Feel the deadline fever. First it was Jaime Garcia getting traded again, now it’s Melky Cabrera on the move. Try to contain your excitement.

Sarcasm aside, the Royals needed an OF/DH type, given that Jorge Soler has been a bust and Alex Gordon is hitting like a Hall of Famer, in that his batting line is probably what we’d project Tim Raines for in 2017. Royals outfielders have combined for an 83 wRC+ this year, so any reasonable facsimile of a Major League hitter is an upgrade.

Melky Cabrera isn’t anything special, but he is a reasonable facsimile of a Major League hitter. He’s got a 105 wRC+, thanks to his regularly elite strikeout rate, as he’s basically the embodiment of the recent Royals offense. He’s got enough power to not be a slap hitter and hits his way to a decent on-base percentage, so Cabrera remains a league average bat, or something in that range.

Defensively, Cabrera remains a problem, as he’s run consistently below-average marks for his work in left field. He’s not Matt Kemp or anything, but he is a bit of a liability in the field, so if the Royals use Melky to displace Alex Gordon, they’ll be giving up some defensive value for the offensive upgrade. But given that Gordon has a 58 wRC+, it’s probably not so easy for them to keep him in the line-up everyday at this point, even with his glovework.

Mostly, Cabrera gives the Royals options, as they can run an offense-first line-up on days they don’t expect outfield defense to matter as much, but keep Gordon on the field when guys like Jason Vargas pitch. With a Wild Card game potentially in their future, making sure you can match-up for a winer-take-all game is a pretty good idea.

To land Melky, the Royals gave up the pitching prospect Eric Longenhagen ranked as their sixth best minor leaguer this winter, but A.J. Puckett probably wouldn’t crack the top 20 in a better farm system. Here’s Eric’s write-up:

The command/changeup pitching-prospect archetype is one more commonly found among left-handed pitchers, who use that combination of skills to attack right-handed hitters. A.J. Puckett isn’t a left-handed-pitcher but possesses the command/changeup profile anyway. Puckett’s fastball sits 90-93, will touch 94 and is only average despite his command of it due to a lack of plane and movement. His changeup, 82-85 with big fade, regularly flashes plus and should mature there. His curveball is inconsistent, in part because Puckett doesn’t reliably get over his front side to generate power downward movement, but the pitch should be average with more reps. He’s an above-average athlete.

Because Puckett’s breaking-ball projection is limited, so too is his ceiling. He projects as a quick-moving No. 4 or 5 starter.

Puckett’s spent the year in high-A ball as a 22-year-old putting up pedestrian numbers, which isn’t what you really want out of a guy with limited stuff. Maybe he’ll move to the bullpen and become something interesting, but Puckett doesn’t look like a guy the Royals will miss all that much.

The other prospect in the trade, Andre Davis, was an 8th round pick in 2015, signed for $25,000, and is running a 4.83 ERA in low-A ball as a 23-year-old. There’s a reason we’ve literally never written about him on FanGraphs. That said, he’s a 6’6 lefty who has a nearly 4:1 K/BB ratio and Baseball America’s 2015 draft report profile said he had “premium velocity”, noting he touched 95-98. So there’s some raw material here.

Still, trading two guys whose upside looks like maybe MLB relievers is pretty easy when you’re in the playoff race, and Melky should help the Royals down the stretch and in a potential play-in game. If they can leverage his bat and Gordon’s glove in a job-share situation, they might have a reasonable left field combination going forward.

Three minor-ish trades went down on Friday night. The Mets acquired A.J. Ramos from the Marlins for Merandy Gonzalez and Ricardo Cespedes; the Nationals acquired Howie Kendrick from the Phillies for McKenzie Mills; the Orioles acquired Jeremy Hellickson from the Phillies for Garrett Cleavinger and Hyun Soo Kim.  Below are the projections for the prospects who changed hands. WAR figures account for the player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.

None of the players dealt last night are top prospects, and as a result, their likelihood of outcomes graphs are heavily skewed towards “no MLB”. Kyle Glaser recently found that fewer than one in five prospects traded at the deadline contribute more than one positive WAR season. All three of these pitchers seem like good bets to fall into that bottom four-fifths.

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The New York Yankees had been in the trade market for a starting pitcher — or at least had been rumored to be in it — even before Michael Pineda was felled by an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. While a trade prior to Pineda’s injury was seen as a luxury, it became a necessity once he was out for the season. They fulfilled that necessity this morning, when they acquired Jaime Garcia — whose two trades in a week, with the final one landing him in New York make him a very poor man’s version of Mike Piazza.

Before we get into this trade, can we just acknowledge the bizarro world detail of it? Per Joel Sherman:
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Lars Anderson likes to experience new things, and he’s currently doing so on the other side of the world. One year removed from a season in the Dodgers system, the 29-year-old former top prospect in the Red Sox organization is playing with the Kochi Fighting Dogs, an independent team in Japan’s Shikoku Island League. One of his teammates is Manny Ramirez.

Anderson — featured in this column a few years ago — had gone from shooting star to minor league role player, and riding the pine wasn’t his cup of tea. As he told me recently, “I love playing baseball. I do not love watching it.” He began daydreaming about places that interested him culturally, and also had professional baseball. Japan was at the top of his list.

Conversations with Terrmel Sledge and John Bowker — each of whom had played in both MLB and NPB — followed. The Fighting Dogs made an offer, and come the third week of March, Anderson arrived in Kochi.  

Things have gone well. The Shikoku Island League plays a split season — “there are no official games in June and July due to the rainy season” — and Anderson finished the April-May first half leading the league in home runs. Facing pitchers “with a wide range of ability” he was second in RBIs, and in the Top 10 in batting average. The second half of the Fighting Dogs schedule begins tomorrow.

Along with Anderson, Manny Being Manny will remain with the team. The two have known each other since they were teammates with the Triple-A Iowa Cubs in 2014, and not surprisingly Anderson has an appreciation for the enigmatic one-time superstar. Read the rest of this entry »

Philadelphia made a pair of trades Friday, sending Howie Kendrick to Washington for LHP McKenzie Mills. They also traded RHP Jeremy Hellickson to Baltimore for LHP Garrett Cleavinger and OF Hyun Soo Kim. Philadelphia also received bonus pool money from both clubs.

Baltimore gets
RHP Jeremy Hellickson

Washington gets
2B Howie Kendrick

Philadelphia gets
LHP McKenzie Mills
LHP Garrett Cleavinger
OF Hyun Soo Kim
International Bonus Slots

Mills is a 21-year old, big-bodied lefty with advanced changeup feel. He was an 18th round pick out of Sprayberry HS (GA) in 2014 and then spent each of his first three pro seasons in either rookie or short-season ball. Mills struggled with control. His strikeout and walk rates — 20% and 12%, respectively, in 2016 and 28% and 5% this year — have both drastically improved this year and he’s having more success as the season goes on despite having already doubled his innings total frmo last year.

As far as the stuff in concerned, Mills is a deceptive 88-92 with downhill plane and could have an above average changeup at maturity. His below average curveball has shape but not power. He can locate it, and his other pitches, and projects to have starter’s control/command. He has K’d 118 hitters in 104.2 innings with Low-A Potomac and is a potential backend starter.

Cleavinger, a 2015 3rd rounder out of Oregon, is a pure relief prospect with a low-90s fastball and loopy, twisting curveball. His command is very erratic and, while he has premium loogy funk and repertoire, it needs to develop significantly if Cleavinger’s to have a steady big league role.

The Phillies also acquired $1 million in international bonus money yesterday General Manager Matt Klentak’s post-trade comments indicate that money will be speculatively used to as yet unidentified or available talent on the international market. The Phillies were originally allotted a $4.75 million bonus pool for the international period and spent a significant amount of it on five players, including SS Luis Garcia ($2.5 mil) and four other players who all signed for around $500k each.

This is not just about the Cardinals’ shortstop Paul DeJong. He’s the subject of the sarcastic tweet below, but the point is that this sort of sentiment — surprise at a walk from a player with poor plate discipline — is increasingly more common in today’s game.

PAUL DEJONG WALK

— Gif Weaver (@SimulacruMusial) July 28, 2017

It’s true, he walked! It’s also true he hasn’t walked much this year, and that he strikes out a lot. For the season, he has coupled a 2.6% BB% with a 31.3% K%. Yikes! But, with today’s power environment, this sort of plate discipline is more…allowable. Used to be, if you struck out four times for every walk, you just didn’t have a spot in baseball. That’s not true any more.

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Justin Wilson used to throw more than a modicum of curveballs, but that was when he was a starter. The Detroit Tigers closer largely shelved the pitch a few years ago, as it had been serving primarily as a get-me-over option. He didn’t feel it was beneficial out of the bullpen. As Wilson explained to me in June, “it was kind of loopy — the action just wasn’t there — so it definitely wasn’t a put-away pitch.”

The 29-year-old southpaw came into 2017 wanting to resurrect it — sort of. Mostly, he wanted a lower-octane offering to augment his bread-and-butter. Since becoming a reliever, Wilson has relied almost exclusively on a fastball and a cutter.

“I wanted something to slow guys down,” explained Wilson, whose days in Motown — if trade rumors are to be believed — are numbered. “When a hitter saw a scouting report on me, everything was hard. My fastball. My cutter is hard. There was nothing with a speed change. I worked on that over the winter, and kept it going into the spring.”

Over the course of the current campaign, Wilson’s breaking ball has been inconsistent and somewhat difficult to define. Pitch data suggests it’s a slider, the lefty considers it more of a curve, and depending on the day, either could be more accurate than the other. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners are a decidedly mediocre team. They are 51-52. They have averaged 4.7 runs per game and given up an average of 4.8 runs per game. Their BaseRuns record is actually one game worse than their actual record, but that’s pretty darn close. They are projected to win half of their remaining games. When you include baserunning, their offense is 15th in the majors. Their defense ranks 18th, three runs above average. Their starters rank 23rd in WAR and their relievers 21st.

In other words, nothing about this Mariners team says go for it, yet the team has dipped its toes in that water acquiring bullpen help in the form of David Phelps and a potential bottom-of-the-rotation starter in Marco Gonzales. Despite their mediocrity, there are rumors the Mariners will dive all the way in this season, attempting to acquire Sonny Gray. And, it does make a little sense.

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Earlier this week, we used granular batted ball data to calculate true-talent team records for American League clubs as of the All Star break. Today, it’s the senior circuit’s turn in the barrel.

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The Nationals just exploded offensively against the Brewers, winning 15-2. It might be hard to believe, but it could have been worse as all 15 Nationals runs were scored in the first four innings. One inning in particular stands out as the Nationals hit five home runs in the third inning on their way to a seven-run inning. It might be hard to believe, but the inning didn’t appear to be a particularly promising one from the beginning as Max Scherzer and his .185/.215/.200 slash line led off. Here’s how the inning went down, per the FanGraphs play log.

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