The Five Best Sells of the Trade Deadline

Yesterday, I listed off my favorite win-now moves of the trade deadline. Today, we’re going to lavish some praise on some teams who also made good moves, but did so by looking to the future. These are the five moves I liked the most from the seller’s perspective.

#5 – Twins Acquire Adalberto Mejia

If there is one type of pitcher I’m almost always higher on than everyone else, it’s guys who command average staff and provide value as somewhat-reliable back-end starters. These guys often bounce around the league and are often not thought of as core pieces, but every winning team needs a few guys like this. Before you know it, you look up, and someone like Wade Miley has already racked up +10 WAR for his career, a mark that most of the highest ranked prospects dealt at the deadline won’t even get to. And occasionally, these guys go all Doug Fister or Kyle Hendricks on the league, turning into much more than a strike-throwing innings-eater.

That the Twins were able to get one of these guys for Eduardo Nunez was a very nice move indeed for Minnesota. Nunez is barely more than a bench player, an average-at-best hitter who has been lousy at every position he’s played, and as a 29-year-old, he had no future in Minnesota. Nunez is the kind of guy you normally see moved in August deals for some low-level lottery ticket, a prospect no one will ever hear of again. That they were able to flip him for a guy who might be able to give them 180 competent innings next was pretty surprising, and a very nice acquisition for interim GM Rob Antony. Even if Mejia turns out to be nothing more than Tommy Milone, well, Tommy Milone has racked up +6 WAR in his career; Eduardo Nunez is at +0.9, and they were only trading away a year and a half of Nunez for six years of Mejia.

The Giants were clearly picking up an insurance policy that would allow them to put Matt Duffy in the Matt Moore trade if they wanted to, but even with Mejia likely limited to the back-end of a rotation, back-end starters are still useful pieces to have, and the Twins have to be happy that they were able to pick up a guy with these skills for a utility player they didn’t need.

#4 – Athletics Acquire Grant Holmes, Frankie Montas, and Jharel Cotton

With Rich Hill and Josh Reddick, the A’s had a package of quality free-agents-to-be that appealed to a number of teams, so it’s no surprise that they got some good talent in return. But I like this group for Oakland a good bit, in part because of how the market is changing the valuation of pitchers.

The big knock on Montas and Cotten is that most people think they end up as relievers, with Montas’ injury problems and Cotton’s lack of a breaking ball limiting their ability to stick in the rotation. But over the last year or so, the valuation teams are putting on relief pitching has gone way up, to the point that we should stop saying “he’s just a reliever” as some kind of dismissal of a prospect’s future value. Given their stuff and their strikeout rates, it’s easy to see both Montas and Cotton racking up extreme strikeout rates at the end of the A’s bullpen as early as next year, and if I’m the A’s, I’m already planning on how I can pump-and-dump both of these guys after establishing them as high-leverage relief arms.

If the A’s can get Montas and/or Cotton to pitch well out of the bullpen next year, they could easily have more value next deadline than either Reddick or Hill did this deadline. And the team would still have Grant Holmes around from this deal, even if they flipped Montas and Cotton next summer to restock the system with younger hitters and guys more likely to start long-term.

By getting two guys who could have real value in 2017, the A’s set themselves up to do very well in this trade. They’ll need both guys to stay healthy and actually perform in the big leagues, but if they can make the reliever conversion in short order, the long-term gain of making this swap might be significantly more impressive than it looks today.

#3 – Brewers Acquire Phil Bickford and Andrew Susac

Speaking of the high cost of relievers, I thought the Brewers would end up holding onto Will Smith, given that his velocity and performance were both down this season while trying to pitch through a knee problem that originally looked like it would require surgery to repair the issue. When healthy, Smith is an elite left-handed bullpen arm, but he hasn’t looked 100% thus year, and I thought the Brewers might have to let him rebuild his value before shopping him this winter or next summer.

Instead, they turned him into a guy who might be their starting catcher next year and a solid pitching prospect. Susac isn’t necessarily an upside play, but catchers who can hit near league average levels have value, and Susac gives the team a decent and cheap option to replace the recently-traded Jonathan Lucroy. And then paired with that safe, close-to-the-majors catcher, the team got something of a lottery ticket in Bickford. Eric Longenhagen noted that his stuff has gone backwards this year and his secondary pitches haven’t yet developed, but he’s also a 20 year old running a 28% strikeout rate in high-A ball, so he’s at least got a couple things working for him.

It’s no surprise the Brewers picked up another prospect that looks better by the statline than the current scouting report, as they’ve been collecting guys ranked highly by KATOH ever since David Stearns took over, but it’s worth pointing out that KATOH rated Bickford as the third-best prospect moved at the deadline. Obviously, the questions about his stuff and command matter too, but to get a guy with some legitimate upside as one piece of a two-player deal for a reliever with a knee problem? That’s a nifty deal for the Brewers.

#2 – Rays Acquire Matt Duffy, Lucius Fox, and Michael Santos

If you read my thoughts on why I like Matt Duffy’s chances to bounce back from a tough 2016 season, you’re probably not surprised to see this rank pretty highly. And with the Rays plan to try Duffy at shortstop, the move makes even more sense, as he no longer requires the franchise to move Logan Forsythe or Evan Longoria to find room for him. His defensive excellence at third base suggests he can probably play a decent shortstop, and as a guy projected for a league-average bat, he’s got a shot to be a quality player for the Rays as soon as he comes off the DL.

Toss in Duffy’s potential to add a bit more power, as Forsythe and other similar hitters have, and I’d take Duffy over Moore going forward, even without the other prospects in the deal. Moore is exactly the kind of good stuff/bad command starter whose value can swing wildly from season to season, and the Rays were smart to cash him in before he reminded teams of how mediocre he’s actually been as a big league pitcher. Of course, if he figures out how to throw strikes consistently, he could take a step forward in San Francisco, but the Rays have enough pitchers that they didn’t need to sit around and wait for Moore to live up to his prospect hype any longer.

In Duffy, they’re getting the polar opposite kind of player, but one I think is likely to be more valuable for their team. And they got two prospects thrown in to boot, plus can re-allocate the $26 million they’d have spent on Moore over the next three years to help replace his value. I think this trade might have made the Rays better right now, and if Duffy turns into a quality shortstop, they’ll reap long-term rewards from this deal as well.

#1 – Yankees Acquire Gleyber Torres, Adam Warren, Billy Mckinney, and Rashad Crawford

Aroldis Chapman is one of the game’s most dominant relievers, and the Yankees were in a unique position of owning both of the two elite left-handed relievers that the Cubs coveted. Without any other suitors selling a comparable product, it appears the Yankees were essentially able to name their price, and the price they named was a pretty high one indeed.

You don’t usually see top-25 prospects traded for rentals, but the Yankees landed one of the best young shortstop prospects in the game in exchange for a couple of months of Chapman’s services. That would have been a nice deal in a one-for-one swap, and certainly provided the team with more value than what they would have gotten by making Chapman a qualifying offer this winter.

But the deal wasn’t one for one. In addition to Torres, the team also got back Adam Warren, who was a very good reliever for the Yankees last year, and while his command escaped him in Chicago, he still looks like a guy who could be of value in New York’s bullpen. Warren isn’t any kind of Chapman replacement, but similar relievers were getting multi-year contracts for $5 million a year this winter, so Warren certainly has some real value, even as just a decent middle relief option.

And then the Yankees got two more prospects on top of that pair. I’m not particularly high on McKinney, and Crawford looks like a minor league lifer, but they’re minor league inventory at the least, and you never know when guys like that might turn into more than what they look now. And when the first piece is this good for a rental, you don’t necessarily need the add-on pieces to be of much value.

So, yeah, the Yankees did really well here, taking advantage of a market that was putting a very high price on relievers to help restock a farm system that now looks like one of the best in the game. Given their financial resources, the idea of the Yankees churning out good young talent again has to be pretty scary for the rest of the AL East.