Pittsburgh Pirates: Did They Do Well to 'Trade' Paul Maholm for Erik Bedard?

At the end of 2011, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a $9.75 million club option on a pitcher named Paul Maholm. They declined to pick up the option, and let him go. The Chicago Cubs picked him up for $4.75 million, getting a huge bargain over the Bucs' club option.

As a "replacement," the Pirates signed Erik Bedard for $4.5 million. He had a reputation of having health problems, but pitching well (to a sub-4.00 ERA) when healthy. Although his actual ERA is 4.76, his FIP (sabermetric ERA)  of 3.90 suggests that he's been unlucky in this regard (these and future statistics are from FanGraphs).

Now, Maholm has clearly been a better pitcher than Bedard. But Bedard cost a lot less than the Pirates' club option. So the issue is not who pitches better, but who pitches better rather relative to what he would have been paid, and what did the Pirates do with the money they saved on Bedard.

According to FanGraphs, Bedard has generated 1.6 wins over replacement (WAR) so far. Extrapolating this to a full season, he would be worth 2.1 WAR for a value of $9.45 million in 2012. This suggests that Bedard will be worth more than twice as much to the Pirates as he is being paid this year.

Likewise, Maholm has generated 1.9 WAR so far which extrapolates to 2.5 WAR with a value of $11.25 million for the year.  He's doing very well for what the Cubs signed him for, and not badly even relative to $9.75 million. In the latter case, at least, he doesn't compare to Bedard.

Maholm would have been the better option if the Pirates had managed to sign him for the same $4.75 million as the Cubs, but the fact that they had offered him much a higher price for a club option practically precluded such negotiations..

Maholm has been traded to Atlanta, where he has been brilliant. This "brilliance" actually started in late June with Chicago. In July and August, he's been putting up ace-like ERA numbers, with a one "handle," after a slow start early in the year.

"Straight up," trading Maholm for Bedard would have been a bad idea. But with the $9.75 million they saved on Maholm (plus a little more), the Pirates got Erik Bedard and AJ Burnett. (The latter costs the Pirates only $6.5 million a year, because the New York Yankees are picking up $10 million of his $16.5 million annual salary.)