FanGraphs Baseball

Trea Turner has his sights set high. The 2014 first-round pick wants to be more than the starting shortstop for the San Diego Padres [or, if last night’s reports are accurate, the Washington Nationals]. Turner wants to be a star.

He could have been a Pirate. Pittsburgh drafted Turner out of high school in 2011, and the now-21-year-old had no trouble picturing himself in black and gold. He told me the Pirates personnel he spoke to during the draft process were “awesome” and that he still keeps in touch with the area scout. Turner said he’d have “loved to be a Pirate,” but “needed to go to college and make myself better both mentally and physically.”

Turner enrolled at North Carolina State, and excelled. In three seasons with the Wolfpack he hit .342 and stole 110 bases. His junior year, he won the Brooks Wallace Award as the best shortstop in college baseball.

Along the way, he received plenty of attention from scouts. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben talks to Scott Drader of Metalhead Software about the development of their successful new video game, Super Mega Baseball.

Episode 514
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the entirely real guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 16 min play time.)

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Turner, Joe Ross to #Nationals. Myers, Hanigan, Jose Castillo to #Padres. Souza, Ott, Rivera, Smith, Bauers to #Rays (Souza, Ott from Nats).

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 17, 2014

Generally speaking, in such cases as a prospect — or any player, really — possesses a combination of power and speed, said player is regarded with some interest by what is referred to broadly as the “scouting community.” While sabermetricians have (in the past, at least) cultivated a reasonable suspicion about such players — or, at least the level of enthusiasm exhibited on their behalfs — it’s also true that those players who’ve both (a) demonstrated power and speed have also generally (b) developed into above-average major leaguers.

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The days-rumored mega deal has happened and I’m here to break down all the prospects.  FanGraphs has you covered, with David Laurila on Trea Turner, Carson Cistulli on Steven Souza, Miles Wray on Rene Rivera, Jeff Sullivan on the Padres and Dave Cameron with wild speculation on what the trade might be, then  general thoughts on the actual trade.

San Diego gets RF Wil Myers, C Ryan Hanigan, LHP Jose Castillo, RHP Gerardo Reyes (from TB)
Tampa Bay gets RF Steven Souza, LHP Travis Ott (from WSH), C Rene Rivera, RHP Burch Smith, 1B Jake Bauers (from SD)
Washington gets SS Trea Turner and RHP Joe Ross (from SD)

I also posted my Rays prospect list earlier this week and was scheduled to have the Padres list up next week, so I already had research done on most of the prospects involved.  As for how this changes their rankings, I would slot Souza third behind C Justin O’Conner and I would slot Bauers 26th between RHP Orlando Romero and C David Rodriguez.  This trade would give the Rays’ list 33 ranked players, the most of any team I’ve ranked so far.  This further underlines the point I made in the intro of the list, about how the Rays’ organizational plan props up their system depth.

I think Souza has been underrated by most and Ross has been overrated by most, which is why the reaction is so universally that Washington is a winner in this deal and Tampa Bay is a loser.  I’d still prefer Washington’s end of the Souza swap, but Tampa Bay is forced to value players differently than other clubs: getting six years of immediate impact from an everyday type is the ideal player they’re chasing.  Prospects years away for contributing (Ross and Turner) or a player that was much more hype than substance in 2014 (Myers) that will be expensive a year sooner than Souza is the kind of assets the Rays value less than most teams.

The Rays saw an opportunity to cash in on Myers’ name recognition before his inconsistency/wrist injury potentially sink his value further, in exchange for a player they’re higher on than the industry, with some lower-end prospects included to account for the tools/hype gap between Myers and Souza.  It’s unusual move in a change-averse baseball culture and risky from a PR perspective, but it makes sense given Tampa Bay’s situation.  The Padres dealing lesser and farther-from-contributing pieces for a potential star and the Nationals dealing a blocked player for two potential contributors make more obvious sense on the face of this deal, so I don’t think I need to explain the motivations for them.

I’ve listed the prospects in the deal in order of preference, though the top two prospects have the same grade, so you could flip-flop them if you prefer the instant impact of Souza over the positional scarcity of Turner.

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Neither Matt Kemp nor Wil Myers have yet been officially traded. Yet it feels like those should happen any moment now, if not while I’m in the process of writing this post, and the end result will be that the Padres will have a pair of new corner outfielders. Kemp is older and Myers is younger, but both would be under team control for several years, and one of the ideas here is to generate some actual buzz about a Padres team that wants to win in 2015.

Subjectively, the Padres have long lacked meaningful buzz, even or especially locally. They’ve had nothing since Adrian Gonzalez was dealt away, and even Gonzalez was sort of a reluctant face of the franchise. Kemp is a celebrity, particularly in California. Myers, meanwhile, is a power bat with personality. People are talking about the Padres now, and everyone likes a team trying to win sooner. No one enjoys slogging through an extended period of irrelevance. But as much as the Padres are succeeding in building some hype, at the end of the day it still looks like there’s a lot missing.

You could say the Padres are kind of trying to be the National League’s White Sox. We know that, with the second wild card, teams are incentivized more than ever to try to be at least okay. With an active offseason, the White Sox have improved from also-ran to potential contender. People are excited! It’s exciting. The White Sox saw an opportunity to put pieces around Jose Abreu, Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Adam Eaton. San Diego? San Diego doesn’t have an Abreu. It doesn’t have a Sale. And the players coming in don’t appear to be superstars, name value be damned.

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Just two years after getting shipped out of Kansas City, Wil Myers is reportedly on the move again. This time, he’s going to San Diego in a fascinating three way trade that looks to create more questions than it answers.

First, the most updated details, as we know them, via Mark Topkin.

Hearing #Rays are down to 2 scenarios on Myers trade, waiting to hear if #Nats are in or out.

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) December 17, 2014

Either way, #Rays said to give up Myers, Hanigan and 2 low minor-lgrs, and get back Rivera, B.Smith, Bauers from #Padres. Then ….

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) December 17, 2014

If #Nats are in, #Rays under these scenarios to get Souza and A-ball LHP. If #Nats out, #Rays said get J. Ross, Trea Turner from #Padres

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) December 17, 2014

Trea Turner was #Padres first-round pick so if he was in #Rays or #Nats deal he would have to be a PTNBL

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) December 17, 2014

As best as we can sort it out, it looks like the deal might be something like this.

San Diego gets Wil Myers, Ryan Hanigan, and pitching prospect Jose Castillo.
Tampa Bay gets Steven Souza, Rene Rivera, and prospects Burch Smith and Jake Bauers.
Washington gets Trea Turner and Joe Ross

If the Nationals part of the deal doesn’t happen, Souza would stay in WAS and TB would keep Ross and Turner.

The Padres get a young right-handed hitter who is supposed to be a future slugger, but he hasn’t shown that kind of power in the big leagues as of yet. And while Myers certainly still has enough upside to develop into what he was projected to be, this is a bit of an odd fit for San Diego, who already had Seth Smith in one corner and is close to acquiring Matt Kemp to play in the other corner. Something will have to give in SD’s crowded outfield, whether it’s Smith getting moved or Myers potentially heading to yet another team.

For the Rays, this is a bit more cut-and-dry. Souza is exactly their kind of player, an underrated prospect whom the projections adore, and they pick up a few additional pieces in exchange for making a perceived downgrade in right field. Souza destroyed Triple-A last year and Steamer has him as Myers equal for 2015.

He is a little bit older and hasn’t yet hit in the big leagues, but he comes with one extra year of team control, which is always valuable to the Rays. While the perceived gap between Myers and Souza is likely quite high, given that Souza has never been ranked as a top prospect, the forecasts think that this isn’t actually a huge step back for Tampa Bay. Even if you think the projections are too optimistic for Souza or too pessimistic for Myers, the Rays get a few additional minor pieces to offset some of that gap.

The Nationals seem to be the third team in this deal simply because the Rays wanted Souza as a Myers replacement; for them, this trade just moves some prospects around. Souza was blocked in Washington by Jayson Werth and Bryce Harper, so the Nationals turned him into a couple of pieces they’re more likely to be able to use. Ross gives them more pitching depth in case they end up trading an arm like Jordan Zimmermann, while Turner will slot in as Ian Desmond’s long-term replacement at shortstop.

We’ll have a full write-up (or two) on this once everything is official. My early take is that this is a fair-ish deal for all involved, pending what San Diego does to clear their new outfield logjam. The Rays seem to be betting on Souza’s projections, the Padres are betting on Myers power developing, while the Nationals are betting that two good prospects slightly further from the majors are better than one who is big league ready.

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Even before all this recent activity, it was pretty apparent the White Sox had the makings of a good core. In fact, the existence of the core is probably in large part what drove all this recent activity. There’s an opportunity to be seized, and the White Sox had plenty of financial flexibility to play with. Clearly, Jose Abreu is a star-level player. Clearly, Chris Sale is a star-level player. Clearly, Jose Quintana is a borderline star-level player. And then there’s Adam Eaton. Eaton, unquestionably, is a part of the core. But how valuable he is depends on where you’re looking.

Looking at Baseball-Reference, last year Eaton was baseball’s fourth-most valuable center fielder, with a WAR over 5. However, looking at FanGraphs, he wound up more middle-of-the-pack, with a WAR under 3. There are a few different reasons for the disagreement, but mostly this is about defense. Here at FanGraphs, we make use of UZR. Over at Baseball-Reference, they make use of DRS. Most of the time, the metrics get along, but it’s both interesting and frustrating when they don’t, and with regard to Adam Eaton, they most certainly do not get along.

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