Friday morning’s three-team, nine-piece trade, which was headlined by Oakland’s acquisition of Jurickson Profar, has obvious implications for the AL West, as a playoff team just added a 25-year-old who posted 2.9 WAR this past season and can play all over the field. But this deal is also a case study in talent churning, and forces us to consider if there’s more eligible international talent out there than we realize. Here’s a rundown of the trade:

Oakland gets:

• Jurickson Profar, INF (from Texas)

Texas gets:

• Brock Burke, LHP (from Tampa Bay)
• Kyle Bird, LHP (from Tampa Bay)
• Yoel Espinal, RHP (from Tampa Bay)
• Eli White, INF (from Oakland)
• $750,000 International Amateur Pool Space (from Oakland)

Tampa Bay gets:

• Emilio Pagan, RHP (from Oakland)
• 2019 Draft Competitive Balance Round A selection, currently pick No. 38 overall (from Oakland)
• Rollie Lacy, RHP (from Texas)

There are so many moving parts in this deal that it might be best to evaluate how the deal balances by looking at additions and subtractions team-by-team, starting with Oakland.

Oakland

In: Jurickson Profar
Out: Emilio Pagan, Eli White, an early draft pick, a pretty large chunk of international pool space

Profar was once an upper echelon prospect, a hyper-advanced wunderkind who looked already looked comfortable and performed against upper-level minor leaguers when he was 17. He was lauded not because he had elite physical skills and was destined for superstardom, but because he was so polished, mature, safe, and competent in every facet of baseball, and he seemed likely to race through the minors and be an above-average big leaguer for a decade or more. He debuted with Texas at age 19, then spent a half decade in prospect limbo due to a myriad of injuries (most significantly, shoulder injuries that caused him to miss almost all of 2013 and 2014), and because Texas’ infield was full of Adrian Beltre, Elvis Andrus and Rougned Odor.

When Profar finally got healthy, he languished in the upper minors and became a vocal malcontent, especially when Texas neglected to call him up in September of 2017, after he had wrapped up a strong 2017 season at Triple-A. It was a transparent manipulation of Profar’s service time.

I collected updated thoughts on Profar in February and the reports were down a bit compared to where they were when he was a proper prospect. Of course, teams were aware of the context of his situation and thought some of the depressed reports were the result of him being aloof and frustrated with his organization, leaving open the possibility that he might break out if given a change of scenery. Instead, 2018 injuries opened up a spot on Texas’ infield, meaning Profar finally got regular big league at-bats, and broke out. He hit .253/.334/.458 with 20 homers, 35 doubles and 10 steals while playing all over the field. He tallied 2.9 WAR.

This Jay Jaffe post provides an exhaustive look at how Profar performed last year, though I think it’s worth adding that there’s a pretty significant disparity between what Baseball Savant expected Profar to slug based on his 2018 batted ball profile (xSLG of .393) and what xStats expected (.430), even though they’re setting out to measure the same thing. Barring a swing change that takes advantage of his bat-to-ball skills, it seems reasonable to expect a little bit of regression from Profar’s power output next year, but he’s still clearly a productive hitter and a versatile, if unspectacular, defender with two years of team control remaining. He’ll replace Jed Lowrie in Oakland and hit the open market in 2021. (Profar projects to be half a win better than Lowrie next year and is not an age-based risk to decline like Lowrie is.) Profar will be 28 when he starts his next contract.

In exchange, Oakland moved four years of control in a middle relief piece (Pagan) and a near-ready bench/utility type (Eli White), and two non-player assets in the draft pick and International pool space. The Brewers traded a similar pick in their deal for reliever Alex Claudio, which will likely result in a prospect who we’d evaluate as a 45 or 40+ FV player. White’s FV is similar. He’s a plus runner who can play all over the field and he has some bat to ball skills, but he probably lacks the power to profile as a true everyday player.

Texas

In: Brock Burke, Eli White, Kyle Bird, Yoel Espinal, $750,000 of International Pool Space
Out: Profar, Rollie Lacy

The Rangers are undergoing a full-scale rebuild and seems unlikely to be competitive during either of Profar’s two remaining arbitration years. Plus, the way they handled him in 2017 may have strained their relationship, making it less likely that he would re-sign with them. They’re also arguably selling high on a player who most of the industry seemed a bit down on before the season, has had injury issues, and whose power output might regress next year. In return they get back a package of quantity more than quality, with Burke and White as the de facto headliners.

Burke had a breakout 2018 (which really may have started in 2017) that ended with a dynamite month and a half at Double-A Montgomery, during which he struck out 71 hitters in 55 innings. He has a plus fastball that sits 91-95 and touches 96 but plays up because Burke creates huge, down-mound extension and has an uncommonly vertical arm slot. Changeup development likely played a role in his breakout, as the pitch was much different last year (82-85mph, at times with cut) than in 2017 (78-80mph), and it’s fair to speculate that something like a grip change took place here. Burke has two breaking balls that are both about average, though he uses the curveball pretty sparingly. He profiles as a No. 4 or 5 starter.

After doing very little in pro ball, White also had a breakout 2018 (albeit at age 24), and hit .306/.388/.450 at Double-A Midland. He then went to the Arizona Fall League, where he was heavily scrutinized by the entire industry. White had only really played shortstop until this year when he began seeing time at second and third base. He fits best at second but is fine at all three spots, and his plus speed might enable him to one day run down balls in the outfield as well. He’s a near-ready, multi-positional utility man who should provide the kind of defensive flexibility teams are starting to prioritize.

Bird is a lefty spin rate monster with four pitches. Last year, his low-80s slider averaged about 2650 rpm, his curveball about 2800, with both marks way above big league average. He sits 90-92 and has below-average command. He’s 25 and projects in middle relief. Espinal throws hard (94-95), and has a weird sinker/power changeup offspeed pitch in the 89-91 range. He doesn’t always clear his front side properly, which causes some of his fastballs to sail on him, but he can also dump his mid-80s slider into the strike zone. He’s 26 and also projects in middle relief, though teams are more certain about Bird’s prospects than Espinal’s because they’re more confident in Bird’s strike-throwing. From a Future Value standpoint, both Burke and White will both be in the 45/40+ area when we write up Texas’ system this offseason (likely slotting them in the 10-15 range of players in that farm), while Bird and Espinal will be in the 40/35+ area, at the back of the list.

It’s hard to say what Texas will do with an extra $750,000 in pool space. There have now been two trades involving pool space in the last week, the other being the Ivan Nova deal. Most big name individual international prospects have signed, but $750,000 is a pretty big chunk of change, and inspired me and colleague Kiley McDaniel to ask around baseball if there’s a player who is either eligible to sign right now or who teams speculate will be eligible before this IFA signing period ends in June. The consensus is that there is not, and that it’s more likely that Texas will spread this bonus money out among several $100,000 – $300,000 talents over the next couple of months.

Tampa Bay

In: Oakland’s Competitive Balance pick, Emilio Pagan, Rollie Lacy
Out: Burke, Bird, Espinal

Tampa Bay is reckoning with the same issue that other teams with deep farm systems have had to deal with: they need to consolidate their overflow of decent upper-level prospects or risk losing them for nothing when they hit minor league free agency or are Rule 5 eligible. Both Bird and Espinal are in their mid-20s, so turning them over into similarly valued assets that they’re not at risk of losing for a while makes a ton of sense. Burke is pretty good but for us, slots behind Brent Honeywell, Brendan McKay, a healthy Jose DeLeon and Anthony Banda, to say nothing of the pitchers already on the Rays big league roster. Essentially flipping him for a pick that should result in a prospect whose FV mirror’s Burke’s (as I posit in the Claudio article linked above) makes sense.

Pagan, now on his third org in three years after he was sent to Oakland in the Ryon Healy trade, immediately steps into the Rays bullpen as a traditional four-seam/slider middle reliever, and Lacy (who Texas acquired from the Cubs in the Cole Hamels deal) is the kind of strike-throwing, changeup arm Tampa Bay likes to horde as they attempt to build another Ryan Yarbrough. He has an upper-80s fastball and scouts have him as a up and down arm, but guys with good changeups like Lacy often outperform scout expectations.

Asset value calculations are tough to do precisely in a situation like this because $/WAR values are not linear, and the 2.5 WAR Profar is projected to generate next year means way more to a competitive team like Oakland than it does to a rebuilding Texas. Craig Edwards has Profar’s surplus value calculated at a combined $37 million over the next two years (his arbitration salary is likely to be low due to a relative lack of playing time, with MLB Trade Rumors projecting him to make $3.4 million), while Oakland gave up about $12 million worth of assets (White at $4 million, a Draft pick at $5 million, Pagan at $2 million, and IFA space of $1.5 mil) to acquire him based on Craig’s methodology. That seems like highway robbery for Oakland, but again, Profar wasn’t generating that kind of revenue on a bad Texas team. This makes it a common sense deal for the Rangers based on where they are on the competitive spectrum, even if it’s painful to part with a good everyday player the organization has been attached to for nearly a decade.

The Cardinals missed the playoffs for the third straight season in 2018, and their bullpen was a major reason why. The unit ranked among the NL’s worst by multiple measures, despite the team’s substantial investment in the ever-volatile reliever free agent market. With little choice but to dive back in, the team has made an even more substantial investment, signing 33-year-old lefty Andrew Miller to a two-year, $25 million deal.

The full details, via The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal:

Both the $12.5 million average annual value and $25 million total are slightly above the two-year, $22 million estimates from Kiley McDaniel and our Top 50 Free Agents crowdsourcing project. From among the handful of reliever deals signed thus far this winter, Miller’s AAV surpasses Jeurys Familia‘s $10 million AAV deal with the Mets. That one is for three years, so it remains the largest, with Miller tied for second in total value with Joe Kelly’s $25 million, three-year deal with the Dodgers. If Miller falls short of 110 appearances — a level he reached in any pair of consecutive seasons from 2013-2017 — across 2019-2020, then his 2021 vesting option becomes a club option with the $2.5 million buyout. According to Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan, Miller had “a number of two-year offers in hand,” but the Cardinals evidently provided enough bells and whistles — not to mention the chance to win — for their offer to stand out.

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The Nationals made one big move to bolster their rotation in signing Patrick Corbin. Soon after, they traded rotation mainstay Tanner Roark to the Reds for a relief prospect in Tanner Rainey. The move was slightly curious for a team that clearly wants to remain in the window of contention; Roark has been a league-average starter for some time now. One week later, the Nationals have their Roark replacement in Anibal Sanchez. A year ago, nobody wanted Sanchez, but some changes to his pitch-mix revived his career, and now the Nationals have rewarded those changes and the upside Sanchez brings over Roark with a two-year deal worth $19 million, as first reported by Anthony Fenech.

Sanchez’s deal also includes up to $4 million in incentives and a $12 million option for 2021, with a $2 million buyout, which is part of the $19 million guarantee. Because it’s the Nationals, there’s also some deferred money, with $2 million from both 2019 and 2020 due in 2021. Back in 2012, Sanchez was coming off two and a half solid years with the Marlins and a half season with the Tigers, averaging 3.6 WAR per season. The Tigers rewarded Sanchez with a five-year, $80 million contract in free agency. Sanchez responded with the best season of his career, posting a 2.39 FIP and a 2.57 ERA en route to six wins above replacement. He followed that season up with a solid, three-win campaign in 2014, though he did have two separate stints on the disabled list. In the final three years of his contract, Sanchez was below average, but did manage to pitch 415.2 innings. For their $80 million, the Tigers received 11.4 WAR, a reasonable outcome even if the performance was front-loaded.

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The reason called strikes exist is that, at a certain point, the game wants hitters to get on with it. If we didn’t have called strikes, hitters could, and almost certainly would, let pitch after pitch in the strike zone sail by, content to wait as long as might be necessary for precisely the right one to arrive. How many pitches would it take before you’d start shouting at the hitter to get the bat off his shoulder and just swing already? 10? 20? 100? No need to find out. Baseball doesn’t have a clock; called strikes serve just as well. You get three pitches in the zone. Three pitches you should be able to do something with. Three pitches, then you’re out, and someone else gets to take their turn.

But of course major league pitches in the zone are still extremely hard to hit. Major league hitters, who become major league hitters, at least in part, by demonstrating a consistent ability to make contact with pitches inside the zone, usually whiff on about one out of every six or seven strikes they swing at. Mike Trout missed about one in every 10 last year. So did 2004 Barry Bonds. Even the very best of the very best miss on pitches inside the zone all the time. Which makes it all the more amazing that Michael Brantley, who is admittedly neither Barry Bonds nor Mike Trout, made contact with 97.3% of the pitches he swung at inside the zone last year. Now, he didn’t swing at pitches in the zone all the time; he was discerning, swinging at 65.8% of those pitches, a number that takes a few pages of the leaderboard to click over to. And not all of the contact he made was necessarily good contact. But it was a lot of contact. Indeed, it was, by a fair margin, the best mark in baseball.

When I first learned this particular fact, which was just a few minutes before I started writing this article, I almost immediately asked myself a question about Michael Brantley that I’m afraid may be rather unfair to the man: What happened on the 2.7% of pitches on which he missed?

Let’s go back to September 1, 2018. That was the day the Cleveland Indians were playing the second game of a three game series against the Tampa Bay Rays in Cleveland, and it was a day — the last of only five such days this year  — on which Michael Brantley swung and missed at more than one strike in a single game. I’d like to focus on the two he missed that day because they emphasize, I think, the utter improbability of not missing that same kind of pitch far more often. Here’s the first one (with some bonus Francisco Lindor):

That’s a good pitch. Blake Snell has a good slider. But it’s not like that pitch was extraordinarily outside the bounds of what big league hitters have to face every day. What Brantley probably should have done is to lay off of it, because the best he was ever going to be able to do was ground the ball weakly to the left side, or maybe pop it over the third baseman’s head and into left field. But that’s easy to say and very hard to do. When the ball comes out of Snell’s hand, it looks like it might end up somewhere just south of Brantley’s left elbow. Instead it ends up just south of the catcher’s left knee. This is part of what makes baseball hard. This is why only mis-identifying a pitch like this 22 times in a given season is, to me, stunning and worth writing about. Here’s another of those 22 pitches–the second Brantley missed that day (this time with bonus Donaldson content):

Here, you can see Brantley sigh a little bit. I’m not sure, but I imagine that’s because this is the same pitch he missed earlier in the game, from the same pitcher. That sigh is him recognizing that he had a whole three innings to think about what Snell did to him last time and he still wasn’t able to prevent it from happening again. That sigh, probably, is him recognizing that Blake Snell is an excellent major league pitcher and life just happens that way sometimes. And it’s the sigh of a man who’s come rather close to perfection in one particular skill in one particular game and has been reminded, if only for a moment, that actual perfection is probably unattainable.

I like baseball for a lot of reasons, but one big one is that its challenges are presented in discrete form, pitch by pitch. Pitches lead to plate appearances, plate appearances lead to outs, outs lead to innings, and innings lead to games. We can break the whole thing down into thousands of tiny moments and consider each moment separately. And players have that many more discrete moments in which to fail or succeed. Michael Brantley failed at one particular thing less often, on a rate basis, than any other player in baseball last year. He approached perfection in something that demands unimaginable skill to do well even once. He missed two pitches on September 1st, 2018, and they were fine pitches to miss. That he saw so many others like them this year and did not miss those is something to be proud of.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance of collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a pitch learned from teammate (and 2018 ballot-mate) Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA.

Lacking the longevity of fellow 2016 Hall of Fame ballot newcomer Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount after receiving a high of 11.1% in three years on the ballot. Nonetheless, his advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

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When last year’s Nationals got around to giving in, one of the players they moved was Daniel Murphy. Near the end of August, Murphy was flipped to the Cubs, who’d put in a claim on Murphy off waivers. It made plenty of sense that the Cubs would’ve had interest. It made less sense that the Rockies didn’t have interest. The Rockies were getting nothing from first base and left field, and compared to the Cubs, they had the higher waiver priority. But Murphy got by, and the rest was history. By which I mean, neither the Cubs nor the Rockies won the World Series. So it goes.

Just a few months ago, then, the Rockies decided Daniel Murphy wasn’t their man. And yet in this month, the Rockies have changed their mind. Yes, I get that circumstances now are different. But anyway, the Rockies have agreed to terms with Murphy on a two-year contract worth $24 million. Somewhat importantly, it sounds like Murphy is going to play first base, instead of second. Ian Desmond will get bumped to the outfield. Earlier, one could only dream of Murphy batting half the time in Coors. Now we’ll all get to see it in reality.

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Episode 848

Jeff Sullivan returns to FanGraphs Audio to reflect on the time spent he and the rest of the FanGraphs staff spent in Las Vegas for the Winter Meetings, discuss a few of the trades and signings that went on there, and also learn just how it is that rodeo cowboys get bulls to buck when they ride them. The answer will disturb you.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hr 4 min play time.)

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A couple days ago, the Angels signed Matt Harvey for a year and $11 million, with a small potential purse of incentives. And now today, the Angels have signed Trevor Cahill for a year and $9 million, with a smaller potential purse of incentives. Cahill is just a year older than Harvey is, and he’s coming off a superior season. But where Harvey threw 155 innings, Cahill threw just 110. And so Harvey’s contract is a little bit better.

As many of you already know, the main issue with Cahill is durability. Over the course of his career, he’s been on the disabled list eight separate times, and he hasn’t thrown 150 major-league innings since 2012. He hasn’t thrown 150 overall innings since 2013. The last two seasons alone, Cahill has dealt with (1) a strained lower back, (2) a strained right shoulder, (3) a right shoulder impingement, (4) a right elbow impingement, (5) a strained right Achilles, and (6) upper back discomfort. Cahill has hardly been the picture of health. It’s why he didn’t receive a multi-year commitment.

And yet, Cahill is only 30. He hasn’t experienced any velocity loss, and he actually throws harder now than he did when he was younger. And it might surprise you to learn that, for all of Cahill’s health issues, he’s never had surgery. Not that I could find a record of, anyway. He’s never had surgery on his shoulder. He’s never had surgery on his elbow. He’s never had surgery on his knee or his hip or his anything else. In this way, Cahill is different from Harvey. And the upside here is easy to spot.

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