Manager “trades” aren’t really trades as we know of them in baseball. They’re just business transactions in which one team allows a manager out of his contract and, normally, is compensated in the form of players. Looks like a trade. Fun to talk about as a trade. But it’s not technically a trade, simply because managers’ contracts aren’t part of some collective bargaining structure that allows them to be traded from team to team.
But we can still, for the fun of it, call this Ozzie-Guillen-to-the-Marlins thing a trade, and if we do that we can talk about what the White Sox are getting in return. And that return, according to Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com, is Osvaldo Martinez and a minor league pitcher.
Martinez, a shortstop, played in the 2010 Futures Game, but he’s not the toppermost of the poppermost in terms of prospects. He hit .300 at double-A last year, but he generally fits the slick-fielding, no-bat mold of shortstops. Which has value now that it’s not 1999 anymore, but he’s not some game-changer. Certainly not as valuable as someone like Logan Morrison, who at one time was rumored to be the return for Guillen. Not sure if I believe that was ever serious, though. More fun than plausible.
At this point, of course, I think Chicago would have taken just about anything. Guillen was pretty nifty for a long time, but that relationship is obviously so damaged that it wouldn’t take a ton of compensation for Kenny Williams to allow him to skate.
