http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/story?id=7853665&_slug_=for-los-angeles-angels-vernon-wells-mike-napoli-trade-worst-baseball-history-mlb&action=login&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fmlb%2fstory%3fid%3d7853665%26_slug_%3dfor-los-angeles-angels-vernon-wells-mike-napoli-trade-worst-baseball-history-mlb

I don't have insider, but if someone does I would like to know what conclusion he comes to. Either way: LOL!

Here is the whole Article

Fifteen months ago, the Los Angeles Angels acquired outfielder Vernon Wells from the Toronto Blue Jays in return for catcher Mike Napoli and outfielder Juan Rivera. The trade was widely panned among baseball analysts at the time, with even the general tenor among Angels fans leaning negative. Sometimes, with the benefit of time and additional perspective, trades that seem terrible at first glance start to look a little more understandable. This was not one of those trades.
In another Insider story after the trade, I used the ZiPS projection system to project how each team would fare. The numbers that ZiPS had projected for Wells during the rest of his contract -- 3.8 wins above replacement, worth about $18 million -- are looking pretty darn optimistic given his minus-0.3 WAR last season and only a marginal improvement in the first few weeks of this season.
By the same token, the projection for Napoli actually turned out to miss low, as Napoli put up the better 2011 season, hitting .320/.414/.631 (AVG/OBP/SLG) and producing 5.5 WAR (per Baseball Reference). The trade looks even worse for the Angels in that after they traded Napoli to the Blue Jays, Toronto flipped him to the Angels' archrival, the Rangers, and he has torched his old teammates to the tune of a .356/.433/.763 line in 16 games and was only a Rangers meltdown from being the World Series MVP.The fact that Napoli ended up in Texas is just salt in the wound, but what we're interested in here is how this trade impacted the Angels specifically. To put the results of the trade into more concrete terms, I calculated each player's surplus value at the time of the trade. What is the surplus value here? A player's wins above replacement minus the number of wins that player's salary typically would purchase on the FA market. For example, a four-WAR, All-Star player typically would cost roughly $18-20 million on the market today. By that estimate, this deal for the Angels was among the worst in baseball history.Adding what Wells already has done with the Angels together with the ZiPS-projected figures for the rest of his contract, Wells is expected to total 1.4 WAR during his time with the Angels. The $81 million the Angels will pay him through 2014 -- the Jays threw in $5 million, the equivalent of leaving the waiter a $1 tip after you skip out on your $20 lunch bill -- should buy 17-18 wins on the free-agent market from 2011 to 2014. That would leave the Angels 16 wins in the red if no other players changed hands.At 5.5 WAR last year and a projected total of 4.5 for 2012, the Angels are likely to have given up 10 wins in Napoli. The Rangers will pay Napoli $15.2 million for those 10 wins, a sizable discount from what that would cost on the open market, putting Napoli's projected surplus value after the trade at just less than 7 wins. The Rangers might re-sign Napoli past this season, but because of that whole free-agency thing, the Angels didn't really "own" any of Napoli's performance after this season.
The Angels do get a couple of wins in value back from dumping Juan Rivera, who was below replacement level and earned more than $5 million.Add everything up, and the Angels lost 21 wins of net value in the Wells-Napoli trade. The bigger question now is, how does that rank historically?To answer this question, I repeated the process, looking at wins versus salary for every major trade going back to the beginning of the free-agency era. Before players had won the right to free agency, teams pretty much owned players' entire careers until they decided they didn't want to, so nobody can pull off a swindle on the level of the Babe Ruth, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Tris Speaker or Lou Brock trades.By this methodology, the Napoli trade ranks as the 12th-worst going back to the 1970s. So, just what does a team have to do to make a worse trade than the one the Angels made? Let's take a look.

I would recommend not posting the whole article and just snippets. It's only $5 a month to be an insider, so pony up the bucks if you don't have it. That's going to the dollar menu for lunch one day...lol

Sorry but the Texiera trade is truly the hideous trade of hideous trades. Funny thing is we've benefited from both of them hugely.

Though I will admit the hamstringing of the Angels with Wells' contract is huge.

While the trade might have cost the Angels the equivalent of 21 wins (and that's assuming a few things, like the idea that Napoli would have performed as well in LA as he did here last year, which is not certain), the trade wasn't quite as good for the Rangers as it was bad for the Angels. The Rangers only gave up Frank Francisco, who probably is more valuable than Wells - if not strictly more valuable, at least more per $ spent. Nevertheless, it was a pretty lopsided trade.

The Tex trade, on the other hand, was probably more lopsided. Some people might see the players involved and not fully understand the extent of the trade. Ignoring Salty and Mahay, which were close to a wash for each other, they traded Andrus, Harrison, Feliz, and Jones (who never made his way up here) for 1.3 years of Tex. I don't know if there's a computer in the world that can calculate the lopsidedness of this trade, especially because those 3 (not including Jones) have already become great players and still have a few years of control left apiece.

Besides, it would have been worth it to get rid of Tex even if it weren't nearly so lopsided. He obviously didn't want to be here and was probably bordering on a clubhouse cancer if he wasn't already.

I'm sorry, this post was about Napoli and Wells. Yeah, that trade sucked for the Angels, and it turned into a pretty good one for us.

You don't have to pay even $5 a month for Insider as it comes free with an ESPN Magazine subscription. Those are usually available at various places on the web for $10-$20 a year and there are sometimes one-day discounts on the web as low as $1 a year.

@Andy.

There are a couple of things that make the Teixera trade easier for the Braves. First, they traded prospects, and they are much more of an unknown than a player with Napoli's track record. Really, Salty was hands down the most highly touted prospect at the time. I don't think anyone expected the surplus value we got from the other guys in the trade. Second, and more importantly imo, they made that trade knowing that they may not be able to resign Tex. Like with our Cliff Lee trade. We knew that Lee may likely walk at the end of the season, yet we still traded a top 1B prospect and a pitcher with mid-back of the rotation potential. It happens.

Meh. I would have put a lot more stock in this article if it were written a year ago. If Napoli turns into a flop and Wells wins the MVP this year, Szymborski will be singing a different tune.

Hindsight is usually right around 20/20.

Does being an insider make you baseball wizard?

Speaking of trade pieces, Chris Davis hit a two run homer off of guess who... Darren Oliver in the O's 5 - 2 route of the Jays. O'Day also pitched two scoreless innings striking out 3.

you would think Darren would have just thrown him something offspeed after watching him up close the past few yrs