It should be easy to figure out, but it’s really not.
There hasn’t been a lot of discussion about an Erick Fedde trade. In theory, he makes more sense to trade than Ryan Helsley. I’ve made the argument in the past, but deadline prices for relievers are absurd and a little more uncertain in the offseason, so it’s possible you get a better return if you wait. It carries risks of course. On the other hand, I don’t believe there’s a premium deadline price on average starters?
But I say in theory for a reason. Erick Fedde is not as proven as teams would like. He’s already 32 next year. Even though he is projected to be an average starter, he may not be valued as such on the trade market. He had a very good April and then the league adjusted. He had other good months too, but he didn’t come close to his 27.5 K% in April the rest of the year.
In fact, we have a little evidence he’s not valued on the trade market like an average starter. Look at what the White Sox got in return for Fedde. Just strip away the three-team aspect of it and focus on who the White Sox got. They got a 19-year-old 40 position player prospect, a 19-year-old 40+ position player prospect and Miguel Vargas. The two prospects are approximately $6 million in value. We’ll come back to this later, because I don’t actually know what Vargas was worth, but I suspect it does not make up the difference between Fedde’s theoretical trade value and the value the White Sox actually got. Of course the White Sox are incompetent.
Now, there is a world where Fedde returns more at the deadline than now. It’s not necessarily a likely scenario, but it’s possible. Let’s say Fedde is for real a 3 WAR starter. He’d net a pretty good haul at the deadline because teams would be more confident 2024 wasn’t a fluke. If he’s average or better for the first four months and available starting pitching is a scarcity, teams would pay up.
Of course, if 2024 really was a fluke, the Cardinals could be passing up on the opportunity to get value now. Not to mention the injury risk that comes with being a pitcher. If you’re thinking it might have been fluky, and I’m thinking it, other teams are thinking it too. And when I say fluky I simply mean he’s not a 3.4 fWAR pitcher, I don’t mean he’s still not a useful starting pitcher.
Nonetheless, it might be interesting to see what he should return. His Steamer projection is 2.2 WAR in 31 starts and 179 innings. It’s a little tricky to figure out how many innings he should be projected for – Steamer doesn’t really account for injury risk much. He threw 177 and 180 innings the past two seasons, but didn’t come close to that before. However, that was because he sucked. He actually made a lot of starts. He started 28 games in 2021, plus two relief appearances, and started 28 games in 2022. He threw less than 5 innings per start. Let’s make this easy, and just say he’s a 2 WAR pitcher.
Fedde is getting paid $7.5 million. That means, on the open market, he should be worth $12.5 million in value. That’s pretty comfortably not a Top 100 prospect – not that I think people are thinking he’ll get that back – but also pretty comfortably at least one 45 future value prospect. And a prospect added to that 45 future value prospect.
Returning to Vargas, in order for Fedde to judged as an average pitcher, Miguel Vargas would have needed to be worth about $10-11 million in value. Vargas has been a very bad defender wherever he’s played and will probably ultimately be relegated to 1B. He has a 104 wRC+ projection though he has a career 65 wRC+ projection 591 PAs. Does he really have much more value than say Juan Yepez when he was a Cardinal?
Now let’s hypothetically say Fedde really is a 3 WAR starter. What will he be worth at the deadline? Well post-deadline is about a third of the season, which means he’d be worth 1 WAR on a $2.5 million salary. Now a 3 WAR starter actually might demand a bit more in a trade than a strict-by-the-numbers value would say. He’d be worth $7.5 million, but I suspect you could get more value than that at the deadline. But more than $12.5 million? And can you actually get $12.5 million right now?
Knowing nothing about the offers flowing in though, I will say hypothetically it makes sense to trade Fedde now for sure. If he’s valued correctly, I really don’t think you can assume you’ll get more at the deadline. And it carries a lot of risk to wait.
Thoughts on Helsley
I couldn’t make this a full post, but I wanted to figure out Helsey’s value. I already wrote a post about trade comps to Helsley from the past, of which there were no good comps, because most relievers are traded at the deadline. But I didn’t actually try to figure out his trade value, which was the one thing I wish that post had.
This is where it gets awkward though, because I am not sure you can assume he’ll be given the qualified offer personally. I’m not as positive as some of you that this should be baked into his trade value. $22 million is a lot for a reliever. He’s extremely unlikely to project to be worth that. You are banking on him rejecting that and there’s a good handful of teams who would not take that risk. He’s not really tradable at that price either, so it is a risk if you have no intention of paying him that. I suppose it depends on what team is doing the trading.
I don’t have ZiPS, but he’s projected for 1.5 WAR in 67 innings by Steamer. 67 innings is too much. He was hurt in 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2023 and was projected for just 52 innings by ZiPS entering 2024. It’ll be higher than that, but probably like… 56 innings? That annoyingly comes out to 1.25 WAR, which translates to $5.6 million in surplus value with his $6.9 million salary. If a team signed him for over $50 million, they’d net a pick past the Competitive Balance A picks, which is around Pick 40, or $7.6 million.
While I am more skeptical of the QO than most, let’s at least factor in the possibility. His trade value cannot 100 percent assume he’s getting offered it so the full $7.6 million is off the table. Whatever team is trying to get Helsley probably has a percentage in mind. Factoring in injury risk, underperformance, and the fact that I highly doubt he’ll project for 2.2 WAR, I think I’m being generous when I say 50% odds.
That comes out to $9.4 million surplus. If you want to round it up to $10 million, that means you are 58% confident he’ll be offered a QO. Anyway, this is essentially just one 45 future value prospect and maybe a lottery ticket. Which kind of goes along with what it felt like his return would be using past comps. Even if you assume the full value of the QO pick, you’re working with about Erick Fedde’s trade value.
So again…. do not expect a top 100 prospect. I am so prepared for Helsley to actually be traded, and then fans being disappointed or even mad at what the return is if he’s traded in the offseason. Not here, because you’ve been warned enough and seem realistic enough. No word on if I will have a third post about Ryan Helsley arriving at the exact same conclusion.
