Grichuk, Cron Bound for Angels Reunion as Deadline Rampage Continues

We all knew the Angels were desperate to add at the deadline. How desperate? Well, how desperate would you have to be to call your ex — two of your exes, actually — on a Sunday night?

The Halos continued their deadline restocking process by reacquiring a pair of their former first-round picks, Randal Grichuk and C.J. Cron, from Colorado in exchange for minor league pitchers Jake Madden and Mason Albright. (No, not the former secretary of state, but I’m gonna keep doing a double-take every time I see Albright’s name until well into his big league career.)

Every big league organization has its own special circumstances and cultural idiosyncrasies, but this trade brings together the two teams that have the best claim to being in unique situations. With Shohei Ohtani three months from free agency, the Angels sit four games out of a Wild Card spot with two teams to climb over. They face time pressure unlike anything most franchises have ever experienced. And the Rockies, well, are the Rockies.

I think a good place to start with this trade is to explain what it isn’t. This is not some great leap forward. You could make the argument that adding Lucas Giolito to the rotation fundamentally changes the Angels’ outlook. This trade is about shoring up holes in the dam.

At this point in their careers, both Cron and Grichuk are left-end-of-the-defensive-spectrum guys, which seems like a curious acquisition for a team that needs a DH less than any other on the planet. But each has his own use on a team that can no longer afford to have holes in the lineup, even for a few games.

Let’s start with Cron. Not like anyone who follows the Angels needs me to tell them what Cron is, but he’s an average to slightly above-average hitter who plays a position where the offensive bar is higher than that. Cron made his first All-Star team last year, partially the result of a hot first half (he hit .298/.350/.552 before the break, .197/.263/.341 after), partially because they had to send a Rockie.

This season, Cron is hitting .259/.300/.473, which comes out to a wRC+ of just 91 when you play your home games in Denver, and -0.3 WAR when you’re a first baseman. And because he’s run even platoon splits his entire career, including in 2023, he isn’t really a platoon candidate.

Cron, who’s listed at 6-foot-4, 235 pounds and looks even bigger, can crush the ball when he gets a hold of one; Baseball Savant has him in the 94th percentile for barrel rate and the 91st for xSLG. But the results commensurate with that kind of raw power have never really come.

Cron might be one of those guys who spends two weeks with the right hitting coach and turns into Paul Goldschmidt, but he’s 33 years old and in his 10th big league season; I’d applaud such a development if it happens, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to. Given those considerations and the fact that Cron is a rental, I doubt the Angels are putting much stock in a potential mid-30s breakout either. They need the player Cron is now.

Now, if you’re reading this thinking Cron cuts a faintly underwhelming figure as a deadline savior, I share your skepticism. But get a load of what he’ll be replacing. Here’s every player who’s made at least 15 appearances at first base for the Angels this year:

The fact that five different players have made 15 appearances at first is pretty wild in and of itself, but the results haven’t been good. Thanks mostly to Drury, the Angels’ aggregate performance at the position has been about league average, but things went south when he hurt his shoulder. Adding Cron takes the Angels’ first base situation from dire to meh, and going from dire to meh can make all the difference in the world come playoff time.

Would I start Cron over Drury or Moustakas? Probably not, but every current Angel who’s seen time at first and has shown any signs of life — so, those two and Trey Cabbage, if you want to give the rookie some rope — can be used elsewhere. And with Anthony Rendon hurt, there is no shortage of holes to fill.

The case for Grichuk is a little easier to make: He kills lefties. Since the start of the 2022 season, Grichuk has hit .325/.360/.610 against left-handed pitching, good for a .409 wOBA and a 149 wRC+. This season, he hasn’t been half bad against righties either: .288/.343/.431. Some of that is BABIP- and Coors-fueled, so maybe Grichuk isn’t an ideal everyday starter, but he’s good for the short half of a platoon and a heck of a weapon to bring in off the bench.

Given the injuries and turnover the Orange County club has had to deal with, the idea of a fixed lineup is a bit of an alien concept at this moment in time. But the Angels’ outfield situation has been as follows: Taylor Ward in left, Mickey Moniak in center, Hunter Renfroe in right. At least two of those players have started together in every game since Mike Trout went down; Sunday’s win over Toronto marked just the second game out of the past 15 that Phil Nevin didn’t start that exact outfield trio.

How does Grichuk fit in? Well, Ward is also a right-handed hitter who’s rocking a severe platoon split… and on Saturday he got hit in the head with a pitch and suffered multiple facial fractures. After that gruesome injury, Ward is done for the season, and the Angels have no time to be sentimental. If and when Trout comes back, Grichuk will make a tidy platoon partner for Moniak, who is hitting .354/.384/.669 against right-handed pitching but just .156/.206/.188 against lefties.

This is the end of days for the Angels. You have to take some risks. That’s a good point to bear in mind when considering the fate of poor Madden and Albright. When the Angels’ prospect list went up six weeks ago, they were the no. 7 (40+ FV) and no. 18 (40 FV) prospects in a fairly weak system. Madden, a 6-foot-6 beanpole of a right-hander, has great athleticism and arm strength; given those gifts, he has a lot of upside. Whether the Rockies can coax that upside from him is another question. The good news, if there is any, is that both pitchers are coming from the Angels’ A-ball affiliate at Inland Empire, and the Cal League is one of the few environments you’ll find in American baseball that’s more hostile to pitchers than Coors Field.

Will the Angels look back in a few years and regret not having a pitcher of Madden’s abilities in the system? Probably not, no. Angels GM Perry Minasian is playing the final few dozen turns of a losing game of Civilization V; he is throwing everything he can at contending now, before Ohtani has a chance to leave. If Ohtani leaves the Angels without so much as appearing in the playoffs, this trade is going to be so far down on the list of grievances against Minasian and Arte Moreno that nobody’s even going to remember it.

We don’t run people out of town on rails anymore. If all this goes south, Angels fans might bring the practice back.

As for the Rockies, well, given that the team has struggled to develop pitchers —particularly right-handed power starters, which is what Madden’s ultimate upside is — I would not have targeted low-minors arms in any trade if I were Colorado GM Bill Schmidt. With that said, Grichuk and Cron are both free agents at the end of this season, and the Rockies are 23 games under .500. Getting two actual prospects back is a pretty tidy piece of business. If nothing else, it shows growth from 2022, when an equally doomed Rockies team made zero deals at the deadline.

Veteran hitters on bad teams get moved wholesale at every trade deadline; if Cron and Grichuk weren’t bound for the Angels, they’d probably have been traded somewhere else, and the Angels would’ve found other options for those positions. Most of those trades are relatively inconsequential. They don’t make big headlines. But the fate of an entire franchise rests on this one.