One need only glance at the Marlins’ projected starters over the next few days to determine where the team could use an upgrade. Jose Urena, a hard-throwing right-hander whose stuff hasn’t translated to strikeouts out of the bullpen or in the rotation, will pitch tonight’s game. Tomorrow, Jarred Cosart is scheduled to pitch — and he has a 15% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate over his career. The Marlins apparently didn’t like the look of that situation going forward, especially if Jose Fernandez’s innings need to be managed and/or if Wei-Yin Chen is unable to return from the disabled list soon.

So, they’ve conducted a trade, which reportedly includes the following pieces (arranged in approximate order of name-recognition):

The Marlins get:

• Andrew Cashner
• Colin Rea
• Tayron Guerrero

The Padres get:

• Jarred Cosart
• Carter Capps
• Josh Naylor
• Luis Castillo

As for the Marlins, they receive an immediate boost from adding Cashner to the rotation. While his season numbers (which include a 4.76 ERA and 4.94 FIP) look pretty ugly, Cashner seemed to have boosted his trade value over the last few weeks. As August Fagerstrom noted recently, he’s been much better since coming off the disabled list:

Cashner’s picked up a half-tick on his average fastball. Pre-disabled list, 15% of his fastballs went 96 or harder. These last four starts, he’s reached that upper-tier of velocity on 21% of fastballs. The walks are down from a bit over 9% to a bit under 6%. The strikeouts are way up, from 15% to 28%, because Cashner is missing plenty more bats. He’s missing more bats inside the zone, perhaps due in part to the added life on the heater, and he’s missing more bats outside the zone, and that’s because of the slider. The slider is really what this is all about.

Cashner’s slider has been more effective of late, and if he can maintain his current run, he should be able to hit his roughly league-average projections and represent an improvement over where the team stands right now. If the playoffs started today, the Marlins would be in, playing in a one-game playoff with the Cardinals for the right to play the Dodgers in another one-game playoff to qualify for the divisional series.

However, the projections see the Cardinals as the better team going forward. They actually see the same for the Mets, who are a game and a half behind the Marlins and Cardinals. The chart below shows the playoff odds before the trade for the teams that look to be in the hunt for the second wild card. The Marlins are in orange, essentially in a dead heat with the Mets and behind the Cardinals.

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Twenty-eight year old rookies on non-contending teams tend not to generate a great deal of attention. Maybe free agents from Japan who are technically rookies might get some publicity, but guys like Ryan Schimpf? Not so much.

Nevertheless, the San Diego Padres second baseman has had a debut worth noticing. Schimpf has recorded just 115 plate appearances as a major leaguer, but has already produced nine homers and .371 isolated-slugging mark — or, about 40 points higher than David Ortiz’s league-leading number right now. Will it continue? Of course not. But it could be an interesting exercise to figure out exactly how Schimpf got here.

In 2009, Schimpf was on a Louisiana State University team that won the College World Series. That team included future major leaguers Louis Coleman and DJ LeMahieu — as well as first-round picks Mikie Mahtook, Jared Mitchell, and Anthony Ranaudo. Schimpf was taken in the fifth round by the Blue Jays in 2009 and given a low-six-figure bonus. He hit pretty well in the New York-Penn league.

At the conclusion of the 2009 season, Schimpf, a 5-foot-9 second baseman with some power, drew a Dustin Pedroia comp from Baseball America, who ranked him as the Blue Jays’ 16th-best prospect in the organization:

He has a short stroke and surprising power for a guy his size. He projects to hit lots of doubles, and the Jays think he could produce 15 or more homers per season. He should also steal 15 or more bases annually with his tick above-average speed. Schimpf is reliable if not spectacular at second base. He has a fringy arm and needs to get a better feel for the position, starting with turning double plays. He could open his first full pro season in high Class A.

That was the last time Schimpf ever appeared in Baseball America’s organizational rankings. He started the next season in Low-A and didn’t really distinguish himself, recording a .240/.332/.418 line over 395 plate appearances. He walked a lot (10% BB rate), but also struck out a lot (24% K rate), and when he did receive a promotion to High-A that August, he struck out in 27 of 74 plate appearances. This left him off the radar as a 23-year-old in High-A and, radar-wise, that’s basically where he has been the last half-decade.

To recap his seasons briefly:

2011
Started the season on the disabled list and, in 228 plate appearances at High-A, hit a lot of homers (10), walked a lot (10%), and struck out a lot (23%).

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San Diego’s sole return for Melvin Upton Jr. is 19-year old Dominican righty, Hansel Rodriguez. This trade’s roots run back to 2013, when the Blue Jays selected LHP Brian Moran in the 2013 Rule 5 draft and immediately flipped him to the Angels for $240,000 worth of international pool money, which was added to the yet-to-be-spent $127,000 they had remaining from that year’s original pool amount. Early in 2014, Toronto signed Rodriguez for $330,000. Moran is currently pitching in Indy ball.

Rodriguez spent the early portion of 2016 in extended spring training before moving on to Toronto’s Appalachian League affiliate in Bluefield, where he had thrown 32.1 innings over six starts. He allowed 25 hits and 11 walks while striking out 26 hitters during that span, sporting a 3.06 ERA.

The strikeout totals aren’t mind-blowing because Rodriguez’s stuff simply isn’t very good yet. Instead, this is San Diego betting on a body and delivery. Rodriguez has a solid pitcher’s frame at 6-foot-2 and a listed 170 pounds. He’ll likely fill out a bit more — at least enough to counterbalance the increased workload he’ll undertake as his pro career moves forward. He has a loose, quick arm and incorporates his hips into his delivery, though he can fly open a little too hard at times and loose some command. It’s possible we see Rodriguez makes some changes to become more direct to the plate and create better extension, but his arm speed is impressive.

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It could be argued that, when Atlanta sent Craig Kimbrel and Melvin Upton Jr. to San Diego last April, it was neither Matt Wisler nor Jordan Paroubeck nor the draft choice they received from the Padres which represented the greatest benefit of the deal for the Braves, but rather the relief from Upton Jr.’s salary. At the time, Atlanta owed more than $45 million to Upton Jr. through the 2017 season. Getting out from under the contract made sense for a club that appeared unlikely to contend anytime soon. Upton Jr., who possessed negative trade value, was nevertheless traded.

Quite a bit has changed in the meantime, it seems. Since arriving in San Diego, Upton Jr.’s on-field performance has improved as the total remaining cost of his contract has decreased. Once a liability, Upton Jr. became a hypothetically tradeable asset — one who was actually traded today, to the Blue Jays, for right-handed prospect Hansel Rodriguez.

There is, of course, some cost to the Padres, who will pay $17 million of the $22 million still owed to Upton Jr. through next season, per Jon Heyman. But that’s not entirely surprising: the trade market currently features a great number of outfielders, something that was true last summer and carried over into the free-agent market last winter. The cost to acquire outfielders simply isn’t very high, and Toronto is benefiting from that glut.

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Any team looking to acquire starting pitching at this year’s trade deadline is going to have to be prepared to take on some risk in the form of uncertainty. Rich Hill, long viewed as the prize of potentially available arms, is a 36-year-old former journeyman who only started pitching like the kind of arm you’d pay to acquire less than a year ago. Now, he’s recently been scratched from a start due to a blister, left the following the start after five pitches, and is doubtful for his next one. The next-most intriguing option was Drew Pomeranz, who’s been good for an even shorter period than Hill, and comes with potential workload limitations. Even the big names of the market, like Chris Archer and Sonny Gray, come with significant recent performance concerns, and both seem unlikely to be moved regardless.

The entire market being littered with question marks, in a way, makes the individual question marks less concerning. It’s just about choosing your question mark. Someone’s going to choose Andrew Cashner’s question mark. Take his word for it:

Andrew Cashner: “I know I’m going to be traded. It’s just part of the game, part of where the season’s at.”

— Dennis Lin (@sdutdennislin) July 22, 2016

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We’re soon to see the Yankees trade away at least one dominant left-handed reliever in Aroldis Chapman, and it’s very possible they deal away a second dominant left-handed reliever in Andrew Miller, as long as someone is willing to pony up for those extra years of control. Plenty of teams will try to get Miller — the Indians, Rangers, Cubs, and Nationals have all been linked — but a maximum of one can actually obtain him. It might be none. And even then, there’s only one Chapman. Point being, a couple teams are going to be left out of the dominant-lefty-reliever sweepstakes, and forced to drop down a tier.

The Cubs got out ahead of the curve and acquired Mike Montgomery from the Mariners yesterday. This doesn’t mean they won’t still pursue Chapman or Miller, but they’ve at least covered one base. Montgomery’s an interesting case, because he’s still relatively unproven, but he’s lately been fantastic, and he comes with multiple years of cheap control. If you buy Montgomery’s recent performance, he’s essentially a really poor man’s Miller, in that he’s an effective lefty who’s also not a rental. Montgomery netted Seattle an interesting prospect in Dan Vogelbach, sort of helping set the market for this next tier of Chapman/Miller backup plans. Other clubs with similar assets to Montgomery ought to have had their ears perk up. Which brings us to the San Diego Padres, and Ryan Buchter.

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In his latest trade rumblings column, Ken Rosenthal has a pretty fun story.

Here is an example of a trade that recently was discussed but never got close, and would have amounted to a bombshell if it had come to fruition.

The scenario, according to major-league sources, unfolded like this:

The Cubs tried to acquire left-hander Drew Pomeranz before the Padres sent him to the Red Sox for Class-A right-hander Anderson Espinoza. Simple enough.

The Cubs’ plan, though, wasn’t to keep Pomeranz, who is under club control through 2018. No, the Cubs wanted to spin Pomeranz for a starter who is under even longer team control.

I could not determine the identity of that starter — it was a pitcher whose “name is not out there (publicly), and probably is not going anywhere now,” one source said.

In any case, the Cubs balked at the Padres’ request of infielder Javier Baez for Pomeranz, believing it too high a price. The second part of the deal — the spinning of Pomeranz for the unidentified starter — would not necessarily have worked, either.

This is an intriguing idea for all kinds of reasons. For one, what do the Cubs need with another starting pitcher? Their rotation is already pretty excellent, so making a complicated three-way trade to either acquire a #6 starter or bump Jason Hammel from the rotation while he’s running a 3.34 ERA would be a bit weird. They could use some rotation depth in case of injury, but if you’re acquiring Pomeranz — potentially the most valuable starting pitcher to be moved this month — because you want to flip him for someone even more valuable, that guy has to be pretty good, right? You’re probably not going to pay the price for Pomeranz, only to ship him off for some guy you’d stash in Triple-A, if you’re a win-now contender like the Cubs. At least, I wouldn’t think so.

Of course, it’s not entirely unheard of. The win-now Dodgers inserted themselves into the Todd Frazier trade, getting a package of prospects they liked from Chicago more than the ones they sent to Cincinnati, rather than just keeping Frazier for themselves. Maybe the Cubs knew that some other team hunting for Pomeranz was willing to part with a guy they liked for the future, and they thought this was their best chance to get a young controllable starter from a team that they don’t match up well with in trade. And perhaps they’d think about using that starter as a reliever down the stretch, strengthening a bullpen that could use an upgrade, with the idea of moving him back to the rotation next year.

So, just for the fun of it, let’s try to figure out who this mystery pitcher might be.

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Last week, when the Red Sox jumped the starting pitching market — surrendering Anderson Espinoza, their best pitching prospect in the deal — to acquire Drew Pomeranz from San Diego, the general consensus was that the team overpaid, like they did in acquiring Craig Kimbrel some months earlier, as the team tries to take advantage of David Ortiz’s last year in baseball. After all, Pomeranz was traded for Yonder Alonso a few months earlier, and despite a great start to the year with the Padres, no one really knows how well he’ll hold up down the stretch, given that this size of workload isn’t something he’s handled before. And just days before the trade, Baseball America had rated Espinoza as the #15 prospect in baseball, 24 spots ahead of Manuel Margot, the primary chip the Padres acquired from the Red Sox in exchange for their closer over the winter.

Giving up a top-15 prospect for a guy with as many question marks as Pomeranz comes with is certainly a gamble, as the deal will look disastrous if Pomeranz can’t hold up through October and Espinoza reaches his upside. But I can’t help but wonder if this deal is perhaps an example of how public prospect ratings and a player’s current market value can diverge pretty significantly.

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Congratulations on your brand-new time machine! Don’t press any buttons just yet. There’s a reason you’ve been given this time machine.

See, A.J. Preller’s done some things, and they’ve been fascinating. Fascinating because, since he took over as general manager of the San Diego Padres nearly two years ago to the day, he’s been like the Two-Face of GMs, just the handsome and less-deformed and evil version. OK, maybe it wasn’t a great analogy.

But there have seemingly been two Prellers! And they’ve each been fascinating in their own right. Preller 1.0 wanted to put a stamp on his new club, wanted to contend right away, and made a flurry of trades in an attempt to do so that now seems ill-advised. Plenty of young, intriguing, cheap talent went out, and plenty of once-enticing-but-not-so-much-anymore, ill-fitting, expensive veteran talent came in. Things didn’t go well, the Padres were bad, and Preller soon reversed course. That first season looked like a disaster, and if the egg wasn’t already directly on Preller’s face, it was at least cooking in the pan.

Since then, Preller’s done a 180. Plenty of that older talent that meant nothing to the Padres’ future has gone back out, and plenty of new, again-intriguing young faces have been brought in. Just as the majority of Preller’s first-wave moves were seen at the time as questionable, the majority of his recent moves have been regarded well. The Craig Kimbrel return was seen as a positive for San Diego. Folks were surprised at what Preller received for Fernando Rodney. Anderson Espinoza is now a Padre. Which brings us to the present. The Padres farm system is starting to look real interesting again. However far back Preller set the Padres with the first year’s moves, he’s been doing his damnedest to make it up.

And so here’s what’s got me interested: you’ve got a time machine, and your goal is long-term success with the Padres. You can erase all of Preller’s moves, pretend he was never even hired, and start over again with the 2014-15 future core players and build from there. Or, alternatively, you can take the ones they’ve got now.

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The Padres continue to capitalize on the short-term success of their big leaguers by parlaying what might just be small-sample mirages into good prospects. For those of you missed my report on RHP Chris Paddack, who San Diego got from Miami in exchange for Fernando Rodney, that write up is here. The Padres arm du jour is Anderson Espinoza, one of baseball most electric young arms and, in my opinion, a great return for the likes of Drew Pomeranz. Read the rest of this entry »