FanGraphs Baseball

Well, if you weren’t sure if the Blue Jays were really going for it or not, here’s your answer. A few days after acquiring Troy Tulowitzki, Toronto has shipped out pitching prospects Daniel Norris, Jairo Labourt, and Matt Boyd to rent the last few months of David Price’s 2015 season, giving them the #1 starter they’ve lacked all season, and a dramatic upgrade to a rotation that was mediocre at best, and extremely thin at the back-end. While Price can’t single-handedly solve all of their pitching issues, he’s still a dramatic upgrade that makes the team far more likely to advance deep into the playoffs than they were this morning.

Like with the Johnny Cueto deal, the price for a rental was pretty steep, costing the Jays a couple of guys who could pitch in the big leagues next year, plus have some long-term upside. In his pre-season Top 200, Kiley McDaniel put a 60 FV grade on Norris, ranking him the #17 overall prospect, two spots ahead of some guy named Noah Syndergaard. Norris struggled some this year, both in the majors and in Triple-A, but he’s the best prospect moved in any deadline trade so far.

And Labourt and Boyd aren’t just throw-ins. Labourt ranked 12th on the Blue Jays list, based on big velocity from a left-handed arm, and Boyd has dramatically improved his stock by seeing his stuff takes several steps forward this year. When asked about Boyd in a chat last month, Kiley said this:

Just talked to a scout that saw him a few weeks back. His velo jumped this year from 88-92 t94 to 91-94 t96 and the solid average off-speed is now above average, sometimes flashing better. He signed for 75K as a senior from Oregon State who had his velo bump as a senior, then again two years later. Basically unprecedented as far as I know. He’s at least a high 45 FV now, probably closer to 50 FV. When the scout was telling me what he saw, I made him repeat everything because it was so hard to believe.

A 55/60 FV guy in Norris, a 45/50 guy in Boyd, and a 45 guy in Labour puts this package even a step ahead of what the Royals paid to get Johnny Cueto, and significantly thins out the Blue Jays stockpile of young arms, already weakened by Monday’s deal for Tulowitzki. Unquestionably, the Jays have decided that their window to win is now, and they weren’t content to just see whether this group could run down a Wild Card spot without significant reinforcements.

Clearly, they’re going to need to do more than just reach the play-in game for this to be worth the cost. Price’s potential impact, though, makes this a deal worth doing, even if paying this cost for a rental is likely to be painful in the long-run.

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Rob Kaminsky, who was the Cardinals first-round pick in 2013, has pitched very well as a 20-year-old in High-A this year. In 95 innings over 17 starts, he’s recorded a 2.09 ERA and 2.53 FIP. His 20% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate have both been better than league average, but he’s also benefited from allowing zero home runs this year. His ability to keep the ball in the park is nothing new, as he’s yielded all of four dingers in his 217 innings as a pro.

Running Kaminsky’s 2015 numbers through the KATOH machine yields a forecast of 2.8 WAR through his age-28 season, which would have put him 183rd on KATOH’s preseason list. This is a notch higher than his 2.5 WAR KATOH projection based on his 2014 campaign in Low-A. These forecasts feel awfully low for a player of Kaminsky’s prospect status, especially considering he’s been one of the best performers in High-A at the tender age of 20. However, KATOH heavily values a pitcher’s strikeout rate for innings thrown in the low minors, and Kaminsky’s strikeout numbers have been rather mediocre. Instead, Kaminsky’s gotten it done by suppressing homers and limiting walks, which on the aggregate, are relatively weak predictors of big-league success.

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Update: the Braves are reportedly also sending Bronson Arroyo to the Dodgers, which works out to saving about $8 million. So, that’s a small benefit for Atlanta, which isn’t discussed below.

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Update No. 2: the Dodgers are taking on some of Arroyo’s money, but not all of it. So the Braves are saving less than that $8 million. Glad we could get this straightened out.

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A valuable lesson we all learned yesterday is that a trade isn’t official until it’s officially official. In the case of this trade, it still isn’t totally complete, so, who knows? Something else we’re aware of is that the structure is complicated. As the Braves, Dodgers, and Marlins work through their three-way exchange, this seems like the current picture of the Braves’ side of things:

Get:

• Hector Olivera
• Paco Rodriguez
• Zachary Bird
• Competitive balance draft pick

Lose:

• Alex Wood
• Jose Peraza
• Jim Johnson
• Luis Avilan

Because it isn’t official, it could always fall apart. Alternatively, it could always change its form. Beyond that, even if this does go down as understood, there are plenty of moving parts. Real people, having their lives changed in an instant! A draft pick, just after the first round! So what I’m about to do is over-simplify, but what this is really about, from the Braves’ perspective, is swapping Wood and Peraza for Olivera. The rest of it more or less cancels out, given the cost of relievers at the deadline. The Braves, perhaps, weren’t comfortable with the risk of keeping Wood and Peraza around. They’re more comfortable with the risk of Olivera, who they tried hard to sign only a few months back.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles AL at Houston | 20:10 ET
Shoemaker (97.0 IP, 101 xFIP-) vs. Kazmir (116.2 IP, 93 xFIP-)
Following consecutive victories over the Anaheimers, the Houstonians now possess both a one-game lead over and also slightly better odds of winning the division than those same Angels. The two clubs meet once again this evening — and unlike a family reunion, the reunion of the Angels and Astros tonight at Minute Maid Park will feature neither (a) baleful career advice from your uncle who had four whiskies already nor (b) sexually confusing encounters with your obviously attractive second cousin Donna. Also, the combination of Matt Shoemaker and Scott Kazmir holds some promise.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Radio.

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The Dodgers, Marlins and Braves have pulled off a massive trade that sends Mat Latos and Alex Wood to the Dodgers, and a whole slew of other players (plus a draft pick) in other directions. The prospects involved include Jose Peraza, Kevin Guzman, Jeff Brigham, Victor Araujo and Zachary Bird. Here’s what the data say about these players. (Note: WAR figures denote WAR through age-28 season.)

Jose Peraza, Los Angeles Dodgers, 8.7 WAR

Jose Peraza is easily the most highly touted prospect who changed hands in this deal. The 21-year-old second baseman was playing in Triple-A this year, where he was hitting an admirable .294/.318/.379 with 26 steals. He put up much better numbers in the lower levels of the minors, however, including a .339/.364/.441 showing between High-A and Double-A last year.

Peraza’s offensive game is centered entirely around contact and speed. He’s struck out in just 8% of his trips to the plate this year, and has struck out less than 13% of the time in each of his five years in the minors. Peraza’s lack of strikeouts, along with his solid BABIPs, have enabled him to hit for high averages throughout his minor-league career.

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Despite their preference to avoid rentals, the Blue Jays have always made the most sense for David Price. While most other contenders have solid enough alternatives — especially with the Dodgers apparently on the verge of landing two quality starters in one fell swoop — to avoid paying a premium price for a short-term upgrade, the Blue Jays rotation are not in that position, and after designating Felix Doubront for assignment, they don’t even have a #5 starter at the moment. So this shouldn’t be a surprise.

sources: blue Jays are making a major push for david price

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) July 30, 2015

Executive involved in bidding for Price believes #BlueJays may indeed be close to landing him. “Not going to go on much longer,” he said.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 30, 2015

The Blue Jays have the kinds of young talent that the Tigers will be interested in, given their short-term window; a pitcher like Daniel Norris could replace Price immediately, giving the team a starter for 2016 and beyond. There’s a natural fit on both sides here, so both teams should be incentivized to make a deal with each other.

The interesting thing will be to see if the deal expands beyond Price. While the Blue Jays line-up is already too right-handed, they do need a better left fielder, and the Tigers are going to trade Yoenis Cespedes, most likely. If the Tigers insist on getting an elite return, perhaps the two teams will work out a deal that upgrades Toronto’s two weakest spots at the same time. After all, if you’re giving up big pieces of your farm system for a rental, you probably shouldn’t stop short and still be rolling out Ezequiel Carrera in the postseason.

Perhaps another team will get involved, but no team has a real reason to bid more on Price than the Blue Jays do. It’s the fit that makes the most sense, and should probably be the deal that gets done.

Ben and Sam discuss a wild Wednesday night on the trade market, covering a three-team involving involving the Dodgers, Braves, and Marlins, the Cole Hamels deal, and the Mets’ almost-trade for Carlos Gomez.

The St. Louis Cardinals have reacted quickly to Matt Holliday’s injury, trading last night for Cleveland Indians’ outfielder/first baseman Brandon Moss. If Holliday, who already missed a month with a quad tear earlier this season, did not re-injure his quad in a game last night, the St. Louis Cardinals very well could have stood pat through the rest of the trading deadline. The team has had trouble all year finding production at first base, but had recently called up top hitting prospect Stephen Piscotty. With Holliday back from the disabled list, and the addition of Piscotty, the team hoped the offense would improve after experiencing some struggles heading into the All-Star break. The Holliday injury scuttled those plans, and they paid a fairly high price for a somewhat struggling Moss in Rob Kaminsky, a top-100 prospect heading into this season.

The move speaks to the lack of optimism that the Cardinals have about the return of Holliday. Already missing Matt Adams and getting little to no production from backup Mark Reynolds, the team was rumored to have been in talks with the Milwaukee Brewers for Adam Lind. Consecutive shutout losses to the Cincinnati Reds highlighted the Cardinals’ struggle to score runs, but the injury to Holliday created a real need. Even at 35, Holliday was likely going to be the Cardinals’ best hitter moving forward. His power had dropped off in the first half of the season just like it had in 2014, but a strong second half that included 14 home runs provided hope that Holliday’s bat could still do a lot of damage. His .290/.409/.420 line was still good for a 134 wRC+ and his projections for the rest of the season were in line with those numbers.

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Late on Monday night, the team with the best offense in baseball and a questionable pitching staff made a blockbuster trade, but not for the frontline starting pitcher that everyone expected. Instead, Toronto Blue Jays GM Alex Anthoplous used one of his best trade chips — 2014 first round pick Jeff Hoffman — to acquire Troy Tulowitzki from the Rockies, adding another legitimate offensive weapon to a team that has had no problems scoring runs thus far.

In my write-up of the trade, I primarily focused on drawing attention to the non-linear nature of run scoring, noting that adding a good hitter to an already high scoring offense produces a larger benefit than importing that same hitter into a weak offense. Good hitting begets good hitting, and with another good hitter in the mix, there will be more at-bats with men on base — when nearly every hitter performs better than he does with the bases empty — and the addition of Tulowitzki to the Blue Jays offense should have a positive effect on the other hitters in Toronto’s line-up as well.

But there is one aspect of the decision to go after Tulowitzki, instead of a guy like Johnny Cueto, that I didn’t address; the postseason effect. After all, the Blue Jays are giving up significant parts of their farm system not just for the hope of getting to the playoffs, but of advancing deep into October, and constructing a roster for the long haul of a 162 game regular season isn’t the same thing as constructing a roster for the postseason. Due to the drastic differences in off-days during the playoffs, teams can allocate a much larger percentage of their innings pitched to their best arms, making the impact of a premium hurler larger in October than any pitcher can have from April through September. For a recent example, simply recall what Madison Bumgarner did for the Giants last fall.

Bumgarner’s dominance, and other performances like it, have given rise to the idea that pitching is what wins in the playoffs; if you’ve watched baseball for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard the “good pitching beats good hitting” truism. The Blue Jays are clearly not buying into that cliche, and are betting on a great offense to make up for a mediocre pitching staff. But does that kind of team actually win in October? Let’s look at some data.

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