It’s the question you ALWAYS must ask whenever a team trades away a guy who was perceived externally to be a top young talent: why?
If Michael Busch is going to hit in the big leagues, and if he’s going to be a cost-controlled player through all of his prime years, why in the world would the Los Angeles Dodgers – one of the smartest organizations in baseball – trade him away in a deal for a couple super young, albeit high-upside, low-level prospects? Why wouldn’t the Dodgers simply have figured out a way to keep him and, you know, use that future awesomeness in their own lineup, especially given the fact that he’s already 26 and has raked at Triple-A?
To put an even finer point on it: is the fact that the Dodgers were willing to trade Busch proof that he’s not actually as good as outsiders think?
And the answer is … maybe! But probably not!
See, the problem is the question. The very NATURE of the question presumes that the Dodgers know more about Busch’s likelihood of success in the big leagues than anyone else in the world, and if that is true, then almost any trade for him using real value is a bad idea. But that can’t be right. For one thing, the Cubs, though they may not be the Dodgers, are not idiots.
For another thing, though, and a big one: believing Busch is going to stink in the big leagues is ABSOLUTELY NOT the only reason the Dodgers would trade him right now. Indeed, when you drill down on it, the reasons to trade Busch right now for whatever decent return the Dodgers could get make so much sense, EVEN IF they think he can become a solid big league bat.
First, let’s start with Michael Busch’s story as a prospect, and how it came to be that he’s a 26-year-old who still hasn’t gotten a starting shot in the big leagues. Usually that’s a bad sign, right?
Busch was drafted in 2019 out of UNC when he was 21, set to turn 22 in November of that year. He did the normal post-draft thing for college bats, getting in a handful of games in rookie ball and A-ball. But then the pandemic hit, and Busch didn’t get a season in 2020, like so many prospects. It was particularly rough for those 2019 drafted players.
When baseball resumed and he got back on the field, it was the 2021 season, he had turned 23, and he went straight to Double-A. Consider that part for a moment: Busch had played a total of 5 games in A-ball before he skipped High-A and went to Double-A, all while missing a year of competitive action because of the pandemic. That’s actually an impressive thing, rather than being a knock against him as a 23-year-old at Double-A (where he hit well). When you start going year by year through Busch’s draft and development, it becomes very quickly easy to see how he wound up only just making his big league debut at age-25, and why he’s still a notable “prospect” at age-26. The guy still has limited pro experience, through no fault of his own.
Anyway, the Dodgers briefly sent Busch back to Double-A to open the 2022 season, and he destroyed it. The Dodgers, because of their positional crowding ahead of him, were probably trying to be very deliberate with Busch’s promotion schedule, but when a guy goes .306/.445/.667/176 wRC+ at Double-A, you have to give him the new challenge.
So then Busch reached Triple-A in mid-May of 2022, at age 24. From there, it was a pretty normal exposure-and-adjustment situation, with a couple months of below-league-average performance followed by a couple months of solidly above-average performance. Considering that this was just Busch’s second full pro season(!), I’d say this is all pretty normal prospect tracking, if not better. All the while, Busch’s prospect stock was rocketing up, because his skills at the plate were becoming more and more clear, combined with tremendous power. The glove was still a question – first base was probably his most realistic spot, if not full-time DH, but the Dodgers would also give him looks at second base, third base, and left field just to see what he might be able to do if a spot opened up on their big league roster. By the end of 2022, heading into his age-25 season, it seemed likely that Busch was going to hit in the big leagues if there was a spot for him.
That’s when the Dodgers had a decision to make. They could plan that Busch would be their Opening Day DH (all other plausible positions for him were occupied by established stars), or they could sign a short-term DH, and delay Busch’s debut to ensure an extra year of team control, just in case. Given that Busch only had about two months’ worth of strong success at Triple-A, they decided to go that second route by signing JD Martinez, and waiting until late April to bring Busch up the first time (convenient!).
That worked out very well for the Dodgers, as Martinez raked at DH. And with Freddie Freeman at first base, Max Muncy at third base, and questions about whether Busch could actually handle left field (he barely played there in the minors), Busch came up only for brief periods when needed at third and first and DH. He got 18 starts and 9 appearances by way of pinch-hitting appearances spread across three different short call-ups, and although he didn’t hit well in those 81 PAs, it’s pretty hard to draw any conclusions from that kind of exposure. Meanwhile, during the 98 games he played at Triple-A, all he did was lead the PCL in OPS, hitting .323/.431/.618/150 wRC+, with a 13.9% BB, 18.8% K, and .295 ISO – absolute dream peripherals.
Then the offseason arrived. Busch, who’d made his way up to the top three or so prospects in the Dodgers’ system and top-50-ish status in all of baseball, was still a very valuable prospect for the Dodgers. But looking ahead to 2024, surely they could see there was once again just no possible starting spot for him on the big league roster. And having just turned 26, it’s certainly not like Busch needed more time to prove himself at Triple-A. It was time to make a decision. Moreover, he is taking up a 40-man roster spot on an increasingly crowded 40-man roster.
So, if the Dodgers had kept Busch into this season, it’s entirely possible he either would’ve been back at Triple-A (where his value can only go down, even if he hits well, because he’s already proved he can and he’s only getting older), or he would’ve been on the big league bench (where his value could definitely go down because it’s hard to succeed like that, and also you’d be squandering some of the active value you could have captured in trade).
Add it all up, and you get the picture of why the Dodgers would trade Michael Busch right at this moment *even if they believed* he could put up a 120 wRC+ (or whatever) in the big leagues this season if he were given everyday starts. They didn’t have those starts to give. Instead, what they had was a really valuable car they couldn’t drive – and also, it was taking up space in the driveway (the 40-man roster). That car was going to depreciate in value this year almost no matter what, so why not pull the trigger on the best trade you could get at this moment?
So there you go. That’s the answer. Why did the Dodgers give up Michael Busch? Well, they didn’t really give him up. They just decided, rationally, that it was time to capture and convert his value. Meanwhile, the Cubs, with some open spots on the big league roster, were in a position to accept it.
Maybe he won’t ultimately hit in the big leagues. Maybe the Dodgers, in addition to everything above, did have some concerns about the adjustment. But I don’t think that the mere fact of the trade proves that they have massive concerns, because there were plenty of reasons for them to make this move regardless.