2012 Season, Trades

Sanchez and Infante for Turner (Updated)

17 Comments

Let’s move the thread here. I’ll get as many stats/details out as I can later tonight.

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I like the deal, a lot.

Losing Turner is not a minor loss. Here’s a guy that threw 99 in high school and has been the organization’s top prospect for each of the last few years (though Castellanos has probably overtaken him by now). Keith Law thinks that it’s a great deal for Miami. Dombrowski cited the major league abilities of Crosby and Smyly as factors in letting Turner go.

Now if you’ll recall, the last time the Tigers gave up a top prospect was in the late 2007 trade for Cabrera where they swapped two former #1 picks – Andrew Miller and Cameron Maybin. Quick, where are Miller and Maybin playing now? Here’s Baseball America’s analysis.

Prospects are just that – prospects. Sure, some will pan out, but you have to have numbers for that to happen (see Texas, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, etc.). The Tigers simply haven’t been able to do that, so DDs strategy has been to buy and trade. And it’s worked out pretty well. Even if Turner goes on to a stellar career, this was a calculated risk which had to be taken.  Our rotation and 2B spot are immediately better, and likely markedly so.

There’s an argument that Detroit’s lack of organizational depth results in rushed rookies, but we all know that we are in a win-now mode, and this trade screams now. Fangraphs projects that this is a 4 win swing for the Tigers. That’s a lot of wins.

An interesting side note to the player swap, is that for the first time in MLB history, teams have exchanged draft picks. MLB teams can’t trade regular draft picks, but compensatory picks can be swapped once.

By the way, your Tigers are 5th in the latest ESPN Power Rankings.

Talk to everyone tonight.

17 thoughts on “Sanchez and Infante for Turner (Updated)”

  1. Infante is signed through next year ($4M due in 2013).

    DET and MIA also swapped their competitive balance lottery picks in this deal and now the Tigers will have the last pick in compensation round A (after the first round), while the Marlins will have the final pick in compensation round B (after the second round).

    Unless Sanchez can’t adjust to AL hitters, and he proves to be little or no help this year, and/or Jacob Turner wins the Cy Young in 2015, i’m having trouble finding very much wrong with this trade…based on Tiger 2012 needs.

    1. +1. If Turner wins 10 Cy Youngs, but this gets us a WS (I know, it’s a huge step), I’m 100% okay with it.

  2. I’m OK with this deal. You have to give up something to get something. Basically, the Tigers gave up 3+ minor leaguers for an everyday secondbaseman who SHOULD play miles beyond the Santiago/Worth/Raburn trifecta, and an established starter who SHOULD fill the void in the rotation. Sanchez is also only 28 and depending on how things go the rest of the year, he could turn out to be a fixture in the rotation for a few years. Turner MAY be a star someday (John Smoltz?) or he may not (Jeremy Bonderman?), but he is a couple of years off in any case. Trading the Tiger’s most well-thought of pitching prospect shows the DD philosophy in a bright light. This is why he drafts so much pitching. Meanwhile Castellanos remains safe and sound at Erie.

    1. By the way, both Sanchez and Infante are Venezuelan, which should make Miggy very happy.

      2. Sanchez and Cabrera are from the same home town (Maracay) born one year apart. Sanchez is 28, Cabby 29.

  4. Turner is a lot to give up for these two. I wonder if the Tigers see something in Turner they don’t like. I think of Cameron Maybin. Was supposed to be a can’t miss and hated to see him go. But, what 3 years later he is a 210 hitter.

    1. Andrew Miller was also another ‘can’t miss’ that’s bounced around with no consistent success thus far.

  5. ..Then again, looking at Sanchez career and his walk/S.O. ratio, maybe this is a very good trade.

  6. I am good with this trade…Hate to give up Turner but prospects are just that prospects. Brantly might have been ok too….BUT Infante is a prover veteran and Sanchez still has an upside when joining a rotation like the Tigers have…….and if this means Rugburn is released tomorrow I will be dancing in the streets

  8. Another factor we should be considering in this trade is the swapping of picks (first time in history this has happened). The Tigers were able to move up roughly 40 spots by taking the Marlins 36th (I think) pick. There is a major difference between the 36th and 76th pick. The chance of a first round draft pick panning out is significantly higher than a 2nd round draft pick working out.

  9. I like the trade. In my opinion Turner is vastly over ranked as the #10 overall prospect in baseball today. We don’t really need Brantley at C as we have a relatively young Avila, plus still have McCann in our system as an eventual backup to Alex or as a future trrade chip. I see Turner becoming a Porcello-ish kind of guy down the road (a #3 or #4 starter), but we are in a win now mode and can’t really afford to wait on a guy that is not likely (IMO) to ever be a 18-20 game winner. The tall lefty in Single A (can’t recall his name) is likely years away from ever becoming anything and again is a chip that I don’t mind using to improve NOW. Texas (the hands down preseason AL favorite in my mind) is showing some vulnerability with some of their starters going down (Ogando and Lewis), and the AL is looking a lot more winnable than it did in June.

    After this acquisition we should have seen the last of Raburn ever at 2B, and perhaps ever as a Tiger (which would make many fans happy) once Dirks returns from Toledo. I’m not as down on Raburn as most are as he has given us some production in recent years after slow starts, but it does not look as though Ryan will emerge from his raburnation as he has traditionally done in the past. Raburn’s one major league quality has been that he has shown an ability to hit with some power as the weather warms up, and that one quality has been non-existent in 2012. Ryan does not have a position that he can play at a major league level and we already have enough DH’s on the roster. It seems as though the Tigers won’t have any choice but to DFA or demote Raburn to the minors after Dirks returns form his rehab assignment in Toledo.

    Infante has grown into a decent major league 2B after leaving Detroit, posting three solid years in ATL before another 1.5 solid years with FLA. Omar is hitting .287 with a .312 OBP in 2012 with a little bit of pop in his bat (8 HR). He is probably at least Santiago’s equal in the field with a much better bat. Santiago can now go back to his UMD (utility man deluxe) role with the Tigers, which is the role that Leyland has insisted Ramon thrives at versus being a full time guy, kinda like Don Kelly (we have two UMD’s on the roster). This is not quite the upgrade I had hoped for at 2B (was hoping for Aaron Hill), but it most certainly an upgrade at our most gaping positional hole. I also like that Omar is signed through next season at an affordable $4 million.

    Sanchez is also an upgrade to the pitching staff. He has a no-hitter in his past, and is toting a 3.94 ERA in 2012. Sanchez is striking out 8.2 per 9 innings and is only walking 2.5 per 9 innings. That is a better than 3 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio. Sanchez’s win-loss record (5-7 in 2012 and 44-45 in his career) doesn’t concern me because he has by and large played on a lot of bad Marlin teams in his career, kind of like Fister’s poor won-lost record while playing for dreadful Mariner teams before landing in Detroit. Sanchez also provides nice security if Fister’s inter-coastal problem springs up again later this summer, as Smyly could be slid back into the rotation without the team being hurt as badly as we were earlier this year when Fister went down twice with that injury and we had no capable starters to slide into his spot. Now we have six starters (including Smyly) to guard against any further problems with Fister in 2012.

    Overall I’d give the trade a solid B on the surface. The Tigers got appreciably better at 2B while also upgrading their starting rotation. We gave up one potentially big-time prospect, while trading away a C (where we have another good prospect in McCann plus a solid/young C at the major league level) and a Single A pitcher who was not ranked especially high in the organization. Of course trades can’t be fully judged in some cases until years down the road, but as others have pointed out we traded away two “can’t miss” prospects in Maybin and Miller in the Cabrera trade and who among us wouldn’t make that deal again? Even having to suffer through two years of Dontrelle Willis was more than worth it when you factor in a likely future Hall of Famer in Cabrera.

    1. we could have paid Dontrelle’s salary for several more years and that trade still would have been one-sided in our favor.

      it was a complete fleecing, given the current returns.

  11. Tonight’s Tigers lineup
    1. CF Austin Jackson
    2. LF Quintin Berry
    3. 3B Miguel Cabrera
    4. 1B Prince Fielder
    5. DH Delmon Young
    6. RF Brennan Boesch
    7. SS Jhonny Peralta
    8. C Alex Avila
    9. 2B Omar Infante

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