Mariners and White Sox Swap Former Tampa Bay Rays
While waiting for the main course of a possible Robinson Canó trade, Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto temporarily sated his trade-based appetites by sending relief pitcher Alex Colomé to the White Sox for catcher Omar Narváez.
For the White Sox, this trade, coupled with the rumors of the team’s real interest in some of this year’s top free agents, may imply something about when they see their competitive window opening.
Narváez was essentially the default option for the White Sox after the suprise 80-game suspension of Welington Castillo, stemming from his positive test for high levels of erythropoietin. A former Rule 5 pick from the Tampa Bay Rays, Narváez had been generally considered a defense-first catcher, well off the top prospect lists. But he could get on-base a bit, sort of like another former White Sox prospect, Mark Johnson, enough to make him mildly interesting and he was promoted quickly given that the catchers of interest in the organization were generally behind him chronologically. Narváez proved better than expected, and hit .275/.366/.429 for the White Sox, good for 2.1 WAR in just 322 plate appearances, which created an interesting dilemma for the team.
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | .255 | .332 | .366 | 290 | 30 | 74 | 11 | 0 | 7 | 25 | 33 | 58 | 0 | 94 | -4 | 1.0 |
| 2020 | .255 | .335 | .371 | 275 | 29 | 70 | 11 | 0 | 7 | 24 | 33 | 57 | 0 | 97 | -5 | 0.9 |
| 2021 | .252 | .337 | .359 | 270 | 28 | 68 | 11 | 0 | 6 | 24 | 34 | 56 | 0 | 94 | -6 | 0.7 |
| 2022 | .250 | .332 | .356 | 264 | 27 | 66 | 10 | 0 | 6 | 23 | 32 | 53 | 0 | 92 | -7 | 0.5 |
In the short-term, the White Sox had already invested in Castillo; in the longer-term, Narváez would have considerable pressure from the farm in the form of Zack Collins and Seby Zavala, neither of whom the team has thrown in the towel on as a catcher. Sure, you can keep Narváez around as a defensive caddy or a fallback if neither prospect ends up at catcher in the majors, but is that the best use of a resource? Narváez’s season makes him interesting for a rebuilding team at an earlier stage in the process, like the Mariners, who can afford to give him the at-bats needed to prove 2018’s improvement wasn’t a fluke.
Chicago’s bullpen is very thin at the moment after Nate Jones and Jace Fry, and with them having enough young talent that they could catch lightning in a bottle and compete in 2019 and 2020 (especially in the latter year), a pickup like Colomé for a catcher you might not be able to use as much as is ideal makes for an interesting swap. Colomé’s not an elite reliever, simply a solid one, and I don’t believe that there were any better prospects forthcoming given that the trade that originally brought him to the Mariners only fetched Tommy Romero and Andrew Moore. Even that trade needed Denard Span to make it happen. And if the White Sox don’t compete in either of the next two seasons, it’s an organization that has shown little reluctance to re-gift a relief pitcher.
| Year | W | L | ERA | G | GS | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 6 | 4 | 3.41 | 64 | 0 | 63.3 | 56 | 24 | 6 | 19 | 66 | 126 | 1.4 |
| 2020 | 5 | 3 | 3.39 | 62 | 0 | 61.0 | 54 | 23 | 6 | 19 | 64 | 127 | 1.3 |
The Mariners are clearly entering a rebuilding phase, so they have time to take a long look at Narváez. One thing I ride rebuilding teams for is when they don’t utilize roster spots to learn something useful about players, and there are things to learn when it comes to Narváez. In addition to assessing whether his 2018 122 wRC+ represents skill at the plate that’s here to stay, there are concerns about his defense; by Baseball Prospectus’ catcher defense metrics, he was worth -10.8 framing runs in 2018, after a 2017 that was almost as poor. Figuring out what Seattle has while they have time, before the wins matter as much again, is useful. David Freitas isn’t going to be the catcher when the Mariners are good again, and neither will some stopgap veteran signed to fill out the lineup for a year. If Narváez is good, the Mariners get three additional seasons of him after this one; if Jonathan Lucroy or Nick Hundley or Matt Wieters are good, they just get better paid in next year’s one-year contracts. Either way, it’s going to be a few years before finding playing time for Cal Raleigh, drafted in 2018, theoretically becomes a need.
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.
A Mariners move I like! They shed millions in payroll and exchange an expensive arb2 reliever for a cheap, potential multi-year starter at a position of need. Credit where due, nice move Jerry.
1. Freitas’ Steamer projection is quite aggressive, it actually likes him as an average catcher.
2. ZiPS is a whole WAR more aggressive than Steamer is on Colome. I think I trust the latter on this one.
Some of that is LI, which I don’t believe Steamer uses in projections, but I do.
I think I like this second-best of the Mariners’ deal this offseason, the best being the Zunino trade. This one really comes down to whether you think Narvaez can improve his pitch framing. I think I’m with Dan that it’s worth it to find out. The reason I’m not as big a fan of this trade is because relievers are usually worth more in-season than in the off-season, and maybe they could get someone better if they hung onto him and let him close some games. But I think the Mariners got better value for Colome in this trade than they gave away when they got him, and there’s upside, so I think it was probably worth it.
On the flip side, I do not like this for the White Sox at all. They’re not contending next year, and probably not the year after that. It mostly makes sense if you figure you can trade him at the next deadline, and you think that Narvaez’s defensive issues make him untradeable.
Any chance Sox intend to close Colome and boost his trade value to spin him at deadline? That’s about all I could really imagine, not that they thought they were a pretty good RP away from being contenders again.
How many GMs are still looking at saves over component ratios, velocity and breaking ball spin rate?
Colome’s last three seasons by WAR: 1.1, 1.2, 1.0 (toss out the 1.8 in 2014 since he made a bunch of starts)
He’s a stable late inning arm, although clearly not Chapman, a vintage Miller or even a Hand. He’s not going to return a top 50 prospect.
Still, a 3rd or 4th late inning option in a 90-105 win team’s bullpen is worth more than a few hundredths of a WAR to a prospective postseason team. The $/WAR metric doesn’t accurately reflect what the preseason and especially midseason market is saying about relief pitching, as many writers here have acknowledged.
If Colome posts component ratios more like 2016 (11.28 K/9, 2.38 BB/9) or 2018 (9.53 K/9, 2.78 BB/9) than 2017 (7.83 K/9, 3.11 BB/9), yeah, someone’s going to give them more than a solid 27-year-old backup catcher for him. That potential return is probably worth paying a half season of arb2 Proven Closer (TM) salary for since, as Dan noted, there isn’t a lot in Chicago’s pen anyway.
None of this has anything to do with saves, except for why Colome’s salary is so high in the first place. Seattle is cutting payroll, or they might be wise to pick July prospects over backup catcher, too.
Honestly, I have no idea how much teams put into saves as relevant anymore. But it sure seems they like “proven closers” finishing games when they can.
This is my sense too. I don’t know why, but there is a sense that being a closer is a different position than pitching the 8th inning. I don’t doubt there are a few differences, but I doubt it’s anything as big as some teams make it out.
yeah, but then we see some relievers who can’t seem to nail it down. Hahn and company must surely have memories of the several times they gave Matt Thornton the ninth and he just couldn’t close out the games for them
I should note that Matt Thornton has 27 games in which he either earned save during the 9th or blew a save during the 9th and he saved 22-of-27, which isn’t remotely some unusually horrid ratio (and his inability to handle the role seems to be limited entirely to a single week of a 13-year-career, in which he had four of those five blown saves)
Agree. If you are around the southside you’d be convinced that not only are they getting Machado they are getting Harper….thus Colome is a first rate *available closer.
You’re going to really hate Omar behind the dish. In addition to brutal framing, he can’t block pitches and has a poor arm. Remains to be seen if his 2018 offensive performance is sustainable. Sox flipped Soria for a high-potential BP arm last year, providing a good option if they suck again.
I’m hopeful this is a sigh of other positive moves that will make 2019 a real step toward relevance. However, as always, skeptical of the Sox FO.
I like this move, a lot, for the White Sox. Narvaez had a surprising 2+ WAR season that was largely driven by an ISO of .154 that is completely out of whack with his entire MLB and MiLB track record; his next best figure is an ISO of exactly .100 across 174 PA as a 22-year-old in high A. Note that his K% in the majors has crept up from 12% in a short season in 2016, to 15.3% in 2017, to 20.2% in 2018. Both the 2017 and 2018 K rates are well above just about anything he did in the minors. He’s 27 next year. How much growth potential does this player really have? Add in the framing issues, and you’re looking at a playable backup catcher with on base and decent contact skills, and that makes him much better than most of those, and in the same way, there’s only a legitimate starting catcher here by virtue of how weak the position is at the MLB level right now. 2018 is absolutely the outlier looking at the totality of his track record, and he doesn’t have the legitimate power to justify nearly doubling his typical K% to sell out for it.
Colome, as Dan notes, isn’t going to bring back a Torres or a Sheffield/Frazier at the deadline – he’s just not that tier of relief ace – but I’m not sure I agree with the assertion that better prospects weren’t forthcoming for him. Recently, MLB teams have clearly been valuing midseason reliever adds more than communities like this one have been for years. Today’s playoffs are played with a premium placed on maximizing bullpen matchups and limiting starters’ exposure to a second (lower tier starting pitcher) and third (higher tier) trip through the lineup. Seattle clearly wants to cut payroll since they knew they couldn’t catch up to HOU or even OAK/LAA. I think they’d get a better return by sitting on Colome, but they don’t want to pay him in the meantime, and it turns out they needed a catcher anyway. The White Sox will gladly score a better future value package by flipping Colome in July than, like ZiPS sees, a depreciating asset in Narvaez would return.
Narvaez HR/FB% by year:
2009 (R): 0
2010 (R): 3.1
2011 (R): 0
2012 (R): 2.4
2013 (A-): 0
2014 (A, A+): 0, 7.1
2015 (A+): 1.2
2016 (AA, AAA): 0, 5.4
2016 (MLB): 3.6
2017 (MLB): 3.4
2018 (MLB): 14.5
No giant changes to his batted ball profile. More hard%, more K%, that’s about it.
One of these things is not like the others!
Ya that 0 in R stands out (twice)
Good analysis. I think the market for non-elite closers or multi-inning relievers is actually weakening since there seems to be a great supply of them. Soria returning only an FV40 like Kodi Medeiros at the ASB is one example. Colome has 1 more year of control than Soria, but I wouldn’t expect a flip return of much more than Narvaez. One might ask that if the WSox like Colome, why not just re-sign Soria?
The White Sox must have a catching acquisition (Grandal?) on the way since neither Zack Collins’ glove nor bat are major-league ready and his ultimate position might be 1B.
The White Sox get Castillo back this year (that’s why Narvaez got to start in the first place).
A rebuilding team is going to pick Medeiros over Narvaez ten times out of ten. The difference between a 2020 playoff berth and a disappointing season isn’t the backup catcher, and it’s an afterthought of a roster spot for many. It’s a good point that there *are* some recent cases to point to to support Dan’s (and yours) assertion that there may not be better prospects on the way at the deadline if you sit on Colome, pay him 3-4m, and move him in July.
Chicago probably isn’t quite ready yet as the position player pool is kind of a mess with a ton of variance baked in (even among the established vets, Abreu and A. Garcia). But if you think of them like a rebuilder still, as I do, grabbing a high minors setup arm (e.g. Medeiros) is very preferable to Narvaez going back to the bench and losing value with regression and behind Castillo, because you’re probably not getting a whole lot for 2019 Narvaez, certainly not a high minors setup arm.
Same, sold high on a mediocre defensive C, and got a good RP with upside.
DiPoto has this bad habit of trading away talent for mediocre players. He got lucky last season, which, unfortunately for Mariners fans, probably extended his tenure in Seattle.
It’s frustrating to see other teams poach front office talent from Houston and other analytically-minded teams, while the Mariners keep sucking.
Good trade from Chicago’s point of view imo. Most likely they’re selling high on Narvaez, they needed a reliever or three that weren’t young guys. If they contend for a wild card spot, or maybe even the division with the AL Central being so weak, with the potential addition of big FAs plus young players’ growth, then Colome is a solid, dependable option. If they don’t contend this year, then Colome gets flipped at the deadline, probably for a better prospect than what Narvaez would have brought back.
The CHW bullpen isn’t quite ‘thin’ per se, it’s more that it’s very young. Besides Fry, who was excellent last year, there’s Aaron Bummer (25y/o, L, 2.40/2.83 FIP/xFIP in 31.2 IP), September callups/closer prospects Ian Hamilton (23, R, not good in 8IP) and Ryan Burr (24, R, not good in 9.2 IP), and a dozen or so guys (Thyago Vieria, Jose Ruiz, Carson Fulmer, etc.) in AA, AAA, and the majors that mostly fall into the categories of “has good stuff but doesn’t really know where it’s going” or “disappointing as a starter prospect, about to be moved to bullpen”. There’s also Zack Burdi, who was an elite relief prospect before blowing out his elbow mid 2017 and will be at full health next year.
tl;dr, the 2019 bullpen for CHW will involve a decent amount of throwing a bunch of young guys or young-ish reclamation projects at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Rays rule the MLB
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R.E.A.M.??
R.R.E.A.M.
When considering the framing, Narvaez’s defense has been so brutally bad it’s almost inconceivable that he could hit well enough to make up for it. I can see why a team would want to take a look at him, though, especially if they’re skeptical of the framing metrics or think they know how to teach a guy to improve. I also like it from the White Sox’s perspective because they weren’t going to give a ton of reps to Narvaez and Colome is a surer bet even if the upside is lower due to position/control/cost.