Atlanta Acquires Kevin Gausman
The Baltimore Orioles continued their suddenly aggressive rebuild this afternoon, trading Kevin Gausman and an injured Darren O’Day to the Atlanta Braves for a RHP Evan Phillips, INF Jean Carlos Encarnación, C Brett Cumberland, LHP Bruce Zimmermann, and international bonus-slot money. A year ago, the Orioles still thought they were a contender and the Braves were still rebuilding, but with the Braves a half-game out of first in the NL East and Orioles a nearly striking 42 games out in the AL East, those positions have clearly flipped.
Twenty years ago, I’d have been sad to see Kevin Gausman leave Baltimore. But at some point between when I enjoyed baseball as a teenager and enjoyed baseball as someone covering it for a career, my relationship with the game changed. I’m from Baltimore, grew up an Orioles fan, and still identify one, but the truth is, I’m a fan of players before I am a fan of teams. At this point, I’d much rather see Kevin Gausman succeed anywhere else — even with the Yankees — than struggle or even just be a league-average starter as an Oriole, even if someday he were to throw a game for another team that ends an O’s season.
Gausman is not an ace pitcher, though he shows glimpses of it at times, which is why he’s simultaneously maddening and fascinating. He doesn’t throw as hard as he used to, when he’d average 99 mph over full games at times, but he’s also been trying to take a few ticks off his pitches to try and improve his command, which occasionally failed him in 2017. Many, including myself, were hopeful after Gausman’s 9.6 K/9, 3.41 ERA second-half last year (7.7, 5.85 in the first-half), but the same kind of frustrating inconsistency has continued. He still has a mid-90s fastball that can touch something even higher than that, a slider, a splitter that can make hitters look helpless when he’s hitting his locations, and a slider of varying quality.
The FanGraphs Depth Charts have the Braves with the 17th-ranked starting rotation, in terms of rest-of-season projections. While the ZiPS projections are more optimistic, pegging Atlanta at 13th, that’s still a rotation that could use an upgrade. Gausman has the potential to pay off well for Atlanta if the team can figure out what they can do with him that the Orioles never could figure out, similar to the Cubs and Jake Arrieta. With Gausman not set to become a free agent until after the 2020 season, his move to Atlanta could pay off extremely well for the team in the best-case scenario, something you couldn’t say if he were simply a two-month down-the-stretch rental.
More to come from us on the prospects later!
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
You would have been sad to see a 7 year old Gausmann leave Baltimore?
Gausmann was already hitting the mid 50’s at that age.
Not to mention ZiPS had one hell of an aging curve back in the 90’s.
Great haul by the Braves. I’d bet they can help Gausman add a quality 3rd pitch to take him to the next level. As it is, he’s sometimes dominant solely on the basis of that split-change.
On the one hand, I’m not sure how much Gausman really moves the needle for the Braves chances of competing this year; on the other hand they say you can’t have too much pitching and the Braves did not dip into the elite part of their farm to get him. Encarnacion is the only one that provides some possibility of intense regret, and that is still fairly remote at this point.
Probably not a lot. It helps some, though Gausman’s probably a bit too inconsistent to be a *major* addition to the rotation. I think this is the same kind of trade you make in December, it’s just that the O’s were in a trading mood anyway.
Any chance it helps them feel better about dumping Teheran during August?
How much stock do you put in his 4-WAR 2016? Obviously we (as O’s fans) were hoping he’d build on that, but he has put it together for a whole season before, so it’s not all potential.
I’ve warmed to Yusniel Diaz as a prospect, and think the Orioles did really well to get Ortiz for Schoop. This return? Brett Cumberland plus some salary relief and some flotsam is a pretty low return for a cromulent MLB starter.
For a couple of years now, I’ve been of the mindset that Kevin Gausman needed a change of scenery and different input to become, if not dominant, at least consistently dependable. The item that most frequently strikes me about Gausman, is his seeming inability to consistency ‘pound inside’ on left-handed hitters. It’s not prevalent enough to say he consciously avoids it, yet ithere still be an “subconscious” element to this. Let’s see how Atlanta approaches their new starting pitcher, and whether they can find a solution to what ails him. Time for the trusted Dave Wallace and Dom Chiti to get to work.