Who Comes out on Top in Blockbuster Trades for Aces in Early Prime?

There's not a whole lot of offseason left, but we might get to see something equal parts rare and cool go down before Opening Day: 

A blockbuster trade of an ace pitcher still in his early prime.

So say the tea leaves, anyway, specifically as they pertain to the Washington Nationals. While rumored trade targets like Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross and David Price probably aren't as available now as they were earlier in the winter, word is that fellow young aces Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann can be had now that the Nationals employ Max Scherzer.

Here, take it from Jon Morosi of Fox Sports:

This is where we can get into all kinds of discussions. Which teams could do business with the Nationals. How much each guy is worth in a trade. You know, mainly things of that nature.

But let's go a different route. Since a trade involving either Strasburg and Zimmermann would inevitably go down in history, maybe history itself can offer insight about who would get the better end of a deal involving either one of them?

Put more directly: How do trades of young ace pitchers typically pan out for the teams involved?

Better grab a shovel. We have some digging to do.

JULIA MALAKIE/Associated Press

OK, first things first: ground rules. For while trades of ace pitchers are not uncommon, a barrier is needed that isolates aces who are still early in their primes. They are a different breed, after all.

The most sensible way to go about this is to go by age. For that, 28 works. The generally accepted peak age for players is 27, but J.C. Bradbury argued for 29 at Baseball Prospectus in 2010. In the middle is 28. Fair enough, you dig.

With this age in mind, I went to Baseball-Reference.com and drew up a list of the best 28-and-under pitchers over a 40-year period between 1971 and 2011, using wins above replacement as a measuring stick. I then went hunting for guys who:

1. Were traded before, during or after their age-28 seasons.
2. Were the clear centerpiece of the trade.
3. Were deserving of ace status when they were traded.

That third part is important. Guys like Nolan Ryan, John Smoltz and Curt Schilling may have become great after early-career trades, but none of the three was an ace at the time he was traded. Also, I ignored pitchers whose best work was clearly in the past when they were dealt.

Lastly, I needed a way to evaluate who "won" each trade. For that, I kept things simple and once again used WAR as a measuring stick for value that each side gained from each deal.

How many trades can actually fit under this complicated umbrella, you ask? I found an even 30, which is roughly what I was hoping for. Even better is that 20 of these trades relate to the more intriguing of the two Nationals pitchers who are (supposedly) up for grabs.

That would be Strasburg. It's debatable whether he's as good as Zimmermann, but he's two years (26 to 28) and three seasonal ages (25 to 28) younger. If the Nationals trade Strasburg, he would therefore slide into a group of traded 26-and-under aces that includes the following examples:

Year	Pitcher	Age	Seller	Buyer	Top Return Piece	Ace WAR	Return WAR	Diff.
1972	Steve Carlton	Post-26	STL	PHI	Rick Wise	64.6	7.7	56.9
1997	Pedro Martinez	Post-25	MON	BOS	Tony Armas	53.8	11.5	42.3
1978	Dennis Eckersley	Post-22	CLE	BOS	Rick Wise	25.9	4.8	21.1
1971	Dave Roberts	Post-26	SDP	HOU	Derrel Thomas	7.5	-0.1	7.6
1991	Greg Swindell	Post-26	CLE	CIN	Jack Armstrong	5.3	-2.1	7.4
1992	Jim Abbott	Post-24	CAL	NYY	Jerry Nielsen	3.5	-2.0	5.5
2007	Dan Haren	Post-26	OAK	ARI	Brett Anderson	13.2	9.0	4.2
2011	Mat Latos	Post-23	SDP	CIN	Yasmani Grandal	9.1	6.9	2.2
2011	Gio Gonzalez	Post-25	OAK	WAS	Tommy Milone	10.0	9.1	0.9
1987	Danny Jackson	Post-25	KCR	CIN	Kurt Stillwell	5.5	6.2	-0.7
1972	Andy Messersmith	Post-26	CAL	LAD	Frank Robinson	15.5	16.5	-1.0
1977	Bert Blyleven	Post-26	TEX	PIT	Al Oliver	9.9	11.2	-1.3
1991	John Smiley	Post-26	PIT	MIN	Denny Neagle	5.0	7.9	-2.9
2011	Matt Garza	Post-26	TBR	CHC	Chris Archer	5.6	9.0	-3.4
1999	Mike Hampton	Post-26	HOU	NYM	Octavio Dotel	4.7	11.5	-6.8
2010	Zack Greinke	Post-26	KCR	MIL	Lorenzo Cain	3.7	18.0	-14.3
2003	Javier Vazquez	Post-26	MON	NYY	Nick Johnson*	2.5	18.0	-15.5
1976	Bert Blyleven	Dur-25	MIN	TEX	Roy Smalley	11.1	27.9	-16.8
2005	Josh Beckett	Post-25	FLA	BOS	Hanley Ramirez	22.6	40.6	-18.0
2004	Mark Mulder	Post-26	OAK	STL	Dan Haren	-0.1	22.2	-22.3

*Nick Johnson was the best player the Montreal Expos got from the New York Yankees for Javier Vazquez, but they also got Randy Choate and flipped him for John Patterson. I've included his WAR here.

Apologies for the sheer amount of stuff up there, but there's an easy way to look at the big picture.

The difference column ("Diff.") is the important one. Positive numbers indicate the deal favored the buyer. Negative numbers indicate the deal favored the sellers. The highlighted ones are too close to call.

Knowing that, the takeaway is that the recent history of trades involving especially young aces is pretty balanced. The buyers and sellers boast eight victories apiece, and both can boast of mega-steals.

Anonymous/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press

The sellers may not have any steals to rival those of the Steve Carlton and Pedro Martinez deals, but they have quantity. The Zack Greinke, Javier Vazquez, Josh Beckett and Mark Mulder deals and the first Bert Blyleven trade worked out fine for the sellers.

That things are balanced like this makes sense. There aren't many commodities more valuable than a young ace. So when one is traded, there's going to be a lot of upside going in both directions. Due to baseball's Twitter account-worthy unpredictability, there's bound to be a history of the upside swing going in both directions.

Which, of course, only adds to the intrigue of Strasburg's situation. If the Nationals deal him, it will be for high-upside pieces. The team they deal him to, meanwhile, will be hoping to cash in what upside Strasburg has left. It sounds like a 50-50 proposition on paper, and the history in front of us doesn't offer a contrarian position.

But what if the Nationals trade Zimmermann instead? Since he's a little older, he would slide into a different and, not surprisingly given the more restricted age range, smaller group of examples that includes:

Year	Pitcher	Age	Seller	Buyer	Top Return Piece	Ace WAR	Return WAR	Diff.
2004	Tim Hudson	Post-28	OAK	ATL	Juan Cruz	24.4	-3.0	27.4
2007	Johan Santana	Post-28	MIN	NYM	Carlos Gomez	15.2	2.3	12.9
2009	Jake Peavy	Dur-28	SDP	CHW	Clayton Richard	9.9	0.4	9.5
1978	Vida Blue	Post-27	OAK	SFG	John Henry Johnson	13.9	7.2	6.7
1991	Bret Saberhagen	Post-27	KCR	NYM	Gregg Jefferies	11.6	5.5	6.1
2011	Ubaldo Jimenez	Dur-27	COL	CLE	Drew Pomeranz	1.8	-0.1	1.9
2002	Kevin Millwood	Post-27	ATL	PHI	Johnny Estrada	2.9	2.1	0.8
2008	CC Sabathia	Dur-27	CLE	MIL	Michael Brantley	4.9	12.0	-7.1
2007	Erik Bedard	Post-28	BAL	SEA	Adam Jones	4.2	33.7	-29.5
1989	Mark Langston	Dur-28	SEA	MON	Randy Johnson	4.9	39.0	-34.1

Disregard the too-close-to-call trades, and this group tilts in favor of the buyers.

Duncan Livingston/Associated Press

But beyond this sample size being too small to draw grand conclusions from, there's the reality that a 5-3 edge is only one away from being a 4-4 edge. There's also the reality that none of the buyer victories can hold a candle to the victories the sellers scored with the Erik Bedard and Mark Langston trades. Adam Jones turned out to be darn good. Randy Johnson turned out to be better than darn good.

So once again, you get a 50-50 sort of vibe. And that also makes sense. Big-name aces beget big asking prices beget trades with big upside going both ways. Factor in baseball's unpredictability, and watch the upside swing go both ways. 'Tis the nature of the beast.

And to an extent, this helps explain why we're even talking about the possibility of the Nationals trading Strasburg or Zimmermann.

If there were decades of history that leaned definitively in one direction or the other regarding trades of early-prime aces, general managers would know about it. If history said such trades always favor the buyer, maybe Nationals GM Mike Rizzo decides he doesn't want to be a seller. If history said such trades always favor the seller, maybe there would be no buyers.

This isn't the message that history is sending, though. Though there are cautionary tales for buyers and sellers of early-prime aces to heed, there are also success stories. And overall, neither side has to worry about bucking any kind of historical trend. As far as value exchange goes, these deals are a fair fight.

Of course, evaluating trades isn't always as simple as looking at the production of the pieces that were exchanged. There's an elephant in the room here, and it has a single word written on it:

Context.

Darren Hauck/Getty Images

Generally speaking, trades involving early-prime aces involve one team looking to win now and one team looking to get what it can so it can win later. Question is: How much does our big picture change if we take these motivations into account?

Quite a bit, actually, and it does so in favor of the buyers. Consider:

• The 1974 Los Angeles Dodgers might not have reached the World Series without Andy Messersmith.
• The 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates might not have won the World Series without Bert Blyleven.
• The 1990 Cincinnati Reds might not have reached the World Series without Danny Jackson.
• The 2000 New York Mets might not have reached the World Series without Mike Hampton.
• The 2007 Boston Red Sox might not have won the World Series without Josh Beckett or World Series MVP Mike Lowell, who was a throw-in in the big 2005 trade.
• The 2008 Milwaukee Brewers might not have made their first postseason in 26 years without CC Sabathia.

Based strictly on the value that was exchanged, these teams didn't "win" the trades that brought them these players. But since the deals did essentially what they were designed to do, it can be said that these teams won these trades more than the value exchange would suggest.

In theory, you can play this game with the sellers, too. But with the trades we've looked at, it doesn't work so well in reality. We considered a total of 13 trades that the sellers didn't "win," and I didn't spot any underlying success stories that suggest otherwise.

So though things look even initially, I'd say the last few decades of trades involving early-prime aces slightly favors the buyers. They may not stand a greater chance of winning the value exchange, but they do stand a greater chance of justifying trades that they technically "lost." 

As for how this relates to Strasburg and Zimmermann, call it confirmation for what you were probably already thinking.

The Nationals can be eager to sell one of them if they want, but everyone else should be even more eager to buy one of them.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.  

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