Beyond the BoxScore Investigates: Aren’t You Glad You Traded for Brad Lincoln… I Mean That Reliever

For years everyone in Pittsburgh didn’t have much faith in Brad Lincoln.  Rightfully so.  But believe me when we say this, we are happy as hell he got his stuff together. A few months ago, the thought of being able to flip Lincoln for Travis Snider would have been hilarious.

Oh, how times have changed. Especially after watching Lincoln in his new Blue Jays jersey flash his #HOLYSHITBRADLINCOLNBREAKINGBALL last night during MLB Network bonus baseball. We got worried. So we started looking for help.

Luckily it didn’t take long to find it.  Beyond the Boxscore is always great at doing investigation into things we always think are true, but ironically seldom are.  We love it.

For the past few years, we have drilled Lincoln on this website.  Too straight, too straight, too straight.  He won’t rely on his changeup.  Does he even have a changeup?  It got ridiculous.  Now he’s gone and we loved the move.  But maybe, just maybe when this shakes out, we were wrong.

Ahhh, I seriously doubt it.

So go ahead, please dig into this article, it’s interesting as hell and probably skewed thanks to some deals your Pittsburgh Pirates have made over the years.  The article is all about trading relievers for position players.

Here is the skinny in case you are short on time.  Eleven winners for the team grabbing the relievers.  Seven winners for teams that grabbed the position players.

"I’ve got eight trades in this article, plus three from the previous one, where the team getting the reliever came out decidedly ahead (Lopez, Wood, Perez, Hawkins, Accardo, Wickman, Worrell, Seanez, Rodriguez, DeJean and Rincon). Then I’ve got seven where the team getting the position player came out ahead (Uehara, Dotel, Capps, Rauch, Gagne, Wheeler and Hernandez) , with the rest being too close to call or a wash (Ziegler, Phillips, Vargas, Sherrill, Meredith, Farnsworth, Proctor, Jones and Adams)."