Cubs Trading for Manny Machado?
Hey, sorry guys. Haven’t been on a ton lately, but that’s what happens when you coach two little league teams, work 50 hours, and have been doing home renovations in preparation to sell your home. There’s a TON of Chicago Cubs stuff to talk about, but I’m going to start with the Manny Machado rumors that everyone is recycling on social media.
These rumors are centered around the idea that the Cubs would send Addison Russell (and some) to Baltimore for Manny Machado.
There is a lot to unpack when it comes to a trade of Russell for Machado, and one such item is Addison’s status with the team and Theo Epstein.
Theo and Jed Hoyer have mentioned that successful franchises are built off of getting the right four players, or pillars. Since they acquired Russell from Oakland for Jeff Smaradzija and Jason Hammel, they anointed him as one such player. Rightfully so or not, fans have since turned on the 24 year old shortstop. In either event, knowing what I know about Theo and company, they aren’t afraid to accept mistakes and move forward – but they also don’t make too many mistakes either.
This doesn’t eliminate the fact that there is some rumor, from some insider, that thinks this could happen.
“But after checking in on his availability during the winter,” a source told Gordon Wittenmyer, “the Cubs expect to talk to the Orioles about Machado again when the worst team in the American League inevitably makes the pending free agent available in the coming weeks, insiders say.”
There is no mention of Russell in this, but you would have to ask yourself, how many middle infielders does one team need? He or Javier Baez have the most value on the market, and moving Baez’s bat right now would look to be a mistake. But would this leadership team look to trade away a young, immensely skilled shortstop, for a couple month rental?
I can get into a whole debate on needing to wait out Addison’s development, but I think the fans that need to hear that argument will just allow it to fall on deaf ears. But there is a production argument that certainly needs to be made between the two infielders.
Machado – .346/.432/.617 1.049 OPS 187 OPS+ 9 HR 17 R
Russell – .241/.308/.324 .632 OPS 73 OPS+ 0 HR 16 R
Looking at just those two stat lines you would say it’s an absolute no-brainer, right? But you have to understand, this is far and away the best production Manny has ever had at the big league level, and this is far and away the worst production Addison has ever had at the big league level.
Russell has a career .240 average, and is hovering right at that career mark right now. Machado has a career .282 AVG and is 60 points above that mark at the moment. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility that Addison stays around the .240 mark, but adds some more power (he’s struggled mightedly this season from a power perspective). It is also very likely that Machado begins to come back down from this otherworldly play.
To compare them further, a .240 average hitter will have 120 hits in 500 at bat season. A .282 hitter will have 141 hits with the same qualifier. Using their career averages, Machado is expected to have 95 more hits this season (already has 46) and Russell is expected to have 94 more hits in 2018 (26 in 2018).
So trading for Machado today, you can only expect to receive only one more hit over the course of the season.
Ah, but power! Yes, Machado has averaged 23 home runs a season in his career, and Addison has averaged 15. But again, Machado has hit nine already, so the expectation is that he would only hit 14 more throughout the rest of the year. Maybe you increase that number as Manny’s production has increased the last three seasons, but we’re still only talking about 1.8 more home runs from Machado than Russell over the course of the next five months.
Basically put, the Cubs would be giving up a better defensive shortstop in Russell for 0.2 more hits per month and 1.8 more home runs per month. And a gut shot of possibly re-signing Machado for $300 million in the offseason. Does that seem worth losing the potential next four years of Russell?
Then there is the impending free agency. Machado has given no indication that he would give any team a break and intends on testing free agency. Now, as Gordon mentioned, he does have a childhood friend on the team – Albert Almora Jr – but if the Cubs were signing a player because he’s friends with someone on the roster, wouldn’t they cater to their biggest star in Kris Bryant (childhood friends with Bryce Harper)?
‘‘That would be special,’’ said center fielder Albert Almora Jr., who’s eager to do anything he can to facilitate a deal between the Cubs and the childhood friend he considers family. ‘‘It’s something we’ve always talked about growing up. We were always so confident. We always said, ‘Man, we’ve got to try to play together in our [big-league] careers one day.’
‘‘I’ll have to start sweet-talking Theo a little bit and see what we can do.’’
We know the Cubs are going to open the checkbook next offseason. We know the Cubs are going over the luxury tax next season. If they were to do that, wouldn’t it be on the best player available, Harper? The club likely needs to address their outfield – both defensively and offensively, but their infield is fine. You might want more offensive consistency, but from a defensive and offensive outlook, the team produces at a higher than baseball average clip.
The last item, and the piece that screams that this is just smoke to me… the same front office which kept trading for Aroldis Chapman relatively quiet and no one on earth (besides KatyPerrysBootyole and Wettbutt23) knew the Cubs were interested in Jose Quintana. This front office is publicly leaking news that someday, down the road at some time, they want to talk to Baltimore about Manny Machado???
This front office doesn’t seem like the type to publicly throw a player under the bus either. For them to release the news (however it happened) it puts Russell, the team, and the front office in a weird situation that is an unnecessary distraction from winning baseball games. It just doesn’t make sense.
Look, I don’t think this is a false rumor, but I think the interest in this rumor is more fan driven than actual Cubs baseball decision maker driven. I mean why wouldn’t you want Manny Machado on your team? He’s a superstar type player, and a guy that will be worth $300 million. I just don’t see the baseball sense in giving up a lot (even if it is just Russell, that is a lot) for Machado.
