Cole Palmer = Aubameyang + Kovacic. Baseball's Player Movement, Pt 2
It's a TRADE, not a transfer, silly.
This is part two of a two-parter about how players move teams. Last time, we talked about how free agency works and the contracts that give teams long-term control over their homegrown talent. This time, let’s take baseball’s trade system and retro fit it to the Premier League in the summer of 2023. You know, for fun.
Coming up, Manchester City swap Cole Palmer for Mateo Kovacic and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. But first, let’s explain how trades often but not always work in MLB. And before that, let’s make sure everyone is subscribed to this informative, amusing and free content.
In baseball, teams trade away some or all of their most valuable players under certain, non-exclusive conditions.
a) The player’s contract is in its final season(s) and an extension is unlikely, given the gap between the player’s market value and the budget of his current team or its current level of competitiveness
b) The team is not competitive and intends to rebuild its squad. It exchanges high-value assets for typically younger players with high potential and many years of team-control before they reach the open market
c) A team has an abundance of talent in a particular position and trades from that strength to acquire a player or players who can fill a need in a different position
Scenario (b) is the driving force behind much of the activity around baseball’s trade deadline, a midseason barrier after which you play the rest of the season with the team you have (bar a couple of weird exceptions that would only muddy the waters here). For the 2025 season, starting in late March, the trade deadline is likely to be July 31.
Typically, when that date approaches, teams out of contention for a run at the playoffs will jettison valuable players in the last year of their contract, or even those with 18 months, or sometimes more, remaining.
In a typical deadline trade, contending teams looking to strengthen their team and win in the current season add these proven MLB players in exchange for one or more ‘prospects’ – younger players from their ‘farm system’ of minor league teams with years of control and lots of potential.
The negotiations between these clubs to find a value equation with half-a-season of a current superstar on one side and, say two players aged between 19 and 22, each with over five years of team control, on the other, can be fascinating.
Baseball’s most famous trade in recent years was ‘The Mookie Trade’ which has hung around the neck of the Boston Red Sox and their famously data-first Brains Trust since it was executed (the trade, not the Brains Trust, although Sox fans may have tried) in 2020.
THE MOOKIE TRADE, FEBRUARY 2020
BOSTON-TO-LA
Mookie Betts was 27 and about to enter the final year of his contract. He had won the American League MVP Award and the World Series with the Red Sox in 2018. He was (and remains) both an elite hitter and a magician of a defender in multiple positions. He was one of the best players in baseball and was going to earn $27m in his swansong season, before a free agency in which the best teams in the league would be throwing nine-figure contracts at his feet (it was reported at the time that Betts was seeking a 12-year, $420m contract to forego free agency and commit to the Red Sox).
David Price had been another key element in the Red Sox’ run. The pitcher was 35 and he was on a contract – signed in the midst of the team’s successes – that paid him $32m in each of the next three seasons.
After winning two World Series during a glorious 2010s, the Red Sox seemed to be heading for a period of transition, yet their wage bill was still in the very top bracket in the sport. In baseball, once a team’s total salary passes a certain level, they have to pay a ‘luxury tax’ on every additional dollar they pay. The big teams can usually swallow that if they believe they can win, but that wasn’t the Red Sox in the winter of 2020.
They wanted to offload the salary attached to Betts and Price and they desperately needed young talent to replenish their depleted ‘farm system’ – the minor league teams that feed the Major League team by developing players.
LA-TO-BOSTON
Alex Verdugo was a 23-year-old outfielder who had already had significant game time with the Dodgers and still had four years before reaching free agency.
Connor Wong, 23, and Jeter Downs, then 21, had both reached only as far as AA level – the second tier of minor league baseball – and Boston were betting on their raw potential turning into Major League ability.
Given the level of Betts’ talent, the return going to Boston looked light from the start. Especially as Price’s contract would now be divided between the two teams (for the next three seasons, Boston would pay Price $16m to play for the Dodgers).
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
LA finished the COVID-curtailed 2020 season as World Series champions, with both Price and Betts key figures. Betts was extended that July for $365m over 12 years, foregoing free agency at the end of that season. And he has been majestic ever since – including the 2024 season, which ended with another World Series for the Dodgers.
Boston eventually fired Chaim Bloom, the general manager who authored the trade. Not one of the three players who left LA for Boston proved a balm for the loss of their superstar. Downs was released in 2022 and currently plays in Japan; Verdugo was traded to the New York Yankees in 2023 and is a free agent at the time of writing; Wong broke through in 2024, when he was the everyday catcher for the Red Sox, without setting the heather on fire.
What does this have to do with Cole Palmer?
So how would this kind of player trading translate to football?
Well, let’s look at Chelsea’s radical change of direction in the summer of 2023, when they sold or released a lot of high-earning and/or veteran players (including N’Golo Kante and Cesar Azpilicueta, as well as Christian Pulisic and Kai Havertz) and replenished their squad with young players on long-term contracts. And let’s look at the Cole Palmer transfer in particular.
Blocked by a queue of attacking talent, including Phil Foden, Palmer left Manchester City, where he had been an academy star, for an initial fee of £40m. In the same window, City acquired Mateo Kovacic from Chelsea, for £20m. Kovacic had captained Chelsea at times in the previous season and was a multiple Champions League winner with one year left on his contract.
If we combine these transactions, we have the core of a classic MLB trade: a plug-and-play star (Kovacic) with one year on his contract on one side; a high-ceiling prospect with years of team control (Cole) on the other.
Football’s cash-is-king market valued Palmer above Kovacic, and under the MLB system, Cole would have had at least four more years of team control and would tip the scales when set against one year of Kovacic (as good a player as he is). Enter Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who was, in the summer of 2023, halfway through a two-year contract with Chelsea that neither party was that keen on seeing through.
So, if City were happy to absorb the gargantuan wages of the two veterans, they would receive Aubameyang and Kovacic for the 2023-24 season, and Chelsea would get Cole for the next four years. If the differences in wages was a stumbling block for a trade that otherwise would suit both parties, Chelsea could agree to cover some of the wages for one or both of the veterans.
Now, I know. As things turned out, four years of Cole Palmer proved to be one of the more valuable commodities in football and tipped the scales in Chelsea’s favour however you cut the deal.
But I think it’s a good way to get your head around how the trade market works. It’s a bit of a wonky corner of the sport, but if you stick around, it’ll become a big part of the storyline of the 2025 season.
Thanks for reading. I hope you stick around. Why not point a pal in the direction of this blog and make a solemn oath to pick a team and follow the 2025 MLB season with me?