Yesterday in the comments of Chris’s article on Brian Cashman and Kei Igawa, a discussion about whom the Yankees have traded in the past two seasons started. I’m of the opinion that with a few exceptions, the players Brian Cashman has traded have been nothing incredibly special and losing them will not hurt the team in the long term. So, let’s take a look at the last year and a half or so of Brian Cashman’s trades to see what the Yankees gave up.

Let’s start with the “deadline” deal of Ross Ohlendorf, Jose Tabata, Jeff Karstens, and Daniel McCutchen for Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte. What did the Yankees give up here? With the exception of Tabata, nothing special. Though Ohlendorf pitched well for the Pirates in 2009, he would not have played a big role for the 2009 Yankees and likely would have had just as small a role for the 2010 Yankees. Karstens did poorly in 39 games–13 starts–with the Bucs. McCutchen held his own (98 ERA+) and showed decent control (2.97 BB/9) in ‘09, but like the other two pitchers in this deal, he’d have no real place on the Yankees moving forward. There are plenty of guys ahead of him.

Jose Tabata was really the only player of consequence the Yankees forfeited in this deal with the Pirates. At the time of the trade, his OPS in the Eastern League was a meager .630. He raked once joining Altoona (.964), but 2009 was less spectacular (.763 OPS between AA and AAA). In a system that’s hurting for position player prospects, losing Tabata hurt, but Jose’s production had dropped year to year and level to level with the Yankees and there were apparently character issues. Perhaps all he needed was a change of scenery. It’s worth noting that Tabata’s star has taken a bit of a hit in recent years; he was rated the 27th best prospect in baseball pre-2007, the #37 pre-2008, and the #75 pre-2009.

The next trade of any importance was the December 2008 trade fleecing of Kenny Williams in the Nick Swisher deal. Cashman traded away Jeff Marquez–who’d seemingly stalled in his development and subsequently bombed with the Sox AAA team in 2009–Wilson Betemit–who was eventually DFA’d–and Jhonny Nunez who did poorly in a 5.2 inning stint with the Sox, but performed very well in the minors. This deal was absolutely great for the Yankees. They bought low on a very good cost controlled player and payed an incredibly small price.

In February of last year, Cashman traded Chase Wright to the Brewers for Eric Fryer; Fryer was eventually included with Casey Erickson in a deal for Eric Hinske. While Hinske didn’t have a huge impact on the Yankees, he added much more than either player would have now, or in the future. It’s also worth noting that the Pirates paid for Hinske’s time with the Yankees.

In other relatively minor trades, Cashman traded Chase Weems to the Reds for Jerry Hairston, Jr., who proved useful off the bench down the stretch and in the playoffs. Again, what Hairston added last year was more than Weems would likely add in the future. Weems would have been stuck behind any number of Yankee catching prospects and it’s likely that he’d never even make the Major League team.

For literally nothing but money, Brian acquired Chad Gaudin, who could be useful as a swingman out of the bullpen in 2010.

A brief review: so far out of these trades, the only remotely useful piece given up was Jose Tabata, and he was likely still at least a year and a half away from being in the Majors at the time of his trade.

The trades of which we’re unsure are the ones made in this offseason. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t judge them now.

The first trade made in 2010 was trading Brian Bruney to the Nationals for a player to be named later, Jamie Hoffmann. It appears that the Yankees grew tired of giving the oft-injured and inconsistent Bruney second chances and tried to turn him into a useful bench piece. If Hoffmann doesn’t make the team and must be returned to the Dodgers, as he’s a Rule V pick, then this trade looks a little worse. If he does stick with the team, this trade looks about equal: marginal piece for marginal piece.

This post is running a bit long and the other, more “major” players traded early in 2010 require a separate post that I’ll put up tomorrow. That one will feature my thoughts on Phil Coke, Mike Dunn, Melky Cabrera, Arodys Vizcaino, Ian Kennedy, and Austin Jackson.

From the Pitt Trib (h/t BBTF):

His birth certificate and passport say outfielder Jose Tabata was born Aug. 12, 1988, in Anzoategui, Venezuela. Yet, during a recent radio interview, general manager Neal Huntington admitted there are “a lot of rumblings” that Tabata might actually be in his mid-20s.

In Latin America, record-keeping can be spotty, especially when it comes to youngsters with excellent baseball skills. The New York Yankees investigated Tabata’s background in 2005 and, satisfied he truly was 16, signed him as an undrafted free agent.

The Pirates are not publicly disputing Tabata’s age, and yet …

“All of the documentation he has used to obtain his visa from the U.S. government and his passport from the Venezuelan government indicates his reported age is accurate,” Huntington said in an e-mail to the Tribune-Review. “Apart from unfounded speculation, there is nothing to indicate his age any different than reported. My point is that while we have reason to doubt his reported age, it is a non-issue to us.”

The Pirates likely have no issue with this simply because there is not much they can do about it at this point. If Tabata is actually 25, he will lose an immense amount of value, going from a precocious 21 year old to a player a bit old for his level, and there is nothing the Pirates can do to forestall that. Tabata has always been about projection and potential rather than performance, such that any years added to his age will do more damage to his status as a prospect than it would to someone who has been able to perform at a high level in the minors. The constant refrain that his power will come later might lose all of its validity if he is already in his mid-20’s. Although the Yankees did not get exactly what they had hoped from that trade, it seems like the questions surrounding Tabata may have been valid all along.

Photo Credit: Mike Ashmore’s Thunder Thoughts

Tyler Kepner recently wrote a blog post on Ross Ohlendorf and the trade that sent him to the Pirates, and Rob Neyer quickly caught on and riffed off of it, focusing instead on Jose Tabata:

Granted, the equation would look quite a bit different if Marte hadn’t fallen apart the moment the Yankees got him, and if Nady hadn’t missed most of this season with a serious elbow injury.

But even if both players had done exactly what we’d expected — Marte a serviceable lefty reliever, Nady an average (at best) American League outfielder — this deal still would have been a steal for the Pirates.
Or it would probably have been a steal, anyway. That’s what happens when you trade two marginal veterans for a quartet of talented young players. Ohlendorf’s good enough to start for the Yankees, right now. Karstens may yet find himself as a reliever. McCutchen may soon be as good as Ohlendorf. And Tabata … well, he’s the real prize, isn’t he?

Between the ages of 16 and 19, Tabata was routinely the youngest player in his league, and he routinely batted .300 (while drawing plenty of walks for a teenager). Everybody said Tabata couldn’t miss. Said he was the Yankees’ best prospect. Said they wouldn’t trade him, because he was their Center Fielder of the Future.

And then he got off to a lousy start in Class AA last year. He was still just a teenager, and probably was yet again the youngest player in his league. But he got off to a lousy start, and the Yankees needed Xavier Nady. Well, they didn’t need Xavier Nady. Nobody in the history of baseball has needed a player like Xavier Nady. (Not until after the fact, anyway. If the Yankees had qualified for the playoffs last season, afterward it would have seemed like they had indeed needed him.)

So the Yankees essentially traded Jose Tabata, so recently their very best prospect, to the Pirates for Xavier Nady. Someday, historians will read that sentence and snicker.

I love Rob, but there is a whole lot of WRONG in this little blogpost. Firstly, the idea that no one ever needs Xavier Nady is a bit silly, in that Nady is not a replacement level player, just a league average player. He was better than anything the Yankees had readily available, and therefore represented an improvement for the club. For a team that was in a playoff race at the time, the marginal improvement from Justin Christian to Xavier Nady was significant, and I am not sure how Rob can represent it as being anything but a net positive. Adding a lefty reliever like Marte was similarly a drastic improvement over the options the Yankees had at that moment, although the marginal upgrade was likely less than the one gained from adding an everyday player like Nady.

Additionally, let’s not rush to anoint these “talented young players” as stars quite yet. McCutchen has made one start and profiles as, at-best, a back of the rotation guy, while Karstens is the very definition of replacement level. Ohlendorf has improved, but he still has an ERA just under 4 in the AL Central, with a FIP of 4.74, and a K/9 of 5.57. He may turn into a good pitcher, but the performances of Brad Penny and John Smoltz in the NL after being awful in the AL East suggests that the level of competition is incredibly different in the two leagues. The three pitchers are exactly the kind of assets an organization with plenty of pitching in its system should be giving up to get pieces that can help in a pennant race. The key here is Tabata, who took a step forward this year but still has yet to flash the power that would make him an elite prospect.

While the Yankees were quick to give up on Tabata, it is important to note that he had a huge attitude problem with the Yankees that many felt would torpedo his career. Furthermore, you need to give up something of value to complete most trades, and Tabata represented that value here. He had enough question marks about reaching his talent that it made for a good gamble by the Yankees. Most analysts felt that the Yankees made a good or even great deal, and cited the unknowns regarding Tabata as their primary reasons for reaching that conclusion. Just to quote one pundit at the time of the trade:

I wasn’t thrilled with the Xavier Nady deal, from the Pirates’ perspective. Jose Tabata’s star seems to have fallen (though of course he’s still young).

Who said that? Why, Rob Neyer, of course.

A few recent events have me thinking about last year’s trade in which the Yankees sent phenom Jose Tabata along with Ross Ohlendorf, Jeff Karstens, and Dan McCutcheon to the Pirates for Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte. Firstly, Bill Madden mentioned the deal in an article on Marte and Phil Coke:

In that respect, it was somewhat surprising when Brian Cashman – who otherwise read the market on free agents this winter pretty astutely – bestowed Marte with a three-year, $12 million contract. One can only surmise the GM felt the need to partly justify last summer’s trading deadline deal in which he sacrificed three of the Yankees’ top prospects, including outfielder Jose Tabata, to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Marte and outfielder Xavier Nady, who’s a free agent after this season.

I would suggest that Cashman resigned Marte because the Yankees have not had an effective lefty reliever for the longest time, but that is not the issue here. Tabata’s subsequent appearance in a Spring Training game against the Yankees led me to begin wondering about that trade. Was it the right move?

It is important to note that at the time, the move was hailed as a steal for a Yankees club desperately trying to reach the postseason. However, various subsequent events have muddied the waters a bit. Tabata snapped out of his season long funk following the trade, while the Yankees missed out on the postseason. Nady and Marte profile as important pieces of the 2009 Yankees, but nether is indispensable and similar talents could have been found on the free agent market. One other important point to note is that the original version of the trade had Brian Cashman sending Phil Coke and George Kontos over to the Pirates, but Pittsburgh substituted McCutcheon and Karstens at the last moment.

With all of these factors in mind, I ask you to answer some difficult questions. Did you like the trade at the time? Would you have been equally fine with it had Coke and Kontos been involved? How do you feel about the deal now? Is this trade a feather in the cap of Brian Cashman, or is it ammunition for those who feel that he is a poor GM?