On Sunday, the Mets continued an active weekend of trades designed to add bench-quality pieces to their big league roster, sending several low-level minor leaguers to Houston for power-hitting corner bat J.D. Davis. Here’s the whole deal:

The Mets get:

J.D. Davis, 3B/1B/OF
Cody Bohanek, INF

The Astros get:

Luis Santana, 2B
Ross Adolph, CF
Scott Manea, C

Davis is talented — he has plus-plus raw power, a plus-plus arm, and can play several positions, though none especially well — but it’s hard to see how he fits in New York without taking playing time from players who have greater long-term potential and might also be just as good as Davis is right now. He doesn’t complement Todd Frazier or Peter Alonso — the two players projected to start for the Mets at Davis’ primary positions — in any way. Like Frazier and Alonso, Davis hits right-handed and isn’t a good infield defender.

He does have experience in the outfield corners, an area where the Mets need warm bodies, so perhaps we’ll see Davis used as a platoon or situational corner outfielder as a means of getting him at-bats against left-handed pitching. Davis hit .348/.419/.583 against southpaws last year and .344/.401/.800 in 2017, with most of that production coming at Triple-A Fresno. He could get some starts against lefties in situations where the Mets can hide him on defense. They could mix him with Juan Lagares or Keon Broxton depending on if the game state dictates a need for offense or defense, which might move Michael Conforto or Brandon Nimmo to center field once in a while.

This assumes Davis, who turns 26 in April, can hit big league pitching, something he hasn’t done in a fairly limited sample; he owns a .194/.260/.321 line in 181 career big league plate appearances. Houston, an organization at the forefront at understanding how to implement swing changes, doesn’t seem to have been able to alter Davis’ batted ball profile in a way that would enable him to start showing his raw power in games. A power-hitting platoon outcome seems reasonable to hope for, though Davis’ true talent level is probably closer to a defensively-limited bench bat, one that’s easier to roster in the American League and isn’t a great fit on this Mets roster as it’s currently composed.

Cody Bohanek, also acquired by the Mets, is an interesting, late-blooming athletic flier who is probably just an org guy. He played safety and corner at Marist High School in Chicago and had college football aspirations until the University of Illinois-Chicago gave him the opportunity to play baseball. Two-sport, cold weather prospects are apt to improve later than their warm weather peers who play more baseball, and that’s what happened with Bohanek, who had a statistical breakout as a senior and impressed scouts at NCAA Regionals. He was a 30th round senior sign in 2017.

Bohanek split 2018 between Low and Hi-A. He walked a lot and has a proficient, versatile infield glove. He may be a bench infielder at peak and the two-sport, small school, cold weather pedigree makes him slightly mysterious and interesting.

I like Houston’s end of this deal. Tyler White, who lifts the ball consistently and has a track record of hitting for power against big league pitching, made Davis offensively redundant in Houston, as the team didn’t seem interested in exploring a two-way role for Davis, who closed in college. They add three up-the-middle defenders who have performed statistically. The best of them is 19-year-old Dominican second baseman Luis Santana, who is coming off a domestic debut at advanced rookie-level Kingsport where he hit .348/.446/.471 with more walks than strikeouts.

A stocky, curvaceous 5-foot-8, Santana crowds the plate so much that he’s practically straddling it, and his idiosyncratic, low-ball swing enables him to impact pitches that cross the plate beneath his chest as he leans over it. It’s weird, but it works, and Santana looks like he’s going to be a plus hitter who also has a discerning eye for the strike zone, and whose plate crowding gets him hit by pitches so often that it actually matters. Santana has been hit in 4% of his 611 career plate appearances, which is nearly twice the career rate of active big league HBP leader Shin-Soo Choo (132 HBP, 1.9%) who became the active leader when Chase Utley (204 HBP, 2.5%) retired.

Athletically, Santana fits at second and third base. His body is pretty maxed out and he’s not likely to grow into sizable raw power, but he runs well, has infield-worthy hands and an average arm. The combination of his defensive profile and promising feel to hit make him a very intriguing prospect. He was slated to be the 10th ranked Mets prospect on our upcoming list as a 40+ FV player, and I think he’s the best individual talent involved in this deal.

The Astros also received Scott Manea and Ross Adolph. Adolph,22, is an interesting small-school sleeper who hit .322/.445/.654 as a junior at Toledo, then signed for $125,000 as a 2018 12th rounder. He continued to rake at short-season Brooklyn after signing, hitting .276/.348/.509 and swiping 14 bases (on 17 attempts) in 60 games.

He’s an above-average runner with good instincts in center field, and there’s a chance he can stay there. He could be a 50 bat with gap power who is playable in center, which would make him at least a viable big league fourth outfielder. He was going to be a prominent part of the Mets prospect lists’ honorable mention section. We whiffed on him pre-draft, but our sources who saw him in pro ball raved and I’m very interested to see how he hits in full-season ball next year because I think the industry’s error bars on small school bats are pretty large due to the quality of pitching they face.

Manea, 23, was drafted by Seattle out of high school but didn’t sign. He transferred to St. Petersburg College in Florida after his freshman year at NC State, but wasn’t drafted after his sophomore year despite being eligible. He had a good summer for the Wachusett Dirt Dawgs of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League and was eligible to sign as an undrafted free agent, which he did with the Mets in late July of 2016.

He’s a heavy-bodied catcher with power who hit .261/.368/.432 at Low-A Columbia last year. Manea’s a below-average receiver who lets his target sag as his pitcher starts to deliver the ball home, which means he has to come back to that spot with his glove, creating a lot of unnecessary movement that isn’t great for stealing strikes. He’s also a well-below average athlete and thrower, so he probably can’t catch.

The Astros have, in several instances, traded players on the periphery of their big league roster (Teoscar Hernandez, David Paulino, Ramon Laureano, etc.) for prospects, and this is another example. I understand the Mets desire to add high-probability contributors to their big league roster, even if they’re low-impact players, but moving a prospect like Santana for the kind of role player readily available on the open market feels short-sighted.

On Saturday, the Brewers and Mets continued to reshape their outfields, making a four-player swap headlined by dynamic outfield defender Keon Broxton. Here’s the deal:

Mets get:

Keon Broxton, CF

Brewers get:

Bobby Wahl, RHP
Adam Hill, RHP
Felix Valerio, 2B

Almost by default, Broxton tentatively slots in as the Mets’ starting center fielder, between Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo. There’s a stark lack of outfield depth on New York’s 40-man; Jay Bruce was traded, the org isn’t expecting much from Yoenis Cespedes next season as he recovers from surgery to remove bone spurs from both heels, and Juan Lagares provides very little on offense and is injury prone. Since 2014, he has endured a strained hamstring, an intercostal strain, several thumb injuries, an oblique strain, and a plantar plate tear. In 2018, he was shut down for the year in May due to toe surgery and has only played seven Dominican Winter League games this offseason.

As far as others on the 40-man are concerned, T.J. Rivera and Dom Smith have each played some left field, while Jeff McNeil, who turns 27 in April, has started just five pro games in the outfield. It’s debatable as to whether any of them are actually playable out there. It is not debatable that Broxton, who is an elite defender at all three outfield spots, is simply better than all of them.

Set to turn 29 in May, Broxton’s growth as a player has likely concluded. He struggled badly with strikeouts as a prospect and was traded straight up for cash before being part of a two-player package for half-year big league performer and fringe 40-man talent Jason Rogers. That deal landed him in Milwaukee, where Broxton improved enough in his late-twenties to be rostered as defensive ace and pinch runner.

The strikeout issues remain (his career strikeout rate is 36%), and Broxton’s propensity to whiff undercuts his offensive production enough to make him a bench-quality player, albeit a good one because of the defense. Ideally, he’s not your everyday center fielder, but it’s reasonable to project him as one right now because of the dearth of other outfielders on the Mets roster.

Broxton and Lagares seem, on the surface, like odd bedfellows for a platoon because they’re each right-handed. It’s possible a timeshare might help keep Lagares healthy, or that the two complement one another in harder-to-see ways. For instance, a quick examination of their heats maps on the site shows that Broxton does his damage on pitches middle-in, while Lagares thrives on pitches down-and-in. They could be platooned in accordance with where the opposing starter likes to work. That’s probably not a different enough offensive profile for this type of thinking to matter, but maybe their skill sets with mesh with each other in some other way we can’t see. Or perhaps the Mets will keep an open mind about further upgrading in center field.

From Milwaukee’s perspective, Lorenzo Cain’s defense made Broxton’s best skill redundant in a crowded outfield picture that now projects to see more action from Eric Thames, Ben Gamel, and Tyrone Taylor, who is a sleeper breakout candidate due to a recent swing change that might have altered his power output.

From the Mets, the Brewers receive another immediately relevant relief piece in Wahl, who will likely compete for an opening day bullpen spot in the spring. He was part of the two-player package Oakland sent to the Mets for Jeurys Familia last summer. Wahl, who turns 27 in March, has thrown just 12 career big league innings at this age mostly because he missed extended development time to multiple surgeries, including one in 2017 to remedy thoracic outlet syndrome.

His stuff was back last year. Wahl’s fastball sits in the mid-90s and will touch 99. He has a four-pitch mix but works primarily with the fastball and a power, mid-80s breaking ball that has bat-missing vertical action. A firm cutter and changeup are also folded in on occasion. Wahl has set-up man stuff but below average command and more significant injury risk than most pitching prospects.

The Brewers also acquired Adam Hill, the Mets’ 2018 fourth round pick out of the University of South Carolina. Hill was dominant during the first four starts of his junior year, but his control disappeared once the Gamecocks began conference play. He struggled to throw strikes for two months leading up to the draft and fell to the fourth round.

Hill does have good stuff. He’ll sit 90-94 and his big, 6-foot-6 frame and lower arm slot combine to create a unique look for hitters. His slider breaks late and has good length when located to Hill’s arm side, and his changeup has good action because of his lower arm slot. His limited command probably relegates Hill to the bullpen eventually, but he has No. 4 or 5 starter stuff if he can develop better control in his mid-20s, which sometimes happens to pitchers this size.

Finally, the Brewers also acquired 18-year-old Dominican second baseman Felix Valerio, who hit .319/.409/.433 in the DSL during his first pro season. Valerio is a skills-over-tools type of prospect who is more polished than most of his peers. He has promising feel for contact and is athletically viable at second base but at 5-foot-7 and 165 pounds, he’s less likely to grow into more impressive physical tools than someone with some length and room on their frame. Players like this either hit enough to play second base every day, or don’t and end up as org guys. Valerio walked more than he struck out last year, and those types of peripheral indicators can offer great evidence to support a case that a player will indeed hit enough to play every day, but not when we’re talking about DSL stats. Still, league sources indicated to me that this was not the first time Valerio’s name has come up in trade talks, so it seems that other teams besides Milwaukee have had interest in him.

All three players have been added to the Brewers prospect rankings on The Board. Wahl and Hill are in the 40 Future Value tier, while Valerio will be added to the Others of Note section of the team’s long form writeup.

No doubt partially out of a sense of jealousy at watching other teams make trades Friday without making one of his own, Jerry Dipoto and the Seattle Mariners added a veteran, picking up outfielder Domingo Santana from the Milwaukee Brewers for outfielder Ben Gamel and pitcher Noah Zavolas.

After acquiring Christian Yelich and signing Lorenzo Cain last offseason, the Brewers faced a bit of a roster crunch when it came to the outfield. On pure merit, it made the most sense for Ryan Braun to see his role shrink coming into the season, but seriously reducing their longtime franchise player’s playing time was something I don’t believe the front office was ever seriously considering. Braun would get some at-bats at first to spell Eric Thames, and between that and various days off and possible injury stints for the quartet, Santana would get playing time and everybody would be happy. And if that didn’t work out, Santana was coming off a .278/.371/.505 age-24 season that could help snag the Brewers a starting pitcher.

Everything worked out quite well for the Brewers, but not so much for Santana. The team was able to juggle the five players in question quite well in the early going, enough to get Santana 24 starts in April, though that was aided by Yelich’s sore oblique that sent him to the ten-day DL. It would be hard to claim that Santana did much with his April playing time, only hitting .237/.321/.269 with no homers. Thames’s thumb injury required the Brewers to have a full-timer at first, and with Jesus Aguilar made the absolute most of the opportunity and the outfield healthy, Santana’s playing time dropped quickly. The return of Thames created another roster crunch and Santana, with an option year available, spent July and August starting for Colorado Springs. He was called up in September, but purely as a reserve and only got a single start for the month.

The Brewers would have had a lot more difficulty trading Santana for a pitcher at this point, so rather than pay him to be a role player, they sent him over to the Mariners for a less expensive role player who can cover center field. Santana’s still relatively young and with three years to go until free agency, he’s more interesting than a pillow contract for a one-year reclamation projection. Even hanging onto Mitch Haniger, Santana likely starts in a corner for Seattle as there’s simply far more promise in his future than that of Jay Bruce.

As Eric Longenhagen noted to me, Zavolas is a former college starter with a low-90s fastball who changes speed well but is missing a solid breaking pitch. Harvard alumni will likely appreciate Zavolas for having thrown a no-hitter against Yale back in April, but he smells a lot like an organizational player to me. He got good results in his debut in the minors, but a 22-year-old ought to be crushing the Northwest League.

From a pure “this is what they project” standpoint, Santana and Gamel come out fairly evenly. I still believe that Santana has some upside remaining, but it will have to involve some kind of improvement in his plate discipline. Santana swung at more bad pitches in 2018 than in 2017, and what’s especially troubling is that unlike some bad-ball swingers, he’s actually quite poor at making contact with the out-of-zone pitches, 14 percentage points worse than the league average in 2018. It feels like there’s a really good player hidden away somewhere in Santana should he adopt a better approach at the plate, but finding that can’t be assured and none of his three previous organizations were able to make him into a better hitter.

Friday morning’s three-team, nine-piece trade, which was headlined by Oakland’s acquisition of Jurickson Profar, has obvious implications for the AL West, as a playoff team just added a 25-year-old who posted 2.9 WAR this past season and can play all over the field. But this deal is also a case study in talent churning, and forces us to consider if there’s more eligible international talent out there than we realize. Here’s a rundown of the trade:

Oakland gets:

• Jurickson Profar, INF (from Texas)

Texas gets:

• Brock Burke, LHP (from Tampa Bay)
• Kyle Bird, LHP (from Tampa Bay)
• Yoel Espinal, RHP (from Tampa Bay)
• Eli White, INF (from Oakland)
• $750,000 International Amateur Pool Space (from Oakland)

Tampa Bay gets:

• Emilio Pagan, RHP (from Oakland)
• 2019 Draft Competitive Balance Round A selection, currently pick No. 38 overall (from Oakland)
• Rollie Lacy, RHP (from Texas)

There are so many moving parts in this deal that it might be best to evaluate how the deal balances by looking at additions and subtractions team-by-team, starting with Oakland.

Oakland

In: Jurickson Profar
Out: Emilio Pagan, Eli White, an early draft pick, a pretty large chunk of international pool space

Profar was once an upper echelon prospect, a hyper-advanced wunderkind who looked already looked comfortable and performed against upper-level minor leaguers when he was 17. He was lauded not because he had elite physical skills and was destined for superstardom, but because he was so polished, mature, safe, and competent in every facet of baseball, and he seemed likely to race through the minors and be an above-average big leaguer for a decade or more. He debuted with Texas at age 19, then spent a half decade in prospect limbo due to a myriad of injuries (most significantly, shoulder injuries that caused him to miss almost all of 2013 and 2014), and because Texas’ infield was full of Adrian Beltre, Elvis Andrus and Rougned Odor.

When Profar finally got healthy, he languished in the upper minors and became a vocal malcontent, especially when Texas neglected to call him up in September of 2017, after he had wrapped up a strong 2017 season at Triple-A. It was a transparent manipulation of Profar’s service time.

I collected updated thoughts on Profar in February and the reports were down a bit compared to where they were when he was a proper prospect. Of course, teams were aware of the context of his situation and thought some of the depressed reports were the result of him being aloof and frustrated with his organization, leaving open the possibility that he might break out if given a change of scenery. Instead, 2018 injuries opened up a spot on Texas’ infield, meaning Profar finally got regular big league at-bats, and broke out. He hit .253/.334/.458 with 20 homers, 35 doubles and 10 steals while playing all over the field. He tallied 2.9 WAR.

This Jay Jaffe post provides an exhaustive look at how Profar performed last year, though I think it’s worth adding that there’s a pretty significant disparity between what Baseball Savant expected Profar to slug based on his 2018 batted ball profile (xSLG of .393) and what xStats expected (.430), even though they’re setting out to measure the same thing. Barring a swing change that takes advantage of his bat-to-ball skills, it seems reasonable to expect a little bit of regression from Profar’s power output next year, but he’s still clearly a productive hitter and a versatile, if unspectacular, defender with two years of team control remaining. He’ll replace Jed Lowrie in Oakland and hit the open market in 2021. (Profar projects to be half a win better than Lowrie next year and is not an age-based risk to decline like Lowrie is.) Profar will be 28 when he starts his next contract.

In exchange, Oakland moved four years of control in a middle relief piece (Pagan) and a near-ready bench/utility type (Eli White), and two non-player assets in the draft pick and International pool space. The Brewers traded a similar pick in their deal for reliever Alex Claudio, which will likely result in a prospect who we’d evaluate as a 45 or 40+ FV player. White’s FV is similar. He’s a plus runner who can play all over the field and he has some bat to ball skills, but he probably lacks the power to profile as a true everyday player.

Texas

In: Brock Burke, Eli White, Kyle Bird, Yoel Espinal, $750,000 of International Pool Space
Out: Profar, Rollie Lacy

The Rangers are undergoing a full-scale rebuild and seems unlikely to be competitive during either of Profar’s two remaining arbitration years. Plus, the way they handled him in 2017 may have strained their relationship, making it less likely that he would re-sign with them. They’re also arguably selling high on a player who most of the industry seemed a bit down on before the season, has had injury issues, and whose power output might regress next year. In return they get back a package of quantity more than quality, with Burke and White as the de facto headliners.

Burke had a breakout 2018 (which really may have started in 2017) that ended with a dynamite month and a half at Double-A Montgomery, during which he struck out 71 hitters in 55 innings. He has a plus fastball that sits 91-95 and touches 96 but plays up because Burke creates huge, down-mound extension and has an uncommonly vertical arm slot. Changeup development likely played a role in his breakout, as the pitch was much different last year (82-85mph, at times with cut) than in 2017 (78-80mph), and it’s fair to speculate that something like a grip change took place here. Burke has two breaking balls that are both about average, though he uses the curveball pretty sparingly. He profiles as a No. 4 or 5 starter.

After doing very little in pro ball, White also had a breakout 2018 (albeit at age 24), and hit .306/.388/.450 at Double-A Midland. He then went to the Arizona Fall League, where he was heavily scrutinized by the entire industry. White had only really played shortstop until this year when he began seeing time at second and third base. He fits best at second but is fine at all three spots, and his plus speed might enable him to one day run down balls in the outfield as well. He’s a near-ready, multi-positional utility man who should provide the kind of defensive flexibility teams are starting to prioritize.

Bird is a lefty spin rate monster with four pitches. Last year, his low-80s slider averaged about 2650 rpm, his curveball about 2800, with both marks way above big league average. He sits 90-92 and has below-average command. He’s 25 and projects in middle relief. Espinal throws hard (94-95), and has a weird sinker/power changeup offspeed pitch in the 89-91 range. He doesn’t always clear his front side properly, which causes some of his fastballs to sail on him, but he can also dump his mid-80s slider into the strike zone. He’s 26 and also projects in middle relief, though teams are more certain about Bird’s prospects than Espinal’s because they’re more confident in Bird’s strike-throwing. From a Future Value standpoint, both Burke and White will both be in the 45/40+ area when we write up Texas’ system this offseason (likely slotting them in the 10-15 range of players in that farm), while Bird and Espinal will be in the 40/35+ area, at the back of the list.

It’s hard to say what Texas will do with an extra $750,000 in pool space. There have now been two trades involving pool space in the last week, the other being the Ivan Nova deal. Most big name individual international prospects have signed, but $750,000 is a pretty big chunk of change, and inspired me and colleague Kiley McDaniel to ask around baseball if there’s a player who is either eligible to sign right now or who teams speculate will be eligible before this IFA signing period ends in June. The consensus is that there is not, and that it’s more likely that Texas will spread this bonus money out among several $100,000 – $300,000 talents over the next couple of months.

Tampa Bay

In: Oakland’s Competitive Balance pick, Emilio Pagan, Rollie Lacy
Out: Burke, Bird, Espinal

Tampa Bay is reckoning with the same issue that other teams with deep farm systems have had to deal with: they need to consolidate their overflow of decent upper-level prospects or risk losing them for nothing when they hit minor league free agency or are Rule 5 eligible. Both Bird and Espinal are in their mid-20s, so turning them over into similarly valued assets that they’re not at risk of losing for a while makes a ton of sense. Burke is pretty good but for us, slots behind Brent Honeywell, Brendan McKay, a healthy Jose DeLeon and Anthony Banda, to say nothing of the pitchers already on the Rays big league roster. Essentially flipping him for a pick that should result in a prospect whose FV mirror’s Burke’s (as I posit in the Claudio article linked above) makes sense.

Pagan, now on his third org in three years after he was sent to Oakland in the Ryon Healy trade, immediately steps into the Rays bullpen as a traditional four-seam/slider middle reliever, and Lacy (who Texas acquired from the Cubs in the Cole Hamels deal) is the kind of strike-throwing, changeup arm Tampa Bay likes to horde as they attempt to build another Ryan Yarbrough. He has an upper-80s fastball and scouts have him as a up and down arm, but guys with good changeups like Lacy often outperform scout expectations.

Asset value calculations are tough to do precisely in a situation like this because $/WAR values are not linear, and the 2.5 WAR Profar is projected to generate next year means way more to a competitive team like Oakland than it does to a rebuilding Texas. Craig Edwards has Profar’s surplus value calculated at a combined $37 million over the next two years (his arbitration salary is likely to be low due to a relative lack of playing time, with MLB Trade Rumors projecting him to make $3.4 million), while Oakland gave up about $12 million worth of assets (White at $4 million, a Draft pick at $5 million, Pagan at $2 million, and IFA space of $1.5 mil) to acquire him based on Craig’s methodology. That seems like highway robbery for Oakland, but again, Profar wasn’t generating that kind of revenue on a bad Texas team. This makes it a common sense deal for the Rangers based on where they are on the competitive spectrum, even if it’s painful to part with a good everyday player the organization has been attached to for nearly a decade.

Cleveland made a big trade last week, netting Carlos Santana from the Mariners and Jake Bauers from the Rays, while sending Edwin Encarnacion, Yandy Diaz, Cole Hulser, and a draft pick off to the other two teams in the trade. Jeff Sullivan already covered that trade, which was pretty interesting for Cleveland, slightly interesting for the Rays, and not very interesting for the Mariners, who essentially just moved contracts around and received a draft pick for their trouble. On Friday, Cleveland made another move, trading Yonder Alonso, a one-time Carlos Santana replacement, as Alonso has now been replaced by the guy he replaced. Alonso heads to the White Sox in a deal that figures to help both AL Central clubs this season.

Indians Receive:

• OF Alex Call

White Sox Receive:

• Yonder Alonso

Last season, Yonder Alonso was the discount version of the Carlos Santana who was on Cleveland’s 2016 pennant winner. Sure, Alonso is left-handed, not a switch-hitter, but he can play an adequate first base with a bat that is a little worse than Santana. He required just a $16 million guarantee to go to Cleveland while Santana received $60 million from Philadelphia. Having signed Edwin Encarnacion for $60 million after 2016, the Indians elected to let Santana go and brought in Alonso coming off a career year in Oakland and Seattle. “Career year” is a bit of a misnomer; Alonso hit 20 homers and put up a 147 wRC+ in the first half of 2017 before settling in closer to his career norms with a 114 wRC+ in the second half, much of it with the Mariners.

Alonso was a bit out of place in Cleveland as an everyday player. In his breakout season in Oakland, only 15% of his plate appearances came against left-handers; that figure jumped to 24% in Cleveland. Alonso has a career wRC+ of 80 against lefties in his career, including a dreadful 64 wRC+ last season. If Alonso had half as many plate appearances against lefties last year, and had hit closer to his career average against them, he would have been worth about half a win more last year. The White Sox might be able to get more value out of Alonso next year by aggressively platooning him. Read the rest of this entry »

On the surface, Thursday’s trade that sent left-handed pitcher Alex Claudio from Texas to Milwaukee in exchange for a competitive balance pick seemed relatively innocuous. A rebuilding team sent a middle reliever to a competitive team that needed one in exchange for an asset — in this case, a draft pick — with a maturation timeline that better fits that of the rebuilding club. But this trade also might tell us a little more about how the Brewers think about pitching, and help us to calibrate the way we think about draft prospects, particularly advanced college relievers.

But first, let’s talk about Claudio, who is entering his first year of arbitration and will be under team control for three more. Kiley and I posited in the Brewers prospect list’s System Overview (it’s at the bottom) that Milwaukee seems drawn to pitching curiosities. This is, of course, our subjective opinion, but the list of Brewers draftees and minor leaguers who have weird deliveries or unique release points has grown to the point where it seems to be an organizational focus or, at least, an organizational experiment. And Claudio, for those who have not been lucky enough to see him pitch for Texas over the last few years, looks like this:

It’s not easy to make big league hitters look goofy under normal circumstances, let alone when you only throw 86 mph. It’s clear the bizarre nature of Claudio’s delivery plays a role in his success. For context, here’s how Claudio’s release point looks on paper when given some context. Here I’ve compared Claudio’s release point to a lefty with a pretty generic delivery.

The proliferation of Trackman at the minor league and college levels enables teams to measure things like release point, and identify players who are bizarre or unique in this regard. Extension probably factors into this, as well, and I think adding that could enable us or teams to plot release points in three dimensions, and learn even more about what helps stuff play beyond just velocity and movement.

Claudio is also effective because he’s a rare reliever with plus-plus command. He’s walked just 4.5% of hitters during each of his three years in the big leagues and, when he misses, he misses down. His ability to dump sinkers and changeups into the bottom part of the strike zone or just beneath it and almost never, ever miss up in the zone is remarkable, and it’s a huge part of why Claudio has been able to induce ground balls at a 60% clip in the big leagues.

Teams have begun to think about pitching like wine and cheese. They’re more concerned about how pitches pair together rather than just evaluating each pitch’s quality in a vacuum. A general rule of thumb is that sinking fastballs pair well with changeups because they have similarly shaped movement, sinking and running toward the pitcher’s arm side. And again, Claudio is a great example of this, with his fastball and changeup movement overlapping exactly.

We know what Claudio is at this point. He’s going to be a good middle relief option whose WAR production will likely hover around 1.0, perhaps maxing out close to the 1.7 WAR he netted in 2017. Based on how we map WAR to the 20-80 scouting scale, Milwaukee got a 40-45 FV player for the next three years. Mapping Claudio’s WAR production to the scouting scale helps us make an apples to apples comparison in situations where we otherwise would not be able to, as in this instance, where Claudio was traded, straight up, for a draft pick.

The competitive balance pick Texas received from Milwaukee is going to be close to the 40th overall selection in the draft, give or take a few spots depending on how free agent compensation picks shake out ahead of that selection. As you can see from our last several years of MLB Draft evaluations (here’s 2018), that 40th overall range is typically right about where the 45 FV and 40 FV tiers blend together, which is akin to Claudio’s value when he’s placed on the 20-80 scale. In short, based on how we think about relievers and how we expected draft prospects in the late first and early second round to pan out, this seems like a fair, logical trade for both teams.

In every draft there are a few college pitchers who seem like they could pitch in a big league relief role right away. It’s almost never a plan teams actually enact for various reasons, but this trade also gives us an idea of where that type of prospect would go in a draft. It would take a confluence of variables for such a selection to be made (a team with a relief need, a very seller-friendly or completely barren reliever trade market that forces that team to turn to the draft, and a specific type of prospect) but this part of the draft is where the drop-off in potential ceiling could lead teams to focus on other traits, like proximity and risk. In other words, the Brewers seem to have told us who they’d take in June if given the choice between this theoretical college arm and, say, a high school hitter whose career is much harder to predict.

The Cincinnati Reds have a strong collection of position players, but have remained near the bottom of the NL Central standings as they’ve struggled to develop pitching from within. It seemed likely that they’d add pitching either via trade or free agency this winter in an effort to compete before their core group of hitters begins to decline. After already adding a few minor pieces (Matt Bowman, Robby Scott), the Reds made their biggest splash of the winter so far by acquiring Tanner Roark from the Washington Nationals in exchange for 25-year-old relief prospect Tanner Rainey.

Roark has been a durable part of Washington’s rotation for six years and has thrown 180 or more innings in four of the last five seasons, only failing to do so in 2015 because he was relegated to the bullpen after Max Scherzer’s acquisition and because he was briefly on paternity leave. That quantity of innings drove mid-rotation WAR production during his tenure in D.C., though he has been declining in that regard (3.3 WAR in ’16, 2.5 in ’17, 1.9 in ’18) despite showing very little decline in stuff. Steamer and Depth Charts both project a continued gradual decline (1.5 WAR) in 2019, Roark’s final arbitration year before hitting free agency. Those projection systems assume Roark’s workload will scale back in his age-32 season, and they have him projected to make just 26 starts. Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections expect similar production.

For now, Roark probably slots into the no. 2 spot in the Reds rotation behind Luis Castillo. The Nationals should be able to back fill for Roark with some combination of Joe Ross, Erick Fedde, or perhaps a quick-moving Wil Crowe, to say nothing of what Washington may add via free agency.

For one year of Roark, the Reds sent relief prospect Tanner Rainey to Washington. Rainey has good stuff, with his fastball sitting in the 95-99 range and touching 100, and his upper-80s slider spinning in at an average of 2600 rpm, which is rare for a pitch of that velocity.

Each of those impact pitches theoretically give Rainey a shot to be a late-inning, high-leverage reliever, but his command, which is not great, might force him into a middle-relief role instead. The chance that one of Rainey or Jimmy Cordero — who is similarly talented and similarly flawed — figure things out and become a real late-inning option are pretty fair, and the Nationals have several years to polish Rainey’s talent. That Rainey is leaving a place that has struggled to develop pitching probably helps his chances of getting there.

Rainey was a 40 FV player on our recent Reds prospect list, ranking 18th. He was one of several hard-throwing Reds relief prospects in their mid-20s who are approaching the Majors. They’ve traded from a position of depth to acquire a player of great need, and the short window of team control over Roark would seem to indicate that they’re going to add more pitching in attempt to field a competitive team.

On Tuesday the White Sox acquired 31-year-old veteran strike-thrower Ivan Nova from the Pirates in exchange for 19-year-old Dominican right-hander Yordi Rosario, and $500,000 in international bonus space.

One of the most efficient strike-throwers in baseball, Nova joins a White Sox rotation comprised mostly of young-ish arms who struggle with walks. White Sox starters who threw at least 100 innings last year posted walk rates between 9% (James Shields) and 13% (Hector Santiago), all of which are below average. Nova’s walk rates have hovered in the 4-5% range during each of the last three seasons, the fifth-best rate in baseball during that span. The White Sox seem to have begun adding veteran pieces to a team that has been rebuilding for a while, perhaps with an eye on competing sooner than later in a weak division that has been dominated by a Cleveland club that appears to be focused more on shedding salary than adding premium talent and further separating themselves.

Nova is in the final year of a three-year deal and is set to make about $9 million in 2019. Pittsburgh’s decision to move him was likely motivated by a combination of the desire to shed salary as well as their comparable in-house replacements for the right-hander, who was a 1.1 WAR pitcher in 2018. The Pirates are stocked with several upper-level sinkerballers who should provide a similar quality of performance until promising pitching prospect Mitch Keller, who we ranked no. 2 in the system, is ready for promotion, which will likely be at some point next year.

The Pirates main return was teenage righty Yordi Rosario, who was advanced enough to garner a 2018 mid-summer promotion from the DSL to the AZL. Rosario is one of four young projection arms acquired by Pittsburgh already this offseason, joining Tahnaj Thomas, Dante Mendoza, and Wilkin Ramos, and he shares several traits with them.

Rosario is a spindly 6-foot-2 and has lots of room on his frame for physical growth, which could lead to increased fastball velocity. He repeats a graceful, athletic delivery and throws a lot of strikes with a fastball that currently resides in the 88-92 range and will bump 93 or 94 on occasion. He also has mature feel for an average, 12-6 curveball that has sufficient depth and bite to miss bats against low-level hitters. We had a 35+ FV on Rosario when the season ended and he’ll slot into the same tier on the Pirates list. His reasonable ceiling is that of a no. 4 or 5 starter, unless he grows into better stuff than I anticipate.

The Luis Robert signing late in the 2016-2017 International Free Agent put the White Sox in the bonus penalty box for the two subsequent signing periods. They’re barred from signing prospects for more than $300,000 until July 2 2019, so their international bonus money is arguably best used in trades like this. What Pittsburgh does with that international bonus space before the current signing period ends in June is undetermined. All of the top IFA talents have signed and the Pirates will be competing for the remaining prospects with teams that lost out on the Victor Victor Mesa sweepstakes, especially Baltimore, which still has several million dollars to spend. Pittsburgh has been more active in Asia than most other clubs.