Diamondbacks Bullpen

[TAP]

Highlights from Murray Chass' NY Times story:

35 trades have been made since the end of the season compared with 56 in the corresponding period last off-season.

Reasons generally cited for the reduced level of trading activity centered on economics, prospects and free agents.

Economics: “Teams are motivated to trade by financial reasons, and that wasn’t present this off-season,” Mark Shapiro of Cleveland said. “There weren’t teams that wanted to shed payroll and reallocate their resources. The majority of franchises are doing well. The game is on the upswing economically. That has had a residual effect on all teams.”

Prospects: “I just think that teams are protecting their prospects more,” the Mets’ Omar Minaya said. “The value of young players who can produce prompts teams to hold on to them longer than in the past. Looking at the talent that is coming into the game, it’s hard to come up with good young players, so teams are holding onto the players they feel can be productive.” TAP editorial: That's the point Levski was making in THIS THREAD.

Walt Jocketty of St. Louis concurred. “We’re all looking for ways to keep our costs down,” he said. “The best way of doing that is trying to keep our payroll down. The best way to do that is to develop quality young players.”

In other words, teams are less inclined to trade young players

Free agents: Teams focused far more on free agents this off-season than they did on trades, even though the market was not considered especially good.

“I think a little more so than in the past, teams looked at free agents first and traded second,” Doug Melvin of Milwaukee said. “Teams would rather fill holes by adding free agents. That way they’re not subtracting players. We did both. For us to fill a catching hole, we had to trade a pitcher. Then we had to sign a free-agent pitcher.”


FULL STORY HERE