A prospect is still just that, if you can get a above average player with some contract left then pull the trigger. Surely its a case by case basis but a bird in the hand…

Hanley, The marlins wouldn’t do that deal given Hanley’s contract situation. It would take a lot more to get a player of his caliber with such a team friendly long term deal. That is why Florida laughed at Boston. I don’t think there is a package they would accept today. In a few years when Hanley has a year left on his deal he probably will be moved. IE Miguel Cabrera

Obviously, it’s a toss-up between Wieters and Stephen Strassburg. If they haven’t yet been tested, they have yet to fail, and thus, are truly infallible Major League players.

Didn’t we just look at a few 2004 lists….? Alex Gordon killed the ball in the minor leagues (YES HE STILL HAS TIME) and hasn’t yet put it together in the MLB. I’m too busy to add more recent one.

Agree 100% percent.

in that for a competitive team, you almost always want to trade unproven talent for proven talent. Its a no doubt decision short term, but there are long-term ramifications that can’t be ignored.

The Brewers are a great example of this, and I think its still too early to call exactly how the Brewers will feel about the CC deal. He gave them almost as much of a short term boost as possible, but it was still short term, and they’re now in a position where they’re missing their two best SP from 2008. CC was a high risk move at the time for a number of reasons: he was a rental, the Brewers are in a smallish market, and they have many of their better players reaching FA in the near future. What happens if they don’t get Sheets, Fielder wins a record setting arbitration case, and they lose 90 games this year (all just hypothetically)? They’ll be in a pretty tough spot. If they still had LaPorta, they could stomach trading Fielder off and still have a very good chance to make up for at least some of his offense by promoting LaPorta, plus they would clear a good chunk of payroll to replenish their pitching staff in addition to whatever talent they get in return for Fielder.

However, as it is now, trading Fielder is much more lateral move. Sure, they’d still clear some payroll and acquire some talent, but they would lose Fielder’s bat without having much resembling a cheap replacement, so they’d just be sacrificing offense for payroll space. Unless you deal with a major market team, you won’t get a polished power bat back for Fielder, since a smaller market team would probably rather just stick with their guy. The Yankees don’t need help at 1B, the Mets and Cubs don’t have any true advanced power hitters in their system (Though Vitters or F-Mart might qualify a year from now), and I doubt the Red Sox would be willing to give up a Lars Anderson type guy for Prince when they’re relatively well set at the corner infield spots to begin with. So maybe the Brewers could still trade Fielder for pitching and then sign a more expensive FA power bat, right? Well, the market for 1B FA next offseason is bone dry, headed by the aging Carlos Delgado and enigmatic Adam LaRoche. If they’re okay moving Braun to 1B, they could go after Matt Holiday or Jason Bay, but if/when either of those guys reach FA, I can almost guarantee that someone will be willing to top the best offer the Brewers can make, since the market for sluggers will be so thin.

So as it stands now, the Brewers have the potential to be a pretty difficult spot for a small market team. A few bad breaks in 2009 and they might need to consider completely rebuilding, a sacrifice which got them half a dominant year from CC and a trip to the postseason in 2008, but not the WS. IMO, if that occurs, the retrospective will be that it wasn’t worth it, and they should have been a little more patient instead of going for it all in 2008 with a team that even after adding CC, looked on paper to be a bit below championship caliber (mostly due to poor defense and a shaky bullpen).

DISCLAIMER: This is not a prediction on my part, in that I’m not assuming that this is the way things MUST go for the Brewers over the next few years. I’m just pointing out that they have a very organizational bust potential, and how disastrous it would be if said potential was to be realized.

that is absolutely true. But for an organization with less financial flexibility, I think that’s an oversimplification. The Santana deal wasn’t a good one for the Twins, I’ll give you that. But with teams that have to cap their payroll around $50 million, spreading your risk among multiple cheap alternatives as opposed to one fairly expensive one makes sense.

That’s the same reason some prospects are deemed “untouchable”. Its not an organization couldn’t bear to part with so much talent, the key is so much cheap talent. If you can get 5-10 wins out of a player who you only have to play $600,000 to, that is completely irreplaceable in the modern baseball economy. Even if a player’s talent level isn’t even close to that yet, just the potential that they might get there someday means holding onto such a player at nearly all costs makes sense for any organization in any market, large or small.

Albert was never a top prospect. Didn’t spend enough time in the minors to recieve that moniker.