Old school, new rules.
Mid-Monday morning, national writer Scott Miller reported that the Blue Jays were hiring Rangers assistant minor league hitting coordinator Brook Jacoby to take over as their new big league hitting coach, a position he had held with the Reds from 2007 through 2013. In Gerry Fraley’s note on the Dallas Morning News site about the loss of Jacoby, he added that the Rangers decided after the season not to bring Tony Fernandez back as a special assistant to the GM, after he’d served in that role for three years.
About a half-hour later, I thought about Fernandez for the second time over the same cup of coffee, after having not given a moment’s thought to his name in a long time. Word broke that new Braves GM John Hart had pulled off a trade reminiscent of the Fernandez/Fred McGriff-for-Roberto Alomar/Joe Carter deal two dozen years later — a good, old-fashioned talent-for-talent swap that wasn’t necessarily driven by dollars or rebuilds, one objective of which accounts for nearly every trade made these days in baseball — by sending outfielder Jason Heyward and reliever Jordan Walden to St. Louis for righthanders Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins.
It was an old-school trade involving four valuable players who haven’t reached their ceiling but are young enough to still dream on the possibility that they will. Three big righthanders (all from Texas) and an even bigger outfielder, a prototype right fielder who was an everyday big leaguer at age 20 and an All-Star the same year. One of those deals that, you could easily suggest, could make both teams better right away — especially coming early enough in the winter that it could lead both to deal further from new strengths.
Because of the pre-peak status of the players involved, it’s a deal that’s more dynamic than Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder was a year ago. Because of the success that Heyward, Miller, and Walden have already had, it’s more of an impact deal that Yankees bat Jesus Montero for Mariners righthander Michael Pineda three winters ago was supposed (or turned out) to be — or that the heavily spitballed (and never-would-have-happened) exchange in 2013 of Rangers shortstop prospect Jurickson Profar for late Cardinals outfielder prospect Oscar Taveras might have been, and you can’t really count Jon Lester and Yoenis Cespedes in July because Lester was clearly nothing more than a two-month rent horse.
Seven years ago, Minnesota and Tampa Bay got together on a six-player deal that looked a little then like Monday’s Atlanta-St. Louis trade. Two days after his 24th birthday, the Twins sent a package headed by righthander Matt Garza — like Miller (a few weeks after his own 24th birthday) a former first-round pick with two years in the big leagues – to the Rays for a group including outfielder Delmon Young — like Heyward a former first-rounder himself and a runner-up in the Rookie of the Year vote.
At the time, Tampa Bay’s outfield, which had been divested a year earlier of the repeatedly dashed anticipation of Josh Hamilton’s arrival, was still loaded. Aside from the 22-year-old Young, the Rays had 26-year-old Carl Crawford (with one year and two club options left on his multi-year contract), 23-year-old star B.J. Upton, 26-year-old tease Rocco Baldelli, 23-year-old enigma Elijah Dukes, and 21-year-old Desmond Jennings, whom Baseball Prospectus had judged that off-season to be baseball’s number 18 prospect.
The decision to reallocate a position of abundance worked out well for the Rays, who got solid work over three seasons and two post-seasons out of Garza, while Young was largely a disappointment in Minnesota.
Tampa Bay chose correctly, making out better than the Braves did when five months earlier they sent Elvis Andrus to Texas, banking on the depth of having Edgar Renteria in the big leagues and rookie Yunel Escobar arriving, plus AAA shortstop Brent Lillibridge as another Top 100 Prospect in the game.
And better than the Rangers did a year later with what was widely judge to be enviable depth behind the plate, with 28-year-old Gerald Laird, 23-year-old Jarrod Saltalamacchia (who had come over with Andrus in the Mark Teixeira trade with the Braves), 24-year-old Taylor Teagarden, and 23-year-old Max Ramirez, all four of whom had seen time in the big leagues in 2008. Publications all over the industry were convinced that the Rangers, with their avalanche of catching depth, lined up perfectly with the Red Sox, who could arguably match a similarly positioned pitcher up with each Texas catcher from an inventory that was headed then by Clay Buchholz, Justin Masterson, Michael Bowden, Daniel Bard, and Nick Hagadone.
The Rangers made no such 2008 deal with Boston (which assumes one was ever really available), instead shipping Laird and Teagarden and eventually Saltalamacchia off unceremoniously (for minor leaguers Guillermo Moscoso, Carlos Melo, Roman Mendez, Chris McGuiness, Michael Thomas, Randy Henry, and Greg Miclat) and losing Ramirez on a waiver claim after designating him for assignment. The Red Sox ended up with both Saltalamacchia and Ramirez, though they had the latter for only five January days before losing him to the Cubs on their own attempt to get him through waivers.
Toronto had its own catcher surfeit in 2009, and didn’t really capitalize on it. J.P. Arencibia was MVP of the AAA Pacific Coast League. The Jays had Travis d’Arnaud at High Class A and A.J. Jimenez at Low Class A, each ranked as his league’s best defensive catcher in Baseball America surveys of league managers. Splitting the season at Low A and Short-Season A was Yan Gomes, and he shared time at the lower of the two levels with Carlos Perez, who some felt would be the best of all of them.
They ended up losing Jimenez temporarily to Tommy John surgery (in May 2012), moving Perez along with other prospects in a large deal that netted them J.A. Happ (in July 2012), overtrading d’Arnaud (after the 2012 season), trading Gomes brutally (after 2012), and non-tendering Arencibia (after 2013). They had acquired Mike Napoli in January 2011 (from the Angels with Frosty Rivera for Vernon Wells) — but, prepared to turn catcher over to Arencibia with caddy Jose Molina already on board, four days later flipped Napoli to Texas for Frankie Francisco.
The Rangers were thrilled to add Napoli because that ballyhooed catching surplus of theirs hadn’t panned out.
The Blue Jays, because theirs hadn’t either (Jimenez is still around, splitting 2014 between AA and AAA), gave $82 million yesterday to Russell Martin for his age 32, 33, 34, 35, and 36 seasons.
This time of year, anytime there’s a big player move you have to step back and ask how it might affect your own team’s plans, and whether it could create new opportunities.
If there was some thought that Hart and Jon Daniels might connect on a trade of C/LF/DH type Evan Gattis, on the one hand the Braves’ trade of Heyward would seem to reduce the possibility, with Justin Upton theoretically now sliding over to right field in Heyward’s place and opening left field up for Gattis.
On the other hand, writers like Buster Olney (ESPN), Bob Nightengale (USA Today), Joel Sherman (New York Post), and Mark Bowman (MLB.com) believe Upton could still be moved, with Seattle (not on Upton’s no-trade list) a candidate (possibly for righthander Taijuan Walker, Olney suggests). According to Sherman, Atlanta won’t stop looking for opportunities to dump Upton’s brother B.J.’s contract on someone, and Bowman believes Gattis could still be on the move.
In St. Louis, Heyward joins an outfield that now has no role for Randal Grichuk, who might have been useful as a relief option for the lefty Taveras if he were still with us. Not sure Grichuk makes sense here (Ryan Rua and Jake Smolinski deserve a shot), and while Peter Bourjos might, Grichuk isn’t a good enough center fielder for the Cardinals to part with Bourjos for what his trade value would bring.
Miller joining Atlanta’s rotation probably doesn’t free anyone up that would fit the Rangers’ objective of finding a controllable starter they could plug into the middle of the rotation.
As for Martin signing with Toronto — he’s not going to catch 140 games, but do the Jays really want to spend more than $20 million behind the plate this year, with $5 million going to Dioner Navarro for fewer than 50 defensive games? The switch-hitter could be a solid fit for Texas as Robinson Chirinos’s partner behind the plate, and though I suspect that’s probably more than the Rangers would want to spend on a part-time catcher, Chirinos will make marginally more than the $500,000 minimum . . . and probably shouldn’t be counted on as a lock to repeat his breakout 2014.
And the Blue Jays still have Josh Thole, who caught every one of knuckleballer R.A. Dickey’s starts in 2014 (and not many more). Doesn’t Toronto need to hang onto Thole and move Navarro?
Navarro will be 31 when the 2015 starts, coming off his first season as a frontline catcher since 2009. In a market where a number of teams are looking for a catcher — including at least a couple who had been intent on signing Martin — Navarro is going to have some trade value over the next few weeks.
Daniels told MLB Network Radio on Sunday that his “clear focus has been on the trade front” rather than the free agent market, as were “most of the teams [he] spoke with” at last week’s GM Meetings in Phoenix. Tops on the list for Texas are a starting pitcher and a run-producing bat, but catcher fits in there as well, and after Martin there’s just not a lot at the position on the free agent market, prompting players like Navarro, Alex Avila, Jason Castro, Carlos Corporan, Yasmani Grandal, and Rene Rivera to pop up in off-season trade rumors. The free agent options just don’t move the needle as much.
Maybe it’s the TV money geyser. Maybe it’s Kansas City and Baltimore and Pittsburgh turning the clock back 30 years and winning again, emboldening more small market teams to make a financial effort to compete. Maybe it’s just a fluke year. But more and more players are getting locked up internally and kept off the open market — I haven’t even mentioned yesterday’s news of the record-setting commitment the Marlins are making to Giancarlo Stanton — and as a result Monday’s huge Atlanta-St. Louis trade feels like it might be a precursor, rather than an aberration.
The Rangers aren’t going to be party to a Heyward-Miller throwback type of deal this winter in which a young player with star upside at something close to peak value is traded for another. They’re not trading Yu Darvish or Derek Holland or Rougned Odor, and beyond that they all come with bad money or health questions.
But that doesn’t mean the Rangers won’t deal this winter — they will — and it doesn’t mean they aren’t in a position to win in 2015. Fewer things have to go right next year than went wrong last year in order for Texas to be playing for something with a week to go.
It was easy to imagine Jason Heyward, drafted and developed by his hometown Braves, playing an entire career in an Atlanta uniform. But it rarely happens. Even Tony Fernandez, after eight seasons with Toronto that included four Gold Gloves and three All-Star appearances, was traded in that huge four-player deal in 1990, traded again in a less noteworthy deal two years later, and traded once more in an even smaller deal in 1993. After his lengthy run with the Jays, he went to San Diego and then New York (NL) and then Toronto again and then Cincinnati and then New York (AL) and then Cleveland and then Toronto a third time and then the Seibu Lions and then Milwaukee and then Toronto one last time. Whether Heyward has another swim through Atlanta (or two or three more), the odds are that he won’t finish his career without changing teams again.
Same goes for Darvish. And Holland. And Odor.
It’s the modern reality of the game, the kind of thing that didn’t stop John Hart or John Mozeliak from making yesterday’s blockbuster trade, and that won’t stop Daniels from listening on Andrus and Luis Sardinas and Luke Jackson and Nick Williams and anyone else he thinks could have more ultimate value to this organization as a trade piece, an analysis fully dependent on how the GM on the other end of the smartphone assesses the Rangers’ assets, and his own.
The process of lining up needs and evaluating windows is a complicated one, with a finite number of teams and a basically finite pool of baseball players capable of filling perceived needs, and when the demand exceeds the supply, as it usually does since most clubs are (properly) never satisfied, to get to the finish line on an impact trade it often takes a good amount of imagination, almost always takes a heavy measure of guts and conviction, and it doesn’t hurt when you have a 25-year-old outfielder with five-tool ability or a 24-year-old starting pitcher flashing signs that he might be ready, in at least one of the four years you’ll control him, to pitch at the very top of your rotation, and are willing to discuss the idea of putting that player in someone else’s uniform.
I’m not sure yet whether we’re witnessing a paradigm shift, or if this is just the level that this winter’s market has necessarily found, but there’s a reason we still talk about Fernandez/McGriff for Alomar/Carter 24 years later, and you get the sense that Heyward/Walden for Miller/Jenkins is just the first of a handful of trades this winter that we’ll be talking about when those guys are all done playing, maybe staying in the game as the special assistant to somebody’s GM.