The Marlins are having another firesale. Their most recent now-for-future trade sent Marcell Ozuna to St. Louis in return for four players, with hard-thrower Sandy Alcantara and fast-runner Magneuris Sierra as the primary pieces coming back. Eric likes both enough to give them 50 FV grades, as their carrying tools make it likely they’ll be MLB players in some form, and if they make any kind of strides, they could become impact players in Miami.

Up front, I will say that I’m not a huge fan of these kinds of bets. Alcantara is arm strength without performance, which is the basic profile of every guy who got taken in the Rule 5 draft this morning. Sierra is extremely fast but isn’t yet clearly an elite defender, so the questions about his bat are problematic. And while I understand that he was 21 last year, began the year in A-ball, and probably shouldn’t have faced MLB competition at that point in his development, I would like to present some very-small-sample Statcast numbers that are kind of scary.

500 players put at least 40 tracked balls in play last year. 497 of them hit their fly balls and line drives harder than Magneuris Sierra. The two that didn’t were pitchers, and not just any pitchers; two of the worst-hitting pitchers alive. Dickey has a career wRC+ of -4. Gonzalez has a career wRC+ of -36. These are the guys who hit the ball in the air like Magneuris Sierra just hit the ball in the air.

Jeff often talks about how looking at what a player does even once can show that the ability is there, if not the consistency. By looking at max distance, perhaps we can see something about what a hitter is currently capable of offensively, even in limited samples. Magneuris Sierra hit a ball no further than 331 feet. Six of the seven guys below that total were pitchers; the other one is basically out of baseball.

And if you’re wondering if this arbitrary cutoff just excludes a bunch of other big league hitters in the mid-330s, well, nope. After Sierra is Gio Gonzalez again (333 feet), then Marco Hernandez (341), then Kenta Maeda (348), then Travis Jankowski (351). Sierra was 20 feet short of the mark put up by an elite speed/defense guy who couldn’t hit well enough to stay in the big leagues.

Same idea as the max distance, but EV would give him credit for hitting it hard even if he hit it on the ground. Some guys just need launch angle changes, after all, so if he was hitting hard ground balls, that’s worth knowing. But, again, nope.

It’s five pitchers and Ronald Torreyes in Sierra’s territory. Torreyes is a utility infielder who is hanging around because he makes a lot of contact. Sierra doesn’t even really do that.

So, yeah. Magneuris Sierra is 21. These samples are tiny. Guys develop. He’s fast and might turn into an elite defender. There are lots of caveats here.

But if it’s me, and I’m trading a guy like Marcell Ozuna, I want some real stuff in return. Given what he just did in the Majors, I think it’s fair to wonder if he just falls outside the barrier of Major League offensive quality. Running is great, but Terrance Gore isn’t really a big leaguer. And if I’m the Marlins, I’d be pretty worried that I just traded for the next Terrance Gore.

Now armed with Shohei Ohtani, things have changed for the Angels. It was clear coming into the offseason that the team could use some help at second base. But with Ohtani in the fold, there’s been some extra urgency, as it’s become much easier to see the Angels making a charge for the playoffs. Earlier on Wednesday, according to our projections and depth charts, the Angels’ second-base situation was tied for the worst in the game. To address that, they’ve traded with the team that was ranked in eighth. The move:

Angels get:

• Ian Kinsler

Tigers get:

• Wilkel Hernandez
• Troy Montgomery

Hernandez is 18; he’s a lottery ticket. Montgomery is 23; he’s also a lottery ticket. Neither is a premium prospect, by any stretch of the word. The Tigers were never going to extract a high price for a guy in his mid-30s entering his walk year. Kinsler did just see his WAR drop by more than three wins. That, though, probably overstates the reality of what happened. And Kinsler seems like a solid upgrade for a team attempting to get a firm grip on one of the wild cards.

Over the past three seasons, Kinsler has seen his wOBA go from .335 to .356 to .313. When you see something like that for a 35-year-old, you get worried that maybe the wheels are coming off. And yet, by expected wOBA, Kinsler has gone from .314 to .328 to .326. There’s no difference at all between 2016 and 2017, and he looks the same by his contact rate. Kinsler didn’t lose his bat-to-ball skills. He didn’t lose any exit velocity. Kinsler, surely, isn’t at his peak, but it doesn’t seem like he’s coming off a major decline. He’s something like a league-average hitter. He does a little bit of everything across the board.

And then, in the field, over the past three seasons, Kinsler has rated as the best defensive second baseman by DRS. He ranks as the fourth-best defensive second baseman by UZR. He was strong again in 2017, and while I’ll concede that the defensive metrics can miss something with defensive alignments no longer so traditional, Kinsler would appear to be a plus in the field. He’ll even still steal the occasional base. Kinsler hasn’t been a sub-2 WAR player since debuting in 2006.

Kinsler isn’t going to last forever, and he’ll never be mistaken for a Jose Altuve, but for a modest cost, the Angels probably just got better by a couple of wins. And they should have the flexibility to do something at third base or in the bullpen, if they can’t address both. Only a month or two ago, the Angels seemed like they were trapped in between. Now they look like the fourth- or fifth-best team in the American League, with an expanding gap between the haves and the have-nots. Sure, it might not have worked without Ohtani. But Ohtani has landed. He’s on the Angels, and he’s made the picture all the more rosy. Thanks in part to Ohtani, a move like adding Kinsler could push the club into a playoff spot. Billy Eppler is rather enjoying this holiday season.

After being rejected by Giancarlo Stanton, the Cardinals continued down the list of items available in what is becoming a Marlins’ firesale and have reportedly come to an agreement on a deal to acquire Marcell Ozuna.

Ozuna to Cardinals is done

— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) December 13, 2017

While the return has not been confirmed, it’s thought that the Cardinals are going to surrender two of their better pitching prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

The run on relievers is officially underway. The latest one to sign is Anthony Swarzak, who’s getting $14 million and two years from the Mets. Like, say, Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, Swarzak wasn’t that highly thought of a year ago. Then he was great. There’s no other way around it, and, while every front-office executive would tell you they want to find the next Anthony Swarzak, or Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, you can’t very well not sign a guy who just did what Swarzak did for the White Sox and the Brewers.

Swarzak is 32 years old, and through 2016, his career WAR was 1.2, over nearly 500 innings. Last year alone, Swarzak was worth 2.2 WAR, which ranked him eighth among all relievers, between Andrew Miller and Mike Minor. Part of that was a matter of increased effectiveness, and the rest was a matter of increased trust, which saw Swarzak throwing high-leverage innings for the first time. Swarzak’s average leverage index last season was 1.49. His previous high was 0.95, when he was a rookie starter. Swarzak’s personal stock skyrocketed.

A few images here can tell the story. More recently in Swarzak’s career, he’s started getting strikeouts, which is linked to a sharp uptick in his usage of his slider.

Beginning in 2016 and carrying over into last year, Swarzak has thrown his slider slightly more often than his fastball. He’s not the only reliever to do that, but things just truly came together, as Swarzak got as many missed swings as Brad Hand. Swarzak’s contact rate this past season plummeted.

And to really cap it off, Swarzak’s velocity has increased as he’s gotten older. It’s not the way this usually goes, and I’m not sure how Swarzak has pulled this off, but the trend is undeniable. Swarzak had problems with his rotator cuff in 2012 and 2016. In 2017, he was healthy, and he was blowing his fastball at 95.

Swarzak’s is a forgettable name, because, for most of his career, he was a forgettable pitcher. Even last season, as he was terrific, he was both terrific and out of the spotlight, so for Mets fans he’s not a familiar acquisition. But this does seem like a big bullpen add, for a Mets team that isn’t as far out of the race as it seems. A healthy Noah Syndergaard should make a whale of a difference, and the Marlins, Phillies, and Braves could and should all struggle to reach 70-75 wins. The Mets still aren’t the Nationals, but they’re the only threat in the division, and that very division gives them a better shot at the wild card. There’s something here, and Swarzak ought to help.

Investing in free-agent relievers can be an uncomfortable exercise. Relievers are constantly appearing and disappearing, with Swarzak being a case in point. So many relievers seem to suddenly emerge that it’s tempting to try to find the next pop-up guy before he pops. With a guy like Swarzak, though, you don’t have to squint or project. The Mets can comfortably assume he won’t forget what he just put together. He appears to be good now, and while that’s a little bit weird, there’s no reason those points can’t both be true.