We’re now a week away from the July 31st trade deadline, so over the next seven days, we’ll probably some pretty good players change hands. Sonny Gray is going to be dealt. Yu Darvish might be. A.J. Ramos, Justin Wilson, Brad Hand, Addison Reed, and Pat Neshek will strengthen various bullpens. Every contender wants to add an arm or two, and so we’ll see a lot of pitching-oriented trades.

But if your favorite team doesn’t make a deal in the next seven days, I wouldn’t get too frustrated, because this year, the August trade market might be a more viable way to upgrade than in most years. For a pretty good group of players, the July 31st deadline isn’t really any kind of deadline at all.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Dawel Lugo, 3B, Detroit (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 9   Top 100: NR
Line: 2-for-5, 2 HR

Notes
It isn’t always pretty, but Lugo finds all sorts of ways to get the bat on the ball and hit it to all fields. His aggressive approach produces game power beneath what he shows in batting practice, but Lugo manages to put the ball in play consistently. Not all scouts like him at third base, citing lack of range, but he has the arm for it and his hands are okay. It’s certainly a corner profile, defensively, and seemingly one without prototypical game power, but Lugo certainly looks like he’s going to hit. He at least has the makings of a high-end platoon or bat-first utility man.

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No matter how you look at Michael Fulmer, you’ll probably come away impressed. Today’s Tigers starter is making good on his sophomore season and currently has the 10th-best ERA among qualified starters. But if you look at strikeouts and walks, traditionally thought of as the outcomes over which a pitcher exerts the most control, Fulmer is 43rd best among that game group. Which ranking is more indicative of his true talent? His changeup might have the answer.

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Last night, the Diamondbacks acquired J.D. Martinez, one of the very best hitters in baseball. In order to land the best power hitter available, they surrendered… well, three people who play baseball for a living. As Carson likes to remind me regularly, everyone we talk about here is an elite baseball player, relative to the human population. Compared to you and me, these guys are awesome. The Tigers have two more world-class baseball players today than they did yesterday.

But, relative to other professional baseball players, well, these guys aren’t exactly the ’27 Yankees. Dawel Lugo, the main piece in the deal by the Tigers’ own admission, was graded as a 40 Future Value guy and ranked as the Diamondbacks’ 10th-best prospect over the winter. Sergio Alcantara is a glove-first shortstop whose upside is probably Nick Ahmed, or something along those lines. Jose King is an 18-year-old in Rookie ball and signed for $75,000 not that long ago.

Based on what other players have gotten traded for, this return feels very light. And that’s not exactly a controversial opinion.

There are always going to be disagreements in the valuation of players, and projecting young players is really hard. The last time the Tigers got universally crushed for trading a good big leaguer for some questionably valuable prospects, they received Robbie Ray in return. And then they gave him away a year later. But maybe Lugo turns out to be the hitting version of Ray, developing into a far better big leaguer than expected as a minor leaguer. It happens. It happened to the very guy these guys all got traded for!

But when we see trades like this, where pretty much everyone in the public sphere agrees that one team got the better end of the deal, we can either choose to believe that a major-league organization made a very public mistake in valuing the players involved in the deal, or we can try to figure out why an apparently lopsided deal happened in the first place.

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The Diamondbacks have added a big bat to the middle of their lineup, swinging a trade for slugging outfielder J.D. Martinez. In exchange for Martinez’s services, the Arizona sent Detroit a trio of minor-league infielders: Dawel Lugo, Sergio Alcantara and Jose King. I do not have a KATOH projection for Jose King, as all but 13 of his professional games have taken place in the Dominican. However, he signed for a mere $75,000 and didn’t even make the honorable-mention section of Eric Longenhagen’s Diamondbacks list. That tells you about all you need to know: he’s a low-probability lottery ticket.

Below are the projections for the other two players whom the Tigers receive. 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.

Dawel Lugo, 3B (Profile)

KATOH: 2.4 WAR
KATOH+: 1.3 WAR

Of the prospects headed to the Tigers, Lugo is the closest to the big leagues and is also the most promising. He’s spent all of 2017 at the Double-A level, where he’s hit a respectable .282/.325/.426. He hit a more impressive .311/.339/.492 last year between High-A and Double-A. Lugo makes a lot of contact while also hitting for a fair amount of power. Players who can do both of those things from a semi-premium position aren’t all that common.

That’s about where Lugo’s appeal ends, however. He rarely walks and is a non-factor on the basepaths. Despite having played shortstop, Lugo’s defense per Clay Davenport’s numbers place him a tick below-average at third, which jibes with Eric’s 40/45 fielding grade. Lugo is still just 22, but as someone who signed out of the Dominican several years ago, he’s unlikely to make any wholesale improvements at this point. Still, someone with his offensive skill set who can play a passable third base could be of some use in the near future.

To put some faces to Lugo’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Lugo’s Double-A performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

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When it comes to making moves for pending free agents at the trade deadline, it’s hard to say that any pure rental is going to be a bargain. In recent seasons, the most successful trade for a soon-to-be free agent is probably the New York Mets’ acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes from the Detroit Tigers two years ago. Cespedes caught fire over the last two months of the season, putting up a 156 wRC+ and helping the Mets to the World Series. The cost was steep, however: part of Detroit’s return, Michael Fulmer, came in at 22 on Dave Cameron’s Trade Value Series this year.

If there’s a Yoenis Cespedes-type player available this year, it’s the guy whom the Arizona Diamondbacks just acquired. And they don’t appear to have conceded any top prospects for him, either, with Detroit opting for some players further away from the majors, potentially indicating where their future is headed.

Here’s the deal in full:

Arizona gets

• J.D. Martinez

Detroit gets

• Dawel Lugo
• Sergio Alcantara
• Jose King

Arizona is win-now mode. Also, they don’t have a great farm system, and Daniel Descalso has been their regular left fielder of late. Even if the injured Yasmany Tomas returns, he’s still just a replacement-level player. J.D. Martinez, meanwhile, provides at least a one-win upgrade over the course of the rest of the season.

Nor does the price appear to have been particularly high. The Diamondbacks retain top prospect Anthony Banda. As for the players they dealt, Lugo was the Diamondbacks’ 10th-best prospect coming into the season. The 22-year-old second baseman has some power and is holding his own in Double-A. Alcantara is a strong-armed shortstop putting up an average line in High-A, while King is an 18-year-old infielder getting his first exposure in the US in Rookie-level ball in Arizona. Detroit seems to have opted for some lottery tickets in exchange for potentially the best hitter on the market.

You might be forgiven for not totally believing in J.D. Martinez. His career got off to a poor start, and of late, he can’t seem to stay healthy. You might even be forgiven for thinking that Martinez is an aging slugger in decline. He’s not that, though. Teammate Victor Martinez fits that bill, and J.D. certainly has the old-man skillset of power and walks while offering little on defense. J.D. Martinez is just 29 years old, though, and since he joined the Tigers in 2014, he has been one of the very best hitters in baseball.

A champion of the fly-ball revolution, Martinez has put up a 146 wRC+ since joining Detroit, which is ninth in baseball over that span, just behind Nelson Cruz, tied with Anthony Rizzo, and ahead of Josh Donaldson, Giancarlo Stanton, and Justin Turner.

Martinez isn’t relying on 2014 and 2015 to prop up his stats, either. Since the beginning of last season, his 148 wRC+ trails only Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman, Joey Votto, Jose Altuve, and Daniel Murphy. This season, Martinez has been even better, hitting .305/.388/.630 with a 162 wRC+. It’s possible the season has flown a little under the radar, as his name is absent from the leaderboards. That’s only because Martinez missed the first month of the season with a sprained ligament in his right foot, however. As a result, he’s accumulated just 232 plate appearances, not enough to qualify for the batting title. If Martinez had hit 16 homers with a 162 wRC+ in April and May instead of May and June, he probably would have made the All-Star team. He didn’t, and while we are mostly talking about past performance, his projections look great, as well.

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The Diamondbacks are officially going for it. Despite being 10 1/2 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West, they are right in the thick of the Wild Card race, and with just three teams fighting for two spots, have a pretty good at reaching the play-in game. And today, their line-up just got a lot better.

Source confirms: #DBacks acquiring J.D. Martinez from #Tigers. First: @JonMorosi.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 18, 2017

J.D. Martinez was the best hitter available, as he’s now on year four of being an elite hitter. Since the start of the 2014 season, Martinez is ninth in MLB in wRC+, right between Anthony Rizzo and Justin Turner. He’s a beast.

With Yasmany Tomas on the shelf, the Diamondbacks had been using Gregor Blanco, Daniel Descalso, and Chris Herrmann in left field, so swapping those guys for one of the game’s best hitters is going to be a huge upgrade. The projections — which still don’t totally buy Martinez’s bat, thanks to his weak pre-2014 numbers — have him worth a little over a win over the remainder of the season, but you can probably bump that up to +1.5 WAR if you think ZIPS and Steamer are too conservative on his offensive production.

Given how competitive the Wild Card race looks to be, that win or two could be the difference between making it or sitting at home. And now sticking Martinez behind Paul Goldschmidt gives the Diamondbacks a pretty fearsome pair of hitters if they advance deep in October. Given how well the team is pitching, this makes Arizona a potentially tough postseason opponent, should they get there.

To land Martinez, the D’Backs are giving up three prospects. Nick Piecoro had the details.

Dbacks are sending prospects Dawel Lugo, Sergio Alcantara and Jose King to the Tigers in exchange for J.D. Martinez.

— Nick Piecoro (@nickpiecoro) July 18, 2017

Obviously things can change during a season, but these are three kind of shocking names to be traded for an elite hitter, even a rental one. Eric had Lugo as the best prospect of the trio last winter, giving him a 40 FV and ranking him as the team’s 10th best prospect. Alcantara was in the others of note section. King wasn’t mentioned.

Lugo’s been fine in Double-A this year, but hasn’t done anything that would dramatically change his stock that I can see. Alcantara is running a 96 wRC+ in high-A ball, which lines up with Eric’s pre-season report of a future utility infielder or a lower-tier starter. King is an 18 year old in rookie ball.

These guys might turn out well for the Tigers. Perhaps Lugo is closer to being big league ready than we think. Maybe the market for rentals really has crashed.

But hard not to like this for Arizona. They get an elite hitter for the stretch run for three prospects that, to be honest, don’t look all that special. You never like giving up any potential, but for the present upgrade, this looks like Arizona did quite well.

Let’s start with a comp, courtesy of Connecticut Tigers pitching coach Ace Adams:

“He reminds me of Jonathan Papelbon, who I had for a couple of years with the Red Sox. The same type of arm action, the same type of delivery; the stature, the arm strength. There’s a lot of life on the four-seamer.”

The “he” in question is pitcher Matt Manning, whom Detroit drafted ninth-overall last year out of a Sacramento, California, high school. The 19-year-old right-hander — all six feet, six inches of him — is being tutored by the longtime pitching coach in short-season ball.

Papelbon was a starter before becoming a reliever, and if all goes as planned, Manning will remain in a rotation for the duration of his career. Adams feels he has a chance to be “pretty special,” and the scouting world pretty much agrees. Baseball America, MLB.com, and our own Eric Longenhagen all rank Manning as the top prospect in the Tigers’ system. Read the rest of this entry »

We might as well start this off with a Buster Olney tweet:

Teams asking about Justin Verlander; perception is DET looking for big,big,big return w/out salary offset. Owed $70m for rest of ’17,’18.’19

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) July 4, 2017

Just from reading that tweet alone, one could infer a few things. One, that the year hasn’t gone very well for the Tigers. That much is true, and the Tigers are only in the playoff race in the way that everyone in the American League is still in the playoff race. The Tigers are closer to the AL basement than they are to a playoff spot. Two, that Justin Verlander is available, and he’s been good enough to be interesting. That much is also true. And three, that a Verlander trade is going to be very challenging to execute. That much is certainly true. Verlander’s is the most fascinating name on the trade market, but as things stand, I don’t know how two sides could come together.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Pedro Gonzalez, CF, Colorado (Profile)
Level: Short Season  Age: 19   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: NR
Line: 4-for-5, 2B, BB, SB, CS
Notes
Gonzalez spent much of extended spring training in the Dominican Republic. Colorado doesn’t have an AZL team, so Gonzalez went directly from the DR to Grand Junction, his second year at that affiliate. Because of this, it has been hard for clubs, even those who place a heavier priority on complex-level scouting, to get eyes on Gonzalez. He remains physically projectable at a lean, broad-shoulder 6-foot-5, 190, and he’s a plus runner under way.

His defensive instincts draw mixed reviews, but he has the speed to stay there and try to polish his routes over time. If he fills out, slows down, and has to move to a corner it probably means he’s grown into enough power to profile there, at which point it will become imperative that he quell his desire to chase breaking balls off the plate.

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