from Amazon
Monday, October 10, 2011
Does it make any sense for a player to be “untouchable?”
You hear this kind of thing all time:
“I’m tired of talking about it,” he said. “We’re not shopping him. We’re not entertaining offers. It’s frustrating. He’s one of the best players in the game. Why would we trade him? I wish people would stop writing about it.”
That was by Walt Jocketty, the GM of the Reds, and it is in reference to Votto.
Now, some of it is posturing, but you hear it so often, that surely it can’t be posturing all the time. Personally, I think that most of the time it is sincere.
It makes no sense. What is the difference how good a player is? One, someone could always offer you a better player or combination of players.
Two, and MUCH more importantly, who cares how good a player is? It’s not like you own him for free, like if I had one of the best cars in the world, say a Bugatti Veyron (worth 2.5 mil and one of the most expensive cars in the world), in which case I could reasonably say that I wouldn’t trade him for any other car in the world (of course, someone could offer me 2 cars or 10). You have to pay all your players a salary, which is like a mortgage, as Tango likes to say (and it is a great analogy). What you own of course, is the equity on that player, which is roughly the difference between the win value of that player and his salary.
If someone offers you a deal that has more equity, you should consider it. Obviously there is more to it than that, but to say or think that any player on your team is “untouchable” seems ridiculous and irresponsible to me…