Hustle Loyalty Respect sends: SP Juan Nicasio (FA)
The Wilfred Brimley Fighting Diabeetuses sends: $3 2017 Auction Budget
Andrew’s thoughts: This is minor but interesting trade.
I believe WBFD just needed a seventh start, so they flipped a negligible bit of auction budget to Hustle Loyalty Respect for Juan Nicasio, a good not great option who was slated to start Sunday. In hindsight, the move flopped. The Pirates’ game was rained out and so Nicasio’s start was washed away, and WBFD fell to Team Canada by 16.2 points. Nicasio has thus far averaged a tick over 21 points per start, so it’s not a stretch to suggest that if he’d started, it would have been the difference between a win and a loss.
That 21 point per start number makes Nicasio a slightly below average pitcher (remember, average is around 24-25 points per start), but I still think he’s worth more than $3. I mean, I get that this was a short-term move. Maybe it was a rental situation, I don’t know. But fundamentally, if I’m HLR, I’d rather just have the pitcher than the $3 long-term. If he was renting him out for the day for $3 then that opinion changes, because at that point it’s just three free budget dollars.
HLR had deployed Nicasio three times this season for 79 net points, or 26.33/start. The usage is spotty, but if you’re picking and choosing what match-ups to deploy your pitchers, they can quickly become more valuable. Three bucks essentially covers one player’s raise in 2017 with a dollar left over. So if you’re looking at this as a normal trade without the emergency start caveat and discounting any possibility of a rental deal, then I’m not sure why one of the top contenders would just dump a pitcher for such a tiny future gain. But meh.
Like I said, this was a minor trade. Good on WBFD for being aggressively chasing a win.