not trading anyone, or by only making certain trades.
The starting date of this analysis takes place on October 3, 2009, when the Jays, among other moves, fired J.P. Riccardi and promoted Alex Anthopoulos to general manager. This signaled a shift for the strategy of the front office, moving from signing older, high-priced veterans like Frank Thomas and A.J. Burnett to making the scouting staff the largest in the majors and developing the farm system. Although it has only been a year, the results are already palpable, and the future is looking bright for the Jays.
The first major move of Anthopoulus' reign as GM was to trade away Roy Halladay, who was set to become a free agent after this year and would not return to Toronto as he was in search of a playoff-caliber team. It was a difficult task, with one of the franchise's most popular players ever being traded, along with a very small market as many teams could not afford Halladay. Eventually, Philadelphia became just about the only option, which meant that they would have leverage over the Jays. Finally, on December 16, they Jays traded Doc to the Phillies for prospects Kyle Drabek, Travis D'Arnoud, and Michael Taylor. They then traded Taylor to the A's for Brett Wallace, another highly sought after prospect involved in the Matt Holliday trade. Later on this year, on July 29, AA traded Wallace to Houston for yet another prospect, Anthony Gose, who the Jays had been trying to acquire all along, but the Phillies had relented before shipping him to the Astros in the Roy Oswalt trade.
To determine the outcome of this trade (as well as every other trade), I am going to only look at this year's production. So even though the Halladay trade was to acquire prospects that will be major league ready in 2-3 years, I want to see how the trades played out this year. I am going to use the Wins Above Replacement statistic to measure each player's value to his team. Although it sounds simple, it can get complex (as it will in the Halladay trade), because we have to account for both the traded player's WAR as well as the WAR of the players who replaced the traded player.
This year, Roy Halladay had an overall WAR of 6.5, but -0.4 of that was due to offense, so if he had been playing for the Jays (with the DH), he would have had a WAR of 7.3. I am assuming all the of values would remain constant no matter what team the player is on. That was the easy part. Now we need to figure out which pitchers had starts this year that Halladay would have had if he pitched in Toronto. Doc made 33 starts this year, and conveniently, the top 5 starters for the Jays this year (Romero, Marcum, Cecil, Morrow, and Rzepczynski) had 139 starts, with 6 other pitchers recording a combined 33 starts. So presuming that Halladay would have started all of the other combined 33 starts, we can figure out exactly how much the Jays lost when they traded Halladay away.
The six other Blue Jays pitchers who started at least one game this year were (with starts in parentheses): Brian Tallet (5 starts), Jesse Litsch (9), Dana Eveland (9), Brad Mills (3), Shawn Hill (4), and Kyle Drabek (3). If we add up the WAR from each start, we can determine the total wins lost due to the trade. Tallet had an overall WAR of -1.4, but in his 5 starts his WAR was -0.35. Litsch only started, and had an overall WAR of -0.1. Eveland had an overall WAR of -0.8. In Mills' three starts, he had a WAR of 0.13. Hill had a WAR of 0.4, and finally Drabek had a WAR of 0.1. The total WAR for the 33 starts was -0.6, which means that if Roy Halladay were to make the 33 starts instead of these pitchers, the Jays would have won about 7.9 more games.
The Halladay trade was just the first of many trades this year by AA, so tomorrow I am going to post part 2, which will evaluate the rest of the trades and determine whether or not the Jays could have made the playoffs this year with certain trades. (See here for part 2)
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