Does The Scott Kazmir Trade Mean Anything?

Bob Stanton-USA TODAY Sports

The first meaningful trade of July happened today, the A’s kicked off their full rebuild by trading Scott Kazmir to the Houston Astros for minor leaguers Daniel Mengden Jacob Nottingham.

It’s a significant deal because a the Dodgers have been linked to Scott Kazmir consistently throughout the summer, and even before Brett Anderson hurt his Achilles tendon.

So the answer to the question up top is, almost certainly from the standpoint that there is one less starting pitching option in a market that was already intensifying due to the Dodgers losing their #3 starter to an injury on Tuesday. Now, let’s perfectly clear the Dodgers are trading for somebody, the level of that “somebody” is unknown but there will be at least one new name in the rotation on August 1st that wasn’t formerly in the organization.

The question that really matters to the Dodgers is whether or not Scott Kazmir being traded set the market for a starting pitcher.

Consider first that these are incredibly complex situations, complex in the sense that many times front office folks have agendas and by floating certain names to agents in trades, that could change the complexity of a trade situation entirely. Also consider that the specific prospects the A’s value from the Dodgers might be totally different than what the Tigers value from the Dodgers. Baseball scouts have so much more resources than admittedly flawed prospect lists at their disposal that they are able to value the 4th “best” prospect in a particular system as less than what the industry says.

An example: let’s assume the A’s were offered, I don’t know, Alex Verdugo and Zach Lee for Scott Kazmir and the A’s ended up taking the package that netted them Mengden and Nottingham. Using baseball prospectus‘ farm rankings the A’s made a mistake by not getting two top 10 guys in the Dodgers system for a starter with a 63 ERA- even if he’s a rental.

Well, John Sickels was the only guy to rank past the top 50 prospects and he ranked Jacob Nottingham 71st in his midseason update

"Crushing A-ball pitching at age 20, stock moving up but I want more information before going higher than this. If final reports back up the numbers, will rank much higher in three months"

Also this from today

"A Redlands California native, Jacob Nottingham just missed John’s pre-season top organizational 20, but was noted as guy you could slide in anywhere after 16 depending on preferences. I really like Jacob’s offensive profile. He is very strong, physically mature, and has a nice-looking swing that could translate to success at the big league level."

This is only one prospect source at one point in the season debating on a prospect or two, but combining the way that Nottingham’s prospect profile has been trending along with the most recent report about his play being positive, he is actually the most valuable commodity in this trade and he wasn’t even in the Astros top 10 by any major outlet coming into this season.

Keep in mind that I have no idea whether Verdugo or Lee were dangled as options for the A’s, the point of all this is that the resources the average baseball observer today gets to use is exponentially better than any other baseball observer of any other era, and despite this, prospect lists are irrelevant from an actual industry standpoint.

If a major league team is offered a prospect that they like, industry consensus goes out the window, Jharel Cotten could be absolutely coveted by the Tigers whereas Tigers scouts absolutely loath Chris Anderson. Maybe they think Grant Holmes is a reliever struggling with his control in A ball, maybe they think De Leon is the best non-Urias pitching prospect in the system, the point is the industry clearly has a consensus on players, and that consensus is normally conveyed to the public through prospect lists. But for the past two years, there have been deals that come out hilariously different to what everybody else expected them to be.

Did anybody think that Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel would fetch Addison Russell and a few other interesting prospects?

How about the Rays trading David Price for what has been (in my opinion rightfully) criticized as nothing?

Or Josh Donaldson being dealt for Kendall Graveman and Brett Lawrie?

Or hell, Jason Hammel getting Jason Nottingham and Mengden?

The answer to all of this is that nobody knows for sure what these deals will look like when it’s all said and done, and this is relevant to the Dodgers for a few reasons, the Johnny Cueto situation from the Reds perspective is more than just “wait until they budge on including BOTH Grant Holmes and Jose De Leon” and it’s more complex from the Dodgers perspective than just waiting until the Reds get desperate and accept pennies on the dollar for an ace.

Even if you want to compare this Kazmir trade to a comparable, rental pitcher like Jeff Samardzija, the organizations are completely different, meaning the talent evaluators are different, meaning the situation is entirely different and a Samardijza trade (Shark trade) would have different levels of talent exchanging hands.

So the very long winded answer to the question up top is that the Kazmir trade means something in the sense that there is one less pitcher available in a pitching starved market, but the market for solid rental pitchers is never ever “set”, nor could the Dodgers have matched the Astros offer with comparable talents based off of prospect lists.