Astros Fill Two Pitching Needs in Trade for Aaron Sanchez, Joe Biagini
Just as the clock struck 4 pm Eastern, the Astros completed a significant trade with the Blue Jays, acquiring both right-handed starter Aaron Sanchez and right-handed reliever Joe Biagini in one fell swoop. As first reported by Shi Davidi of Sportsnet, the full deal looks like this:
Astros Receive:
- RHP Joe Biagini
- RHP Aaron Sanchez
Blue Jays Receive:
- OF Derek Fisher
That is quite the haul for the Astros. A trade like this kills two birds with one stone: It allows them to add depth to both the starting rotation and the bullpen, two areas of need.
The Astros’ rotation has been quite good this season, but they have lacked depth, with Brad Peacock (shoulder discomfort), Lance McCullers Jr. (Tommy John surgery), and Corbin Martin (Tommy John surgery again) currently out on the IL, and Collin McHugh relegated to the bullpen after an ineffective start. The minor league options to replace them have had varying degrees of success.
Sanchez will certainly provide depth in the Astros’ rotation, but there is the potential for him to be much more than that. He is now three years removed from his last significant run of success, having battled a combination of injuries and ineffectiveness since 2016. But what remains encouraging about the 27-year-old Sanchez, despite his abysmal 2019 performance, are his underlying metrics. He still possesses a good fastball, though it is currently a few ticks below of what it was pre-injuries. More intriguing is his curveball. The spin rate on the pitch ranks in the 94th percentile, and hitters have been held to just a .273 wOBA (.234 xwOBA) against it, all while whiffing on 37% of swings.
For Houston, the hope is that the coaching staff will be able to leverage Sanchez’s excellent curveball into tangible on-field results. They’ve done it before — it’s worth noting that both Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander feature curveballs with high spin. Sanchez was perhaps the prime change-of-scenery candidate at the 2019 trade deadline, and there’s hardly a better situation in which to land than in Houston.
Sanchez will join a rotation that features the aforementioned Cole and Verlander, but also Wade Miley (4.34 FIP) and the newly-acquired Zack Greinke (we’ll have more on that soon). Should one of these back-end arms falter, or if Sanchez needs to be moved to the bullpen, Jose Urquidy (2.65 FIP) is a solid bet to fill in. He’s been quite solid serving as a stopgap in four July starts. No matter how one breaks it down, the Astros have an elite rotation, and they clearly have their sights set on the World Series behind this group of arms.
With that said, there’s more to baseball than starting pitching, especially in the bullpen-dominated postseason. That’s where Biagini comes into play. The 29-year-old has been a solid-if-unspectacular bullpen arm in Toronto this season, posting a 3.78 ERA and a 4.39 FIP in 50 innings, including today’s performance. The Astros’ bullpen ranks in the top-third of teams in terms of overall value, but their top arm, Ryan Pressly, was just put on the IL with right knee soreness earlier today. They do have other competent arms in their bullpen to bridge the gap to closer Roberto Osuna, but more depth never hurts.
Prior to 2019, Biagini had been a fine reliever, but his strikeout rate has seen a seven-point jump this year. This is likely due to an increase in cutter usage, a pitch that hitters are posting just a .245 wOBA (.261 xwOBA) against. They whiff on nearly 46% of swings against it. Only two pitchers with at least 30 innings have increased their cutter usage more than Biagini. He now throws it 32% of the time, compared to just 16% last season. Clearly, what he’s done has worked, and that made him a very attractive trade option for the Astros.
Stevenson is the third and final piece Houston received in this deal. He’s a 22-year-old outfielder currently playing in High-A, where he has slashed .298/.388/.393 over 390 PA. Prior to the season, Eric and Kiley ranked Stevenson as the Blue Jays’ 33rd-best prospect, noting that his tools “are indicative of a bench outfielder.”
In return for these two high-upside arms and the prospect, the Blue Jays received the 25-year-old Fisher, a former prospect who ranked as high as No. 7 on the Astros’ preseason list in 2017. As Eric wrote at the time:
If he ever starts hitting, he’s a potential star. Fisher is already 23 and it’s unlikely he develops great bat-to-ball skills at this point, but he still projects as a big-league regular of some kind because of the power, patience, and speed.
Due to Houston’s plethora of outfield talent, Fisher fell out of favor on the depth chart and has been limited to just 312 big league plate appearances in three years. In that time, he hasn’t been particularly impressive, either, posting a 77 wRC+ and just 0.2 WAR. He’ll likely be the beneficiary of a significant boost in playing time with Toronto. He’s a year younger than their current center field regular, Teoscar Hernández, and likely has more upside with his speed and power combination. Whether he can develop into something more remains to be seen, but the opportunity to do so is much greater playing for a rebuilding team in the Blue Jays than a contending one in the Astros. For what it is worth, Fisher is hitting .286/.401/.522 (125 wRC+) in 270 Triple-A plate appearances this season, his fourth straight season with at least some time at the minor leagues’ highest level.
This trade makes sense for all involved. The Astros receive a high-upside arm to bolster their rotation and a solid, improved relief arm to provide value in the postseason, while the Blue Jays take a chance on a former prospect who will have the opportunity to prove himself on a rebuilding squad.
Devan Fink is a Contributor at FanGraphs. You can follow him on Twitter @DevanFink.
You guys just sitting on the Greinke deal…or?
That’s a third pitching need
Didn’t Toescar Hernandez also come from Houston? There are worse things, I suppose, then taking farm system extras from the Astros.
That being said, Teoscar does some things that a well-coached player should not do. He swings wildly at pitches from pitchers who are struggling, letting them off the hook. He struggles defensively in LF & RF with eccentric routes to balls, playing flyballs into triples, although he seems OK in CF.
Despite their place in the standings, the Blue Jays seem to do a good job of developing talent for their position players, with farmhands coming up who developed just in its own farm system exhibiting some polish upon arrival. The guys from elsewhere, like Drury, McKinney, Teoscar, the departed Brito, all have issues with wild aggressiveness at the plate and on the basepaths that suggest they were not coached properly.
Another Astros farmhand? Oh joy.
P.S. Didn’t Jays have pitching issues? I thought there was going to be some concentration there.
I’ve been beating the drum on Sanchez to the Astros for a while. The Astros love guys with huge spin rates, good velocity, and who underachieve and Sanchez is a worthwhile gamble for them. Getting him for Derek Fisher, who might not have even made the 40-man for the Astros this winter, is a really big win for them.
As far as the Blue Jays go, argh. That front office is just embarassing when they’re trading pitching at the deadline. Maybe they fix Derek Fisher. Probably not.
Fisher is a good gamble for a Toronto team looking a couple years away from competing. Just put him out in the OF and let him get reps. He has blazing speed, light tower power and will take a walk. If it all clicks for him, look out.
Wish he could have gotten more of a chance with Houston.
It would be a good gamble if it wasn’t an overpay.
Teoscar only cost a few months’ of Liriano last year, but Fisher, who the Astros would also lose anyway, got them a SP with significant potential (former AL ERA leader who was putting it together), a bullpen piece, and an OF prospect with speed and some power.
If you buy a lottery ticket for $1000 and the prize is a $1000, not really a good gamble.
Really curious what the Jays will do with Fisher now. They keep playing all these misfit toys from previous trade bungles (McKinney, Drury (!!!), Teoscar Hernandez) in the OF; now they are going to have to decide either to leave Fisher in the minors (making this move look bad) or send one of the other ones down (making those other moves look bad).
Fun times.
I think you are vastly over valuing the Jays players here. Aaron Sanchez is a sinker baller who relies on contact, has never had great control and seems to have hands made out of tissue paper. Biagini is a solid but unspectacular reliever and Stevenson is a 35 FV “prospect”
In return they got an 26 year old OF who’s floor seems to be 4th OF and has decent upside.
Why is there no mention of Cal Stevenson in this article? Doesnt his addition negate most of the value for Toronto? To be honest I think just Sanchez and Biagini for Fisher was already too much. Yes Sanchez has had a down year but no need to sell at his lowest point. If he moved to the pen earlier his value would have been much higher. But if we say Sanchez + Biagini for Fisher was a fine deal for Toronto then adding Stevenson makes it a bad deal.
Stevenson was added to the deal between when I started writing it and when the trade was announced, so that’s why he was overlooked. Thanks for catching this; there is a blurb in there about him now.
The other thing is that I think there is a rush to state it was a good deal because pretty much everyone who works in baseball is better at this than us, plus the usual concerns about being totally completely wrong make people hedge their bets. So there’s a strong impulse to say that the deal was fair even when, as in this case, it likely was not.
Atkins and Shaprio can’t go soon enough.
Biagini is a low leverage reliever and Sanchez is huge question mark. Meanwhile Fisher seems like a pretty interesting player (he has a .899 OPS in 1000 PAs in AAA with 70 grade speed) who was only in AAA because Houston is stupid deep at OF. yet Jays fans seem to be ready to jump off a cliff about this trade.
Am I missing something?
Fisher’s a 60 raw, 70 speed, 40-everything else guy. Sometimes he dials it in and plays good defense and doesn’t K all the time, the rest of the time he drives you batty because he’s just dripping in physical potential that doesn’t play because he doesn’t et on base.
He’s exactly the kind of player that Toronto should be looking for in a buy-low opportunity but mostly because you can get that kind of guy for close to free. He’s got a couple of different routes to being good–one from his power, another from his defense, but neither one seems all that likely to click. My guess is that he’s got something like a 1-in-10 chance of being better than Drew Stubbs, who seems to be the archetype for the defense-oriented version of this player. I’d rather get a guy like Rogelio Armenteros, or Brandon Bielak, but the Astros almost certainly preferred to trade Fisher because you can never have too many arms and you can definitely have too many outfielders.
I think the Aaron Sanchez thing is weird. His surface level stats look awful, but because of the wacko offensive environment he’s in he’s essentially pitching like a 5th starter. The guy is destined to go back to the bullpen for various reasons, and the fact that the Blue Jays kept running him out there as a starter continues to confuse me. The Astros will probably try to convert him to the bullpen at some point, where he and Pressly will likely be a high-spin-one-two-punch-of-doom.
As an Astros fan, I would have preferred to give up Bielak or Armenteros too, which is why I think people are underestimating Fisher. He’s a MLB starting OF right now on half the teams in the league.
The knock on Fisher has been he K’s too much and hits too many GB to get to his crazy power. I would think the fact that he is running a 23% K%, a reduceds GB% (45%) and increased his LD% (26%) at AAA this year would be a pretty encouraging sign.
It seems like right Fisher’s floor is that of a 4th OF with a pretty decent chance of becoming a regular player. If I was a Jays fan I would be pretty interested in seeing him get MLB at bats.
Hate this trade for the Jays but too many Jays fans overrate the potential returns the team should be getting for marginal pieces. Sanchez literally had one good year, in 2016 and,has been hurt and bad ever since. Maybe Houston fixes him and he becomes something. If anyone can do it they can. Why I hate this trade is not the pieces they gave up, all are pretty minor, it’s that once again they seem to be overvaluing tools and drooling over theoretical upside. Sure, maybe Fisher puts everything together and becomes a star but that’s like a 5% outcome. Seems a strange guy to be chasing for a rebuilding club.
I can’t reconcile how you can say this is a solid deal for both teams when one acquires “a high-upside arm to bolster their rotation and a solid, improved relief arm to provide value in the postseason” and a prospect and the other acquires ” a former prospect who will have the opportunity to prove himself.”
I love the characterization of an arm having knee soreness.