Trading away players is always a weird sort of thing. Sometimes it means that a club has decided they cannot improve with that player on the roster. Sometimes it is simply business and a means to get a desired ends. Other times the organization doesn’t want to lose a specific player, but need to when certain opportunities arise. There are tons of other reasons a club may decide to trade someone, but these tend to cover most. When trading away a player seems, strange, is when they send a player away that the team didn’t get any use out of. Yeah, we’re talking the Chicago Cubs and Drew Smyly.
Back in December 2017, the Cubs signed Smyly to a two-year deal worth $10 million. That deal would pay Smyly $3 million in 2018, and $7 million in 2019.
Fast-forward to Friday. The Cubs and Texas Rangers struck a deal sending Smyly to Texas. So the Cubs basically spent $3 million for Smyly to use the Cubs rehab team and equipment. But that isn’t all, a lot of media outlets are reporting this move as a corresponding move in reference to the club picking up the option on Cole Hamels. Now, this is true, but it also isn’t. I’ll explain.
On Thursday of last week, the Cubs had declined the $10 million club option for reliever Brandon Kintzler, to which, later in the afternoon, Kintzler accepted his player option of $5 million. Coincidently, Smyly had the same tax hit as Kintzler – $5 million. See, according to the Competitive Balance Tax (or the luxury tax as most refer to it as), the average annual salary or value (AAV) is what counts towards the tax. This eliminates those creative deals where a player might be paid $20 million in their first year, and then $15 million in year two and three, and then $18 million in year four. So, instead of counting their actual salary towards the tax, they count the AAV. In the last example, that hit would be $17 million, and in Smyly’s case, it is $5 million.
What I would suggest is, the Cubs moved Smyly, not because they wanted to, or because they picked up Hamels option. They moved Smyly because Kintzler threw them a curveball that they didn’t expect (sort of ironic as it seemed he didn’t fool anyone since coming to Chicago).
This wasn’t a corresponding move to the Hamels deal, while yes, they needed to do something like this to keep offseason plans intact, this was 100% because of Kintzler.
So, what are those offseason plans?
They are still, 100%, to make a valiant effort to signing Bryce Harper. There has been nothing to sway my mind of this, and there will be nothing that does sway my thoughts. If we assume that Harper will earn a 10 year $350 million deal this offseason (I believe it might be a bit more), then trading Smyly was necessary to keep that idea true. An AAV of $35 million almost perfectly fits into the Cubs space between their current payroll and the $246 million that would cause their first pick to be moved back 10 spots.
It is my belief that the Cubs made the Smyly move 1000% to keep them in the game for Harper, and if they lose out on him, a plethora of backup plans.
