FanGraphs Baseball

The A’s figured 2015 would be a competitive year, and though there have been plenty of encouraging signs, at some point there’s just not enough time left to expect bad luck to reverse itself. The Astros, meanwhile, figured 2015 would be a competitive year, but maybe not this much of a competitive year, so they found themselves considering the market of short-term upgrades. So it is that a surprising A’s team and a surprising Astros team have come together on a move: Scott Kazmir is going to Houston, and now the league-wide trade market is open.

He’s not the first big-leaguer to be moved. Juan Uribe got swapped. Mark Trumbo got swapped. Welington Castillo got swapped a couple of times. But this is the first real deadline move, with the A’s conceding that it’s time for them to sell. Kazmir’s a free agent in a few months, but the Astros weren’t turned off by that. If anything, they were seeking that out. Rentals tend to cost less, and Kazmir provides important rotation insurance. The guys the A’s are getting are named Jacob Nottingham and Daniel Mengden. You’re probably not familiar with either, but that doesn’t mean the A’s just got robbed.

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With significant deadline trades, we’re going to attempt to provide an evaluation of the prospects changing teams from both Kiley McDaniel’s scouting perspective and Chris Mitchell’s statistical breakdowns. The numerical breakdown of both players appears below Kiley’s write-ups.

Today, the Houston Astros officially decided to go for it, acquiring Scott Kazmir from the A’s in exchange for for A-Ball prospects RHP Daniel Mengden and C Jacob Nottingham. Both were late cuts from my preseason prospect list list, which by Opening Day, with the Evan Gattis trade and losing Delino DeShields in the Rule 5 draft, included 22 players.

Both players were among the group of six given 35+ FV grades, so they were both in the 23-28 range in Houston’s system entering the year. I don’t have inside info on how the negotiations went down, but I’m guessing Kazmir was long a target for Houston (as they took a run at him this offseason) and Oakland was holding out for a top 10 prospect in the Astros organization. Based on the preseason rankings, this will look like a light return, but given Nottingham’s breakout season, they did indeed land a guy who would have ranked in the Astros top 10 if the list was re-done today.

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Just to be clear, there are two separate positions here.

Position: Milwaukee Brewers Developer – Baseball Systems

Location: Milwaukee

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Ben and Sam banter about the Astros and then discuss the possible interpretations of Zack Greinke’s scoreless innings streak.

Brayan Pena is a 33-year-old backup catcher who has amassed 1820 PA across 11 seasons, producing a .259/.299/.352 line and a 75 wRC+. The takeaway point from that first sentence is that Brayan Pena has been among the worst hitters in the league over the last decade, which is probably something you knew about him without any prompting. Pena’s a fun-loving character and he’s passable behind the plate, so he’s made a career for himself in the big leagues despite the very limited offensive production.

Reflecting on Pena is simply a way to put the 2015 White Sox in perspective because the White Sox are essentially hitting like Brayan Pena as a team this year. On the season, they’re hitting .241/.295/.357 (77 wRC+). They’re five percentage points worse than the Phillies (82 wRC+) at the plate without removing the Phillies’ pitchers from the equation. Take pitchers out of the equation and the White Sox’ 78 wRC+ is nine percentage points worse than the 29th place Phillies (87 wRC+). The White Sox offense is historically bad.

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The trading deadline is nearly upon us, and if history is a guide, there could be a dizzying amount of player movement in the coming days. This season appears to be unique in a couple of ways. There seems to be a somewhat historic mismatching of pure buyers and sellers, in large part due to the insanity of the American League wild-card race. Purely by definition, is there a sure seller in that bunch?

This week, we’re previewing the deadline in a somewhat unique manner. Instead of focusing solely on club’s holes and potential targets, we’ll hone in on them from their respective talent arsenals to be drawn upon to make deadline deals. Which clubs are best — and worst — positioned to land the most attractive prizes on the market? Yesterday, we looked at the American League. Today, it’s the NL, and its somewhat more traditional stratification of buyers and sellers.

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When we first picked Dan Warthen’s brain about his specific slider, Noah Syndergaard did say that he’d played around with the pitch, but only to improve a different pitch. “I played with it a little bit to pick up the RPMs on my curveball,” he said then. Yesterday, Syndergaard did more than play with it — he threw eight of them, making it the second time this year that he’s thrown the pitch that often.

It looked like this:

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With the trade deadline now eight days away, most of the trade speculation has centered around a few big name players. Johnny Cueto, Cole Hamels, Jeff Samardzija, and Scott Kazmir were the primary pitching targets for contenders looking to upgrade their rotation, and David Price might end up in that mix too. The hitting class is a lot weaker, but Justin Upton’s name continues to float out there, and Ben Zobrist is probably available to a team who wants a do-everything guy instead of just a bat. But if you want any of those guys, they aren’t going to come cheap, and there is going to be a lot of competition for their services.

But while I still think this remains a seller’s market — though to a lesser degree than it was a month ago — I do think there are some potential values to be had for teams that are willing to shop in the mid-tier instead. To that end, here are the three players I’d be aggressively targeting this month, given their expected production and my sense of what I think they’ll cost, relative to the big name guys.

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Last week at Grantland, two friends of the show in Jonah Keri and Nick Piecoro had a wonderful discussion about all things Arizona Diamondbacks, including the Touki Toussaint trade that caused many a skeptical eyebrow to be raised in the Diamondbacks’ direction. While Keri and Piecoro by no means endorsed the Diamondbacks’ recent moves, they brought up an interesting perspective on Arizona’s willingness to spend big on Cuban players Yasmany Tomas and Yoan Lopez — and thus easily eclipsing their allotted international bonuses — without spending much on international free agents from other countries. The idea: there’s a relatively slim chance that Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart — or any other general manager for any other team — would still be working in their current position when today’s 16-year-old reaches the majors. While the fan no doubt cringes at the thought of a general manager romping around the front office with nary a concern for the franchise’s sustained success, one can definitely empathize with the human instinct for self-preservation.

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