Revisiting the Salomon Torres Trade

by Charlie on Feb 25, 2009 2:32 PM EST Comment 9 comments

The Post-Gazette has a blog entry about the Salomon Torres trade today. That trade, which brought pitchers Marino Salas and Kevin Roberts to the organization, looks like a bad one now, but I'm not sure what we can learn from it.

As I've said before, trades should be judged based on the information available when they were made. At the time of the trade, Torres was a 35-year-old reliever with injury and conditioning issues who'd posted a 5.47 ERA in 2007. His peripherals that year indicated his ERA should have been slightly better, but it was still an awful season, and when a 35-year-old reliever has an awful season, he's usually done. Torres himself seemed to think that might be a possibility--he considered retiring rather than reporting to the Brewers. A 67-win team needs a pitcher like the one Torres was after 2007 like a fish needs a bicycle.

So the Pirates swapped him for two live arms in Salas and Roberts. While minor league relievers usually aren't worth getting excited about, the Pirates needed pitching depth badly at the time, and they weren't giving up much. Salas and Roberts didn't work out--Salas pitched well in the minors but flopped for the Pirates, and Roberts stunk at Class AA Altoona, although he pitched better at Class A+ Lynchburg. At the time of the trade, the chances that either Salas or Roberts would contribute much in the big leagues were small, but those chances are still often worth taking, because if a reliever can come through the minors and be a valuable contributor in the bigs, he can be controlled very cheaply for several years.

I didn't like the trade at the time, because I didn't feel that the Pirates got quite enough back. But shipping Torres off for young players was the right idea, and it was a reasonable trade that might well have paid dividends.

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Tim Neverette

Not relevant to the above, but…

To me the primary interest with the first spring training game today is listening to the new announcer who is taking over Lanny’s chair; Tim Neverette.

It was awkward listening to him, Greg & Blass stepping all over each other during the introduction in the top of the 4th. Tim doesn’t seem to be Mr. Excitement, but time will tell. To me he sounds a hell of a lot like John Gordon who calls Twins games.

Good day.

by Uncle Nate on Feb 25, 2009 2:58 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Two "Live" Arms?

You are implying that Torres’ arm was “dead”?

And how do we know that Salas and Roberts had “live” arms? This is strictly your assumption.

Let’s face it - Torres had outlived his usefulness in Pittsburgh. He was a productive and popular Pirate, but it was time for him to go.

It was an opportunity for the Pirates to cut payroll.

It was a good trade for the Brewers.

by thegunner on Feb 25, 2009 3:02 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I'd rather the Redmond trade be revisited

by azibuck on Feb 25, 2009 3:11 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Live Arms

Not an opinion. They were both side to have a fastball in the low to mid 90s. I think that’s what Charlies is referring to in the live arm.

I agree it was a good trade for the Brewers but I don’t think it was a salary dump. I think it was more of getting rid of a player who is suing the organization. Where I work we usually fire a person who’s trying to sue the company.

by Slick1 on Feb 25, 2009 3:12 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I still think...

…that it may have been discomfort over his religious practices (specifically his unwillingness to salute the flag). Which would be sad, if true.

by Vlad on Feb 25, 2009 4:12 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Sad, and illegal, too

by WTM on Feb 25, 2009 5:42 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Odd

Honestly I don’t remember his religious practices ever being mentioned before. As far as not saluting the flag, it would be weird to expect a foreign citizen to do so, although I wouldn’t put it past us.

After all, a fair amount of our foreign policy with Spain in the past few years has been at the very least affected by the fact that Spain’s president did not stand up to recognize the American flag as the American delegation passed by during the annual Spanish armed forces parade.

by Dignan on Feb 26, 2009 9:38 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

It's not a foreign thing.

Torres is a Jehovah’s Witness, and all JWs refrain from saluting flags and singing anthems and such, for every nation. There was a big Supreme Court case in the ’40s (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette) about their right to not perform the Pledge of Allegiance, for example. [They also have a few other special restrictions, too, like conscientious objection to all wars and an unwillingness to acccept blood transfusions even in emergency circumstances.]

I was told by a couple of people that management had a bug up their collective butt last offseason about players not standing at attention during the anthem, among other things, and that led me to wonder whether it was a motivation behind the trade of Torres. Since he plain and simple isn’t allowed to do it.

by Vlad on Feb 26, 2009 12:33 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Good trade...

My dos centavos….

1) If there were peripheral issues, I think it was the lingering bitterness over whether the Pirates did or did not agree to financially support his training academy in the DR, not his vocal (?) evangelism (?). There was no way that training academy issue could be anything but a distraction to a new management team.

2) While ST performed well f/a contending Brewers, do we think we would have gotten similar results w/a non-contending Bucs team?

3) Did we want yet another old(er) player blocking the emergence (or testing) of a potential young replacement (Capps)?

4) When he temporarily retired or considered retiring – critically, after the trade, so we got ours – I was positively giddy w/delight. For once, no matter how bad the replacements we got were, we were the stickers, not the stuckees.

Can’t unring the bell, but the trade made me feel like a million yuan at the time.

by Trogluddite on Feb 25, 2009 8:39 PM EST reply actions 0 recs