August 20, 1928
BREAKDOWN OF ALL THE DEADLINE DEALS
Now that we are a couple of sims past the trade deadline I thought I should talk a little about the moves I made and the thinking behind it.
First a recap of what was traded. I sent away 3/5ths of my starting rotation in 35 year old Mose Smith, 32 year old Del Plummer and 31 year old Cal Williams as well as 29 year old outfielder Bud Rogers and 32 year old shortstop Lloyd Carter. Both Carter and Rogers had been long-time starters for my Kings but both had also recently lost their starting jobs on the team. I also parted 31 year old reliever Dick Dover, who had been very inconsistent in Brooklyn so spent the majority of the past couple of seasons in AAA, as well as a 24 year old minor league first baseman by the name of Jack Procell.
In return, while we certainly got worse in the short term because of the pitchers sent away, we got much younger and hopefully positioned better for the future. We acquired a first round and a fourth round draft pick as well as 4 minor leaguers. They are a pair of pitchers in 23 year old Mickey Beavers and 20 year old George Johnson along with 23 year old outfielder Charlie Powell and 20 year old third baseman Tony King.
THE REASONING
So why would I decide to tear down a team that had won the pennant a year ago and was possibly still in the hunt this year as, while we were 4th in the league, we were just 9 games out of first place at the time of the first deal in early July.
First reason is I knew we were out of the race. Our hitting was not doing what it did in past years and both Philadelphia and New York were on fire. The Stars especially had shown in the past that when they got hot they were almost unstoppable. Since that first move in July until this writing my Kings have still done fairly well, going 24-22, although they are on a downward trend here in August. The New York Stars have gone 24-19 since July 1st as they too have struggled in August but the Philadelphia Sailors have gone 34-9 over that stretch. So whether I had the three pitchers in my rotation or not (worth noting is Mose Smith has been awful since the trade as well) there is no way we would have not lost even more ground to Philadelphia.
So with a pennant out of the question this year I had to look ahead to next season. Smith would be 36 years old and was not the pitcher in the first half of this season that he was a year ago when he won the Allen Award as the Continental's top arm. Plummer would be 33 and just a year removed from missing 13 months with a major arm injury. Williams would be 32 and coming off two very good years for us including a 20-win season a year ago. He is the one I felt the most hesitation about moving, but the opportunity to grab a young arm like George Johnson (who is in the BNN top 30 prospects and top 10 pitchers) was too much to pass up. Plus my head scout Rube Carter seemed to be no longer as high on Williams as he was a year ago.
I am not saying these were bad players. On the contrary, all 3 are in my mind still good...if you are contending for a pennant this year. Smith was a huge reason we won a year ago but we weren't winning this year. All 3 are older so I wanted to make a move when I could still get some decent value in return.
The same goes for the two hitters I gave up. Carter is an outstanding defensive shortstop but I have a young prospect named Arnold Bower who has a comparable glove and seems to be a much better hitter than Carter currently is so it made sense to move him now while he has some value. Rogers is a year younger than Carter and hit over .400 in April before a terrible May-June slump. He is likely still a great hitter but we have young guys in the system - and young guys with power, something our team desperately lacks - so I figured it is better to trade Rogers a year or two too early instead of too late. We are playing stats-only as followers of this thread I am sure are well aware so it makes the decision on when to move a guy that much tougher but it has been my observation (correctly or not I am uncertain) that a large number of hitters seem to go into a nosedive when they hit age 30-32. That factored very heavily on my decision to move Rogers. He quite easily could be the exception to that rule, or my observation may be way off base as it is on an admittedly small sample size but with the guys I have in the pipeline I felt I could take that risk especially when I had a first round draft pick coming back in return.
WHAT I ADDED AND WHY I WANTED THEM
Those two picks are very important additions as the Brooklyn collection of pitching prospects was very thin prior to the deals. I am certain that one of my two first rounders (likely around 10th and 14th overall) will be used on a pitcher and there is a good chance I will use both of them on an arm. A stats-only draft is a real crapshoot - both good and bad as my star C-1B Mike Taylor, an 8th round pick a year ago, proves. The more tickets I have in the draft lottery the better odds I get a winner out of the pile I take.
George Johnson was acquired straight up for Cal Williams. Right now he is ranked as the 7th best pitching prospect in the game. Prior to acquiring him I had no pitchers in the top 100 and just one that was listed in the top 200 prospects. I might disagree with that a bit as I have a couple of pitchers in my system I really like but I do agree I am very thin on pitching talent. Johnson was taken 6th overall by the Chicago Chiefs out of high school 2 drafts ago. In a year and a half in Class B his numbers have not been overly impressive (13-29, 5.08 era) but high school pitchers seem to take a while to develop. He gave up more homers than I like to see but I have to think that was partly due to pitching in the longball crazy COW League. Chicago had just moved him to Class A the week before the deal so I put him with my A ball affiliate in Omaha. He had a couple of rough relief outings for me but looked pretty good in winning his first start. He is the youngest pitcher I have in Omaha and one of just a dozen pitchers age 20 or younger in the Heartland League. My plan is to bring him along slowly but I see him being in the middle of my FABL rotation in 3 years and still being just 23 years old at the time.
The other arm I added is 23 year old Mickey Beavers who was a 12th round pick out of college following the 1925 season. He was in AAA a year ago and looked very good but his numbers are not quite as impressive this season. He did look good for me in 3 starts with my AAA affiliate but I brought him up to Brooklyn for a couple of weeks and he was clearly overmatched - going 0-3 with an 8.40 era and an awful 2.27 WHIP. That has scared me a little on his potential but my hope remains he can fill one of my rotation spots next spring. I dealt Mose Smith, Dick Dover and Lloyd Carter to Cleveland for Beavers and an outfielder named Charlie Powell that I am very high on as well as I received a 4th round pick in the deal. As a result, for reasons I mentioned earlier (Smith's age, Carter's age and lost job, and Dover's terribly inconsistent pitching) I think taking a chance on Beavers was a very reasonable risk.
My scout Rube Carter absolutely loves Powell. Now I have decided to rely much more on stats then scouting reports but it is nice to hear Carter agrees with what the stats tell me. Powell is a corner outfielder on a team with corner outfielders averaging about 5 homers a year for me. I want at least one big power hitting bat in my lineup and I think it can be Powell. He started the season at AA Toledo and was promoted by the Foresters to AAA Cincinnati in May. I have him in AAA Houston and in 111 games between the three cities Powell has hit 46 homeruns. The big question is what will his batting average be like as he has hit just .280 in AAA this season with a 13.4% strikeout rate. I gave him a quick taste of the big leagues with a week in Brooklyn but he got just 3 plate appearances. No hits but he did not strike out and drew a walk as well. With him and the emergence of Gus Powell (no relation), another 23 year old corner OF who has 12 homers but is batting .222 in 53 games in Brooklyn, I have two players to battle it out for the clean-up role in the Brooklyn lineup.
The final prospect I received was 20 year old 3B Tony King. King is, by 2 years, the youngest position player I have at AA Knoxville and while his glove needs some work, he is enjoying great success at the plate batting .352 in 14 games for the Knights. He hit .295 as a 19 year old in Class B and was batting .273 for the NY Stars AA affiliate this season. My scout Rube Carter says he has power potential, but we haven't seen it yet, and felt he could be a solid contributor on a first division team when we acquired him. Carter has lowered those expectations recently (which is one reason I like to look at the stats and level a player is playing at primarily) but my expectations have gone up after seeing how he is handling AA pitching as a 20 year old. My concern is his play in the field, but Carter seems to think he will be okay. King has been a negative zone rating guy all his career so I am not so certain but the first round pick I got from the Stars in the deal was the prize piece for me in the trade.
A good deal is one that helps both teams. While the jury is still out on the guys I sent to Cleveland (the Foresters have been struggling as a whole since the trade) I think the Stars (with Rogers and Plummer) and the Chicago Chiefs (with Cal Williams) have made out nicely on the trade. Now it is up to my scout Rube Carter and myself to make sure the draft picks pan out and it will take time to see how accurate a judge of talent I am with Johnson, Beavers, Powell and, to a lesser extent King. If I develop one starting pitcher out of the draft this year and between Johnson and Beavers I get one mid-rotation starter I think the deal would be well worth it from the Kings point of view. If Powell can break through and be a strong FABL power hitter that would be a nice bonus. I am betting those things will happen. Now I have to wait for a few seasons before we can accurately judge these trades.
I don't think I gave away a shot at the 1928 pennant - it was already long gone. 1929, perhaps? But if things pan out these deals laid some solid building blocks on what I hope will be a very strong first half decade in the 1930s.