It doesn’t really matter how you think the Rangers got here. Whether you think it’s been team skill or team luck, whether you believe more in the third-best record or 14th-best run differential, today is the first day of August, and only the Cubs have a bigger division lead around the rest of baseball. The way things are set up, the Rangers are almost certainly going to the playoffs. They need to hang tight, sure, but they’ve been free to build for a playoff series. They sit in an enviable position.
The front office has been busy. A few days ago, they brought in Lucas Harrell and Dario Alvarez. Monday, they paid for Carlos Beltran. And most significantly, they’ve now also paid for Jonathan Lucroy and Jeremy Jeffress. This post is about that last move, and obviously, the key is Lucroy, who’s looked like an excellent fit for the Rangers for months. Lucroy will provide something the Rangers didn’t have, and they’ll get to keep him for another year in 2017. Yet don’t sleep on the Jeffress addition. He’s far from being a throw-in, and he’s going to help this team in October.
Some trade-deadline decisions are painstakingly difficult. The line between buyer and seller can be microscopically thin and the undeniable appeal of winning win can easily tempt teams to hold onto talented players when logic dictates that selling is the right call. For the Yankees, the decision was harder than it should have been this season. For the Rangers, it was as clear as day.
The Yankees are a .500 team sitting just five-and-a-half games out of a wild-card position, and yet the decision to sell couldn’t have been more obvious to those of us on the outside without emotional or financial stakes on the line. Selling is not part of the Yankees’ M.O. They expect to win and, more often than not, they deliver on that expectation. But with a roster laden with aging veterans and little-to-no evidence of an emergent winning core, the obvious choice was for the Yankees to improve their future outlook by trading players who had minimal chances of being key contributors to the next winning Yankees team. To general manager Brian Cashman’s credit, they made the right call and returned impressive prospect value for relievers Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller. Today, they cashed in another obvious trade candidate and sent Carlos Beltran to the Texas Rangers.
For the Rangers, six games up in the division despite a roster with blatant holes and an unimpressive run differential of +3, the decision to buy was an easy one. They’re a team that’s benefited from luck, but one that also possesses enough core talent that it’s more than conceivable a few roster upgrades could put this team in position to win in October. As has been discussed ad nauseam this season, the American League is lacking for obvious powerhouse postseason favorites, unlike the Senior Circuit which is starkly stratified by roster talent. Add to the mix the fact that the Rangers have a farm system dripping with top-tier talent and now was as good a time as any for the Rangers to push their chips all in.
A Beltran/Rangers pairing was such a strong and evident match on paper that Dave Cameron correctly predicted the trade last week (in addition to the Jeremy Jeffress acquisition!). When looking to upgrade a roster, the first place to check is a team’s weaknesses and the Rangers this season have far and away received the worst production out of the designated-hitter position in the American League thanks primarily to Prince Fielder’s ineffectiveness. With Fielder out for the season and a hitter of Beltran’s quality available on the trade market, this match was kismet.
While deals for Zach Duke and Mark Melancon might have made it appear as though the price for relief pitching was coming down, the San Francisco Giants, in need of some help at the back end of the bullpen, have just paid a pretty high price to get the left-handed Brewers’ reliever Will Smith.
For the Giants, pursuing a reliever made a lot of sense. They have some useful pieces there, surely: Santiago Casilla has been generally reliable at the the end of the bullpen, Derek Law has pitched well with more exposure, and Hunter Strickland has been solid at time. As a whole, however, the group hasn’t done a lot to add to the Giants’ chances of reaching the postseason this year.
The Giants’ 19.8% strikeout rate is barely ahead of the Colorado Rockies’ (19.7%). By ERA (3.76) and FIP (3.92), the Giants pen sits in the middle of the National League pack. By WAR, however, the team places ahead only of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the abomination the Cincinnati Reds have put together. By Win Probability Added (WPA) among NL relievers, Casilla (0.63, 37th), Strickland (0.53, 39th) and Law (0.52, 40) — who, again, represent the back-end of San Francisco’s bullpen — are well behind the game’s better pitchers. The rest of the relief corps is hovering around zero or worse. They’ve landed someone who should be able to bolster the bullpen significantly this year, and perhaps into future seasons.
In 2015, mostly in the capacity of setting up Francisco Rodriguez, Will Smith was one of the best relievers in baseball, . He made 76 appearances, strinking out 35% of the batters he faced — and no NL reliever without a save had a higher WAR than Smith’s 1.4 mark. He moved into 2016 with the closer role his to lose, but lose it he did when he lost his balance while removing a shoe and twisting his right knee during spring training, an injury which required surgery. Smith hasn’t been as lights out this season, striking out 24% of batters against a 10% walk rate in 22 innings. Although his ERA and FIP have not stabilized due to a couple home runs, his strikeout rate in July has crossed the 30% threshold, providing some encouragement that Smith is on his way back.
If you had Hector Santiago for Ricky Nolasco in your trade predictions post, you are either Billy Eppler or Rob Antony, or a crazy person.
So we have two sellers swapping big league starting pitchers at a time when most buyers looking for pitching help can’t find big league starting pitchers to trade for. That’s pretty weird!
On the other hand, I can kind of squint and see this. The Twins get a Twins-like pitcher, a guy who has spent his career beating FIP by inducing a million infield flies, and looks like a perfectly useful mid-rotation starter. The Angels get a guy who controls the strike zone a bit better but has underperformed his FIP forever, making him much worse than his peripherals suggest, and is closer to a replacement level arm. In exchange for downgrading their rotation, the Angels get a lottery ticket pitching prospect in Alex Meyer, who is big and throws hard but can’t command the zone.
The Angels will take on a few million bucks in payroll next year, when Nolasco is due $12 million while Santiago will make less than that in his final arbitration season, but financially, there isn’t a huge difference here. So the Angels just make themselves a bit worse while getting a different innings sponge and admitting that they’re looking long-term.
Why the Twins themselves are the ones acquiring Santiago, I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps they’re going to trade Ervin Santana and wanted to have someone around to eat innings, and thought that Meyer wasn’t too high a price to pay for some credible big league pitching over the next year. If he keeps pitching well, he can probably be flipped for an equally decent prospect this winter or next deadline.
So it’s not like this trade is a disaster or anything. It’s just pretty weird to see a 40-64 team trading for a pitcher with some present value by shipping a prospect to a 47-58 team at the deadline.
Presumably, you’re aware that the Dodgers have been playing well, but, presumably, you’re aware that the Dodgers have been playing well without Clayton Kershaw. In a sense, that’s a good thing — it demonstrates that they’re strong even without their most valuable player. But then, nobody wants to be without Kershaw, and he doesn’t have a timetable to return from his back injury. He might not come back this year at all. The Dodgers have been plowing forward without their ace, and their ace is a big part of the equation.
The rumors were predictable. Big-budget operation, deep farm, rotation hole. The Dodgers got linked to Chris Archer, and the Dodgers got linked to Chris Sale. Observers wanted to see the Dodgers make a splash, because splashes are sexy, and restraint can be boring. In what’s at least their first trade Monday, the Dodgers didn’t make said splash. They didn’t give it up for a No. 1. Except, also, they did, in their own way. The Dodgers have acquired Rich Hill, and Hill has been statistically the best starter in his league.
The Baltimore Orioles’ vision from 2012 is almost fully formed. In 2011, they selected Dylan Bundy with the fourth-overall pick in the draft, and the following year, they did the same with Kevin Gausman. In 2013, Bundy was the No. 2 overall prospect in the game, according to Baseball America. He was Lucas Giolito. Gausman was No. 26 — he was Jose Berrios. Now, three years later, it’s 2016, and the club is in first place. It’s all going to plan. The Orioles are leading the American League East, and it’s all thanks to their dominant starting rotation, led by workhorse aces Bundy and Gausman — among the most dominant one-two punches in the league.
I’m sorry, what’s that? Everything’s true except for the last part? You’re telling me the Orioles are in first place, but their rotation has a 5.00 ERA? They just traded for Wade Miley? Gausman’s never thrown more than 115 innings in a season and has a career-worst 4.45 FIP and Bundy’s only made three major-league starts? Three?
So, maybe the vision from 2012 isn’t fully realized. But the Orioles are winning, and, despite a bit of a circuitous route in getting there, this is the closest that vision’s ever come to being a reality. Because Dylan Bundy is a starter now. Alongside Gausman in the major leagues, and for the first time in their careers, finally. We’ve been waiting for this for years. And, at the risk of delving too deep into sports talk radio host jargon, Bundy feels like he could be a massively important piece for an Orioles club that badly needs a shot in the arm if it wants to make a deep postseason run. I swear I’m not going to use the phrase “X-Factor.”
A bevy of trades went down over the weekend, as this year’s trade deadline-season entered into full swing. Here are the prospects who changed teams the last couple of days, as evaluated by my newly updated KATOH system. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.
Frazier had been promoted to Triple-A a week ago after slashing a strong .276/.356/.469 with 13 steals at Double-A this year. He pairs a high walk rate with decent power and speed, making him one of the most promising offensive prospects in baseball. Despite possessing average speed, Frazier plays mostly the corner-outfield spots these days, and hasn’t graded out particularly well there defensively. This suggests most of his big-league value will come from his hitting. Still, considering he’s a 21-year-old who’s already mastered Double-A, his future looks bright.
The Marlins had to pay a decently high price for Andrew Cashner. Jon Morosi is unironically tweeting about the ongoing Jeremy Hellickson sweepstakes. It’s important to establish the market context in which the Orioles have now traded for Wade Miley. It’s been obvious for months the Orioles could use some help in the rotation. The farm system didn’t make it realistically possible for them to look at higher-level solutions. They’d have to settle for what they could afford. Wade Miley is what they could afford, with the Mariners getting Ariel Miranda in exchange. There’s no money changing hands. This is about as uncomplicated as a move can get, with Miley being tremendously dull and still presumably helpful.
That’s the thing about the Orioles. Even though they’re a first-place team, it’s a team that had issues. Recent results be damned, the Orioles, in theory, can hit. We all know they can relieve. The rotation has been bad behind Chris Tillman — so bad that Wade Miley is an improvement. There aren’t many contending teams that Miley would make meaningfully better, but that’s the Orioles’ burden and blessing.
The package netted by Brian Cashman and the Yankees in exchange for Andrew Miller is headlined by two big names in OF Clint Frazier and LHP Justus Sheffield (both of whom project as average-or-better regulars for me) and supplemented by two potential relievers in RHPs Ben Heller and J.P. Feyereisen.
Clint Frazier was the fifth-overall pick in the 2013 draft out of Loganville High School in Georgia. He was signed away from his commitment to Georgia with a $3.5 million bonus, the most lucrative bonus in Indians draft history. Frazier was a high-effort spark plug with elite bat speed, though he didn’t look like your typical high-upside prep draftee.
Before the draft, most organizations were correctly skeptical about Frazier’s long-term ability to play center field despite some of the run times he was posting (he ran a 6.6-second 60-yard dash at East Coast Pro) because of the way they anticipated his body to fill out. Frazier was listed at 5-foot-11, 185 pounds as an amateur but has grown into a listed 6-foot-1, 190, though he’s probably heavier than that. Despite his likely corner-only destiny, Frazier’s bat speed and advanced feel for hitting made him a worthy top-five selection, even if he had atypical physical projection.
Because of the superhuman circumference of his biceps and his generally muscular physique, Frazier is most often body-comped to Popeye the Sailor Man, a reference I hope doesn’t elude the youngest of our readers. Though he posts some plus run times to first base because of a natural jailbreak, he’s only about an average runner whose middling speed is masked by visible effort and good base-running instincts. Frazier’s speed and feel for center are enough that I think he’d be passable there in an emergency, but I wouldn’t advocate him playing there everyday. I think that, given his size and build just shy of age 22, Frazier is likely to slow down as he enters his prime. His arm strength should allow him to play in either outfield corner (though I think he fits best in left), where I believe he’ll be an average defender at maturity.
Frazier’s 80-grade bat speed has helped him generate a .278/.360/.452 career batting line. He’s hit despite the excessive loop his hands take back to the ball, a mechanical hiccup that I think causes his barrel to arrive late and robs him of the ability to pull the ball consistently. This could dilute his game power a bit, but Frazier is strong enough to muscle some of those balls out to right field anyway, and the new Yankee Stadium will be particularly kind to this flaw. Though his swing features a good bit of effort and Frazier has struggled some with strikeouts throughout his minor-league career, he still projects as an average Major League hitter. Again, the bat speed is the primary reason for this, but Frazier has shown that he has some barrel control and the ability to make adjustments in the middle of at-bats, as well. Reports on his makeup are glowing.
As the going rate for elite relievers continues to make grown men and women blush, it’s increasingly evident that there’s value in not needing to get into the market for the crème de la crème of relievers. Through the hefty prices paid in the acquisitions of Craig Kimbrel, Ken Giles, Aroldis Chapman and, now, Andrew Miller, contending teams are making it clear that they value having that lights out guy at the back of the bullpen perhaps even more than we may have once thought. Fortunately for the St. Louis Cardinals, when they lost their closer, Trevor Rosenthal, first to under-performance and then (perhaps not coincidentally) to a rotator cuff injury, they had an internal alternative which kept them from needing to wade into the deep end of the relief pitching market.
Seung Hwan Oh has been absolutely dominant for the Cardinals this season first as a set-up man and, for the last month, as a closer. The 34-year-old right-hander who had been tremendously successful in both South Korea and Japan has posted a 1.69 ERA and a 26.4 K-BB% since being signed by St. Louis this past winter. His 1.94 FIP ranks tenth among relievers in baseball this season. With the loss of Rosenthal, the Cardinals could have pursued the top names on the relief market this month, but Oh gave them the freedom not to. Instead, they made a relatively quiet transaction this morning picking up left-handed reliever Zach Duke from the Chicago White Sox in exchange for 23-year-old outfield prospect Charlie Tilson — a deal which was announced in true old-school fashion by the teamsthemselves.
In 2014, Zach Duke posted a surprisingly strong season out of the bullpen for the Brewers. He was 31 at the time and it was his first full season in a major league bullpen after scuffling along as an under-performing starter for most of his 20s. That one great season led to the White Sox giving him a 3-yr/$15M which was heavily mocked at the time due to his age and lack of a successful track record. It would appear, however, that the White Sox were either on to something or extraordinarily lucky as Duke has continued to be a solid reliever since signing the contract.
Since the start of the 2014 season, he has thrown 157 innings to very impressive results: 2.87 ERA, 27.9 K%, 58.2 GB%. He walks more batters than you might like — 10.0% walk-rate — but it’s hard to complain when the overall results are as strong as his. The key to his success has been a curveball which misses bats — the whiff-rate on his curve this season is 43.9% which ranks 12th of 41 MLB relievers (min. 100 curves) — and a sinker which induces grounders on 67% of balls in play. This has resulted in him posting an impressive combination of strikeouts and grounders over the past three seasons.
