We're still waiting on a lot of the winter meetings insanity to get finalized, but there's plenty of significant stuff ready for overeager winner and loser declarations.
12/11/14: Marlins trade LHP Andrew Heaney, RHP Chris Hatcher, IF Kike Hernandez, and C prospect Austin Barnes to Dodgers for RHP Dan Haren, 2B Dee Gordon, IF Miguel Rojas, and approximately $12M. Wow. Just, wow. Dating back to last trade deadline, the Marlins have now traded away half of their top ten prospects from this time a year ago.Here Heaney, their top minor leaguer and #30 overall prospect in baseball, is shipped to the Dodgers along with extra value for a fast but weak-hitting second baseman and either a back-end starting pitcher or a wad of cash, depending on Haren's retirement decision. LA gets a quality bullpen arm, an infielder with some upside, a probable backup catcher, and a top prospect, all of them cheap and under long-term team control. While I think it's a moral imperative for Miami to back up the Stanton signing with major league additions, this is a tremendous cost for negligible value. Miami overrated Dee Gordon, when just playing Solano or Dietrich or Hernandez at second next year wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world if it meant they got to keep the guys they traded. They underrated Heaney, who possibly could have been a key piece in a deal for some corner infield power. If Haren decides to keep pitching, I'll concede that he's a nice stable veteran for a young and unpredictable rotation, but it wouldn't shock me if the deal was made for the $10M the Marlins can pocket if he chooses to retire. I'm getting the feeling that the Marlins are going to run out of trade bullets before a playoff team comes together, but Jeffrey Loria can already say he's done enough to throw his hands up and say "Well, we tried. Tear it down again." This is just the first of many Dodger dominoes to fall, but it's the big win that allowed everything else they did to fall into place.
12/11/14: Dodgers trade LHP Andrew Heaney to Angels for 2B Howie Kendrick. Here's domino #2. The Dodgers manage to turn Dee Gordon and Dan Haren into a year of Howie Kendrick plus the other three players they got from the Marlins. Pretty nice play from Andrew Friedman. It's so good that even though the Angels are the winners in this trade, the Dodgers still manage to come out ahead overall. Really though, strong move by Jerry DiPoto. With all their money tied up in Josh Hamilton, Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, and Mike Trout, the plan of accumulating high-upside pitching prospects to fill out the roster is one I like. It didn't work out great with Tyler Skaggs and Hector Santiago last year, but that doesn't mean that Heaney and Nick Tropeano (acquired from Houston) won't be good.
12/11/14: Marlins trade RHP Anthony Desclafani and C Chad Wallach to Reds for RHP Mat Latos. Latos is a rental, which is the only downside to acquiring a 27-year-old starting pitcher who is a 4-win player when healthy. Desclafani is the latest of Miami's top prospects to be traded. His 2014 major league debut was superficially ugly, but looking at his numbers for half a second reveals that his cluster luck was incredibly poor. When you allow 45 baserunners and 23 of them score, that's really not all your fault, as evidenced by a FIP under 4. I think Miami overpaid here, too, but not as drastically as in the Dodgers trade. At least Latos will make a noticeable impact on the 2015 Marlins. Slight edge to the Reds, but it's the cost of doing business if you want to add wins to the major league team.
12/11/14: White Sox trade RHP Andre Rienzo to Marlins for LHP Dan Jennings. Sox get a decent, cheap lefty reliever. Marlins get a guy who hasn't put it together in the majors yet, but had good K rates in the minors. Shrug. I'd rather have Jennings, but then I sat through a Rienzo start or two this year and I might be biased.
12/11/14: Tigers trade RHP Rick Porcello to Red Sox for OF Yoenis Cespedes, RHP Alex Wilson, and LHP Gabe Speier. Did you know Rick Porcello isn't even 26 years old yet? Amazing. That kind of makes me like this trade a bit more for the Red Sox. Their plan of collecting number 3 starters has been questioned, but this is one I can get behind. We know what Cespedes is, a swing-at-anything guy with decent pop who may or may not add value as a defensive left fielder, depending on who you ask and on what day. Alex Wilson is the kind of guy Detroit needs like five of, an inexpensive and useful relief pitcher in the prime of his career. Speier is a lottery ticket, but hey, his rookie ball numbers are nice. This one seems about fair, but I think Ben Cherington did a great job in getting a player as good as Porcello in alleviating his outfield logjam. I also probably wouldn't have traded Porcello if I were Dave Dombrowski, even though they really did need another outfielder. Maybe Max Scherzer or James Shields will wind up signing with the Tigers, in which case nevermind, but for now, the next trade in this post is Dombrowski's follow-up. I'm not whelmed.
12/11/14: Reds trade RHP Alfredo Simon to Tigers for IF Eugenio Suarez and RHP prospect Jonathon Crawford. The previous trade opened a rotation spot in Detroit, and they filled it with... Well, let's not overstate things. Simon is going to turn 34 early next season, he's a rental, and his peripherals suggest his 3.44 ERA in 2014 gives him a little too much credit. It was also his first full season as a starting pitcher. So I'm not sure the Tigers got anything at all. In exchange, the Reds picked up a 23 year old shortstop with good range and minor league numbers that suggest he could be a good hitter, plus the Tigers' first round draft pick from 2013. So yeah. The Reds are doing well this winter.
12/12/14: Nationals trade RHP Ross Detwiler to Rangers for 2B Chris Bostick and RHP Abel De Los Santos. Detwiler is probably a good 4 or mediocre 3, but with his entire career spent in Washington so far, it's fair to wonder if a move to Arlington is going to work out for him. Either way, there wasn't space for him in the Nats' rotation next year. Bostick and De Los Santos are both A-ball maybe prospects. A fine trade for Washington, and an underwhelming start to Texas's journey back to contention.
12/12/14: Cardinals sign 1B Mark Reynolds, 1 year, $2M. If Matt Adams needs a platoon partner, well, he's got one. If not, the Cardinals have a right-handed Adam Dunn on their bench. No losers here.
12/12/14: Pirates re-sign LHP Francisco Liriano, 3 years, $39M. There's a pretty wide variance in how this could turn out, and it's more risk than we usually see Pittsburgh take on. Sure, Liriano's had the best two years of his career in black and gold, but it isn't that weird for a pitcher to be at his best at age 29-30. If the Pirates have a weakness it's starting pitching, both on the high end and in depth, and Liriano could conceivably help with both. He could also get hurt or lose control of the strike zone, both of which he's higher risk for than most other free agent starters. The Pirates signed Liriano to a low-cost two year deal before 2013, and that worked out great. I think the Pirates lose here by virtue of not quitting when they're ahead.
12/12/14: Astros sign RHP Luke Gregerson, 3 years, $18.5M and RHP Pat Neshek, 2 years, $12.5M. I read that Jeff Luhnow's theory is that young starting pitchers fail to develop when their bullpen blows leads all the time. I also remember how a good number of GMs get fired for signing relief pitchers when the rest of their team sucks. No matter the theory behind it, this is a waste. All it is is a team that's doubled down on the prospect plan so many times they don't want to part with any of their precious minor leaguers, and no real significant free agent wants to sign up for whatever's happening in Houston. So they throw deals at relievers because nobody else will take their money. Neshek and Gregerson would both be winners, except I bet they could have each scored similar contracts with teams that might be good in 2015. So the winner is Dallas Keuchel's feelings, because now he'll finish 14-9 instead of 12-9. And if the Astros wind up signing Max Scherzer, well, I've already established I'm an idiot.
12/12/14: Cubs sign RHP Jason Hammel, 2 years, $20M. Hey, another year or two like his first Cubs stint, and this guy's gonna be average for his career! Actually, I like this just fine for the Cubs. We knew they were going to go after an ace and a mid-level starter this winter. They got a great deal on the mid-level starter and they did sign someone people think is an ace. They're still an arm or two short if they're serious about playing important games in 2015, but signing Hammel to this contract is quite a bit better than signing Liriano, or McCarthy, or any other mid-rotation guy to the deals they got or will get. It just looks odd to me because most free agents pick the biggest dollar amount, and I think Hammel really, genuinely, wanted to be a Cub more than he wanted another year and $10M on his contract.
12/12/14: Red Sox sign RHP Justin Masterson, 1 year, $9.5M. Another number 3 starter heads to Boston. So 3 of Masterson's past 5 years would make this contract a bargain, and the other two would get him waived. I don't even know what to do with this and I wonder what Ben Cherington knows that I don't. The whole "overload on bats, get innings-eaters" plan might be good enough to get Boston back to the playoffs, but nothing they've done so far makes me think that's happening. This is a somewhat educated guess and nothing more, but I don't think this one works on an individual player level or a team level. At least put a team option on there so if it works out there's some continuity.
12/12/14: Diamondbacks trade LHP Wade Miley to Red Sox for RHP Rubby De La Rosa, RHP Allen Webster, and IF Raymel Flores. OK, first of all, Wade Miley's profile picture on baseball-reference makes me way more optimistic on him than I should be. What a man that is. I feel better about everything just looking at that goofy grin. What's that? Congress's budget deal virtually ensures a repeat of the economic collapse, and for once republicans and democrats are equally to blame? Don't care. Wade Miley will show us the way. As a pitcher, he's- surprise- just below average. Or he was, in the NL. In Boston, he's probably garbage. De La Rosa and Webster were the pitchers the Dodgers sent to Boston in the Adrian Gonzalez/Carl Crawford/Josh Beckett franchise reset trade of late 2012, and failed to make an impact in the majors with Boston. Webster, though, was actually quite good at triple-A in 2013 and 2014. De La Rosa was less consistent, but it's not impossible that both of them wind up in the Diamondbacks rotation at some point in the next year. Flores is a 20-year-old middle infielder, so who knows. This is an interesting one. I feel like Dave Stewart might have picked Boston's pocket and exploited their lack of major league pitching depth in a way Dave Dombrowski failed to do.
Wow, lot of action. And some of the biggest ones haven't even been finalized yet. Hell yeah winter meetings.
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