Cardinals Trade Tommy Pham to Rays
(Photo: Charles Edward Miller)
In somewhat of a surprise move, the Cardinals have traded outfielder Tommy Pham this morning. In somewhat of another surprise, the team acquiring Pham hasn’t added him for the purposes of contending this season. While the Tampa Bay Rays haven’t been mathematically eliminated from a place in the playoffs, their chances of earning even a Wild Card berth are effectively zero at this point. Pham has value to the organization beyond 2018, though.
Even as rumors continue to circle around Chris Archer, the Rays have added a much needed outfielder not only for the remainder of the season, but also for the future. In trading away Pham, the Cardinals appear to be receiving multiple minor-league depth pieces.
Rays receive:
- Tommy Pham
- $500K international bonus-pool money
Cardinals receive:
- OF Justin Williams
- LHP Genesis Cabrera
- RHP Roel Ramirez
In 2017, Pham overcame a lengthy injury history and a chronic eye condition to put up a .306/.411/.520 line with a 148 wRC+ and 6.1 WAR after spending the first month of the season in the minors. This year hasn’t been as good for Pham. He was installed as the starting center fielder, but his batting line hasn’t carried over. He’s recorded a .248/.331/.399 line that, after accounting for park and league, is essentially average. That said, his .369 xwOBA, per Baseball Savant, indicates a lot of Pham’s troubles are bad luck and that the quality of contact has still been good. The projections seem to agree: Pham is expected to put up a 114 wRC+ the rest of the way.
Pham is 30 years old but won’t be arbitration-eligible until after this season, keeping his salary in line with the Rays’ desires. Pham’s bat should play in a corner-outfield spot, and his defense should be above-average there as Tampa readies itself for next season.
Of the three prospects the Cardinals are receiving, Williams was ranked the highest among Rays at No. 17 heading into the season. He put up impressive numbers while repeating Double-A in 2017, but the 22-year-old hasn’t had the same success in Triple-A this year. Cabrera is a 21-year-old lefty starter in Double-A who has a good fastball and put up decent numbers this season. Roel Ramirez is a righty reliever striking out 27% of batters in Double-A. The trade should open up more playing time in St. Louis for two young players: Harrison Bader, who has shown a lot of promise defensively with an inconsistent bat (particularly against righties), and Tyler O’Neill, who has 29 homers in 307 plate appearances between Triple-A and the big leagues.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
But why though?
I saw a throwaway line today that Pham has said some things that management didn’t like. There was an offseason piece where Pham said he was less than thrilled at being held in the minors so long and he also was unhappy that the Cardinals didn’t reward him with a big deal after last year’s breakout.
He did say some things! Specifically, he said these things: “Early in 2014, after being leapfrogged by better-regarded prospects such as Randal Grichuk, Stephen Piscotty and Oscar Taveras, Pham says he called Gary LaRocque, the Cardinals’ farm director, and demanded his release. “I said, ‘You know what, I’m the best mother—— on this team, and you guys don’t even know it,’” he recalls. “I said those exact words. They told me things happen, I’ll get some at bats. I just had to wear it.”
SI talked with him for a good article. Search and you’ll find
So they traded him four years later for peanuts? Not even almonds or cashew nuts. Peanuts.
Pham’s got an interesting story, and one has to admire (or at least pay attention to) a guy who brushes off a batting cage injury by saying it didn’t hurt as bad as when his dad stabbed him. Still, Pham’s version of his story just typically leaves out how much his development was sidetracked by constant injuries.
And some of the things management probably doesn’t like about Pham is what he says about management, but he also says stuff about his teammates. And it appears that the front office has decided to put Bader in CF and moving him to a corner time-share, which he probably wouldn’t take well.
He should be. The way that the Cardinals have treated him in the past few years is absolutely criminal.
You mean, making him earn playing time and then not extending a 30 year old flash in the pan, and eventually trading him for younger pieces who probably will be worth a higher WAR moving forward to a time when they will compete again?
I think the Cards have shown this year that they have been a **** sandwich for a while now. BTW, who has produced better – Pham, Piscotty or Grichuk? Think Pham may have had a point.
That’s an understatement. He’s been blackballed by the Cards for years and only surfaced last year when the Matt Adams to LF experiment failed. The never saw as more than a platoon bat, and he voiced that this year. Surprised nobody ever ran a “Free Pham” campaign, but I guess they were too busy watching Dexter.
Who keeps down voting these comments saying the Cards haven’t treated Pham well? I bet it’s Cards fans.
JC its gotta be. The dude has equalled or outperformed every “highly regarded prospect” when he got the chance. I like watching Piscotty rn but Pham even in a down year has just vindicated himself over and over. This team is a shitshow rn.
Why would the Cardinals want to make this move now instead of in the offseason?
because they want PAs for bader and o’neill the rest of this year, to help them get a better sense of what they have in the outfield going into the offseason.
That, and they risk more injuries and they have an outside chance of competing this season with the re-tooling.
This feels like an awfully lite return for the Cards, especially including the int. pool money.
The Cards are prohibited from spending over $300k on intl. players this year. The pool money has no value to them other than as a trading chip. I agree the return feels light though.
They could still sign a bunch of low bonus guys
Right but they didn’t get much for that trading chip.
Pham is an interesting player and psyche. The Cards need to clear OF room for youngsters and Pham was probably the easiest to move. Now, hopefully Ozuna and Martinez follow. Fowler is probably untradeable w/o eating half his contract.
Yeah, but Bader and O’Neill really aren’t that good.
I like Bader if he can become a more disciplined batter but this trade still makes no sense to get pennies on the dollar to free up playing time
What’s wrong with trading Fowler and eating half his contract? Is it better to play him or not play him and eat all of his contract?
I don’t think anyone would want Dexter, even if Cards ate half of it.
Yes the rays have zero chance, they have to move past 2 teams to make the wild card.
Yet EVERYONE thinks the Nats can still contend and they have to jump 6 teams. logic
The Nats only have to jump 2 to win the division.
The Rays are 21 games out of the division and 10 out of the wild card. The Nats are 5.5 back in their division. logic.
OR:
The Nationals are about 20 times more likely to win the World Series than the Rays are to make the playoffs as of today. logic.
Math is hard for you, huh?
1. The Rays are 10 games back, the Nationals are 5.5. That, um, matters.
2. The Nationals only need to jump two teams (Philadelphia and Atlanta), not six. And they would get a NLDS spot, not a WC.
Logic indeed.
Also there’s an article on this blog, dated today, that says the Nationals should sell because they’re unlikely to contend.
Rays playoff probability – 0.1%
Nationals playoff probability – 40.9%
Nationals are only 5 back of a playoff chance.
The Rays are almost 10
Usually don’t see sell-low deals like this. Very underwhelming return for a controllable player.
Have to wonder if his degenerative eye disease is worsening. He’s hit like .200 over his last 50+ games.
Wouldn’t you think the Rays would have checked that out before making this deal?
But with a xWhoaBa of .369, so that seems unlikely.
And he is 9th in MLB in hard %
HIs batted ball profile and xwOBA indicate otherwise – inline with last year.
This is a puzzling move. As a Brewers fan, I really like it! But I’ll bet my friends who are Cardinals fans are not so enthused.
There’s already a 1984-style minor rewriting of history going on by people who are clearly desperate for a job with the Cardinals front office. He was never that good, last year was a fluke, the Rays’ 14 and 25 prospects are actually really good, etc. I am so bored with internet baseball people.
you are in the wrong place, then?
I’m not desperate for a job there. I work at UPS, my work environment is toxic enough.
The rays have a good system but this deal will ultimately haunt them
It’s like someone read the “Let’s Trade Matt Carpenter” article, and decided to do it, but smaller!
…how did another team not offer more?
i’m surprised, too, but apparently nobody did. hard to believe they didn’t also have offers out from cleveland, arizona, etc. — but they picked this one.
could be they’re higher on the guys they got than the public, could be they’re lower on pham (his eye condition isn’t stable, so there’s the possibility of important non-public information), and of course it’s possible they just screwed up. no real way to know.
Indians or Phillies especially
EDIT: Indians just picked up Leonys Martin, for less than the Rays traded so I guess they preferred that.
Yes, but I would strongly prefer Willi Castro over any of the guys the Cards received in that deal. Maybe the Cards don’t like Castro? I am pretty baffled by this too.
Even over all three of them? I don’t have a strong opinion.
Probably not, but I prefer him over Justin Williams, who is definitely the centerpiece of the deal. If Cleveland threw in almost any FV40 and a lottery ticket in their system, I prefer the one headlined by Castro over Williams.
Well, Castro is 21 in AA.
He was a solid bat in High A last year.
Tigers made out like a bandit considering what they flipped.
Castro is decent but struggling at AA last I checked. Still 21 and a decent prospect but he probably isn’t anymore than a late summer call up in 2020 at the earliest but most likely is 5-6 years away and they’re deep at SS.
Martin is a platoon dream for Tito and good team control
There’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know if the Indians preferred Martin to Pham (although he forms a nice platoon with Davis). We also don’t know how quickly this happened/league knowledge of Pham on the block
Pham is 30, has a degenerative eye condition, and also has a laundry list of other injuries in his past (that were a big part of the reason that he didn’t make it to the majors until his late 20’s).
I do tend to think that, going forward, he’s an approximately 3 WAR player with 5+ WAR upside. I will argue that Pham has a pretty big “market for lemons” problem (even more than minor league prospects do), meaning that the very fact that the Cardinals are making him available in a trade would cause me to think hard about whether I should downgrade my mean expectation for him.
It seems pretty obvious that Pham was not someone that management liked, based on the way they sort of jerked him around this year, then this as well.
The Cards have always jerked him around and promoted and played lesser players ahead of him. I wish Pham luck, he’s had a hard life.
Find that SI article about him if you can. It explains everything.
Before 2016 the guy literally could never stay on the field. The Matt Adams thing was without question a complete embarrassment, but to say he was always jerked around by the Cardinals ignores 10 years of Pham consistently struggling to stay off the DL.
It is not just Pham.
Pham, Grichuck and Piscotty could have been a solid outfield unit.
Grichuck was clearly not speaking just for himself when he criticized the team’s handling of players.
Pham must of been an eye witness to what went down with the Astros emails
In that case trading him would be beyond stupid. Much harder to claim attorney-client privilege over a former employee.
He probably wouldn’t have actually seen anything though
Like everyone else, I think this is a totally weird move. I get it from the Rays’ perspective. For a bunch of guys who were going to be exposed to the Rule 5 draft and weren’t in their plans, they bought low on a guy who put up 6 fWAR last year. I don’t like how he fits in RF, but they upgraded so much on talent it’s hard to ding them for it.
But if this was the only thing they could get for him, I would have rather have just held Pham. If they want to win in the next few years, he’s probably on the same level as Ozuna (similar projections) and (I think) comes with two more years of team control. And he’s cheaper. Surely they could have gotten this type of a deal by trading Ozuna instead of Pham. Maybe even better.
The bonus money makes it a great trade for the rays. The give up a 45 and two 40s, the latter two they might already get back with the 500k in the next signing period. This makes the impact on the farm minimal
Gensesis Cabrera…wow what a cool name. Sorry just had to say it.
definitely adding to the “star wars extended universe or southern league?” quiz
Based on his Numbers, I’m not surprised the Rays are ok with letting Genesis make his Exodus from their organization.
Why did you have to?
Pham’s OBP is .331, not .303?
yes. fixed.
This move is curious to me. I know Pham has his own unique circumstances, but I’d be interested to see all players who put up 6.0 to 6.5 WAR in their age 29 season (maybe even after never previously putting up 3 WAR in any prior years) and then what their WAR was the next 3 years. I wouldn’t think a 6 WAR season would be a fluke, maybe his eyes have been giving him issues again this year and the team couldn’t figure it out? Or the attitude/tension was that bad?
It’s entirely possible that no contending team wanted to risk taking on a player with a perhaps undeserved but certainly widely known reputation as being difficult. Most of the moves contending teams make are intended to add a win or two without upsetting the apple cart.
Also, it’s very possible that Tyler O’Neill outperforms Pham both for the rest of this year and going forward. This organization (affinity for Mike Matheny aside) generally isn’t stupid.
Cards have so much toxicity right now, why not dump someone who is obviously not happy and never really part of the plans, even if it is just for future trade parts? Pham was always an afterthought despite raking at AAA for 3 years… just never seen as more than a gritty platoon bat. Tampa thrives off late bloomers (Wendle this year, Souza, Morrison, Guyer, Zobrist, Joyce past)
Pham is over 30 already and looked like a fluke coming off last year. He has continued to get worse as season has gone on. I am surprised how many of you think the return is lite. It seems like they got a kid who can maybe contribute to bullpen soon (Ramierez), one who can a little later (Cabrera, though he might get a shot to stay starting) and a possible “reclamation project” for the OF where they are still starting Dexter Fowler regularly. I don’t know, maybe I am underrating Pham, but he doesn’t seem likely to matter to the next competitive STL team.
You might underrate him slightly, but I’m with you. Even that said, outside of his performance, the organization is clearly set on cleaning house and getting a fresh start in that clubhouse.
seems like getting rid of Bud Norris would be a good start if they are trying to get a fresh start in the clubhouse
Pham has 9.5 war over 1284 PA’s. (4.4 WAR/600)
Even if you ignore last season, 3.4 war over 754 PAs (2.7 WAR/600) is a well above average player.
Not to mention he has three additional years of control time where arbitration isn’t likely to award him much.
His trade value should be comparable to, if not higher than, Ozuna last offseason.
Controllable trumps age? 3 years is a big difference – Ozuna in his prime vs. Pham already on the other side of 30.
I think if anything, the Cardinals got more than I’d have expected. He’s also a poor defensive CF, has struggled with multiple injuries, and din’t hit a lick when actually given a shot in 16 before taking it by storm in 17. He looks more like he should this year and I’m not sure who bets on 30 year old one year wonders. You’re looking at gambling on a LF with career contact trouble and a worrisome injury history.
This doesn’t look like amazing return on the surface, but the Cards have been good at jettisoning guys at the right time lately. They did it with Allen Craig, Piscotty, and Grichuk. They weren’t sentimental with Matt Adams, Jaime Garcia, Holliday, Beltran, Leake, or Lance Lynn either. It seems like this FO knows when it’s time to let guys go. Maybe Pham bounces back to a 4-5 WAR pace, or maybe he slows down quickly in his 30s, esp given his past injuries and bad eyes. If he’s a 2-3 WAR guy then he’s probably redundant on this team moving forward, even if he has value to another org.
But it’s hard for me to think about this in isolation. Take all of the Cards’ recent moves together — DFA Holland and Lyons + trade Voit, Tuivalala, Mercado, and Pham — and it seems like they’re trying to get younger, clean up the 40-man roster (which had gotten clogged with redundant players), and install relievers with options left (unlike Lyons and Tui) to keep the shuttle going. Meanwhile, they installed a guy who has been working on developing young talent in the organization for over a decade as manager to replace Matheny. Shildt has a clear project now.
A lot of this just looks like roster management, but I’m not sure whether the MLB team is better or worse after all of these moves. A lot depends on how O’Neill and Bader perform, along with some of the younger guys they’re throwing into the bullpen, and some of those guys couldn’t’ve gotten chances given the state of the 40-man a few days ago. They also have some Rule 5 decisions coming up this offseason. Even after all this they’ll have to make some more moves to make the numbers work (e.g. they probably can’t keep all of Gyorko, Wong, Munoz, and Garcia, plus Schrock will have to be protected or exposed to Rule 5). These moves help, and it looks like they got a few top-10 org guys too.
If they believe in O’Neill and Bader (and/or Adolis Garcia or Arozarena) then Mercado plus at least one other OF wouldn’t have a role. Pham was probably the easiest to move for any decent return at the moment. If they believe Carp and J Martinez will both still be good for the next competitive team then Voit had no role, just as Adams didn’t before him.
So yeah, not a great return on the surface, but it makes sense in the context of the broader project.
Maybe the current version of the Cards just isn’t as good at developing players as their reputation says.
That’s a strange thing to conclude from the roster, farm system, and where they’ve drafted for the past 15 years. They haven’t had a top-10 pick since JD Drew 20 years ago, yet still keep churning out so many average-or-better players that several of them per year are redundant. I don’t see too many other organizations doing that. They’ve had only one sub-.500 season this millennium, and have won at least 86 games in nine of the past ten seasons (altho not last year and probably not this year). That indicates pretty solid player development, considering their draft position and that they’ve had a middle-third payroll for almost that entire time.
What they’ve been less good at is developing consistent 4+ win players, but that’s really hard to do when you don’t ever draft high. They pulled Carpenter out of nowhere. Had Pham not been injured so much he could’ve been another. Carlos Martinez is close to that level but not quite. Maybe DeJong gets there. Alex Reyes was supposed to be but got hurt. Tavares was supposed to be but died. That’s unlucky. Then they’ve had an ocean of 2-3 win guys that they developed: Jay, Craig, Wacha, Piscotty, Grichuk, Wong, Lynn, Garcia, Adams, Pham.
Those who left the org didn’t get any better (Marco Gonzales is the exception, but he was hurt almost the entire time he was with the Cards). Now it’s the turn for O’Neill, Bader, Weaver, Flaherty, etc. Maybe a few of those guys pan out. They all look average-ish at worst. Or maybe they keep the 2-3 win treadmill going.
Pham was on the 2017 FG Trade Value list, honorable mention. That’s quite a fall.