The Rockies Take on Final Boss
The first of what will likely be several Blue Jays players to depart Toronto before the deadline has been traded this evening: right-handed reliever Seung Hwan Oh is headed off to Planet Coors. While the majority of the Blue Jays’ most likely trade candidates — Josh Donaldson, for example, and basically all the starting pitchers — have generally been disappointing this year, Oh was one of the legitimate success stories for Toronto in 2018. Coming off a 4.10 ERA/4.44 FIP campaign in St. Louis, a significant decline from the 1.92 ERA he put during his first season in the United States, Oh signed with the Blue Jays for just one year and $2 million this offseason — with a $2.5 million club option for 2019 after his contract agreement with the Rangers fell through. Oh needs his slider working to have sustained success and, by and large, it’s worked this year.
Burned by bullpens that ranked among the bottom-third of baseball each year from 2014 to -16, the Rockies have spent on relievers recently, an effort which led to the seventh-best reliever WAR among clubs in 2017. The team doubled down last winter, spending $106 million to bring back Jake McGee while adding Wade Davis and Bryan Shaw to replace Greg Holland. These moves worked out less well, to be generous: McGee and Shaw have combined for an ERA well past six, while Wade Davis is in the midst of an unremarkable, though less disastrous, season as the closer. With Nolan Arenado creeping towards free agency, the team’s window to contend is now, so bringing in Oh, who can also help in 2019, is a good add, and one that didn’t require an obscene amount of money. Colorado has more problems, but they did address one of their pressing needs.
Of the players included in the return, first basemen Sean Bouchard and Chad Spanberger, the latter is interesting enough — and probably sufficiently low in the organization’s pecking-order — that I tried to acquire him for the Orioles in exchange for Adam Jones this morning. This is the preferable haul for the Rockies, though. Not likely being able to play outfield professionally — and certainly not in a large outfield like the one Coors possesses — Spanberger is probably limited to first or designated hitter. Simply put, with other first basemen in the system and no DH in most games, he didn’t have a great deal of utility for the Rockies. In Toronto, he’ll have more of an opportunity. The Sally League is a long way from the majors and McCormick Field in Asheville is the second-best home-run park in the league (behind Greensboro), but Spanberger’s shown enough raw power that he merits some attention. For a relief pitcher in whom you’ve only invested a couple of million dollars, that’s good enough.
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.
I have heard Bouchard is not in the deal. Also, wouldn’t it be cool if an elite MLB reliever came out to Raining Blood by Slayer? I’d love to see someone like Jordan Hicks (even if he’s unpolished) or Edwin Diaz come out with that as his walkup song.
The sports media in Toronto is calling this trade a disappointment for the Jays. The TV ratings are terrible, attendance among the worst in baseball, and the Leafs and Raptors are garnering considerably more attention even though it is July! With respect, Szymborski, I don’t think you appreciate how much the current front office is despised by Jays fans. They can’t get by on “good enough.”
13/30 is “among the worst in baseball.” Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
It is when you consider that they were among the top 5 the previous few seasons. That is a massive drop in such a short time.
Not surprising given the drop in baseball players who can hit/throw on the roster
Reasons for the drop: 1) Red Sox have the best record, 2) Yankees have the third best. You’re going up against two juggernauts right now. Are you blaming the front office for failing to take them out of the AL East?
exactly, Boston and NYY being good at the same time has always been a disaster for all other AL east teams- no surprise that it has hurt Toronto this season, on the back end of their mini window.
The Raptors attention is all negative, tbf. Moving DeMar was a trainwreck.
Weird comments, acquiring Leonard was outstanding, not even giving up Anunoby or Siakam. Re-signing VanFleet was another outstanding move. Great offseason in Toronto.
Derozen gave away on defense nearly all that he provided on offense. The majority casual fans are regressives who only see points per game and take the PR nonsense at face value.
This return might make sense if he was a rental but with another year of control at 2m this return is light. 1b “prospect” who’s hitting well in A ball at 22 is just barely holding on to prospect status. Not saying Oh has the track record of Britton but hes pitched better this season, isnt coming off major surgery and had a cheap option at 2m so getting a fraction of the return is disappointing, even the lesser pieces of the Britton trade look like a good bet to have a major league impact whereas the Jays will be lucky if one of these guys sniffs the majors.
The opposite is true.
Oh has 3.6 career WAR in 180 career IPs over ~3 seasons. He’s projected to add 0.2 WAR and 20 IPs for the rest of this year, summing up to 3.8 WAR over 200 IPs. That averages out to about 1.2 WAR over 65 IPs for next year, worth somewhere around $10m. He makes $2m. The surplus value is about $8- and that’s being generous on the $/WAR number, ignoring his age 37 and the fact that nearly all his WAR came from 2016, and ignoring the discount for future production (i.e. next year).
Adding Oh has only a negligible impact on Colorado’s playoff odds, both for this year and next. Merely promoting DJ Johnson would add roughly the same improvement in odds. Colorado is just poor at managing baseball assets.
Spanberger is one of the best assets that the Rockies have had in recent years. They’ve given him up for a small return that helps them very little, while they continue to do bone-headed things (Blackmon in CF for example) that needlessly cost the team more wins than are added by all (or any) of their recent ‘name reliever’ acquisitions.
Saying that the lesser pieces of the Britton trade ‘look a good bet to have major league impact’ is wrong and unsubstantiated. Are you simply taking that from the ‘eye test/traditional scouting’ writeup by Eric? (“Barring something unforeseen, all three of the new Orioles have a probability of contributing at some level in the majors, as all three are upper-level arms with at least playable big-league stuff”).
Dillon Tate is a 24 year old in AA, who has a career K rate under 8. He is unlikely to ever be an average MLB SP, and neither does his profile suggest that he’ll be particularly useful as a reliever. Cody Carroll can at least strike batters out, but his walk rate projects around 5.00, therefore his FIP projects similarly high. He’s at least interesting, and likely the best of this bunch despite Tate having more scout love and pedigree. Rodgers is a soft-tossing 25 year old lefty who struggles to even strike out 7 per 9, he projects for a FIP around 6.00.
Empirically, a package of three pitchers in the high minors, none of whom project to be close to league average, is substantially worse than a pair of position player prospects that posted .400 wOBAs in A ball.
Fangraphs has almost no successful track record of eye test scouting, it’s just a regressive appeal to the broader baseball audience that doesn’t use empiricism. The Kiley/Eric stuff is just ‘back of the napkin’ opinionating (at best), which is then watered-down by consulting the lowest common denominator opinions of the eye testers in the league (which is just conformist surveying). Typically, since their work is based on surveys plus some eye testing, they tend to heavily favor guys who throw hard and have obvious physical tools (i.e. scouting favorites) over high performers: that is to say, their regressive takes are almost straight out of the 90s, and are not particularly close to industry-standard, let alone cutting edge. Fangraphs empirical writers (the Jeffs, Carson, Dan, sometimes Jay), on the other hand, are still cutting-edge and insightful. However, as fangraphs’ broadens their appeal to the ESPN/Fox crowd, these backwards ‘survey and eye test’ takes are extremely popular and keep the clicks coming.
Oh is also 36 years old and despite his improved numbers in Toronto, is still a flyball pitcher who posted a homerun percentage above 10 in 2017.
This is probably the worst conceivable place for a guy where 70% of balls wind up in the air.
I agree that the return seems a bit light for a useful bullpen piece, but I dislike this deal much more for Colorado than for Toronto.
Forrest Wall is supposedly in this deal too.
Just saw this. If that’s the case, then the Blue Jays did fine. While a totally reasonable return for Oh in a vacuum, I still question why the heck Colorado traded for such an extreme flyball pitcher.
Rafael Betancourt was an extreme fly ball pitcher and was arguably the top reliever in the NL during his time in Colorado. Relievers with great stuff and great control depend far less on fielders, so it shouldn’t matter much at all.
Colorado is so bad at making smart baseball moves.
Deal is now Wall, Spangenberg, and PTBNL. Not sure if Bouchard is an option as PTBNL.
I heard that Wall is rule 5 eligible which probably played a role in his inclusion.
Fangraphs will not critique a single ‘trying to compete move,’ no matter how poor. This is a typically bad move for Colorado.
Oh is a 36 year old rental who projects for about 0.2 WAR rest of season. Spandenburg, as Dan has rightly noted, is a very good looking prospect- he’s managed a .408 wOBA in both his pro stops so far (R & A), with almost 600 PAs. He’s a notable asset. Bouchard isn’t a poor asset either, posting wOBAs of .400 and .346 at similar stops (A- & A) and PAs (~560).
Oh is a high quality reliever, but he projects to throw about 20 innings for Colorado. The only shiny part of his profile is his ERA. His projected FIP for rest of season is 3.30. by ZIPS, 3.81 by DepthCharts, and 4.30 by Steamer. Oh has a shiny ERA though: therefore dumb teams can’t resist.
The Rockies bullpen already has 3 relievers projected to as good or better (rest of season) than Oh. Adam Ottavio has racked up 1.8 WAR this year, and projects around ~3.40 FIP rest of season. Scott Oberg and Wade Davis project to add about 0.2 WAR each rest of season. Even Jake McGee is projected for ~4.30 FIP rest-of-season by all three projection systems (no worse than Oh’s Steamer projection): but McGee has a ghastly ERA around 6.00. Overall, Oh looks like a top 5 reliever for the Rockies, who has a decent argument to be their best current reliever, but is also fairly similar to the projections for the other 4. This move doesn’t help Colorado much, and it comes at the price of two quality position player prospects.
The problem with so many of these recent deadline trades is that very few of them move the needle significantly, in part because so many of them are for relievers who project to play very little.
The Rockies have taken just about the least intelligent approach towards relievers of any club in recent years. This Oh trade is just yet-another bad move by Colorado- fueled by overly focusing on ERA. Colorado would be much better served by promoting DJ Johnson into the role now given to Oh- his 13.1/2.7/1.1 rates at AAA being excellent, having a very strong record of low FIPs in the minors.
https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=sa553075&position=P