Beltran vs. These Other Guys

Baseball Prospectus has a look at the players most prominently involved in the Beltran trade last year, excluding Mike Wood.

Here's a quick breakdown of the current stats for each player involved in the trade, including Baseball Proscpectus's VORP stat (Value Over Replacement Player):

               AVG OBP SLG VORP 
John Buck      227 270 356 0.8 
Mark Teahen    251 302 353 -1.2 
Carlos Beltran 264 319 431 13.2

               K/9  ERA  VORP 
Mike Wood      5.64 3.59 8.9

Currently, Beltran is lapping the trio in value, 13.2 to 8.5.

That three Royal players cannot even equal the value of one other player is another problem all together, but there are two other factors that people keep forgetting to look at when evaluating this trade:

          Beltran  Trio
$/VORP    $876.6k  $112.2k
Age       28       24 (Avg)

As arbitration kicks in for each of these players, the cash advantage will dissipate for the Royals, but the fact is, these guys are always going to be four years younger than Beltran.

Allard Baird traded 4 months (and a monster post-season that would have done us no good) of Carlos Beltran for four years of potential at three critical positions. The plan was never going to bring us wins this year, and probably won't the next, but these guys are all going to be entering their primes when Beltran is exiting his.

I'll take that trade.