With the trading deadline approaching, we’re currently in the period of the most rampant speculation. Any seller that has a player to deal can be matched up with a number of contending teams if they have the right cash and prospects to kick in. In the case of the Braves, they can be connected to just about any player since they have the prospect capital to acquire just about any player, and they have the additional prospect capital to offset any payroll issues.
But what kind of buyers should the Braves be trading? For starters, I would not trade any of our top prospects for any player with only a half-season remaining of team control — a “rentalâ€. So an Ian Anderson-for-Manny Machado deal would be hard for me to make, personally. But just about anyone less than that would be on the table. But that’s the only example of a trade I would not make, and instead, these are the trades I would make:
–Matt Wisler and Dustin Peterson for Nathan Eovaldi
Wisler and Peterson probably don’t have a place in Atlanta. They’re on the 40-man, and it’s hard to see a scenario where they have a long-term picture in Atlanta. So as it sits, they’re clogging a couple spots on the 40-man that someone like Touki Toussaint will need in the offseason. Eovaldi is only signed through this year, and he could easily turn into a pumpkin, but the Rays made a smart investment in Eovaldi, and they’ll be rewarded for it.
-Lucas Sims and Wes Parsons for Joakim Soria and Jace Fry
Sims, similarly, does not have a home in Atlanta going forward. It’ll be sad to see the former first round pick and Georgia native move on in this fashion, but with the more talented wave of pitching prospects coming through, Sims and Wisler have exhausted their opportunities. While Parsons has come on late and hasn’t yet been given an opportunity at the major league level, he can be attractive to another team as well.
Soria would be another closer type and another late-inning option that has experience and has pitched in playoff races. Remember, not a single member in the Braves’ pen — especially after the perceived end of Moylan’s tenure — has pitched in a playoff race. Jace Fry would satisfy our need for a new “Jaceâ€, and he’ll be a more reliable left-handed option over Sam Freeman.
–Derek Dietrich for Bryse Wilson and Rio Ruiz
This may not seem like the type, but for me, this is a “going for it†move. Dietrich is 28 and is having the best year of his career — .287/.353/.452 — and he’s played LF and 3B the past 2 seasons. With Ender struggling in CF, Acuna able to play CF but struggling with his own injuries, and the lack of a quality first bat off the bench, Dietrich makes perfect sense. If Acuna gets injured, Ender continues to struggle, or you need a solid backup for the infield, Dietrich can slide in and help. Dietrich is also only in arb-2, so he’s got some control left.
Wilson is hard to part with, but he’s our 9th-best pitching prospect in a system with 3 ML starters under club control. You have to be willing to part with something to get something. Ruiz is similarly expendable with Camargo ahead of him, Riley behind him, Jean Carlos Encarnacio behind Riley. His time is up as well.
Eovaldi would replace the revolving 5th starter (McCarthy, Fried, etc.), Soria and Fry would replace Freeman and Phillips, and Dietrich would replace Danny Santana on the big league roster.
What do you think?
I think I got JC’d by like 30 seconds.
I would do those deals for Eovaldi or Dietrich in a heartbeat, but I doubt their current teams would. Sorry but I see the trade value of guys like Wisler or Ruiz as pretty much zero. Maybe Sims still has some cache.
Soria seems to me like exactly the sort of guy we should be targeting. Would love to add him to the bullpen.
If you could add a couple years of control to the starting pitcher acquired, I could see including Pache in with Wisler and Peterson. Kyle Gibson, Steven Matz, Michael Fulmer?
From last thread:
First, the Marlins have two championships because the Cubs choked. Basically, they got lucky in the short series roulette.
Second, I would not trade a long term strategic plan to compete for the Marlins two championships interspersed with abject shit-hood.
I think Eovaldi is getting a fair amount of interest — he’s always had a massive fastball, which means that if you can convince someone’s advance scout that he can change speeds, he looks like a potential bargain-bin frontline starter.
To wit: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/nathan-eovaldi-might-be-the-best-starter-on-the-market/
So there are going to be a lot of teams inquiring on him. That said, he’s a three-month rental, so he can’t cost that much. I’d give up Allard for him.
Well I think I’m between Alex and Rob here. In no way would I give Allard for 3 months of Eovaldi, however there’s no way the Rays won’t get a better offer than Wisler and Petereson for him. Maybe add Muller or Wentz to Rob’s proposal.
I will say if TB would add Romo, I would consider Allard, Wisler, Peterson plus maybe a Richardo Sanchez.
As krussell said, there’s a middle ground between trading Gohara, Anderson, and Pache for Manny Machado and making a big move or two that puts your team over the top. The moves I’ve put up here guarantee we win the division, I think, but they don’t necessarily make you confident you can advance through the playoffs. I think you need a better SP and better position player received back to put us in that territory. If it takes a couple-few FV 50+ prospects, then I’m not sure the Braves should be willing to do that.
Wilson is a FV 45 at the moment. If that and Ruiz doesn’t get you Derek Dietrich, then the trade market is looking a little inconsistent.
I think the prospects who “contributed” to the Foibles of the Reconstruction — Wisler, Blair, Sims, Ruiz — are probably getting an unfair assessment. Wisler is 25, and has a career 4.92 FIP. If a team felt like he could immediately contribute a healthy 30 starts with a low-to-mid-4’s ERA, then that’s a 2 WAR player. Is it good enough for us with all of the pitching talent we have? No, but rebuilding teams need that. That’s Tanner Roark, Jason Hammel, Dylan Bundy, etc. Innings-eating, league average starters have a lot of value in today’s game.
I’d be interested to see who KLaw thinks Wisler and Sims can be turned into.
I like all the proposals laid out. I think if we can get by with giving up prospects that are not in our top 10, we will be in great shape. Wisler and Sims both have options and Wisler has had some success at the major league level. He has to be an upgrade over some of the starters that teams like the Orioles are sending out on a regular basis (of course a few of those guys started against Atlanta and looked like Cy Young. ) . If we can get a bag of balls for throwing in Ruiz, hurry up before the other team changes their minds.
I think there might be a legitimate concern for a GM on the other side of a Braves deal…do they really want to deal with the Braves and not get back one of our top-100 prospects? The optics on that kinda suck.
Wisler was a top 40 prospect 3 years ago and Sims was a first rounder who has torn up AAA lately. It is all about supply and demand, but one of them along with another mid level prospect is a solid return for a 2.5 month rental.
Tanner Roark has a career FIP of 3.92 and has been worth about two and a half wins in each of the last two years; he just isn’t a comp for Matt Wisler. He’s basically Jair Jurrjens.
There are a whole lot of guys in baseball who might be league average. But that’s a relatively low ceiling. The only guys worth paying anything above a bucket of balls for are the ones who have a high floor, which Matt Wisler does not. Unless and until he can demonstrate any ability to throw a clean frame on consecutive outings, he can’t be counted on to eat innings. Just to force his manager to make more quick hook pitching changes. That’s what he’s always done to us.
this trading thing
in search of bling
we offer dross but in profusion
in hope the more they must assess the greater their confusion.
The pitchers you listed would probably be acceptable, but Rio Ruiz and Dustin Peterson have shown that they’re not even good in Triple A and aren’t prospects at all anymore. They would probably have to be replaced with someone else. Maybe Travis Demeritte still has a little prospect value.
But I agree with your overall ideas. Trade the fringe prospects who won’t factor in our future plans and keep the more significant prospects.
Another path forward is to promote some good pitching and put it in the bullpen, with maybe a spot start here and there. That’s what I would do. The Cardinal-way.
If you lot know they’re fringe, the other GM knows they’re fringe.
Hold on! Do not give away prospects for three months of anybody. There are only a few that would even make a difference. Eovaldi, Machado, or any reliever available including Kimbrel are not that guy.
DSL
Carlos Paraguate
in no way does he need to obfuscate
at seventeen his .718 OPS
a short stop with more power not less.
@timo
hey, your dogged promoting of Eovaldi is paying dividends. We have already heard from his brother Viv. Plays in all 4 seasons.
Your Soria/Fry deal is very light. You want to trade two two minor league non-prospects for two legitimate MLB players with control (Soria has an option for next year). That deal has a chance to get Soria alone although I think it’s light for that too. This deal requires two ranked SP prospects.
Your Eovaldi deal is light, too, but not for the same reason. Someone else will offer more. Eovaldi will be signable next year if one wants to.
I like the Dietrich deal. I had thought about Dietrich a while ago but decided we didn’t need an OF – might be able get Reed to perform just as well. Being able to plug him in at 3B or OF is a decent idea. Because of Dietrich’s remaining control, you might have to sweeten the deal a bit (like throwing in a Sims or Wisler). And getting rid of Santana is appealing although he looks like more of a Flaherty upgrade assuming his defense is tolerable.
I’d include Anderson in a trade for Machado, especially if we got a reliever or two
We’re not trying to win the governor’s cup
That was difficult. An as defined quality start from someone other than Anibal would be nice. Can you imagine what a seven inning, two run start would do for the pen?
Wow…Ender made an out on the first pitch of the game… no way. I hate how he doesn’t work pitchers at all, especially leading off the game
Ender hitting ninth worked well for a while.
Ender hitting never is going to work so much better.
I like Stroman despite his troubles this year.
Julio’s pixie dust is working so far, but 20 pitches an inning is a hard way to go.
“At least it’s a solo shot.”
First run for Julio on an even numbered start in almost a month. Let’s jope that’s all he allows.
Ugh. All the grounders are belong to us.
I don’t know how Albies didn’t wind up at second on that throwaway (I suspect he just didn’t see it), but it cost us a run.
Been hitting into a lot of DPs of late.
Braves batters averaging three pitches per plate appearance so far tonight — and Ender Inciarte has had three pitches in his two appearances combined. Good job, good effort.
Justin Smoak is a legit baseball name.
Wisler’s weird. I would think he has a floor of a 2 WAR starter immediately, which is both not saying much but also not saying little, but who knows.
It hasn’t taken long, but I’ve grown very impatient with Ender. I wrote in his preview that he doesn’t have the athleticism or physical tools to fall too far off from where he is. And while it’s not necessarily his physical tools that are failing him, losing 100 OPS points pretty much relegates him to 4th OF territory. He just doesn’t have margin for error when he gets into a half-season slump. If he doesn’t put something together between now and the deadline, I think a LF might get on their shopping list.
The NL East is playing the AL East this year, you fools! We’re all playing the same teams! Stop whining!
On another note, I made the mistake of stopping by Talking Chop just now, and they are absolutely freaking the hell out over launch angle, and our lack of it. As if our hitters are trying to tap weak ground balls back to the pitcher. Yeesh!
Come on, Rob. If Wisler had a floor of 2 WAR he would be at least our 3rd best starter. He has a career -0.1 bWAR in 324.1 career innings. It’s not like he has never had a chance.
Snitker hitting Inciarte leadoff is dumb. The 2 glove boys (Ender and Swanson) should be hitting 7 and 8.
Good for Julio. At least we clear Ender this inning.
Launch angle is literally the dumbest thing ever added to baseball vernacular. Those idiots on TC are the same types that complain when guys can’t hit sacrifice flies on-demand.
On the other hand, exit-velocity is a welcome addition. And it’s something we really lack. Ender has to be near the bottom there.
@37
This is literally the stupidest I’ve ever seen a Talking Chop thread when dropping in for five minutes during a game. I can’t even list the number of truly asinine things I read in a 60-second span over there just now.
Even numbered Julio gave us a good start tonight. Time for some offense.
The one thing I agree with them on is that continuing to bat Ender leadoff grows dumber by the second. Bat him eighth. Hell, I really don’t much like that pitcher batting eighth thing, but if Snit promises to do that and bat Ender ninth, I’ll even promise to not wince every time I see the starting lineup.
Six innings, one run. Good job, Julio.
Zook!
Julio will start the 7th.
Julio’s starting the seventh. Who knew that was legal?
6.2 will do. Good job, JT.
Toronto’s lineup tonight is pretty awful.
Rally and inning Ender.
Man, JT. He’s held together with bubble gum and duct tape, but he’s keeping on.
@35
I’m really trying not to defend Wisler, especially now, but it’s important to note that his age-23 season should have been built off of more than it was. He was rushed in his age-22 season because we had literally no one else, and then had a 4.85 FIP in 156 IP at 23 years old. Wisler had a better age-23 season than Folty did.
But he was then decidedly the 6th-best starter behind Teheran, Folty, Garcia, Dickey, and Colon, but then when Colon was done, they went to Sims, who was even worse than Wisler (5.02 FIP in 57 IP). But after they were done with Sims, they went to Gohara and Fried, and rightfully so.
We threw so many garbage pitchers during our rebuild, and we also took back low ceiling prospects when we traded off our rentals, and I’m hoping a balance can be reciprocated so we haven’t wasted the opportunity cost of Wisler’s 324 career innings. The pitcher I’m describing — 30 starts at a 4-4.50 FIP– is a 2 WAR pitcher, and Wisler has no injury concerns. I pretty much think the same of Sims who has even less ML success.
Come on, Dansby, don’t impersonate Roger Dorn.
I am not a fan of our shortstop, but that was his first boot in a while. Work through it, A.J.
Frenchy says, “My specialty was hitting lefties.” Um, really? I thought his specialty was swinging at everything and rarely walking.
Is a .777 career OPS vs. lefties enough to make it a “specialty”?
Wisler has shown no sign at all he can put those numbers up, Rob. He’s still the same guy with the same repertoire from the previous 49 major league starts. His FIP and xFIP about about the same as his ERA. There is a reason they took him out of the rotation 2 years ago. If his stuff was as good as Folty they would have kept giving him more chances. But he only has 2 major league caliber pitches.
What they should have done is make him a reliever full time at Gwinnett when it became clear he wasn’t rotation material. Instead they keep changing his role.
When you have no specialties, a .777 career OPS vs. lefties may seem like a specialty.
Frenchy, you threw well from RF. That was your specialty. Nothing more.
We let a guy hitting .169 beat us… like we did with Prado and Pham. That is such a Barve like thing to do
How many games you gonna win scoring 1 run?
@57 at least we don’t need any offensive help though
Really need to win games like this against a team like Toronto.
Win this one without me. Good night.
We scored the 3rd-most runs in April. 10th-most in May. 9th-most in June. 21st-most in July, though there’s the potential for some games played issues messing with the stats. Still, I think we get the idea about the offense.
We need to get back to playing the NL East.
Let’s do the bullpen! 15th in ERA in April. 14th in May. 26th in June. 23rd in July and sure to get worse after this game.
C’mon, you know what you’re getting with Carle. Get Phillips in there again. See if he can get 5 outs.
Jays schooling us on how to hit .. pitches left up get hit hard and to opposite field …. all our guys wanna pull everything ….
Phils won.
Second-place Atlanta Braves.
By the time we decide how the market plays out for bullpen help we could be 5 games back.
But at least we get to keep all our prospects. That’s what matters.
@67 exactly…
Maybe that was a bit too sarcastic. I don’t really think we’re one or two players away, so I don’t blame AA if he doesn’t make a big move.
Freeman looks woeful now .. like he dont care .. missing all kinds of pitches .. what is wrong with him ??
O’s just beat the Yankees… again…. O’s are 6-4 against the Yankees. The Yankees must be a terrible team. [Note: O’s have 8 wins against the Yanks and Braves – nearly 33% of their total]
I don’t think this is a measure of quality of a team. On the other hand, there’s no doubt our guys are dragging badly. All-Star break can’t come at a better time.
PS: Just heard that only two teams have a winning record against the Yankees – O’s and Rangers – both last place teams.
Julio needs to be included in any trade AA makes this month.
@69
If “away” means a bonafide World Series contender, then yes, I agree we are more than 1-2 players away. Could be as many as 5-6 players away. I’m drilling down on the roster for a Thursday post, and I can’t say I have a lot of great things to say about it as currently constructed.
Well I guess it also depends on who the 2 players are. But we’re not getting Trout and Verlander for Pache and Allard.
Apropos of nothing in particular, I thought this was a decent article:
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24049347/mlb-hitters-explain-why-just-beat-shift
I might be a little light in my trade proposals, but even if you have to add more pieces to each deal to make it work (who of consequence would you possibly have to add?), switching out Freeman, Jackson, McCarthy, and Santana for Dietrich, Soria, Fry, and Eovaldi would make a big difference.
Daniel Murphy, who’s been injured or useless until this point, went 4-4 with 2 doubles tonight. So we have that going for us… which is nice.
How many 5-run innings in losses have there been lately? Two against the Brewers, one tonight.
Forever DOOOOOOOMED.
Good morning, enjoyed all the trade proposals. Let’s hope other GMs see a future in Wisler, Sims… I think they are ( at least a little) better than they’ve shown so far. It’s obvious we have to do something if we wanna play in October and adjusting the pen is the way to start. Get it done, AA.
Good start by Good Julio – go get ’em today!
Recapped.
Even if not a top prospect, why make ANY trade for a half-season rental? This is not a WS winning team. Multiple holes to address and they can’t all be done at the trade deadline, or shouldn’t given what it would cost.
For example, I like Eovaldi. But why trade for him instead of just signing him in the off-season?