Red Sox and Rays Both Bet on Results
The Astros have it relatively easy: They’re a super-team lacking meaningful divisional competition. The Indians have it even easier: They should resemble a super-team as well, playing in one of the very worst divisions in modern baseball history. This isn’t what it’s like for the Yankees or the Red Sox. While both teams are almost certainly going to the playoffs, one of them will have to survive the wild-card game, which brings an abrupt end to one competitive team’s season. Even though either team would be favored in this year’s matchup, neither is excited by the prospect, so they’re working to try to finish in first. Late Tuesday, the Yankees got better by fetching help in the bullpen. Early Wednesday, the Red Sox responded by fetching help in the rotation.
Red Sox get:
Rays get:
It’s a clean trade — a one-for-one between a team in the hunt and a team watching it from the outside. In general, it looks how these trades usually look. The good team is getting a veteran rental, and the worse team is getting a longer-term prospect. Indeed, you could say this is a normal trade for the teams to make. But even normal trades are interesting! And for both sides, this is a bet on the numbers. It’s a bet on the new Eovaldi, and on the new Beeks. Both have been pitchers in transition.
The Red Sox are ahead of the Yankees by five games in the standings. That’s a comfortable margin, especially given that Gary Sanchez is now back on the disabled list. Furthermore, the Red Sox already have Chris Sale, Rick Porcello, David Price, and Drew Pomeranz. The hope is that, before too terribly long, Eduardo Rodriguez will also recover from his injury. Just taking a glance, this might not seem like the perfect fit. The Red Sox will probably win their division, and Eovaldi might be their fourth- or fifth-best starter. Teams don’t often trade very much for a rental fourth starter.
For one thing, the Yankees remain incredibly dangerous. Boston’s divisional odds are strong without being overwhelming. For another thing, Eovaldi is pitching insurance — insurance in case someone gets hurt, insurance in case Rodriguez doesn’t come back. For a third thing, this could and should alter the playoff bullpen, whether that means Eovaldi becomes a reliever, or someone else does. And finally, Eovaldi appears to be the best he’s ever been. Maybe I should have noted that first.
I wrote about Eovaldi as an intriguing pitcher on July 9. Since then, he’s had one awful start, and one great one. Nothing has really changed over the two weeks. Eovaldi throws hard, still, and he’s a strike-zone pounder. Among the adjustments he’s made: He’s throwing more cutters and fewer fastballs, he’s elevating his fastball more, and he’s tunneling his cutter better. His fastball and cutter work well as a pair, giving Eovaldi some of the results it’s always felt like he should have had. For now, his home-run rate is elevated, but that’s a noisy statistic, and his xFIP- is right around guys like Chris Archer and Aaron Nola. Eovaldi misses bats, and he seldom grants a free pass. That’s a good skillset to bank on.
The risk might be the home runs — perhaps Eovaldi throws too many strikes. He’s also someone who’s no stranger to elbow problems, and every team in baseball is aware that makes him a durability gamble. The Red Sox are just hoping Eovaldi can keep it together for another few months. That sounds cold and impersonal, but they don’t have to worry about Eovaldi’s long-term outlook. He’s a free agent in November. He’s an effective pitcher now.
Boston’s decision is that Eovaldi is ready to help, while Beeks is and was not. So now, if you look at this from Tampa Bay’s side, they’ve lost a rental, but they were always going to trade him. In return, they get a young lefty who hasn’t looked good in a very small sample of big-league exposure. Jalen Beeks presumably isn’t a finished product. But there’s reason to believe he’s close. He doesn’t rate that highly in terms of raw stuff or command, but you should see how he’s done in Triple-A.
Beeks is 24, and this year he’s made 16 starts in the International League. Here’s a very simple plot: walk rate against strikeout rate, for everyone in Triple-A who’s thrown at least 50 innings. Beeks is the point in yellow.
By K-BB%, Beeks ranks second out of 161 pitchers. He’s sandwiched between Josh James and Freddy Peralta. Beeks looks a little worse in terms of whiff rate and strike rate:
Still, the swinging-strike rate ranks 13th. Again, by whiffs and strikes, Beeks looks like Peralta. He looks better than, say, Michael Kopech. These numbers aren’t everything, but they’re probably the most important numbers for a minor-league pitcher to generate. The Rays are betting that Beeks’ strikeouts and walks reflect a true ability to retire high-level competition. It would be easy to believe that Beeks isn’t anything much, given how bad he’s looked in his brief time in the bigs. The Rays apparently don’t care, similar to how they didn’t care about the same concern regarding Wilmer Font.
Beeks does get his fastball well into the 90s. He also elevates it — sometimes too much.
The high fastball is something the Rays and Red Sox both teach, so it’s not like this is something the Rays will have to try to coach into him. Here, also, is a fun clip of a good curveball:
Beeks throws a four-seamer, a changeup, a curve, and a cutter. That cutter has apparently been the difference for him in 2018, and the Rays certainly aren’t going to take it away. There’s a four-pitch repertoire, then, that’s worked well at the next-highest level. It remains unclear how well this can work at the actual highest level, and look at Beeks’ arm action, one is reminded a little bit of Ubaldo Jimenez. Beeks might never throw that many consistent strikes, and perhaps he’s just a long-term reliever. Perhaps he’s not even that. But he’s been good in Triple-A, he’s cost-controlled, and he’s ready right about now.
Remember, though the Rays are 19 actual games behind the Red Sox in the AL East, they’re only six games worse by BaseRuns. This is a team that’s been stockpiling talent, and free agency isn’t going to deal too much of a blow, with Wilson Ramos being the most significant upcoming loss. The Rays believe they can compete in 2019 — if not for the division, then at least for the wild card. And these last few months alone, the organization has added Beeks, Font, Andrew Moore, and Anthony Banda. There’s been an attempt to acquire high-minors starters who would be under club control for a while. They’re certainly not all going to work, but this is how the Rays have to operate, and this trade makes their outlook a little more rosy.
A few months of a starting pitcher for more than six years of a potential starting pitcher. Maybe the Rays aren’t even going to care about traditional starting pitching, but in that case, you could say it’s a few months of a starting pitcher for more than six years of a potential multi-inning opener or reliever. Beeks might not be good enough. His Triple-A performance is compelling evidence that he is, or will be.
For now, the Rays are stepping back, as the Red Sox participate in the AL East arms race. The Red Sox just made themselves better and deeper, bolstering their odds of winning the division and winning the pennant. The Rays are biding their time and building up. They can sense their opportunity is coming.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Beeks seems like a reasonable return for Eovaldi, and he fits their timeline: The Rays seem like many of their guys are going to be up and/or ready to be big league contributors near the tail end of 2019 or by 2020. It’s also convenient that a lot of Boston’s team is only controlled through the end of 2019.
This makes me wonder: Do they see Chris Archer as part of that team in 2020, or will they deal him away as his team control dwindles? Are they willing to keep Cron and Duffy through the end of their expiring contracts? Because of they don’t see them as contributors, it makes sense to listen on them now, when they’re more valuable…and in order to get players that will be up and ready in 2020.
Cron looks like a guy the Rockies could possibly use, with Desmond shifting to LF and displacing Parra.
You know who could really use Cron? The Angels.
Feels like they will trade Archer, but perhaps they don’t want to sell low, teams are scared off by his injury or both. I’m sure they’ve listened, but probably haven’t liked what they’ve heard relative to where it was even in the offseason.
Latest on MLBTR says that the Pads are willing to include one or two of Mejia, Urias, and Quantrill for Archer. There are enough good pieces in the Pads’ system (Mejia, Urias, Paddack, Allen, Baez) that I’d think I’d be very intrigued if I were the Rays.
I think Duffy is likely to be traded in the offseason. Christian Arroyo can probably give the Rays most of what Duffy can for less money, and the Rays have a lot of 2B/3B/SS infield depth between Adames, Robertson, Arroyo, Wendle at the major-league level, and Nick Solak and Brandon Lowe in the upper minors. It makes sense for them to convert Duffy into something else via trade. Cron should stick around. I’d bet the Rays will trade Archer before the 2020 season. By then Honeywell, De Leon, and Banda should all be back from the TJS scourge that has ravaged the starting staff this year, and McKay should be knocking on the door.
Personally, I’d deal Archer and go for broke building a high-end system. That’s the only way they’re going to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox. This middle ground stuff isn’t going to cut it. Sell Archer, sell whomever else, and go for it.
The problem isn’t that Eovaldi throws too many strikes. The problem is that fastball is straight.
He’s got value as rotation insurance until September, and then come playoff time you hope his fastball plays up out of the pen and the teams like the Yanks and Astros don’t destroy his straight heater.
That was certainly his problem in Florida (was it Miami?) and with the Yankees, but I don’t recall him showing a cutter at all then, let alone as a primary pitch.
I think Eovaldi is going to be a great 2 inning kinda guy in the playoffs, a lot like Maeda was for the Dodgers. A team can never have too many 100 mph fastball guys back there (the Yankees are trying though)
Dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fan here who gives this deal two thumbs up. Pomeranz just doesn’t look like he can find it again and answers to when Rodriquez will be be back are nowhere to be found. Wright(?????) seems to be held together with glue and duct tape and Johnson doesn’t help my sleep. I think the Yankees picking up Britton is only a very small incremental improvement but the Red Sox had to get another starter. Eovaldi is as good a gamble as the other names being batted around.
*Red Sox fan prefers his team’s move to Yankees’ move*
No point keeping the oars when you’ve already sold the boat.
Good move by the Sox.
Eovaldi at best is a Porcello/Price level pitcher (not the Cy Young version, but the current version) and at worst is likely a 5th starter that is better than Pomeranz and provides insurance and maybe a ROOGY in the playoffs. And they get an extended look for potential signability in the offseason.
Beeks seems to be a 4th starter at best given the stuff and at worst an AAAA player who won’t make a difference. However, they already have Johnson and Velasquez serving that 5th starter role on the cheap, so Beeks would likely have been redundant.
Trading timelines is the perfect kind of trade for both teams and the only way this blows up in the Sox’ face is if we get worst case scenario for Eovaldi and best case scenario for Beeks. Granted there are low odds scenarios like Eovaldi blows his arm again or Beeks becomes a bona fide, 2nd/3rd starter, but highly unlikely and/or random.
Porcello and Price are not reasonable comps for Eovaldi. Your assessment is over optimistic.
Eovaldi has ~800 career IPs and ~10.0 WAR. That comes out to 1.25 per 200 IPS, so something between a 4th starter and a 5th starter. As you mentioned, the BoSox already have a few cheap 5th starter typers pitching as 5th starters do. Eovaldi is only a marginal upgrade. This year he has been worth 0.7 WAR, last year he was worth 0.7 WAR.
He throws hard, that’s about where nearly all the excitement is coming from, though his fastball rates as merely an average pitch. The cutter usage is interesting, but his other pitchers are poor to average, and he doesn’t throw the cutter enough to project to be an above average pitcher. Eovaldi up to date has been a mediocre 5th starter, it’s Dombrowski-ish to target such players.
“The Red Sox just made themselves better and deeper, bolstering their odds of winning the division and winning the pennant.”
Isn’t this only marginally true? Fangraphs, of course, calculates the playoff odds. Adding Eovaldi and losing Beeks could improve fangraphs’ own numbers on Boston’s playoff odds slightly.
Beeks is projected for roughly 0.2 WAR over roughly 20 IPs for the rest of the season. Eovaldi is projected for roughly 0.7 WAR over roughly 50 IPs for the rest of the season (averaging zips, dchart & steamer). By rate, Beeks projects to provide about 0.10 WAR per 10 IPs, or roughly average performance (i.e. ~2.0 WAR over 200 IPs), which fits his ~4.50 projected FIP. Eovaldi projects to be a bit better, 0.14 WAR/10 IPs.
That does amount to a 0.5 WAR difference, although the majority of that difference is due to projecting Eovaldi to pitch 30 more IPs than Beeks. However, Boston’s projection before the trade had those 30 IPs included, but being pitched by other pitchers: guys like Brian Johnson, Hector Velazquez and Steven Wright. All 3 of these pitchers have projections similar to Beeks, that is, roughly 0.10 WAR per 10 IPs, so they were projected to pick up 0.3 WAR over the 30 IPs that Eovaldi is now projected to take from them. All told Boston went from having those 4 pitchers projected for 50 IPs and 0.5 WAR, to now having those 50 IPs reallocated to Eovaldi for 0.7 WAR: an upgrade of 0.2 WAR.
Accordingly, if the Red Sox did bolster their odds of winning the division, it can only be by a marginal amount. Adding Eovaldi can only increase Boston’s projected wins by something around 0.25 wins. With the given standings as they are, the added quarter of a win has limited value. Eovaldi’s playoff usage projects to be low, so the added value in the post season also projects as de minimis.
Fangraphs has all this information, and use to be more forward critiquing lopsided trades. Jeff’s work is absolutely top notch, but even this article chooses to leave out the quantitative facts that are most relevant to this analysis: how much did the Red Sox improve their odds, how much is such improvement worth, and how much is Beeks (with strong major league ready projections right now) worth?
Beeks projects to be worth ~50m or so over the next 6 years, with ~40m of that value being surplus (projected roughly for 6 WAR, at $8m per WAR, minus roughly $8m in projected salary). Nearly all research on the matter has the value of an added win topping out around $8m for contenders, but let’s assume that for Boston, the value of an added win at the moment is $20m. Even so, Eovaldi’s surplus value comes in around (~0.7 WAR, $20m per WAR, minus $0.6m salary) $13m. By normal added WAR values, Eovaldi’s surplus value is around $5m. Therefore this trade provides substantial negative surplus value for Boston, while adding close to nothing to their ability to win now.
I believe any open analysis of these numbers will show that Tampa got a very good deal here, and Boston got a poor deal. Contenders can rarely benefit from adding rental mediocrities unless they have a big whole of replacement level or below replacement level production. Boston didn’t have a huge hole, it merely had mediocre pitchers providing mediocre production. They key here is that Eovaldi is not good enough (despite non-predictive micro trends and quasi-hot streaks), neither are Boston’s alternatives poor enough, for there to be any real ‘upgrade’ in this move.
This appears to be a typical regressive move by Dombrowski- overpaying for a somewhat known name and scouting favorite who throws hard. It’s likely just the regressive tendency to trust veterans over youth, based on unsubstantiated (and indeed counterfactual) narratives about needing vets for the playoffs.
Anyway, Jeff’s work is brilliant, his support for Tampa’s return is obvious and well stated, and he is bold enough to correctly state that Beeks is ready now (but that Boston probably doesn’t think so). I could only pick that one line to suggest a possible improvement: that the actual odds could be given, so that the trade could be assessed quantitatively.
What Jeff writes about, and what I think you’re ignoring here, is that these players have large error bars around their projections. Jeff describes both as pitchers in transition, and his July 9th piece goes into a lot of detail on Eovaldi’s changes in particular.
I wouldn’t expect you to go super deep into an surplus value analysis in a Fangraphs comment. But you’re also not discounting future WAR for the Rays (which is almost all of their value from Beeks). If you use a 10% discount rate, which Matt Swartz uses in his July 2017 article on the topic here, that ends up eating probably close to 25% of the $40m surplus value you calculate. But also, the relevant comparison for each team is Red Sox surplus value w/ Eovaldi vs w/Beeks and Rays surplus value w/Eovaldi vs w/ Beeks, not Red Sox surplus value w/ Eovaldi vs Rays surplus value w/ Beeks. When you add in the other uncertainties in the Red Sox rotation, and assume their projections are closer to his YTD 1.51 WARP from BP than to say his ZiPS projection, I think you can see how this would make sense from their perspective.
“This appears to be a typical regressive move by Dombrowski- overpaying for a somewhat known name and scouting favorite who throws hard.” This is way too hot of a take. Honestly, I think I’m a little skeptical of this move myself, but Dombrowski is a successful GM. This isn’t the Shelby Miller trade.
Your response is just kind of out of thin air.
Where is the evidence that these players have large error bars? Why even make reference to a quantitative matter- i.e. error bars- without providing any numbers to assess how large they are? I believe Steamer et al have about a 0.30-0.40 predictive value for the season, a bit higher for rest of season projections- and this number doesn’t somehow drop off dramatically with Eovaldi or Beeks type pitchers.
Projections are of course projections, and they can have error- but that is tautological. These pitchers don’t have uniquely massive variance to their projections, even the developing cutter aspect included.
Your right, though, about discounting future value, that’s a good catch and does change the numbers I used a bit.
The issue with adding Eovaldi is that he simply has not been very good- he’s 28, 10 WAR over 800 IP, on a club that has a surplus of 5th starter types- not a lack. Jeff has a clever point about his developing slider, but until his xFIP et al actually improve, his projections will remain mediocre- and they are the best method at estimating his value and likely future performance.
Surely you notice that fangraphs literally never criticisms a ‘compete now’ move anymore for any clubs that project to be in the top 25 or so in the game. The only critique from last offseason’s awful FA class was the Hosmer deal, and even then fangraphs advocated that the deal might not be crazy. These articles are already half-written now, in the sense that every veteran acquired by any club, with an intent to win (no matter how illogical) is considered laudable.
There is no serious empirical argument that Dombrowski is a successful GM, he’s the Jeff Fisher of MLB GMs, simply been around forever. Merely being part of some solid seasons doesn’t make a GM a success, just as it doesn’t make Matheny as successful manager. Dombrowksi has long track record of making deals with negative surplus value, and almost never makes an intelligent, progressive move.