Looking Back At The Michael Bourn Trade
March 18, 2013 at 12:00 pm by Andrew Sisson under Atlanta Braves
At this point in March, there are only a couple of spots on the team up for grabs that likely won’t be decided until the conclusion of Spring. Most of us are just simply hoping and praying the core group of players can remain healthy until the games start counting in a couple of weeks. While this topic doesn’t necessarily have any forward-looking impact, I thought it may be a good time to go back and take a look at the trade that brought Michael Bourn to Atlanta. Of course, by looking back, we’re using the benefit 20/20 vision and now have knowledge of some of previously unknown risk, so it shouldn’t change your view of the trade at the time. It is more of a way to see how it’s played out and towards which team the bar has shifted in favor of since.
At the 2011 trade deadline, trade the Braves received Bourn from the Astros for OF Jordan Schafer, LHP Brett Oberholtzer, RHP Paul Clemens, and RHP Juan Abreu. Not that the book is exactly “closed” on this deal, but many of the players have moved on from their respective teams or have provided us with a bigger sample of information where we can get a good grasp on the result of this trade.
At the time of the trade, the Braves were in need of, well, Michael Bourn. Lacking a centerfield option and a hitter that could get on-base at the top of the order, Bourn fit both of those needs to perfection. Bouncing between Nate McLouth and Jordan Schafer during the first half of the season, Bourn was exactly the upgrade the Braves were looking for, both in the lineup and in the field. As a kicker, he also had an additional year of team control after the season with team friendly arbitration numbers (2012: $4.4M, 2013: $6.845M).
Considered the “centerpiece” of the trade for Houston, Jordan Schafer, 24 at the time, hadn’t fulfilled the top prospect tag the Braves had hoped for after drafting him in the third round in 2005. The Astros hoped there was still untapped potential in Schafer and a change of scenery would be helpful. Brett Oberholtzer and Paul Clemens, 22 and 23, were both starting in the Mississippi rotation and were the two pieces the Astros thought would provide future value in the quest to rebuild. The final piece was Juan Abreu, 26, a flame throwing RHP with control issues in the Gwinnett bullpen, who fell short of claiming a spot in the big league ‘pen.
Somehow, the Braves were able to escape the deal with out giving up their top four pitching prospects in Teheran, Delgado, Vizcaino and Minor. Many believed one of the four would have to be parted with in order to land the impact player the Braves were looking for. Oberholtzer and Clemens, both regarded as mid-level, high C/low B grade, prospects that profiled as back-end of a rotation pieces, were stuck behind the Braves stable of young pitching. Essentially, all the pitchers the Braves gave up were expendable; the Astros chose quantity over quality.
Looking back, the general feeling was that this trade was a big win for the Braves. There were able to get the perfect top of the order/centerfield combo, at a reasonable price, for a once hyped prospect and a bundle of pitching prospects that were clogged behind a very talented core of young pitching in the upper minors. The Astros came under fire for not receiving enough in return for one of the most prized targets at the deadline. So, how exactly has it played out since?
Michael Bourn’s tenure with the Braves came to an expected end after signing a 4 year/$48M deal with the Indians this off-season. In his one and a half seasons, Bourn played 208 games in Atlanta, putting up 7.6 fWAR during that span. His .275/.341/.381 triple slash and 99 wRC+ were all above average for his position. In the field, his speed and quickness continued to show why he was one of the premier defenders at his position. As was expected, a great deal of his value came in the form of run prevention where he accumulated a DRS of +27. Bourn’s return was exactly what the Braves were in need of. The general expectation from day one was the Braves weren’t expected to resign the Scott Boras client after the 2012 season. With the establishment of the new CBA rules, the Braves will also receive a compensation pick, either 31st or 32nd overall, after Bourn turned down the Braves 1 year/$13.3M qualifying offer.
Schafer on the other hand was a large disappointment for the Astros, racking up an abysmal -0.3 fWAR in 136 games. His .220/.301/.298 slash and a wRC+ of 69 was accompanied by a 28% strikeout rate, which is something you usually see from the Juan Fransico’s of the world, instead of a player who should be maximizing his speed and on base ability at the top of the order. Unlike Bourn, Shafer did not help his value in the field, posting a -11 DRS in an Astros uniform. The Braves, in a somewhat surprising move, reacquired Schafer off waivers in November.
Oberholtzer and Clemens, now entering their age 23 and 25 seasons, haven’t exactly made the quick progress the Astros have hoped. You will see neither floating around many top-prospect lists, and it’s not just because Houston now boasts one of the better farm systems in the league. Last year, Oberholtzer threw 166.2 innings between AA and AAA in 28 starts, posting a 4.37 ERA and a 137:40 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Also pitching at the same levels last season, Clemens threw 143.1 innings in 27 games, exhibiting a 5.87 ERA and a 105:45 K/BB. Oberholtzer has already been assigned to minor league camp this spring, while Clemens appears to be in the running for the long-relief role in the Astros bullpen. Still in their early to mid-twenties, neither should be written off yet. Both still have the potential to deliver some future major league value, but the Braves aren’t exactly kicking themselves for trading away the pair.
Juan Abreu on the other hand did find his way into the Astros ‘pen in 2011, throwing 6.2 innings in relief. After a disastrous start to the 2012 season in Triple-A, Abreu was selected off waivers by the Toronto Blue Jays last August. He has since signed with the LA Dodgers.
On the Braves end of the deal, this trade turned out even better than the front office expected at the time. It’s been commonly stated in the industry that front offices never root against the players they trade away, but knowing that the head decision makers were able to properly evaluate players and the organizational outlook, does offer a positive feeling. Using FanGraphs $/fWAR model, Bourn was worth $32.2M in value with his time in Atlanta. If you want to add in the compensation pick, which conservative estimates suggest to be worth $3.5M in surplus value, you can see how one-sided this trade has looked considering the Astros have yet to see a positive return in major league value on their end.
Overall, A+ Frank Wren.
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It would be interesting to compare how this trade turned out to the Phillies aquisition of Hunter Pence turned out. Both trades happend close to one another and so many people said the Phillies made the better deal.
Indeed that would be interesting. I am pretty sure that trade almost depleted the already bare Philly farm.
Johnathan Singleton has been killing it in the minors but just got suspended 50 games for smoking weed. Jarred Cosart has been pitching really well in the minors. Both are top 50 prospects. Overall, D- Ruben Amaro.
Great post, Andrew! The Bourn transaction seems to be the antithesis of the Tiexiera trade. The Braves paid pennies on the dollar for Bourn, received potential future value when he left, and Bourn actually filled a primary need on the team (remembering that the Braves needed a starting pitcher more than they needed a bat when they acquired Tex).
I liked the content of this article, but gotta make you think that as others read articles like this, they will become weary of FW’s ability to make some steals.
I am wary of becoming weary. That’s mostly when I can’t seem to use proper spelling.
Well, fans of other teams could be just getting tired of watching all these great moves by the Braves’ FO.
like signing Dan Uggla to a 4 year deal?
Making a wary/weary joke.
Never mind.
What a great article! The CAC is on a roll this week.
I feel like FW played the trade deadline so well that year. Not only did he pull off this trade but there were reports that we were going after Pence which drove up the price for the Phillies.
It’s been almost 6 years since this trade happened, but would you be willing to take a look back at the Teixeira trade with the Rangers? I’ve always considered the Rangers the winners in that trade, but not as much of a landslide victory for the Rangers as others say.
Charlie the Braves got Texeira and Ron Mahay for Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Matt Harrisson, and Beau Jones. 4 of the 5 are Major leaguers. 3 of the 5 have played all star calibur ball.
The Braves then traded Texeira for Casey Kotchman and Stephen Marek.
so the Braves traded 3 future all stars and Jarrod Saltalamacchia (20+homers last year) for Texeira, and never even got a draft pick out of him.
It was a landslide, and the number 2 reason to hate John Scheurholz.
What’s the #1 reason to hate John Schuerholz (just curious)?
The Rangers definitely won the trade; I don’t think anyone questions that. The only thing I’d point out (which is why I personally don’t feel it was quite as bad a trade as others make it out to be) is that two of those players were expendable at the time. The Braves didn’t have any need for Salty or Andrus because they had McCann and Yunel Escobar at the time.
matt harrrison and neftali feliz would be kinda cool to have as well.
Hate is too strong a word IMO, given what Scheurholz accomplished as GM. That said, he made three trades that were really, really bad.
1) Future all stars for Tex discussed above.
2) Dave Justice and Marquis Grissom for Kenny Lofton and Alan Embree, the effect of which was worsened by trading Jermaine Dye a week before the season.
3) Adam Wainwright and spare parts for JD Fucking Drew. I vote for this as the worst not only because Wainwright is in fact the ace pitcher the Braves have been missing ever since the mid 2000s, but because JS let himself get bamboozled by the idea that an apathetic Boras client would take a hometown discount.
@Lemmer
The Dave Justice/Marquis Grissom trade broke my heart as a little kid. Justice was one of my favorite players ever and I just couldn’t stand Lofton.
And I disagree about the Drew trade being all that bad. Drew had by far the best season of his career for the Braves. Chipper had a bad year that year and Drew really carried the Braves for a lot of that year. Also the Braves got Eli Marrero and Ray King in that deal too. Marrero was a solid bench guy and King was a solid LOOGY.
Reasons to hate John Scheurholz
1. HIs book sucks
2. see above
3. He drafted his son.
Honestly I don’t hate John Scheurholz, and his book, though not nearly as good as Skip Caray’s, is insightful. Scheurholz made a lot of fantastic moves during his tenure…probably a lot more good ones than bad, though, in hindsight (20/20), this one really hurt.
also a fun fact to remember is that the compensatory pick the Angels received for Tex was used to draft… Mike Trout. Yeah, put up one of the all-time greatest seasons ever at age 20 Mike Trout.
“matt harrrison and neftali feliz would be kinda cool to have as well.”
Oh absolutely. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the trade looks bad now that we’ve had a few years to look back on it and digest everything, but at the time I didn’t believe it to be quite as bad a trade as everyone else thought because a couple of the players (Salty and Andrus) were expendable even though they were highly-rated prospects. I’d be curious to get the opinions of the CAC writers on the trade when it happened (not knowing anything that would take place after the trade).
Also, in regards to Trout, is it possible that the Braves could have gotten Trout if they had held on to Teixeira and gotten the draft pick for him the Angels got? Would they have picked in the same slot as the Angels if they got that comp round pick?
To answer your question Charlie I believe so since it was the Yankees slot that was taken I believe(not 100% sure).
While the Braves had Salty and Andrus blocked I could’ve dealt with the loss of Salty but at the time Andrus was 18 or 19 he had a lot more upside than Yunel and that I think would’ve made Yunel more expendable. Perhaps not that year but in another year and a half.
Another thing to keep in mind, the Braves actually had a losing record when Tex was here. While that is not Teixeira’s fault I think it is notable because it showed he didn’t really fulfill a huge need. They then trade that investment(of their top 3 prospects and another guy that most Braves officials were high on in Feliz) to the Angels for a poor man’s Mark Teixeira (on his good days) and a mid level prospect.
Even if you do not think the initial trade was a loss, the subsequent trade made it an extreme loss.
@Mike
Yeah the Braves had a losing record when Teixeira was here because we had absolutely no pitching. The Braves had a great offense in 2007 and when JS couldn’t find a pitcher he wanted he badly overpaid to add more offense to the team in hopes of outscoring everyone to just try to make the playoffs.
And I pointed out that it was not Teixeira’s fault they lost I am just saying they did. If Tex was truly needed that I doubt a sub .500 record would have happened. Even netting 1 true #4 pitcher would have been just as good if not better for a cheaper price tag.
Don’t forget who the Angels got in that compensation pick too! I will give you a hint he plays CD for them, won RoY, should’ve won NOV and is now considered one of the best if not the best player in baseball
Mike motha’ f###ing Trout
Should be MVP not NOV
Also another reason the Tex trade sucked was that the Rangers originally asked for Jo-Jo Reyes as part of the package and the Braves refused to give him up and instead sent the Rangers Matt Harrison. We know how that turned out.
Tim B, yeah it was that bad. Wainwright was the best prospect in the organization, a Georgia kid, a huge Braves fan, and had number 1 stuff. You don’t trade that for one year of JD drew. I don’t know what the hell John Schuerholtz was smoking to keep thinking all of these Boras clients would give the braves hometown discounts. If you are the type of player who would do that sort of thing, Scott Boras would not be your agent. Wainwright is the type of player that probably would have done the hometown discount and like someone mentioned earlier could have been the Braves staff ace that the team has sorely needed for about a decade, no offense Tim Hudson. JD Drew was not going to bring a World Series title to atlanta. And that is my main complaint about John Schuerholtz. It seems he got obsessed with keeping the division title string going instead of maybe not making the playoffs for a couple of years and really getting parts that could go far in the playoffs. Or holding onto several valuable parts like in the 07 Tex trade and build up for another run. Frank Wren has talked about this building in waves. We have a young wave of talent in Atlanta now, and in my opinion have some really nice players in the low minors for another wave in a few seasons. I like the value approach of a team instead of going for broke with one player.
End of rant
I’d love to have Adam Wainwright, but unless he was healthier than he’s been in St. Louis it’d be a stretch to say he would have been the ace the Braves have been missing. He really only has had 2 ace-type seasons (’09-’10), some good to very good seasons (’07 & ’12) and some serious injury seasons (’08 & ’11).
Wainwright for Drew? A short term win for us, but ultimately a long term huge loss. It’s remembered as a bad trade, but Drew’s ’04 season was a monster: 1.005 OPS and 8.9 fWAR. We forget it because he was only here one season and he would never even reach half that fWAR mark again. It’s easy to forget how good JD was that year. It’s easy to remember that Wainwright won 20 games in 2010.
tl;dr: Wainwright for JD was a short term win and a long term loss, but don’t forget how good JD was in 2004. Also don’t overstate Wainwright’s career, which has been brilliant at times but has also been more than superficially damaged by injuries.
Exactly I really do not think it was awful. In fact that was the only time Drew has even received an MVP vote. On top of that the injury concerns with Wainwright began when he was just a prospect. A lot of people felt he would be a BP arm only because of his delivery and when his career started in 06 that was what he was.
I also do not know how trading the top prospect like Wainwright for 1 year of Drew is worse than the top 3 prospects like Salty, Andrus, and Harrison, plus another young raw arm like Feliz for a year and a half(turned out to be just 1 year) of Teixeira.
It’s not. The Teixeira trade was far worse. Like I said, it’s my opinion that the Wainwright for Drew trade wasn’t all that bad.
Just for fun, here are the average positional rankings for the Nationals, Braves, and Phillies via Fangraphs:
Nationals: 11.75
Braves: 10.875
Phillies: 16.375
That seems to me a much more accurate picture of relative strengths than Bill Baer’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place system over at Sweet Spot. Both the Nationals and the Phillies are going to have a solid advantage in the rotation that won’t be offset by the Braves’ superior bullpen. Still, I think that is fairly obvious at this point that the Braves should be significantly better than the Phillies and not significantly worse than the Nationals.
I’ll buy that for the Nationals, but I think the Phillies only have a marginal rotation advantage over the Braves, and maybe not even that.
Hamels and Lee should be as good as ever, but Halladay’s effectiveness is a huge question mark at this point, and Kendrick and Lannan are essentially replacement level or worse.
If we take the ZIPS WAR projections for the top six projected starters for each team here is what we get:
Nationals: 18.3
Braves: 15.2
Phillies: 16.0
If you edited the ZIPS projections based on spring training observations and injury updates, perhaps you boost Teheran and penalize Halladay enough to give the Braves the edge. Still, the 2.7 WAR projection for Beachy seems generous to me. I guess I’m willing to grant that the Braves and Phillies are roughly equal – and Atlanta obviously has a far superior offense.
True for Lannan except when he faces the Braves when he becomes Sandy Koufax. :)
Also the Phillies used to beat Lannan like a drum and he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.
All the conversation above about how bad the Wainwright/Drew trades is of course the old 20/20 hindsight accompanied by a lack of historical context. My own thought has been that the best thing to happen to the Braves was ending the division title streak and the years it took to get out form under the pressure to continue/restart the streak and/or win one for Bobby. Wainwright trade: this was directly related to pressure to at all costs continue the streak, and really turned out exactly as hope for at the time. Drew had his best season and pretty much kept the Braves afloat that year. There was no expectation that he would sign as FA, and the FO at the time had concerns about Wainwright (wouldn’t stop getting taller, how’s he going to develop?). Can’t turn around and complain years later when he turns out to be good. Obviously the Tex trade was much worse, not least b/c the FO was chasing past glory and desperately trying to get Bobby back on top. But remember that the trade was for 1.5 yrs control of one of the top young power hitters (not to mention +defensive rep), so obviously you’re going to give up a haul, you just hope they don’t *all* turn out to be awesome. Not to mention the centerpiece at the time was salty, who was absolutely superfluous for the Braves. Tex came over and raked for a half season, the team around him just wasn’t good enough. Then he had his usual slow start and it was time to cut bait (note that the return for Tex was pretty terrible even at the time, and this is what I’d really fault JS for). Be thankful we’ve moved on from the Cox era and the pressure to make trades like that is gone.
Didn’t Wren also get cash in the deal from Houston?