What Makes a Trade Good or Bad?

My friend Joel and I have been going back and forth a lot on whether or not the Silva for Bradley trade was any good. Basically, this is how the debate has gone down:

J: Bradley was a dick and he needed to get traded away.

SG: Yeah but the Cubs traded from a position of weakness because they HAD to trade him and everyone knew it, so all they could get in return was a chubby guy who can't break 90mph.

J: Easy there man, isn't it time you got back to managing jimhendryapologist.org?

SG: You're stupid.

You get the idea. But the more back and forth we had, the more I realized that I was indeed defending a lot of Jim Hendry's moves. Maybe it's because I followed the progress of the Cubs minor league system from when Hendry took over and slowly made the Cubs system the envy of baseball (this was a while ago).

So it's possible I have a soft spot in my heart for Jim Hendry.

But it's also possible I'm right. You see, if there's one thing I detest is Monday morning quarterbacking. Just because a trade doesn't work out after the fact, it doesn't mean it was a bad trade at the time. And the inverse also holds true.

Let's take the Silva trade because we can't really "look back" on it yet. It's too soon. But this is when Hendry had to make the trade—he can't look back to see if it's a good idea or not. And right now, this is a bad trade. Look at Silva's numbers and look at Bradley's numbers. Sure, Bradley is a jackass and Silva isn't, but Silva's career looks like it should never have gotten started and Bradley at least looks like he has some gas left in the tank. And then there's the whole thing about dealing from a position of weakness.

There is one phrase you'll hear over and over when it comes to trade talk:

You can't really judge this trade for a few years until all the parts of it can be evaluated

Bullshit. You can evaluate a trade right then and there but you have to stick your neck out and face the possibility that you are wrong. That's what Hendry and every other GM has to do, so why don't we hold ourselves to the same standard?

I know we don't have to, but we should.

Anyway, this was a bad trade. Silva's performance might make it a bad trade that turned out well for the Cubs, but right now I give this trade an F.