Just one day after they acquired Shane Victorino to sure up their outfield, the Angels brought two more outfielders into the fold in separate deals. First, they acquired David Murphy from the Indians in exchange for infielder Eric Stamets. Minutes later, we learned they also acquired David DeJesus from the Rays for pitcher Eduar Lopez. Here’s the skinny on the prospects the Angels gave up to add these Davids into their outfield mix.

Eric Stamets

Stamets is a glove-first shortstop with very little power to speak of. He’s hit a weak .248/.306/.360 in Double-A this year, which is actually a modest improvement over his .235/.293/.314 showing from the same level last year. Stamets’ one strong suit is that he puts the ball in play quite often. His 10% strikeout rate is among the lowest at the Double-A level. The problem, though, is that those balls in play rarely result in good outcomes. His consistently low ISOs and BABIPs suggest he hits the ball without much authority.

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The Dodgers were known to be in the market for starting pitching, and this morning, it looks like they’ve added an arm to their rotation.

Source: Latos, Morse to Dodgers for prospects. At least one competitive balance pick also to Dodgers. W/ Latos off board Haren still in play

— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubCub) July 29, 2015

Latos always seemed what likely to land with an analytically-inclined club, given his mediocre ERA but solid FIP/xFIP numbers, and his reputation for being a bit of an issue in the clubhouse, so perhaps we should have anticipated LA as a likely destination. What this means for the team’s reported pursuit of Cole Hamels remains to be seen, but the Dodgers probably shouldn’t stop trying to acquire another pitcher, given Brett Anderson’s health track record.

Morse being included in the deal doesn’t make sense from a baseball perspective, given that the Dodgers already have a strong bench that includes a bunch of guys who are better than him, but keep in mind that the Dodgers have been aggressively using their financial resources to buy prospects, and I’d guess that this is just more of that trend continuing; rather than giving up talent to get Latos, perhaps the Dodgers convinced the Marlins to take a nothing return if LA took the remainder of Morse’s contract, which has $3 million left this year and $8 million next year.

In fact, Wittenmyer’s report makes it sound like the Dodgers are actually the ones potentially getting prospects here, with the “at least one competitive balance pick” comment. If the Dodgers are getting multiple picks back with Latos, then adding Morse’s salary might simply be the cost they were willing to pay to do so. And of course, the Marlins seem to be continually more interested in cost reductions than putting a good team on the field, so this would fit their M.O. perfectly.

We’ll have a full write-up of the deal when all the details of the deal are known.

The floodgates are wide open, my friends. The latest trade to come down the pike is between the Phillies and the Nationals. This one has Jonathan Papelbon headed to the Washington Nationals in exchange for 22-year-old pitcher Nicholas Pivetta. Here’s what the data say about Mr. Pivetta and his future.

Pivetta holds a 3.02 ERA and 3.96 FIP through 101 innings this year, with most of those innings coming at the High-A level. The Nationals bumped Pivetta up to Double-A a couple of weeks ago, where he’s gotten shellacked in three starts. Both his ERA and FIP are north of 7.00 through 15 Double-A innings.

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The Royals have struck again. First, they pried Johnny Cueto from the Reds for young arms Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb and Cody Reed. Now they’ve landed Ben Zobrist from the Athletics for two more pitching prospects — Sean Manaea and Aaron Brooks. Awful lot of pitching prospects changing hands these days. Anyway, here’s what the stats say about the young arms headed to Oakland.

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Yesterday, the Angels picked up Shane Victorino to serve as the right-handed portion of an LF platoon, presumably spelling Matt Joyce against left-handers. Today, though, the team imported two left-handed part-time outfielders, making Joyce particularly redundant. In a pair of moves reported at virtually the same time, the Angels have acquired David Murphy from the Indians and David DeJesus from the Rays.

Murphy and DeJesus are basically the same player; both are low-strikeout, gap-power types that provide roughly league average offense and are best used in part-time roles. For his career, Murphy has hit .274/.335/.433, while DeJesus is at .276/.351/.415. DeJesus is the better defender, so I’d guess that he’ll end up splitting left field with Victorino, while Murphy will serve as the strong side of the Angels new DH platoon, sharing time with C.J. Cron.

Certainly, neither of these acquisitions are major upgrades, but simply having decent performances from LF/DH will be big steps up from what the Angels have gotten from those positions this year. With the Angels making a strong run towards a playoff appearance, these marginal gains could end up having an impact in October.

To acquire the pair of platoon outfielders, they sent Eric Stamets to the Indians and Eduar Lopez to the Rays. Neither one was included in Kiley McDaniels write-up of the Angels top 19 prospects, though Stamet did warrant a comment in the others-of-note section. Here’s what Kiley wrote about him in the spring:

SS Eric Stamets – He’s an easy plus defender and runner and he’ll be in Triple-A next year, but the bat is light and there’s very little power, so the upside is utility guy and he may be more of an emergency, glove-first type.

Lopez is a 20 year old who hasn’t made it out of rookie ball yet, and has put up a 5.03 FIP in 33 innings this year. Suffice it to say that he wasn’t likely to appear on any top prospect lists next year either.

So the Angels basically got two decent part-time big leaguers for nothing of real value. These aren’t the sexiest additions of the week, but they should improve an Angels team that needed these upgrades, and they come at essentially no cost.

With the acquisition of Johnny Cueto over the weekend, the Royals got themselves a legitimate #1 starter for the postseason. Today, they’ve reportedly turned their attention to upgrading at second base.

Source: #Royals getting #Athletics’ Zobrist.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 28, 2015

While Ben Zobrist isn’t the defensive asset he was earlier in his career, he remains one of the best hitting middle infielders in baseball, running a 125 wRC+ while posting the lowest strikeout rate of his career. Zobrist might be slowing down in the field, but there was no better way for the Royals to upgrade their offense than by swapping Zobrist in for Omar Infante.

Over the rest of the season, Zobrist projects for about a +1.5 WAR, while the Royals were projected to get just +0.3 WAR out of some combination of Infante, Christian Colon, and Dustin Coleman. Zobrist might spend some time in the outfield as well, but he should add something like one expected win to the Royals ledger over the remainder of the regular season.

Of course, the Royals already have the AL Central all but won, so the marginal value of that win isn’t particularly high. Like Cueto, Zobrist was acquired for what he can do in the postseason, and the team will certainly be significantly stronger with his presence in the line-up instead of Infante.

No precise word on the return yet, but Jeff Passan notes that the A’s are getting “two pitchers”. We’ll have a full post on the trade when the details are known.

For the second time in a span of four days, the Mets have dipped into their surplus of young pitching talent to strengthen their 2015 roster. Over the weekend, they dealt two unremarkable pitching prospects — Rob Whalen and John Gant — to add Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson to their sputtering offense. Last night, they cut a deal with the Athletics for Tyler Clippard. In return, they coughed up another fringy arm in Casey Meisner.

Kiley McDaniel saw the 6-foot-7 righty in person over the weekend and provided a nice little write up (with video!) in a post last night. He concluded that Meisner’s fastball-curveball combination made him a potential league-average (#4) starter. That’s not particularly sexy, but it would be a fine return for 2-3 months of a reliever.

Meisner’s stat line isn’t quite as optimistic. Meisner split the 2015 season between Low-A and High-A, where he’s pitched to a sparkling 2.35 ERA as a 20-year-old. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. His .265 BABIP disguises his unremarkable 3.98 FIP. His 20% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate, meanwhile, are merely average.

As a result, KATOH forecasts Meisner for just 1.6 WAR through age-28, which is actually a notch down from his 2.2 mark following his performance in the New York-Penn League last season. The statistical comps paint a similarly dismal picture.

*Pitchers who have yet to play their age-28 seasons.

Meisner appears to be one of those pitchers whose performance lags behind his stuff. He’s 6-foot-7 and throws a mid-90s fastball, so the ingredients for success are certainly there. So far, however, he hasn’t performed in a way that suggests he has much of a big-league future. At age-20, though, he still has plenty of time to figure things out.

We are in the thick of Trade Deadline Week, and it is exciting. If you are like me, you have activated push notifications on your phone for trade-rumor tweets. There are a lot of moves made this week, specifically on July 31, the non-waiver trade deadline. While we are bogged down by the details and the rumors, I want to present the frequency of trades throughout the year.

Before diving into the graph, let’s look at a little history. Trades were rather restrictive until 1986 when the rules changed to establish the current trade deadline. The trade deadline didn’t have activity level we have come to expect until the 1990s. In 1994-1995, there was a players’ strike that halted play and subsequently many baseball personnel transactions, so I chose 1996 as the starting point for the data set — that is, the first full year of baseball after the strike. All of the trade data is from Pro Sports Transactions. This data set contains the full spectrum of trades, not just major trades. This also includes trades for international signing-bonus slots.

July 31 has an average of 8.3 trades with an exponentially growing lead up to the deadline. I’ve annotated a few time frames within which there are lot of different trades: Spring Training, the non-waiver trade deadline, the postseason roster deadline and the winter meetings.

This is a more detailed version of the graph above, focused on July and August exclusively. The light blue highlights indicate an average greater than one trade per day. July 2 sees a bump in trades, mainly due to international-prospect signings. The August 31 roster deadline has a significant bump, but it has a quarter of the number of trades compared to July 31.

Buy Now

The team that’s scored the most runs in baseball this year just made their offense better by trading Jose Reyes and minor leaguers to the Rockies for Troy Tulowitzki. Ken Rosenthal broke the news, but the full details are not yet available.

Because of the fit, there will be the inevitable questions about further moves — Toronto had been rumored in on most pitchers, and scores more than a half run more than the second-best offense in baseball, and Reyes now seems a poor fit on a rebuilding squad in Colorado — but a second move isn’t required to like this for the Blue Jays.

The game is about getting better, on the run scoring or run prevention side. And if the Jays score six runs a game, they should win more than if they score five and a half. Given that the difference between the yearly outlay for Reyes actually trumps Tulowitzki’s, this deal is even budget neutral. Maybe that’s why Dave Cameron thought it up a while back when he dreamt up some Tulowitzki trades:

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