Scouting the Prospects in the Giancarlo Stanton Trade
Today, the Marlins acquired two prospects, RHP Jorge Guzman and SS Jose Devers, as part of the package sent from New York in exchange for Giancarlo Stanton. Below are scouting reports on those prospects as well as thoughts on whom, within New York’s system, might represent a competent stopgap replacement at second base for the spot vacated by Starlin Castro, who was traded to Miami as part of the deal.
Miami’s New Prospects
Houston signed Jorge Guzman in June of 2014, just before the end of the 2013-14 international signing period. He was a bit older than most other IFA signees but still spent his first pro season in the Dominican Summer League. The following year, 2016, he split the season between the Gulf Coast and Appalachian Leagues and began to generate some buzz around baseball as he was seen by a larger number of pro scouts. In November of 2016, he was traded to New York as part of the package for Brian McCann, which also included RHP Albert Abreu. Guzman was seen as a premium arm-strength lottery ticket at the time, sitting 95-97 and touching 102.
In 2017, Guzman went to the New York-Penn League and threw strikes with a 96-102 mph fastball and plus slider. He struck out 88 hitters in 66 innings. His changeup is still raw, and scouts don’t like his stiff, hunched posture during his delivery, but he throws strikes and has a chance to start. He could have an 80 fastball and 70 slider at peak, which alone could make him an elite reliever. If Marlins player development can improve his changeup, or develop a different third pitch, his ceiling as a rotation piece is quite high. He enters his age-22 season in 2018.
Jose Devers is a shortstop who hit .245/.336/.342 as a 17-year-old in the GCL this year. He has an immature but projectable 6-foot frame, and his physical composition is such that scouts think he’ll fill out and add strength as he matures. He has precocious feel for hitting but currently lacks the physicality and swing plane to do any real damage with the bat. Devers’ actions and arm strength are such that scouts think he has a chance to be an above-average defensive shortstop, so he doesn’t necessarily have to develop an impact bat to profile as a big leaguer. There’s a perfect-world outcome in which Devers’ frame develops in that Goldilocks zone that affords him the physicality necessary to punish the baseball even as he retains the agility to stay at shortstop, though it sounds like a swing tweak might also be necessary for such an outcome.
I have a 50 FV on Guzman, which means he’ll garner heavy consideration for this offseason’s top 100, and a pretty aggressive 40 on Devers based largely on his frame, athleticism, and natural feel to hit. Where does that rank on our yet-to-be-released Marlins list? Well, 2016 first-rounder Braxton Garrett — low-to-mid 90s, above-average curveball, above-average changeup, chance for plus command — would be soundly ahead of Guzman if he hadn’t required Tommy John in June. Brian Anderson and the newly acquired Nick Neidert are both relatively polished prospects who I think can be average big-league regulars, but neither of them can touch what Guzman’s ceiling looks like if he develops a good third pitch.
Trevor Rogers, Miami’s 2017 first-rounder, is a huge 6-foot-6 lefty with a mid-90s fastball, but his breaking ball and strike-throwing are behind Guzman’s right now, and Rogers is already20 years old despite having been a 2017 high-school draftee. I think TJ recovery rates are such that I’d still rather have Garrett if given the choice between all of these guys, but there’s an argument to be made for Guzman as the No. 1 guy in this system. He’ll likely rank somewhere in the back third of our top 100.
The Yankees’ Internal Options at the Keystone
The Yankees can patch the hole created by Castro’s departure with some combination of Tyler Wade and Thairo Estrada. Wade failed to do much in a meaninglessly small big-league sample, but his scouting report remains the same as it did a year ago. He’s a plus runner with an all-fields approach to contact and sound ball/strike recognition. He lacks the power to profile as an everyday player anywhere other than shortstop (where Wade’s glove would be average). With superior talents at short in the upper levels of the organization, the Yankees began moving Wade around the diamond during the last few seasons. He began seeing work all over the outfield during the 2016 Arizona Fall League and got reps at six positions in 2017, including first-time action at third base.
Estrada is also a capable defensive shortstop who could be plus at second base. He, too, has doubles power, insufficient for everyday reps at second base, but he grinds out tough at-bats and played well enough in the heavily scouted 2017 Arizona Fall League that he likely would have been a Rule 5 pick had New York not added him to the 40-man roster this offseason. Both project as quality utility guys, with Wade offering more versatility and Estrada offering better defense at short, but they’ll be fine at second base in a pinch until Gleyber Torres is ready.
Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.
Gerrit Cole for Clint Frazier and Miguel Andujar next?
7 years of control over Frazier and Andujar for 2 years of Cole?
Cole’s a top 20 pitcher since his 2014 debut, has excellent stuff, and has upside to ~5 WAR seasons. With their roster construction and the stated desire to get under the CBT, I do think 2 years of Cole could be worth 6 each of Andujar and Frazier, sure.
with Clint Frazier and Miguel Andujar, why not throw in a little more and try for Bumgarner?
why not go for the guy who has proven to be as tough as nails in the biggest games?
I thought the Marlins should have tried to get Clint Frazier, even if it meant adding a little money to the deal. Yankees have no real need for him, with their surplus of outfielders, and the Marlins would have immediately gotten Stanton’s replacement.
the Yankees kept Frazier so that he could headline a prospect package that could snag the ace starter that will put them over the top and into the Series
The Yankees will trade for a 2B now. Kinsler or Harrison
Cole + Harrison for Frazier, Sheffield and Andujar
If I were the Pirates I would do that in a New York minute.
no. the Yankees are still $11M under the $197 tax threshold.
that deal puts them over and for no real reason. they have no need of Harrison’s $10M+ salary.
if they wanted that, they would have simply kept Castro.
they have so much offense that they can play Torreyes or Wade to start the season before putting Gleyber Torres into the 2B slot that they cleared for him
I hope so. Torres is a great prospect but he’s not even 21 yet and has only 96 PA’s in AAA, 27% of which were strikeouts. Projected by Steamer600 for just 1.2 WAR which may not be satisfactory for a contending team like the Yankees. At the very least they should acquire some sort of cheap veteran as an insurance policy.
Are you kidding?? Torres is a generational talent the kikes of which NY has never seen. Give the kid the opening day start and he’ll mash 50 bombs and 50 doubles.
I hope you meant “likes” and not “kikes” unless Enrique Hernandez’s nickname was just way more popular in NY than I thought.
Torres is probably the guy at 2nd at some point this year, next year at the latest (unless they suddenly decide to move Didi to get him at SS). But I suppose if they’re not going to dip below the luxury tax this year (or ever), might as well add Kinsler. Why not?
They’re 100% staying under the tax this year.
I’d rather sign a Howie Kendrick and let him fake 2nd for a month than spend talent to trade for a pricey Kinsler contract.
no, they will not.
they will not trade for another position player unless it’s Trout or Machado… and that aint gonna happen.
they will do nothing other than scour the marketplace for a top starter
that is a pretty terrible return, isn’t it? guzman is a good prospect but with significant reliever risk and little devers might become good but is a longshot lottery ticket.
didn’t dave write an article that said he expects stanton to have around 100M surplus value on his contract? I thought that was optimistic due to stantons injury history but even at 60M surplus value that still is a grade 60 prospect. the opt out might make that slighly worse but you can assume that he needs to create like 50M of surplus value in his first 3 years (averaging about 5 WAR) to make an opt out worthy for him.
so according to that list
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/valuing-the-2017-top-100-prospects/
his actual value would have been a 60 and a 45 or a 50 and 2-3 45s at least.
now the no trade clause of course hurt the leverage but still they essentially gave him away. plus the marlins actually paid for castros salary (who is projected for 1.3 WAR next year).
Marlins will likely flip Castro now.
Agreed.
I’m sort of wondering why the Marlins didn’t get this done as a 3-team trade, but after all the Stanton drama with the Cardinals and Giants perhaps they wanted to strike while the iron was hot and get a deal done. Suppose it’s also possible that Castro might have a market with some teams (e.g., the Blue Jays) who will deal with the Marlins more readily than they’d deal directly with the Yankees.
Stanton’s contract has nowhere near 100M in surplus. For one, as you said, that analysis ignored the opt-out clause. Moreover, it is clear that the rest of the league simply does not value Stanton as such. I believe one report described the Marlins as “delusional” for thinking they could offload the entire contract AND receive top prospects in return. Overall the return appears to be somewhat light and yet reasonable at the same time. Certainly not egregious as many fans would have you believe right now.
I agree with Wilmerr.
The leaks of trade packages with the Cardinals and Giants seemed to have one of those teams taking on about $250 million of Stanton’s contract and sending back trade packages headlined by a #25 to #50 pitching prospect (Alcantara from the Cardinals) or a back half of the top 100 pitching prospect (Beede from the Giants).
I’m not sure that those packages were valuing Stanton overall at anything more than his remaining contract.
If the Marlins had to trade him to maintain solvency, and he refused to be traded to any team besides the Yanks, Dodgers, Cubs and Astros…
The Cuban billionaire would be buying pitching right now instead of unloading the entire team. This is the third ownership group put in place by the MLB mafia that has acted exactly the same despite the Marlins now having a state-of-the-art ballpark and new TV deal.
The Marlins own the 16th largest media market in the USA while over in Ohio the Reds own the smallest media market and have the contracts of Joey Votto and Homer Bailey.
Rob Manfred, Derek Jeter and the rest of the MLB mafia (owners) are looting the Miami market as they have been since the Marlins came into existence.
If your goal is to build a winning team, this is a terrible trade. Castro varies between “okay 2nd baseman” and “below replacement guy” making a lot of money. One prospect is good, but should not be the headliner for the MVP. In a normal scenario, a team would eat some more money on Stanton’s approximately market-value contract to get better prospects. So yeah, this is bad from that perspective.
But since the Marlins’ goal was to get rid of Stanton’s contract, they did pretty well at that.
It still helps to eliminate the risk of having to pay Stanton 30M a year all throughout his 30’s, since that is presumably the same time frame during which the Marlins hope to contend.
It is also likely that any team would require a certain level of financial stability before pursuing a proper rebuild, and in that sense this trade may indirectly help the Marlins to win games in the future. Now that the team’s finances are somewhat under control, they can begin to sell off remaining valuable pieces like Ozuna and Yelich in exchange for the prospects they require.
True, the Marlins could have structured the Stanton trade so as to receive better talent in return, but the trade-off would have been the financial component. It may be that the stability of the organization was simply prerequisite to the end goal of winning games down the line, and in that way this deal is justifiable from both business and baseball perspectives.
Guzman has Chapman downside and Severino upside. He has a +++ fastball, + Slider and a meh changeup. Which is just like Severino. In fact, his fastball is even better than Sevi’s. Sevi barely uses his changeup is a fantastic starter, so if the changeup improves to league average, he will be a 5 WAR pitcher. As a Yankees fan, there were 4 prospects I didnt want traded: Sheffield, Florial, Torres, and Guzman. I think Guzman is better than Clint Frazier, or Chance Adams ever will be.
So…he’s as much of a can’t-miss guy as Arodys Vizcaino?!
Pitchers with electric stuff in short-season ball have Danny Hultzen downside.
Just your daily reminder that your favorite prospect, whoever they are, will probably not meet your expectations.
View the Stanton contract as a market correction and the Yankees get a benefit. But potentially the buyers of Machado and Harper benefit as well. Whether Stanton would have been an overpay on other teams is irrelevant- he was for Florida. At that point, it’s like driving a car off the lot. It is a market reset and MLBPA won’t like it.
The Marlins didn’t get one of Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier or Justus Sheffield? Who in the hell is running that organization?
This trade is a rip off. The Yankees get one of the premier sluggers in the game and somebody who has learned to go the opposite way, which is a big deal in Yankee Stadium. Sure, the Marlins get relief from their payroll and get the opportunity to shed a huge contract.
But does anybody seriously believe that if push came to shove, that the Yankees wouldn’t have caved in and given up one of their top prospects as part of the deal?
I sure would like to know what the Cardinals offered before Stanton invoked his no-trade clause. I bet it was a lot more than what the Yankees gave up.
This terrible trade almost makes me nostalgic for the days of Bowie Kuhn. He would’ve nixed this trade as being a pure salary dump.
Cashman doesn’t cave.
That should be the man’s epitaph, haha.
Dude was only interested in a heist.
“But does anybody seriously believe that if push came to shove, that the Yankees wouldn’t have caved in and given up one of their top prospects as part of the deal?”
No, they wouldn’t. They were were uninterested until it became obvious the Marlins were desperate.
And it also didn’t hurt that they were already set in the outfield anyway. I’m sure they brought up that fact early and often in their talks with the Marlins.
Yup.
Cash approaches blockbuster trades by telling the other team to make him an offer he can’t refuse.
Push did come to shove, and the org that caved was the Marlins. Because they had to move Stanton, and the Yankees didn’t have to take him. The side that is more desperate always gets the worse end of any deal. The Yankees already had too many options in the outfield and their offseason wishlist didn’t start with “dingers” (in fact, adding another power bat was probably third or fourth at the highest).
It doesn’t matter what the Cardinals might have offered before Stanton invoked his no-trade clause, because Stanton had that no-trade clause to invoke. That’s part of what puts the Marlins in a desperate place in this negotiation: Stanton can arbitrarily restrict who the Marlins talk to, so they’ve got a very limited pool of buyers for the product they’re trying to sell. Once they decided (and advertised) they had to get out from under his contract, they put themselves into terrible negotiating position. If getting rid of the financial obligation was the priority, there was no way they were also going to get a lot of talent. They had to take whatever offer they might get, and the offers were only going to come from teams Stanton approved… and those teams knew that.
I’m wondering what this means for Bryce Harper.
He grew up rooting for the Yankees. Now there’s no way he signs with NYY when he becomes a free agent.
What are the best guesses where he ends up?
Whatever team offers him the most money. My guess is Boston.
Unless…the Yankees use their savings from the reset to create an outfield of death!!!
I guess they could get away with Three RFs…
With a grand total of 0 IP in CF since 2015 between the three, they’ll be fine, right?
Right? =/
I strongly believe that if Ted Lerner is still alive, Bryce Harper is not getting out of DC. He’ll get a 15 year, $500 million dollar deal with $200 million of that deferred.
When in doubt, assume that Boras client will sign with the Nats for more money than is possible.
If we believe Bob Nightengale’s reporting – and I’m never really sure that we should – the Cardinals offered to take “nearly $250 million” of Stanton’s contract and trade Sandy Alcantara and Jack Flaherty. The Giants reportedly offered to trade Tyler Beede and Aramis Garcia and take on $230 million of the contract. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2017/12/10/mlb-winter-meetings-preview-trade-rumors-free-agents/938521001/
Going by the Fangraphs prospect valuation scale, Alcantara and Flaherty, as two Grade 50 or 55 FV pitching prospects, are worth somewhere between about $30 to $45 million combined. ( https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/valuing-the-2017-top-100-prospects/ ). So the total value of money plus prospects from the Cardinals was something like $275 to $295 million, depending part of what number “nearly $250 million” means.
I’m pretty sure that both Beede plus Garcia are generally viewed as a lesser prospect package than Alcantara and Flaherty, so the Giants’ offer was well south of the Cardinals’, probably something like $40 million less of total value.
The Yankees will reportedly take on $265 million of Stanton contract. I think that Castro’s remaining 2 / $22 million is roughly zero value: his 2017 WAR would say it’s several million per year positive, his 2018 Steamer forecast would say it might be a few million per year negative. I’m not sure if the FV values hold up so well for a player as far from the majors as Guzman, but teams do value high ceilings. His value as a 50 FV pitcher without any discount would be just under $15 million, and Jose Devers as a lottery ticket maybe rounds that up to $15 million.
Anyway, if we believe the reporting, it looks to me like in cash plus prospects the Marlins actually got a better trade return from the Yankees than what they were willing to accept from the Giants, and something that may not be that much worse than what the Cardinals offered.
FWIW Devers is a cousin of the Red Sox’s Rafael…
One thing to remember: as dazzling as Guzman’s fastball may be, he’s now been traded twice in two seasons – by two organizations that have demonstrated some acumen in player development. Not saying he won’t make it, but two teams have now said “ we like him, but not enough to keep him out of a deal”, and you just don’t see that very often with top prospects.