Let’s make a deal

Sean Doolittle was traded to Nationals in 2017

“Hi, Billy”
“Hi, Mike”
“I want xxx.”
I guess that’s how the talk begins when Mike Rizzo calls Billy Beane, or maybe text. Washington Nationals won the 2019 World Series Champions. General Manager & President of Baseball Operations Mike Rizzo definitely deserves credit for building a winning team. There are many ways to build a winning team and get great players. You can sign top free agents, for example, Max Scherzer. You can identify young talents and develop them in the farm system, we all see Ryan Zimmerman, Stephen Strasburg and Juan Soto. You can acquire good players from other teams, thus by trade, Sean Doolittle was traded to the Nationals from Oakland Athletics, and Daniel Hudson was sent from Toronto Blue Jays.

Trades between MLB teams are always interesting to discuss. Fans love to talk about some successful trades that changed the team history or some trades make them extremely sad. I reviewed the franchise trade history of the Washington Nationals on baseball-reference. Here’s what I found.

Mike Rizzo was promoted to be Nationals’ general manager on an interim basis in March, 2009 and named the full-time GM in August. When I looked at those trades, it’s quite obvious that Billy Beane must be a good trade partner, right? They made 12 trades. Particularly, in 2013, they made 5 trades. Why do they make trades with each other frequently? Here are some possibilities.

1. Different league and different division
It’s easy to understand this. General managers don't want the players to help the rivals in the short-term or long-term. In the same division, you are going to play each other 19 games per season. It’s not a bad idea to send a player to the other league, to the other side of the country. Not every trade will work out as expected. This somehow can minimize the chances that fans will regularly remember the trades that did not work out. We can see below, Rizzo made more than 20 trades with AL West teams.

American League
East		Central		West
Orioles	0	White Sox	4	Astros	0
Red Sox	2	Indians	2	Angels	3
Yankees	4	Tigers	2	Athletics	12
Rays	5	Royals	4	Mariners	5
Blue Jays	2	Twins	5	Rangers	2

National League
East		Central		West
Braves	1	Cubs	6	D-backs	1
Marlins	3	Reds	2	Rockies	1
Mets	3	Brewers	3	Dodgers	5
Phillies	5	Pirates	7	Padres	4
Nationals	X	Cardinals	1	Giants	1

2. Different ways to build a team
Mike Rizzo is old school and Billy Beane is known as a pioneer of using analytics to build a team. From 2012, the Nationals have become a winning-team, above .500 for 8 straight years. However, the Athletics franchise has 6 winning seasons from 2009 to 2019. Billy Beane and his Oakland Athletics used analysis to identify undervalued players and win. Mike Rizzo really wanted to win now. The difference creates some rooms for each other. For example, in 2017, the Nationals got Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson from the Athletics and sent Blake Treinen and two prospects Jesus Luzardo and Sheldon Neuse. Mike Rizzo improved the bullpen and Billy Beane enhanced the farm system.

3. Trust
A good trade is mutually beneficial. “I noticed that many general managers gloated when they made a trade that was good for their team, but bad for other team. Well, that is a win-lose situation that might be good in the short term, but it will come back haunt you in the long term. You can only do that once, maybe twice, before word starts to spread around the league. The other teams will be hesitant to deal with you because they aren’t sure you’re not to try to screw them.” Cal Ripken Jr. indicated in his book “Get in the Game”. Mike Rizzo and Billy Beane’s first trade was dated back in 2010. They are good trade partners because they know each other and they can build a win-win trade.