The Rays Make a Smart Bet on Matt Duffy

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August 1, 2016

After months of rumors, the Rays finally traded a starting pitcher, shipping Matt Moore to San Francisco in exchange for a three player package headlined by infielder Matt Duffy. Eno Sarris already talked about what the Giants are hoping they get in Moore, so let’s talk about what they gave up to upgrade their rotation with a young controllable starting pitcher.

The prospects in this deal are both interesting. Lucius Fox cost the Giants a $6 million signing bonus last year after being declared an international free agent, and we rated him as the Giants #3 prospect this spring, noting his upside as a high-end athlete who might hit. He’s not close to the big leagues, but there’s some real upside here, especially if he turns out to be an above-average defensive shortstop; you don’t have to hit that well to have value if you can field at that level.

The other prospect, Michael Santos, is your typical deadline trade chip; a projectable hard-thrower in A-ball, nowhere close to the big leagues, with about as wide a range of outcomes as you could imagine. We ranked Santos as the Giants #16 prospect back in the spring, and he’s pitched well (though without missing bats) this year, so there’s some value there, though like Fox, he’s a long ways away.

But there’s one piece of the trade that isn’t a long-term project. While they got two A-ball lottery tickets in the deal, they also got back a big league infielder who put up a +5 WAR season last year. And more than anything else, this deal will probably be decided by the answer to the question: what is Matt Duffy, really?

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Scouting the Prospects in the Matt Moore Deal

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August 1, 2016

Bahamian (won’t ever get tired of typing that) SS Lucius Fox is headed to Tampa Bay as the primary prospect return for LHP Matt Moore. Fox was receiving late-first-round grades as a domestic amateur before reclassifying as an international prospect before his senior year and signing for $6.5 million during last year’s J2 period. Fox ranked third on FanGraphs’ 2015 J2 sortable board and was #2 in my personal rankings.

Fox turned 19 last month and is extremely young for the full-season Sally League, where he was hitting .207/.305/.277. Fox’s body was simply not ready for full-season ball. Though he’s exceptionally twitchy and athletic, he hasn’t matured enough to compete and succeed at that level. There’s bat speed here as well as feel for moving that barrel around the zone and Fox has the physical tools to be an above-average hitter who pulls out a dozen or so annual homers. The left-handed swing has more power potential than his more conservative right-handed cut.

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Giants Add Lefty Starter Matt Moore’s Resurgent Stuff

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August 1, 2016

The Giants just added a 27-year-old left-hander with a 93 mph fastball and major-league success under his belt on an affordable contract until 2019. That left-hander, Matt Moore, hasn’t recorded the same ERA or strikeout rates he’d produced before his Tommy John surgery, but if you look under the hood, the stuff seems to be back.

That stuff, and that contract, made it worth the hefty price: 21-year-old right-handed pitcher Michael Santos, exciting young 19-year-old Bahamian shortstop Lucius Fox, and — most painful of all — 25-year-old major-league third baseman Matt Duffy. Dave Cameron will have more on the choice to include Duffy, but either way, it’s a price you pay for a pitcher you believe can serve at least as a middle-of-the-rotation guy. A price you pay if you believe Moore has his stuff back.

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Giants Pay Steep Price for Brewers Reliever Will Smith

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August 1, 2016

While deals for Zach Duke and Mark Melancon might have made it appear as though the price for relief pitching was coming down, the San Francisco Giants, in need of some help at the back end of the bullpen, have just paid a pretty high price to get the left-handed Brewers’ reliever Will Smith.

Here are the full terms.

Giants get:

  • Will Smith (RHP)

Brewers get:

For the Giants, pursuing a reliever made a lot of sense. They have some useful pieces there, surely: Santiago Casilla has been generally reliable at the the end of the bullpen, Derek Law has pitched well with more exposure, and Hunter Strickland has been solid at time. As a whole, however, the group hasn’t done a lot to add to the Giants’ chances of reaching the postseason this year.

The Giants’ 19.8% strikeout rate is barely ahead of the Colorado Rockies’ (19.7%). By ERA (3.76) and FIP (3.92), the Giants pen sits in the middle of the National League pack. By WAR, however, the team places ahead only of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the abomination the Cincinnati Reds have put together. By Win Probability Added (WPA) among NL relievers, Casilla (0.63, 37th), Strickland (0.53, 39th) and Law (0.52, 40) — who, again, represent the back-end of San Francisco’s bullpen — are well behind the game’s better pitchers. The rest of the relief corps is hovering around zero or worse. They’ve landed someone who should be able to bolster the bullpen significantly this year, and perhaps into future seasons.

In 2015, mostly in the capacity of setting up Francisco Rodriguez, Will Smith was one of the best relievers in baseball, . He made 76 appearances, strinking out 35% of the batters he faced — and no NL reliever without a save had a higher WAR than Smith’s 1.4 mark. He moved into 2016 with the closer role his to lose, but lose it he did when he lost his balance while removing a shoe and twisting his right knee during spring training, an injury which required surgery. Smith hasn’t been as lights out this season, striking out 24% of batters against a 10% walk rate in 22 innings. Although his ERA and FIP have not stabilized due to a couple home runs, his strikeout rate in July has crossed the 30% threshold, providing some encouragement that Smith is on his way back.

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Cubs Complete Bullpen Makeover with Joe Smith

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August 1, 2016

For the second time in as many years, the Chicago Cubs effectively remade half their bullpen on the fly. Last year, it was a series of former-starters-turned-reclamation projects that somehow all worked out. This year, they’ve gone the more traditional route. It started with the little pickup of left-hander Mike Montgomery, which didn’t stop them from the big-ticket acquisition of Aroldis Chapman. Young, hard-throwing Carl Edwards Jr. has been a welcome addition, and apparently Joe Nathan is a thing again.

Shortly before 4:00 p.m. EST brought the close of this year’s trade deadline, the Cubs made one more move to set up their bullpen for this year’s championship run.

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Brief Scouting Thoughts on the Enigmatic Dillon Tate

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August 1, 2016

Dillon Tate’s career at UC Santa Barbara began in the bullpen and he transitioned to a starting role in 2015 as a junior. He threw 103 innings in 2015, a significant increase for a raw pitcher who’d only thrown 43 the year before. Regardless, he was holding his velocity deep into games and was among those considered by the Diamondbacks for the top-overall pick in last year’s draft. Tate’s stuff waxed and waned during his junior season but was back by draft time. He was up to 98 for me at NCAA Regionals and flashing a plus breaking ball. The Rangers drafted him fourth overall shortly thereafter.

That Tate has previously dealt with and bounced back from a downward turn in his stuff is especially significant considering he’s going to have to do it again. Reports on Tate suggest the quality of his arsenal is down across the board — and, indeed, he’s struggled to miss bats for the past two months. During spring training, Tate was 94-96 with a plus slider and flashing an above-average changeup. The fastball velo has been down in the 90-93 range lately and Tate is currently sporting a 5.12 ERA at Low-A Hickory.

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Scouting Aged Lefty Ariel Miranda, Mariners’ Return for Miley

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August 1, 2016

Ariel Miranda sounds like one of those weird Disney Princess mashups that were fashionable clickbait last year — Click to see the Disney Princesses re-imagined as Sex and the City characters! Click to see the Disney Princesses re-imagined as members of the 2003 Philadelphia Eagles Secondary! Click to see the Disney Princesses re-imagined as America’s most infamous serial killers! — but he is an actual baseball pitcher who has come on of late and become a fairly interesting prospect of advanced age.

Miranda, a 6-foot-2 Cuban lefty, signed in May of 2015 after he defected and established residency in Haiti. He pitched across three levels during his first full season, finishing his initial domestic campaign with a solid eight-start run with Double-A Bowie. Miranda has passed 2016 in Triple-A (except for a two-inning shot of espresso with the Orioles early in July) and, while a 3.93 ERA from a 27-year-old isn’t exactly sexy, he’s flashed viable big-league stuff. His fastball will touch 95 mph on occasion and sits 90-93. Miranda has a quick, athletic arm and incorporates his lower half into a picturesque delivery that he doesn’t always finish. When he’s not driving the ball down, he lives either up in the zone or out of it altogether, something of which major-league hitters will take full advantage, but he’s capable of missing bats in the zone with his fastball. Miranda has been able to throw plenty of strikes this season, just not always where he wants to, and his control is ahead of his command.

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Blue Jays Give Some Pitchers to Get Some Pitchers

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August 1, 2016

Here’s some things that happened. The Blue Jays got a swingman in return for a swingman:

And then minutes later, they gave up a Chavez to get another Chavez:

The “other” Chavez, in this instance, being Scott Feldman, an early-30’s swingman himself. Both are free agents at the end of the year. It doesn’t make total sense, and it’s not the most interesting thing that happened at the trade deadline, but bear with me.

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The Weirdest Trade of the Day (Year?)

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August 1, 2016

The trade deadline always brings us surprises, but man, this one takes the cake for out-of-nowhere deal that no one could have seen coming.

If you had Hector Santiago for Ricky Nolasco in your trade predictions post, you are either Billy Eppler or Rob Antony, or a crazy person.

So we have two sellers swapping big league starting pitchers at a time when most buyers looking for pitching help can’t find big league starting pitchers to trade for. That’s pretty weird!

On the other hand, I can kind of squint and see this. The Twins get a Twins-like pitcher, a guy who has spent his career beating FIP by inducing a million infield flies, and looks like a perfectly useful mid-rotation starter. The Angels get a guy who controls the strike zone a bit better but has underperformed his FIP forever, making him much worse than his peripherals suggest, and is closer to a replacement level arm. In exchange for downgrading their rotation, the Angels get a lottery ticket pitching prospect in Alex Meyer, who is big and throws hard but can’t command the zone.

The Angels will take on a few million bucks in payroll next year, when Nolasco is due $12 million while Santiago will make less than that in his final arbitration season, but financially, there isn’t a huge difference here. So the Angels just make themselves a bit worse while getting a different innings sponge and admitting that they’re looking long-term.

Why the Twins themselves are the ones acquiring Santiago, I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps they’re going to trade Ervin Santana and wanted to have someone around to eat innings, and thought that Meyer wasn’t too high a price to pay for some credible big league pitching over the next year. If he keeps pitching well, he can probably be flipped for an equally decent prospect this winter or next deadline.

So it’s not like this trade is a disaster or anything. It’s just pretty weird to see a 40-64 team trading for a pitcher with some present value by shipping a prospect to a 47-58 team at the deadline.


Scouting Oakland’s Return for Rich Hill, Josh Reddick

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August 1, 2016

The Athletics are moving two rentals in exchange for three very interesting pitching prospects, all of whom have bullpen-worthy stuff at worst — and mid-rotation upside at best.

The headliner of the deal, at least as far as upside is concerned, is RHP Grant Holmes. Holmes, who was committed to Florida, was the 22nd-overall pick in 2014 and signed for $2.5 million out of Conway High School in South Carolina. He touched 100 in high school and was one of the draft’s more advanced prep arms with a more mature body and better strike-throwing ability than many of his hard-throwing peers. After signing, he descended upon the AZL, which was clearly already beneath him at the time, and dominated before moving to the Pioneer League for his last few starts of the season.

In 2015, Holmes’ control went backwards and he walked 54 hitters in 103.1 innings for Low-A Great Lakes. Walks have remained an issue this season (43 free passes in 105 innings). Holmes is an above-average athlete and his delivery isn’t overtly violent or difficult to repeat, but his arm action is long and his release point has been inconsistent. Eventually, I think Holmes will throw enough strikes to start though two straight years of serious control issues are officially concerning.

The stuff is great. Holmes was 92-94 mph and touching 95 for me in April and has generally been in that range all year. His fastball moves, a product of his arm slot, and can be unhittable when he locates it. Holmes’ primary offspeed weapon is his curveball which, when he breaks off a good one, looks like a slider’s caricature. It has two-plane, slider shape and slider velociy (about 79-82) but has the vertical depth of a curveball. It flashes plus but is also inconsistent and can tilt in without much bite.

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