Talking Baseball: Vol. 34
Let's talk about the MLB Trade Deadline and how things look now.
Is it annoying that Tarik Skubal went to the Los Angeles Dodgers? Absolutely it is. Was it completely predictable? You bet your ass it was. Am I tired of almost every high-profile player ending up in Los Angeles? Without question.
Am I mad at the Dodgers for doing it? No. No I am not.
They are playing within the rules of the system that exists, and operating the way you should want your favorite team to operate. And that is true whether there is a salary cap in place or not. There are always opportunities and avenues for teams to spend more money, whether it be on players, research, development, scouting, coaching, etc., and you should want (no … demand) your team maximizes that.
I can’t fault them.
I can’t blame them.
I won’t do either.
I am also not really interested in getting into the details of the upcoming CBA fight over a salary cap because there is going to be plenty of time for that in October, November, December and most likely beyond.
Right now I’m just focused on the actual baseball aspect of things. Because there is enough there to make me mad.
Such as….
I am mad the way other teams just let this sort of thing happen.
I understand why the Tigers felt they had to trade Skubal given his contract situation and the near-certainty of him leaving in free agency to eventually join the Dodgers.
Getting something is better than getting nothing, I guess.
But I’m mad that the Tigers, a team that has made the playoffs two years in a row, just decided to give up on its season by not only trading Skubal, their best pitcher and the reigning back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner, but also trading their second-best pitcher in Casey Mize.
The Tigers are 2.5 games out of a Wild-Card spot, and still have 13 games remaining against two of the teams they are chasing (the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins). Skubal and Mize would have potentially started at least three or four of those games.
Neither of those teams are any good. They are catchable.
They are only 5.5 games back of the Chicago White Sox with six head-to-head games remaining with them.
They are catchable.
I know you’re probably thinking, “but just sneaking into the playoffs and losing shouldn’t be the goal.”
But who says that has to be the result here? Who says that has to be the goal here?
Who is the dominant team in the American League? There isn’t one. It’s a wide open league. Are you really scared of the White Sox? Nobody knows what the Yankees lineup is going to look like given the injuries to Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger. Tampa Bay is doing its normal Tampa Bay thing where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but it’s an absolutely beatable team. Houston is completely mid.
Who is intimidating you here?
We’ve seen teams sneak into the playoffs as a wild-card team with mid-80s win totals and go on runs to the World Series. Having a Skubal-Mize 1-2 punch would have made something like that at least within the realm of possibility. Crazier things have happened. Worse teams with worse pitching staffs have done it.
The Tigers plus-63 run differential is the second-best in the American League! It is almost certainly a better team than its record and has a higher ceiling than it’s shown so far.
Why would you not even try to reach it?
Why would you take a pennies on the dollars trade that probably isn’t going to pan out?
I know baseball people like the outfield prospect from Los Angeles Zyhir Hope, but he wasn’t even the Dodgers best outfield prospect, let alone their best prospect.
River Ryan, one of the pitchers in that deal, is already 28 years old and is less than two years younger than Skubal. He has thrown just 20 innings in the Major Leagues while possessing a very concerning injury history. I can’t imagine the profile for guys like that is encouraging long-term.
Is it better than nothing? Probably. At least in the sense that it’s warm bodies and players coming into the organization with years of control. But there’s also a good chance that it still ends up being a whole bunch of nothing. Or at the very least not anything that changes your outlook in the future.
This same sort of argument applies to the Baltimore Orioles.
I am mad about Orioles trading the face of their franchise and the face of their rebuild, catching Adley Rutschman, to a team in their own division (the Boston Red Sox) when they didn’t need to move him at all.
They moved their catcher, a starting outfielder and current closer while telling their fans they didn’t actually gut the team and are still trying to win (they, like the Tigers, are also just 2.5 games out of a playoff spot).
I am mad somebody like the Milwaukee Brewers didn’t push all of their chips onto the table and try go for it.
This is seriously an “if not now, then when?” type of situation for the Brewers.
They have the best record in the league. They already have the best pitcher in baseball at the moment in Jacob Misiorowski, and an extraordinarily deep pitching staff beyond him.
If you add Skubal into that mix you not only give yourself a comically dominant 1-2 punch that would probably shut down almost any team they face in a short-series, you would prevent THE ONE TEAM STANDING IN YOUR WAY from getting the player that could make all of the difference in this thing.
The Brewers side will tell you their prospects are too valuable to move because they depend on those guys to be the foundation of their team. And maybe there is truth to that. Maybe from a big picture, macro outlook that is how it works. But there is also truth to the reality that the majority of those prospects (the overwhelming majority) are going to fail, or not be as good as you hope.
Sometimes their best use for you, especially as a contender, is as a trade chip.
Just go back over any top prospect list from prior years and see how many of those players actually pan out.
The odds are not in your favor.
Sometimes you have to just say, fuck those prospects and try to win right now.
You’re probably not going to get a better window, or a better year, than this.
You keep knocking on the door, and you keep having it shut in your face.
Try to kick the damn thing in for once.
I know the Brewers did end up adding by trading for guys like Dustin May, JoJo Romero and Antonio Senzatela, but there’s a good chance that Skubal alone provides more value than all of those guys combined. You also could have still made some of those trades while also parting with some better prospects for Skubal.
I don’t know, man.
I think I’m just mad.
Not only about the Dodgers getting whoever they want, but everybody else just stepping aside and letting them get whoever they want.
Pennants fly forever.
Something that doesn’t make me mad, for once, is the Pittsburgh Pirates, who did pretty much what they needed to do at the trade deadline.
Will it matter?
Probably not significantly.
But I’m just happy they finally addressed the one thing that has sabotaged their season more than anything else — the bullpen.
Better late than never, I guess.
Given their recent slide coming out of the All-Star Break there became a push for them to detour away from their path as buyers and start selling off guys like Brandon Lowe and Gregory Soto.
That would have been the wrong approach.
First of all, did you see what some of the returns was for players over the past few days? It was a buyer’s market. Nobody was getting anything for anybody. Hell, the Pirates picked up Luke Weaver from the New York Mets and only gave up Sammy Stafura, who is, at best, the third-best young shortstop in the organization and whose value skyrocketed thanks to half a season playing in one of the most extreme hitters environments in professional baseball.
There is a good chance the comp. pick that comes your way for Lowe leaving in free agency is just as good, if not better, than whatever prospect you would have acquired for him this week.
At the very least they should have stood pat, done nothing, and just let this season play out and see what these guys can do the rest of the way.
Even with this recent slide, you are still in it. You still have a chance. You still have more help coming back with the eventual return of Oneil Cruz.
About a week ago I said the Pirates probably needed to add two relief pitchers, a starting pitcher, and probably a right-handed bat.
They did some of that.
While they did not get the starting pitcher or the right-handed bat, they completely overhauled almost the entire bullpen within the span of a week.
Camilo Doval.
Luke Weaver.
Kirby Yates.
Lake Bachar.
Combine that with getting Soto into a role that he is better equipped to handle (a sixth-or seventh-inning role) and with the recent emergence of Mason Montgomery, and you suddenly have a bullpen that has gone from being a major liability to potentially imposing.
That does not even get into the hot streak Yohan Ramirez has been on and the upcoming return of Evan Sisk.
They did all of that without having to give up anything off of their Major League roster or a single top prospect.
I say this with love, but all of the pre-deadline trade proposals that involved Seth Hernandez, Edward Florentino or players off of the Major League roster (Oneil Cruz, Brandon Lowe, Spencer Horwitz) were not only deeply unserious, they were also lousy. Every year good relief pitchers get traded for nothing. This year turned out to be no different.
While so much of the focus on the Pirates shortcomings this season has focussed on the regression of Paul Skenes and the nightmare season for Mitch Keller (which is now over), the bullpen is still the biggest culprit in where they are in the standings.
Just look at these games this season where they had a win expectancy of 85 percent or higher, in the eight inning, with a multiple run lead.
They lose all of these games.
In seven of these games the win expectancy was 89 percent or higher.
In three of them it was 96 percent or higher.
Like I said a couple of weeks ago, losing one or two of these games is just the sort of thing that happens over the course of a 162-game season. That is baseball. Shit happens.
Losing this many games like that? It is beyond comprehension. That is season-changing stuff.
Even if you just win the three games where your win expectancy was over 96 percent your record right now is 60-54. Do you know where you are in the standings right now with a 60-54 record? Half a game out of a wild-card spot.
You win those games, and just ONE of the other games and you are actually in a wild-card spot right now.
The bullpen needed fixed. Desperately.
They at at least attempted to fix it.
Now it is on the players. The new players and the returning players.
The big key now is getting Cruz back to help balance out the lineup and Skenes remembering that he is, in fact, Paul Skenes.
They are still in this.
Quick hit thoughts
— The move I am struggling to grasp the most is the Philadelphia Phillies trade for Luis Arraez. Not because Arraez isn’t useful (though, he’s probably not as useful as his batting average will make people think), but because of the trickle-down effect it is going to have on their lineup and defensive alignments.
Alec Bohm is apparently moving to first base.
Bryson Stott is moving to third base.
Trea Turner, arguably the worst defensive player in baseball right now, is sticking at the most important position on the infield (shortstop).
Bryce Harper is moving to … right field?!
Moving that many guys around and out of position is not going to have a good result. Especially when a lot of these guys are not even good at the positions they were playing before this.
I firmly believe this because I have watched it play out in Pittsburgh this season. The Pirates pushed defense to the back burner to try and squeeze a few more runs out of the lineup by acquiring good bat/no glove players, and then moving people to positions they are not used to playing.
Nick Gonzales, a naturally bad second baseman, has been an absolutely nightmare at third base, and he is only getting worse.
Brandon Lowe can hit, but he might as well take a frying pan out to the field with him at second base.
Jared Triolo won a Gold Glove as a utility guy, but it was primarily as a third baseman. They tried him at shortstop and it’s like he never played a game of baseball before when he is out there.
It has worked offensively. It has been a comedy of errors defensively, but not the the “ha ha” comedy.
More of a, “If I do not laugh I will cry” sort of comedy.
I imagine this is in Philadelphia’s future here. I don’t love it. Their pitchers are not going to love it, either.
— San Diego getting Robbie Ray is a nice pickup for their rotation. I would have liked that for the Pirates given the starting pitching concerns, especially now that Keller is finished (and was having an awful season before the injury). Carmen Mlodzinski might get his chance again after all.
— The biggest “boom-or-bust” trade for me might be Clay Holmes to the Chicago Cubs. Homes is really good when he is healthy, and in theory should be a great addition. But he has only pitched in nine games this season and has not pitched in a Major League game since the middle of May due to a broken leg. There is at least some risk in how he comes back from that.
— I actually really liked Toronto’s move to trade pending free agent Kevin Gausman and replace him by trading for a younger, better pitcher in Jose Soriano from the Los Angeles Angels.