GRADE THE TRADE: DUELING ARTICLES
This image isn’t meant to represent any single person… certainly no-one in the group chat… nope…
This is a very special edition of “Grade the Trade”. Due to the highly volatile nature of this most recent deal, two league members stepped forward, arms stretched into the air like a pair of nerds, and said, “My Opinion Matters”. Therefore, for the first time ever (and possibly the last), I present…
dueling articles!
James Swindell and Richard Martindell Jr have both written articles analyzing and grading the most recent deal. Neither author has read the other’s piece. You, the reader, can decide for yourself who got it right. First, we have…
james swindell
In an unprecedented April trade, Michael S. is shipping off Charlie Morton, Justin Turner, and Jackson Chourio to Dan T. in exchange for Bo Bichette and Freddie Freeman. This trade caps off a flurry of early trades in the month of April, an unusual course of events so early in the Major League season. Fantasy owners typically exhibit a certain level of restraint in April and May, recognizing that early struggles may not last as the season progresses. But the addition of newer fantasy owners brings fresh perspectives that have proven to disrupt the traditional conventions of the league.
The news immediately rippled through the league, stirring controversy and splitting the opinions of league owners. The debate boiled down to two differing opinions: was this trade made too early or right on time?
The two managers involved in today's trade, Michael S. and Dan T., were front and center, staunchly defending the trade to remaining members of the League. Dan stated that "This season is a wash for me and frankly, I'm already in a hole so I'd rather have Chourio and be done with it." Dan got his guy, but with what kind of repercussions for the remaining members of the League? Addressing concerns of tanking, Dan announced that he intends to compete the remainder of the season and is relying heavily on the waiver wire to replace the struggling veterans he cast aside for Chourio. He also calculates that he would have made this trade at any time this season and chose not to take the conventional "wait and see" approach. If his team is going to continue to struggle then it will be with players he believes in.
Other league owners, including Ian S., Richard M., and Vinson M., expressed concerns that this "panic selling" for prospects so early disrupts the league's balance and undermines the 'wait and see' approach most adhere to. The specter of 6-8 teams hoarding the most competitive pieces and creating super teams looms large. Additionally, some worry this could trigger a shift towards a long-term, Dynasty-like approach, leaving some teams waiting years to compete again. This trade has ignited concerns about a potential arms race for top prospects, leaving some to wonder if a select few teams will consolidate power and leave others in the dust. With outrage and questions swirling, the rest of the league can only do one thing: wait and see what ripple effects this trade may have.
grade the trade
dan t.
GRADE: B+ (Risky, but potentially rewarding)
UPSIDE: Acquires a top prospect in Chourio, with significant long-term value.
RISK: Relies on struggling veterans Morton and Turner to improve
michael s.
GRADE: A- (Strong return, but Bichette carries some risk)
PLUS: Lands the elite talent of Freddie Freeman with immediate impact.
QUESTION MARK: Bo Bichette’s current performance raises concerns, but his potential and keeper eligibility offer trade value at the deadline if he doesn’t improve.
the league:
GRADE: Incomplete
This trade has sparked a lively debate within the league, with many members expressing concerns about competitive balance and a potential shift towards a dynasty approach. However, some find the trade intriguing and believe it signifies a new era of strategic flexibility. The long-term impact of this trade remains to be seen, leaving the league's overall grade incomplete for now. "To Veto or Not to Veto: That is an unprecedented question," one member remarked, highlighting the unique situation this early trade has created.
richard martindell jr
“Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.”
-Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Dictator of Nazi Germany 1933-1945
April 23rd, 2024. It was a Tuesday morning. A morning that started off cold but with a promise of warming up. The kind of morning where you could get a state inspection and emissions test done on your car. Then, at 11:06 AM, 12 phones chirped, vibrated, flashed, or quietly kept to themselves in locked position as a bombshell was dropped: Freddie Freeman had been traded in week 4 of the fantasy season. And immediately, all Hell broke loose.
The full trade is as follows: Dan trades Freddie Freeman and Bo Bichette for Michael’s Jackson Chourio, Justin Turner, and Charlie Morton.
In an effort to parse this trade, I’m going to list each players’ current stats as they have for the year along with their last 14 days which I believe gives a better gauge toward whether a hitter is heating up or not.
Now that we have our reference points, let’s start to dig into this complicated trade. There are several controversial pieces at work here and I think starting with one of those will help parse through all this. The first one to look at is Bo Bichette.
part one: the burnt Bisquitchette
Bichette has been a fantasy quagmire for a year now. What was once a top prospect and rookie candidate is now being described as “cooked.” To be fair, his performance last year markedly dropped in terms of his counting stats. But let’s give Bichette a bit of the benefit of the doubt. In 2023 he suffered a right knee patellar tendonitis and then a right quad strain for two separate IL stints. As someone who is going through a similar injury, those two injuries are right next to each other, interlinked in the same muscle group, and on the same leg. Bichette clearly didn’t play healthy from July to August and a leg injury easily explains the drop in stolen bases for the year. Despite that, Bichette still managed to hit a .306 AVG and an .814 OPS.
So it’s hard to say he’s cooked. At least, it’s hard to say it has been Bichette’s fault he was singed last year. But let’s look at this year. Is he perhaps regressing? Bichette’s walk rate is up 2.1% from last year with a decreased strikeout rate by 3.7%. Despite the small sample size, his pull% is well within his usual metrics. Bichette’s soft contact has increased by 9.3% which wouldn’t be a problem if his hard hit rate didn’t decrease by 8.9%. This is a guy who's hard hit rate sits around a 35% and this year is sitting at 27.1%.
To further illustrate something with Bichette, here is his current heat map for where pitchers are currently pitching to him:
And here is where he is making contact this year:
So what in the world is going on then? Well it’s back to that walk rate and strikeout rate. Bichette is being obnoxiously more patient and it’s creating less sexy production. That’s not entirely bad, but it’s not what you particularly want either. Especially if you’re a fantasy manager who is hunting for his first win of the year.
Now here is where something frustrating about this trade rears its head up at me. These stats are hard for me to really put a hat on because the sample size is so incredibly small, because it’s so incredibly early in the year. As an extended look, I wanted to see how Toronto as a whole is doing this year because this is not the first Blue Jay this league has called out as suddenly being mediocre (Vlad Jr haters, stand up). In 2022 they hit .264 AVG with a .760 OPS. In 2023, the Toronto Blue Jays hit a combined .256 AVG and a .746 OPS. And this year? They are currently collectively hitting a .233 AVG with .695 OPS. If you cannot see that Toronto has been massively underperforming, then I’m not sure what to tell you. It’s not Bichette, it’s the whole damn team.
It’s my opinion that Bo Bichette will bounce back and will hit what the projections say he will hit: about 20-23 home runs and a .280-.290 average with at least 10 steals. Of all things, I cannot imagine his average staying the way it is currently because he has literally never hit under .290 before in his career.
part two: the apple of my eye
But if you are an owner who has bought into the doom and gloom of Bichette being done and wants him gone, then this brings me to what his replacement will be: Jackson Chourio. In a large part, he is the main focus of this trade. That sounds weird coming from a guy who just spent almost two pages talking about Bo Bichette, but that’s the truth. To get this immediately out of the way, Chourio is a Milwaukee Brewer and their hot, sexy new rookie phenom to boot. Dan is a Milwaukee Brewer fan. Describing these two as star crossed lovers would not be an exaggeration. There is no doubt in my mind that this factored heavily into the price for acquiring Chourio. But I’m not here to quote Shakespeare, I’m here to analyze. And what I need to analyze is does Jackson Chourio replace Bo Bichette?
Maybe? Gods, it sucks how early this is because I’m looking at (checks notes) 82 Major League plate appearances for Jackson Chourio. And I don’t even have a lot of minor league plate appearances to go off of either because he was only in AAA for 24 plate appearances last year. Am I supposed to use 2024 spring training numbers for this? The amount of fantasy analysis I can give on this guy is equal to counting the amount of Motrin I have left in my bottle (19.5 tablets somehow). So I’m going to do my best here, but this is difficult.
Jackson Chourio, coming into this year, was one of four top prospects in baseball that constantly flipped with each of the four others as to who was the #1 overall. The others for reference were Jackson Holliday (no relation), Wyatt Langford, and Junior Caminero. ZiPS Projections has Chourio as a .260 hitter with 16 home runs and 30 stolen bases. Fantrax had Chourio as a .277 hitter with 13 home runs and 15 stolen bases. The always more pessimistic Steamer has Chourio as a .245 hitter with 15 home runs and 15 stolen bases. You can pick which one you want to believe in more, it doesn’t matter to me because they’re all just projections.
If we look back up at the stats I posted for each player, you can see how Chourio is doing so far. As of right now, he’s closer to Steamer’s projections in terms of AVG but is on pace to exceed the home runs and stolen bases. Will either of those continue? Probably not. Chourio is already cooling down as just last week he hit only .150. But that’s kind of expected with rookies. You’ll be dealing with these sorts of ups and downs as they adjust to the league. In the minors he was a .280ish hitter depending on the level he was at. So again, do we just go off the projections, his lightning fast minor league track record, or his current major league stats for evaluation? I don’t know. But what I do know is that he likely will continue to be inconsistent as he adjusts to the league and it is unlikely he will outperform Bo Bichette this year. He might outperform him another year in the future.
So let’s pause on the players’ side of this deal and take the opportunity to thank our sponsor- no wait, that’s wrong. Let’s take the opportunity to see this trade from the angle that Dan put forth: a dynasty move to shore up a core for the next 8 years. Jackson Chourio is kept in the last round this year vs Bo Bichette’s round 11th next year. Bichette will then inflate 6 rounds to the 5th round and then he will be a 1st round keeper in 2027 giving him only 3 more years of team control in a cushy draft position. If a team wanted to keep Bichette in 2027 and beyond, they’d need to decide if he was worth a 1st round keep.
ZiPS has an interesting 3 year projection they do for players. For Bichette they have the next 3 years (2024 included still) as thus:
And for Jackson Chourio they have him as:
The edge still goes to Bichette if he actually keeps up those numbers. And those are at least comparable to some of the players that were drafted this year in the 1st round.
part three: what is left behind
And because I’ve said 1st round a lot, lemme talk about the next controversial piece in this trade: Freddie Freeman. Possibly the player with the most amount of track record, analysis on him begins with “He’s Freddie Freeman” and ends with a career .301 AVG, 1229 Rs, 322 HRs, 1156 RBIs, 90 SB, and a .901 OPS. While our league often has odd players drafted in the 1st round due to the keepers, Freeman was legit a first round player in a lot of other leagues because of his stability year to year and occasion of stealing some bases as a first baseman.
Trading a guy like Freeman now can happen because of a few reasons. The first is that he’s injured and another team is banking for next year. The other is that he’s massively underperforming and you no longer believe in him. Referencing the stats I posted at the top, neither are true at the moment (yes he only has 1 home run in 3 weeks so far, but 2024’s .382 SLG is 32 points lower than last year so I’m not convinced this isn’t a league wide problem of just April being awful). So why did Freeman have to go?
I don’t have an exact answer for this. But gut instinct says that Michael knew the price he had with Chourio and wasn’t going to move him for anything less than an impact bat. Dan possibly panic sold here with Freeman only having 1 homer and felt he was missing out on his home boy. Does that make this trade bad though? Well no, not if you balance around a 1st round player like Freeman accordingly.
Clearly Dan is losing a lot of hitting production here with both Bichette and Freeman leaving. The Fantrax projection for Freeman for 2024 was 124 R, 28 HR, 99 RBI, 14SB, .316 AVG, and .937 OPS. Combined with Bo Bichette, that’s a total of 51 home runs that need to be reclaimed or at least get close to. In the best case scenario, Chourio gets close to what Bichette could bring +/- 6 home runs. So how will he try to get back what he’s giving up with Freeman? The answer is apparently Justin Turner and Charlie Morton.
part four: are you still living?
I’ll start with Justin Turner as getting those hitting stats back is the immediate issue right now. Can Turner get close? Well to start with, Turner is no Spring chicken. He’s 39 years old and has played since 2009 back when he was on the Orioles. He’s had his ups and downs too, especially when it comes to his health in recent years. In 2022 he missed time with an abdominal strain, something known for sapping power from hitters by eating away at the torque they generate for a swing. In 2020, it was a shortened season so all bets were off for that year. In 2018 he suffered a wrist injury, the other death sentence for a hitter’s power. Apart from those years, Turner has managed to hit at least 21 home runs in every year since 2016, hitting 27 three times. That’s a very good track record to bet on.
But it’s an even year and a lot of people see Turner’s age, his injury history, the weird slumping team of the Blue Jays, and reasonably conclude they don’t want to be the one left holding the bag when his decline finally does come. If it ever does.
If we look back at the stats posted at the top, we can see that Turner is once again doing another Justin Turner like year as he seems unphased by time. His BABIP is .333 which means while there is regression coming, it’s not going to be a lot so Dan can confidently expect Turner to continue hitting his career .288 AVG. Adding Justin Turner into this trade was one of the best moves Dan could have done to stabilize the loss of production he was taking on. So long as Turner doesn’t fade down the stretch, as old people tend to do in the majors, this should work out well.
Using best case scenario with Turner’s projected 21 home runs and Chourio’s 16, Dan has only 37 home runs coming back to him for the 51 he is sending out. I use home runs over the other stats because this is a very power focused league with a home run generating 4 stats of production (R, HR, RBI, OPS) while sometimes aiding AVG along the way. But credit where credit is due, Dan is actually gaining 11 SB if Chourio steals the 30 bags he’s projected (via ZiPS).
part five: just retire, man
So with that said, the last piece of the trade is rather important. It needs to justify the loss of power by shoring up another weakness that Dan’s team has had all season: pitching.
Unfortunately the pitcher that comes back to Dan is Charlie Morton. Possibly the only player older than Justin Turner. This is where the cracks begin to show in the depth of Michael’s team as he doesn’t really have a lot of pitching to spare. More on that later, let’s dive into Morton to figure out just what he has to offer to help balance this trade out.
Looking at Morton’s current stats would show that he’s been aggressively mediocre this year. Borderline replacement level. The consensus on him is that the only reason he’s not streamed from the FA is because of his name. The last 5 years have seen him up and down in production, posting a 4.74 ERA in 2020, 3.34 ERA in 2021, a 4.34 ERA in 2022, a 3.64 ERA in 2023, and now a 4.70 ERA in 2024. Up and down, up and down he goes. This year being an even year would ask us to believe he’s going to have another subpar season. And at age 40, that wouldn’t be surprising. Morton’s K/9 is down from his usual 10s to 8.6 and his K-BB% down by 1.4% at a 12.6% which follows a trend of a gradual decrease since 2021 when he posted a 20.9%. However, his fastball, sinker, changeup, slider, and curve velocity are all at the same marks as usual. His HR/9 is also unchanged.
So why is he getting beat up so badly and why does his xFIP say he’s going to keep doing this?
It kind of looks like hitters aren’t being fooled by his stuff anymore and are hitting places where Morton was able to generate more misses. I can’t explain this change and I don’t believe at all that this tells the whole story, but when the velocity, strikeout rate, walk rate, hit rate, hard contact, barrel rate, and exit velocity are all the same as before, what is causing this?
How has Atlanta's defense been these days?
Ohhh. Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. Atlanta’s defense has been subpar or average apart from Arcia and Riley. That, plus his age, plus the fact that Morton has always been a career 4.01 ERA pitcher explains what we’re getting with Morton this year and previous years. This is just who he is and unfortunately his team can’t help him.
This was not the pitcher Dan needed to shore up his defenses. This is a pitcher that might even be a detriment to him. In fantasy, young pitchers have the concern of having their innings capped. Well old pitchers have that same problem only this time it’s because they wear down by the end of the year. And in a league with IP, your veteran pitcher needs to be a guy who can give you 180IP or at the very least, give you the ratio stats. Morton is a pitcher who has never had ace caliber stuff and is in his twilight years on a team that has mediocre at best defense.
part six: where does that leave us?
This is a trade that has a lot of problems in it. The first is as Vinson himself said:
This deal wasn’t going anywhere. In a week to two weeks, you’d have a full month and four matchups in the books and you’d be able to reevaluate. Many teams have come back from a bad start to the season and Dan’s position is not so terrible as to jump the ship. Of his three matches he lost his first week 3-9, the second one tied 6-6, and the third one lost 4-6-2. These are not the losses of a team in free fall. I just can’t understand or accept someone throwing away two top hitters this early in the year (even if it was for your one true love) because of results like that.
Another problem of this deal is the players involved feel like they should be in two separate trades. Dan should have been more greedy and either gotten more than Morton in this deal (like at least maybe Chris Bassitt) or he should have held onto Freeman with diamond hands and opted to trade someone closer in value to what this deal was including (such as Jordan Westburg. Trade one rookie for another).
But as mentioned, Michael was running out of pitching. He’s unlikely to part with Skubal and who could blame him. Pfaadt wouldn’t have helped Dan now, but at least would support the dynasty plan he says he’s going for. In all honesty, Aaron Nola probably should have been involved in this trade in some way if Freddie Freeman was involved. The production that Morton is putting out right now can be easily found on the FA wire and all on pitchers that have better upside and keeper value than he does (Such as Jordan Wicks, the Cubs rookie pitcher who coincidentally has the exact same 4.70 ERA as Morton right now).
The return for Bichette and Freeman is not enough to even out Dan’s team. And playing for next year at the beginning of week 4 is not an excuse to do this kind of sell off. Doubly so that if a team was actually playing for next year, Charlie Morton would be the last guy on the list for that team to acquire.
Many fantasy analysts will draft players based on the projected end of the year stats and add them up to get their estimated winning standings for each stat. In our league, there’s been a tendency to do the opposite. Owners will focus narrowly on current stats and forget about a past or future. Both of these are wrong. Fantasy baseball is not about setting a target and assuming it will never move. To come in without a fluid gauge on a player is asking to be disappointed or is asking to be fleeced.
I think that Bichette has been grossly disrespected in our league in terms of his value because he was injured last year and is having a slow start this year. Which once again, is the same thing a ton of hitters are having problems with right now and is not likely to continue. Is Freeman going to hit one home run every three weeks this year? That would be about 8.6 home runs for the season. That’s incredibly unlikely and on that Dodgers offense, you should want every part of it. Will Chourio continue to hit .224 the rest of the year? Most likely not, but no one has a crystal ball for whether it will get better Alex Bregman or Mike Trout style or whether it’ll be Jarred Kelenic. Plenty of prospects have flamed out. Plenty have gone on to be superstars. Trading a known superstar of Freeman and a demi-superstar of Bichette to gamble on that is such a poor line of reasoning.
What this trade shows is a FOMO for a prospect on a favorite team and someone taking advantage of that. In June or July, this would be just another bad trade in a history of bad trades. The top three most notorious ones that come to mind are:
In July 2021, Ian traded Robby Ray, Paul Goldschmidt, Francisco Lindor, and Alex Manoah for Bo Bichette.
Last year in June, Mark traded Freddie Freeman, Salvador Perez, and Max Scherzer for Bo Bichette and Eury Perez.
Also last year in June, I traded Jose Ramirez and Ryan Halsley for Cedric Mullins and Bobby Miller.
All those trades are arguably the worst trades in the league. Dan and Michael’s trade is bad, but not those levels bad. They’re a Tuesday in terms of bad trades. Which coincidentally is also what day today is: Tuesday. Unfortunately it’s not Tuesday in July, it’s Tuesday in April. And there’s a part of me that feels really disappointed that Dan thinks he’s out of the race already.
conclusion: grades
michael: B
You got one of the best, most consistent hitters along with a buy low of a guy who by all accounts, will be as good as he usually is and all you had to give up was a rookie, an aged pitcher, and Justin Turner. But you lose points because this is a league we all have to play in, and while I will commend you on a job well done in getting the best deal possible, know that this makes things harder for future trade partners.
dan: d
You got your guy and managed not to completely nose dive in hitting. That needs to be praised because I think everyone knows how much Chourio means to you and it’s important that it is heard loud and clear. But you gave up a lot of consistency for it and then justified it with being out of the race for this season. It bums a lot of us out to hear that when it’s not even a full month yet and when everyone is also suffering with a lack of starting pitchers and with hitters being inconsistent this part of the year.
(Obligatory appeal to cut out the month of April to get rid of this inconsistent and unpredictable part of the season. Paid for by the committee to bring back the last week of the season.)
