FanPost

The Linebrink trade, revisited

Now that the draft is over, it's safe to ask: just how bad was the Linebrink trade?  I guess we won't know the real outcome until we see how all 5 players develop (the three we traded and the two we picked up), but I'm curious about the reaction around the ol' gangbang, err, blog. 

You'll recall that we traded Will Inman (our 2nd round pick in the 2005 draft, in between Braun and Gamel) and left-handers Steve Garrison and Joe Thatcher for Linebrink, with the expectation that we would get two draft picks for Leiney if/when he signed elsewhere.  He signed with the White Sox in the offseason, meaning we received a player in the supplemental first round (our #3 pick, Evan Frederickson) as well as the White Sox's second round pick (our #5 pick, Cutter Dykstra).

Here's how the ex-Brewers are doing so far:

Let's say we made the playoffs last season.  I imagine the conventional wisdom would be, "Well, it cost us those three players, but it was worth it by playing in the postseason."  Since we didn't make the playoffs, one assumes that we rolled the 20-sided dice and lost, with a result somewhere in between "it was a good idea at the time" to "an unmitigated disaster."

 

In retrospect, I suppose you could make the argument that if Linebrink was worth 2 or (heaven forbid) 3 wins, then without Linebrink, we still might be looking for our first winning season since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  It's a hard argument to make, though: it's not that we traded those three good prospects for Linebrink, per se; we traded them for 25.33 innings of Linebrink's 3.55 ERA.  That's a smidge more than 8 innings per prospect.  (By comparison, Joe Thatcher's numbers over the same period of time for the Padres last season: 2-2, 21 IP, 1.29 ERA.)  It's hard not to think about that particular what-if: what if we replaced Linebrink with Thatcher, thus keeping Garrison and Inman?

(Feeling sick yet?  Did you happen to check out Linebrink's line for the White Sox this season?  How about a 1.55 ERA / .90 WHIP in 29 innings.)

For me to be OK with the trade, we'd need Frederickson to be about as good as Inman, who arguably was the centerpiece of the deal for the Padres.  Given our difficulties in producing quality SP from our minor leagues, though, I guess I'm a little leery of the wisdom of that trade, even in the middle of a playoff chase.

With that in mind, you'll forgive me if I look askance at the Laporta or Gamel for C. C. Sabathia rumors.