I think we are in agreement that the O’s should have sold and sold big at the deadline.
In that context, I don’t like any of the moves the team made.
However, my take on the Beckham-Myers trade is a bit different.
I’ve watched almost every pitch Tobias Myers has thrown this year. I like him, I think he’s a good prospect, I ranked him in my mid-season list before I’d heard any reports on him or seen him ranked by anyone else. He is quite polished for a pitcher his age with 3 solid pitches and decent control/command (excellent for his age). That said, Myers doesn’t have a ton of projection, he could probably fill out a little more, he’s already a pretty solidly built for a pitcher. He has solid stuff, but nothing overwhelming, he’ll need to be a plus command/control guy to be an impact guy. He’s probably a 45 FV guy at best considering how far away he is and how he’s yet to throw more than 40 innings of pro ball.
FV 45 pitchers have been shown (by one methodology) to be worth 13 million. So we gave up at most 13 million of surplus value (I don’t think you’ll find anyone who’d put a FV 50 grade on Myers this soon). Beckham has been worth 2.5 WAR/600 ABs (fangraphs) or 2.8 WAR/600 ABs (baseball reference) over this season and the last. Let say his median outcome going forward is 1.5 WAR/season. He’s young enough that he shouldn’t be hitting a decline phase yet, so that’s 4.5 WAR plus whatever he accumulates the rest of this season. So lets make it a round 5 WAR. The current valuation of free agent $/WAR is 8 million per WAR, so that is 40 million of value for Beckham minus his salary. Even with aggressive raises to 2 million, 5 million, 8 million, plus the 300k he’s owed the rest of this year, that’s just over 15 million, leaving the O’s with 25 million of surplus value. That looks like the median outcome to me.
Again, to reiterate, I don’t like the Orioles deadline strategy (or lack thereof) but the Beckham trade (from an asset valuation standpoint) is a great move.
