CC wouldn't have gotten Tribe into the playoffs

Loyal Of Fair Hooker reader Jeff Brown weighs in with a theory that Mark Shapiro might have jumped the gun on trading CC Sabathia:

The Indians' cataclysmic season now shows them just 6 games out of first place. After being eliminated ages ago, they have been showing how good of a team they could have been (should have been?) all along.

Think for a moment, Steve -- they traded away C.C. Sabathia very early in the trading period, and if they had kept him, would he have been worth an additional 6 wins? 5? 4? Given the way he pitched in July and August, I surely think so. One has to second-guess GM Shapiro's decision to trade all of their players away, given that they could have made the playoffs in spite of their early-season struggles. Do you agree?

Well, let's take an objective look at that question. It's true that, had the Tribe held on to CC, and had he pitched as well for them as he has for the Brewers, they would likely have won at least a few more games. But it's hard for any player, no matter how well he plays, to make a six-game difference for his team.

Yes, CC has gone 10-2 (pending today's game) for the Beermakers, but before we go any further with those numbers, we must remember that he has done that in the National League, and these days, the senior circuit is clearly the junior varsity. The American League went 149-102 against the NL this year, a .594 winning percentage. That would work out to a 96-66 record over a 162-game season. Translate Carsten's 10-2 into AL numbers, and it's more like 8-4. (10-2 is a winning percentage of .833. If you multiply that by the baseline .500, divide by .594 and multiply again by 12, you come out with 8.4 wins.) CC would likely have taken most of the starts made by Zach Jackson and Anthony Reyes, who have combined for a 4-4 record. So that wouldn't have made a six-game difference. At most, that's a four-game difference, but 8-4 isn't really four games better than 4-4. If an 8-4 team were in the same division as a 4-4 team, they'd be considered two games ahead. And yes, pitcher wins and losses are overrated, but if you look at the underlying numbers, I think that's a reasonable approximation.

Naturally, it's worth mentioning that CC was not the only player the Indians traded. Paul Byrd has gone 5-2 for Boston since being traded for a few steak dinners, and Casey Blake is hitting .254 with 10 home runs since being traded to the Dodgers. It's hard to say whose starts Byrd would have taken, but we know whose at-bats Blake would have taken. Andy Marte has improved since the trade, hitting .250 in August and .297 in September, but with no power; and he's a .221 hitter for the season.

Byrd, I suppose, would have made some of the starts that were actually made by Scott Lewis (who won ALL FOUR of his starts) and Matt Ginter (1-3). So they combined for 5-3, compared to Byrd's 5-2. That's pretty much a wash. Blake probably would have made about one game's difference (keeping in mind his NL stats are NL stats), and CC would have made probably about two games' difference. Add all those numbers up, and we'd be looking at maybe an 84-77 team going into the last day of the season. We'd still be shut out of the playoffs.