41.13 My Trade History in Review: Yi-ke Hsaio

[crobillard]

What you can expect from this series, dear reader, is that I wont be assigning a winner and loser on these trades. The more pertinent question is more introspective, whether I should have done them with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge of how the players are doing now.

The next trade that I made since coming back to the BBA was with the Phoenix Talons. I don't think a lot of people thought this was a good deal at the time. This trade saw Maxime Manceau leave Edmonton in exchange for rookie Yi-ke Hsaio and SP Marcos Morales. This deal is a lot easier to break down than my previous one with Brooklyn, but it is the second deal that I made exchanging pitching for hitting. This trade was made right after the Brooklyn trade, almost immediately after the 2037 season concluded. I had a lot of concern about my middle infield. I had Dong-soo Chon and George Bluth that season. Defense was pretty good, but Chon had a .656 OPS in 336 at bats and Bluth had a .677 OPS in 356 at bats. It certainly could be worst, but we just weren't getting the offensive production that I thought we needed. What made it worse was San Fernando clobbering me in the Cartwright series.

Therefore, Manceau needed to go. He just came off a great season in which he went 13-6 with a 3.19 ERA in 163.2 innings with a 1.20 WHIP. Pretty good season. Nowadays it would be crazy to trade him, but it felt alright then. The major part of the return was Yi-ke Hsaio. His first season in Edmonton he had a .280/.330/.462 batting line with 50 doubles, three triples and 17 homeruns in 586 at bats for a 2.4 WAR. Very solid. Since then I've had him play at first base some so they he was a bit more versatile and right before the start of this season he lumped a point in contact and gap. It's likely due to his lack of playing time, but hopefully he'll bump back up. In limited time Hsaio has been fantastic. Splitting time with Jharod Thealer, he appeared in 322 at bats with a .301/.362/.460 batting line 29 doubles, two triples and six homeruns for a 1.9 WAR. This season he's done really well in the extremely small sample size too. Morales hasn't performed well for me. I tried him out in 2039 when he had 57 innings on the mound with a 5.86 FIP. His only value for me came when I traded him to Portland last season.

I don't know how I feel about this trade now. I felt like it was pretty even then. I think I'm still on that same page now since Manceau has lumped a bit and is 30 years old vs. Hsaio's 24 years old. I think I would still make that trade, but with my constant need of pitching and my lack of using Hsaio very much since dealing for Thealer, I wonder if I would be better off right now with Manceau. I'm split on this one, but I'm slightly closer to it being a good trade for me looking back at it. If Hsaio has been shitty all this time it would obviously be a different story. There is some concern about Hsaio's lumps, but I'm hoping he'll bounce back with a bit more playing time.