The BP First Take: Tuesday, January 31 by Daniel Rathman

What a difference a year makes? Last offseason, the Brewers traded top prospect Brett Lawrie to the Blue Jays for Shaun Marcum. This offseason, the Jays had the opportunity to flip Lawrie to the Mariners for Michael Pineda—and, according to Jeff Blair of The Globe and Mail, they turned it down. Pineda was later traded to the Yankees in a four-player deal also involving Jesus Montero, Hector Noesi, and Jose Campos. But the more interesting fallout here appears to be the change in Lawrie’s value. Marcum is a nice pitcher, to be sure—he was worth 2.9 WARP last season—but he does not have Pineda’s upside, and while Marcum came with just two years of control remaining at the time of the trade, Pineda still has five. The Brewers’ decision to trade Lawrie was driven partly by a feeling within the organization that a “bad attitude” would prevent him from reaching his sky-high potential. Lawrie silenced many of those critics by hitting .293...