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On Friday, Cleveland made another move, trading Yonder Alonso, a one-time Carlos Santana replacement, as Alonso has now been replaced by the guy he replaced.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.