The Reality of Aroldis Chapman

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December 8, 2016

As of yesterday afternoon, both Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen had been courted by the Yankees. Both had received offers. And both those offers were believed to exceed the four-year and $62 million deal that had just rendered Mark Melancon the most well-compensated relief pitcher in history.

Brian Cashman said his preference was for Chapman because, among other reasons, Chapman wouldn’t cost a draft pick, and the closer had pitched well in New York. Cashman told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch that he “[didn’t] believe that Jansen would have any issues pitching in New York either, but it’s nice to have that box checked, too.” You have to figure Champan’s 100 mph fastball certainly helped matters.

Cashman got his wish. Chapman is a Yankee once again, to the tune of five years and $86 million. There are reasons the deal makes sense from a baseball point of view. It’s also possible that the spectacle of Chapman’s velocity will have some marketing value. Hal Steinbrenner himself has reportedly stated that he liked the buzz Chapman created at the stadium. By those criteria, it’s possible that they choose wisely, and I’ll address those points in a moment.

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Projecting the Prospects in the Adam Eaton Trade

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December 8, 2016

Just one day after they dealt away Chris Sale for an impressive crop of young talent, the White Sox continued their tear-down yesterday by flipping Adam Eaton for another nice haul. This time, they landed three young pitchers (roughly in order of consensus future value): Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning.

Here’s how the minor leaguers headed to Chicago grade out by my KATOH system. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar a methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.

*****

Lucas Giolito, RHP (Profile)

KATOH: 5.8 WAR (47th overall)
KATOH+: 10.8 WAR (9th overall)

Giolito is one of those cases where the scouting reports outstrip the on-field performance. Scouts have long raved about Giolito’s fastball-curveball combination, and he parlayed it into dominance at the lower rungs of the minor leagues in 2014 and 2015. He was a consensus top-five prospect at this time last year, but things got a little rough for him in 2016.

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Scouting the White Sox’ Return for Adam Eaton

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December 8, 2016

The White Sox continued adding to their suddenly robust farm system yesterday, acquiring a trio of pitching prospects from Washington in exchange for star outfielder Adam Eaton. Below are my scouting reports on the prospects involved. Lucas Giolito (60 Future Value) will slot in behind Yoan Moncada on the next revision of the White Sox prospect list, the completions of which I might delay until Rick Hahn’s purge of the major-league roster appears complete. Reynaldo Lopez will slot between Michael Kopech and Zack Collins as a 55 FV, while Dane Dunning will be the top 45 FV on the list.

The once Prodigious Lucas Giolito has more recently become the Enigmatic Lucas Giolito. While he remains one of baseball’s best pitching prospects after an inconsistent 2016, Giolito is no longer head-and-shoulders the game’s best. The opinions of scouts who saw Giolito this year make for an interesting collage of hope, fear, tempered expectations and patience, but all agree that front-end starter upside is still extant, if a bit less likely.

That kind of upside has been apparent since Giolito’s days at Harvard-Westlake, where, before suffering a season-ending elbow injury that would later require Tommy John surgery, he was generating potential 1-1 buzz and had a legitimate chance to become the first right-handed high-school pitcher ever taken with the draft’s first pick.

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Maybe Adam Eaton Should Stay in Right Field

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December 7, 2016

So the Nationals now have Adam Eaton. Adam Eaton is really good! Last year, after moving to right field, Adam Eaton put up a +6 WAR season, thanks to his defensive ratings going through the roof. Washington, though, has some guy named Bryce Harper in right field, so Eaton is going back to center field, where he played up until last year. That will allow Trea Turner to move back to shortstop. That’s the plan, anyway.

But maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe the Nationals would be better off if they kept Adam Eaton in right field.

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Adam Eaton Is the Nationals’ Newest Star Player

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December 7, 2016

You might remember that, last year, the Nationals didn’t get who they wanted. They made a strong run at Yoenis Cespedes, but they obviously didn’t win. They made runs at Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist, too, but they didn’t win there, either. They ultimately wound up with Daniel Murphy, and Murphy worked out fantastic. The season worked out fantastic. The Nationals pulled off a significant pivot.

There’s been more pivoting this week. The Nationals made a run at Chris Sale, and they lost to the Red Sox. They made a run at Andrew McCutchen, and they couldn’t reach an agreement. So the front office quickly turned to Adam Eaton. You could think of Eaton as being the Nationals’ Plan C, and he’s not so sexy a splash as the others. And yet he’s good, incredibly good, arguably even McCutchen-good, and he’s the newest star player on the Nationals’ roster. All the Sale talks made the deal move fast. It must have been an exciting trade to complete.

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Nationals Land Adam Eaton, Quiet Star

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December 7, 2016

A day after the Nationals failed to send a bunch of talent to Chicago for Chris Sale, the Nationals have reportedly agreed to send a bunch of talent to Chicago for Adam Eaton.

According to reports yesterday, both Lucas Giolito and Reynoldo Lopez were in the Nationals offer for Sale, so the two teams appeared to have just reworked the rest of the package to get Washington an outfield upgrade instead of a rotation upgrade. And while Eaton is definitely not Chris Sale, this might be just as impactful an upgrade for the Nationals.

First off, Eaton is really good. August Fagerstrom called him “Baseball’s Quietest Superstar” back in May, and he justified the commentary over the rest of the season. Eaton’s put up three straight years with a 115-120 wRC+, and after moving to right field last year, his defensive numbers took off. He’ll have to move back to center field in Washington, but there’s definitely real defensive value here, and he runs the bases too. Eaton is a terrific all around player with an above-average bat, and he fits well at the top of the Nationals line-up.

Whether he’ll be as good back in center field is an open question, and if the defense is just okay, then Eaton won’t put up +6 WAR again. But with his bat and legs at an up-the-middle spot, his floor is probably +2 WAR as long as he’s healthy, and there’s obviously room for value well above that if the defense still plays back in center field.

And, of course, there’s the contract. Eaton is signed for $18 million over the next three years, with club options that could push it up to 5/$38M; that’s a remarkable value. As a free agent, Eaton would have gone well over $100 million, and maybe over $150 million; Jason Heyward got 8/$184M for the same kind of package of skills last winter, though he had a longer track record of success than Eaton. But there’s similarities there, and the market paid big for Heyward last winter, so this is not a player type the Nationals could have acquired cheaply.

For the White Sox, they get what looks like a great return in young pitching, though as Jeff Sullivan wrote yesterday, there are reasons the Nationals are willing to trade Lucas Giolito. But Giolito and Lopez both have a lot of upside, and Dunning was the Nationals first round pick last year, so there’s a lot of options for how this could work for Chicago. Even if you only get one good starter out of the three, that’s still probably more valuable than betting on Eaton to age well enough to still be around the next time the White Sox are good.

With this deal, Eaton’s acquisition means Trea Turner heads back to shortstop, which pushes Danny Espinosa back into a part-time role, where he can spell Daniel Murphy and Anthony Rendon. The upgrade from Espinosa to Eaton is probably worth a couple of wins, plus this gives the team more depth, and adding Sale to the rotation and then dumping Gio Gonzalez to free up a rotation spot wouldn’t have been a dramatically larger improvement.

So the Nationals got better, but at the cost of a couple of good young arms. The White Sox get upside arms to throw at the wall and see what sticks. A good team gets better, a rebuilding team gets younger, and this looks like the kind of deal that might work for both sides.


Let’s Get Weird: Ian Desmond Is a Rockie

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December 7, 2016

Hoo boy, here we go. Welcome to prime hot-stove season, everyone. Ian Desmond is going to the Colorado Rockies, and he’s going to be paid $70 million to play there for five years. And, according to various reports, the Rockies may be looking at him as a first baseman. This move is the equivalent of the Denver Broncos signing Lionel Messi. It’s unexpected. It’s bonkers. It’s newly legal in Colorado, and Jeff Bridich is into it.

Man, let’s think about this for a minute. Ian Desmond was a lost cause a year ago. He had imploded in glorious fashion in Washington and then took a pillow contract with the Rangers to play a super-utility man. He wound up moving the outfield and recorded roughly average overall defensive numbers there. He also put together a 106 wRC+ for the year… but just a 65 wRC+ in the second half. Did he go back to being his 2015 self? Was it just a prolonged slump. Was he really a decent hitter once more?

We’re going to find out. We’re also, apparently, going to find out if he can play first base. Or… are we?

I mean, is Ian Desmond really going to play first? Committing $70 million to a guy to play a position entirely foreign to him seems strange. Asking him to play first base after he’s just finished a roughly average offensive season is also strange. If the Rockies wanted to move an outfielder to first base, they could’ve just done so with Carlos Gonzalez, whose defensive skills have been declining for some time now. Instead, the Rockies are going to stick Desmond there and cross their fingers.

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Wilson Ramos Is Something Completely Different for the Rays

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December 7, 2016

Last night, the Tampa Bay Rays signed Wilson Ramos for two years and $12 million, with nearly $18.25 million available in all if he meets certain incentives. Ramos represented an interesting case for potential suitors. At 29, he’d just produced the best season of his career. He’d also sustained, and is currently rehabbing, the worst injury of his career — one that will prevent him from returning until midseason at best. From the Rays’ perspective, the move is unusual in at least one way, too: they just signed a catcher who can hit.

Were Ramos to repeat his 2016 campaign, he’d immediately become the best catcher the Rays have ever had. Were he to repeat his second-best season, he’d become the best catcher the Rays ever had. Were he to repeat his third-best season, Ramos would be the third-best catcher the Rays have ever had. By wins above replacement, Ramos — once he’s healthy in 2018 — is very likely to become the best Rays catcher ever. Even if he just hits to his career level (exactly league average), once he sees 100 plate appearances, he’ll be the best hitting catcher the Rays have ever had.

Of course, there’s a lot more going on than offense and positional value in this deal, which slots in nicely with the two-year, $10-ish million contracts that have been handed out to volatile veterans like Matt Joyce, Steve Pearce, and Sean Rodriguez. There’s plenty to worry about, just like in those deals.

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Carlos Gomez Has a Home in Texas

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December 7, 2016

Think about the teams that need to make the most of the year ahead. The Red Sox, certainly, will now be under a lot of pressure to roll through the playoffs. That’s the consequence of working how they’ve worked. The Royals will face a lot of pressure in a different way, because it looks almost certain that 2018 and beyond will be a challenge. For Kansas City, this could be their last competitive season in a while. And then you get the Rangers. The Rangers’ situation and the Royals’ situation aren’t too dissimilar. The Rangers are probably a little better off, but the long-term picture isn’t so sunny. This’ll probably be the last year with Yu Darvish and Jonathan Lucroy.

So the Rangers need to maximize what they have. They also need to try to do that without doing any more harm to the long-term outlook. Enter Carlos Gomez on a one-year deal. It’ll be an important year for both parties. Gomez is looking for a pillow season, a chance to re-establish some value in a friendly place so that next offseason he could really score. The Rangers are trying to give it what could be one last go. Gomez still isn’t without his big giant upside, as the Rangers try to keep up with the Astros.

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Ian Desmond Signs with the Rockies

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December 7, 2016

The curveballs just keep coming at the 2016 Winter Meetings, as Ken Rosenthal just reported a whopper:

While we were all trying to process exactly where Ian Desmond would play for the Rockies, since they’re nominally all set at the positions he plays, Rosenthal struck again:

This is interesting on so many levels, more of which will be sussed out later in a piece from Nicolas Stellini. What the trade appears to suggest most immediately, however, is that the Rockies are ready to push their chips into the middle of the table as they enter Year Three of the Jeff Bridich Era. This is news. The Rockies have made a habit of lying in the weeds or rebuilding for the better part of this century, having typically stayed out of the deep end of the free-agent market. With the five-year, $70 million commitment to Desmond, they have officially returned.

How much first base Desmond plays will ultimately be determined by whether the Rockies decide to move one of their outfielders. Charlie Blackmon and Carlos Gonzalez constantly see their names in trade rumors, and that’s unlikely to cease now that Desmond is in the fold. But what could perhaps be more interesting is if the Rockies choose to use Desmond in a Ben Zobrist role, letting him shuttle in for Trevor Story to help keep the latter fresh, as well as manning first base and cycling among the outfield spots.

The bottom line is that the Rockies are now officially interesting. They had already been trending that way, but this signing confirms it. They have a rotation that contains four pitchers projected at 2 WAR or better, plus an interesting rookie in Jeff Hoffman, as well as decent starting-pitching depth. The promotions last year both of Tyler Anderson and Jon Gray added much-needed substance to the rotation. They likewise have solid incumbents at second, short, third and the outfield. Now they’ve added Desmond. Their bullpen could be bolstered, but most teams can say that and the Rockies bullpen doesn’t project to be awful. There’s a good chance that there are more moves coming from the Rockies, moves that allow Desmond to shift back to a more natural outfield position, but in any event, there is now very real optimism around the 2017 Rockies.


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