If you consider his performance over the past few seasons as a whole, it’s clear why the Nationals gave reliever Brandon Kintzler at least $10 million over the next two years to pitch in Washington. Isolating just his 2017 campaign, however, there’s reason to think there’s some risk attached to the deal despite the modest price tag.

Since the beginning of 2016, Kintzler has used his sinker to induce ground ball after ground ball. Indeed, only 13 qualified relievers have recorded better ground-ball rates over those two years. Only 31 sinkers, meanwhile, have allowed a lower launch angle (minimum 150 balls in play). It’s largely that pitch which has allowed Kintzler to suppress homers despite having exhibited little capacity to miss bats.

In a world where Anthony Swarzak and his lack of a track record is getting two years and $14 million, this deal makes absolute sense. If a club’s player-value metric says the reliever class of player is consistently overpaid, there are only two choices: either (a) never pay a free-agent reliever or (b) try to get value from one of the cheaper ones. In that regard, the Nationals did well.

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Position: Boston Red Sox David Ortiz Fellowship

Location: Boston
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Late last night, the Angels turned an 18-year-old whom they’d originally signed for $125,000 and their eighth-rounder from 2016 into second baseman Ian Kinsler. Below are brief scouting reports on new Tigers prospects Wilkel Hernandez and Troy Montgomery.

Hernandez is an 18-year-old Venezuelan righty who spent most of the year at the team’s Tempe complex, first in extended spring training and then in the Arizona Rookie League. He was one of several young, projectable pitching prospects who helped compose the burgeoning underbelly of Anaheim’s farm system. One of the others, RHP Elvin Rodriguez, was also acquired by Detroit as the player to be named later in the Justin Upton trade.

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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.