GRADE THE TRADE: THE THREESOME
My panicked look as I try to decipher all of this
What an exciting mess.
I have tried three different methods for starting and arranging this article and it always ends with me binning it and returning to the drawing board. How do you analyze three trades made within three hours in which two of the involved teams made two trades? And to add even more complexity, one of those owners has made three overall trades this offseason.
As easy as it would be to say, “Just treat each trade as a discrete analytical exercise,” that’s not how I roll. We can’t evaluate these deals in a vacuum as that would diminish the value of the critique. The world happens contextually, and so does dynasty level fantasy baseball. If we treat these deals as singular vacuum sealed events then we are no better than “Flat Earthers”, and by golly I am not letting them win.
Therefore, I will be analyzing the transactions from yesterday by Owner rather than by Trade. I’ll analyze everything that went out vs. came in (phrasing) during that day and grade their overall effort in the context of the larger offseason.
So, welcome to another exciting, singular, and hyperbolic edition of Grade the Trade.
JOHN SITKO
GAVE: 10TH ROUND PICK
GOT: EVAN CARTER (fa) AND JUSTIN STEELE (22)
The new guy strikes again.
Sitko wasted no time this off-season in attempting to shore up what was initially a weak keeper slate and he has succeeded mightily. With his latest deal he now has six strong keeper candidates which contain an appealing mix of high-end pitching (Gausman, Senga), reliable hitting (Bellinger, Marte), and upside plays (Carter, Steele).
On a more granular level, here are the players who were drafted in 2023 in the 10th round:
Josh Bell, Luis Arraez, Pablo Lopez, Ryan Mountcastle, Jhoan Duran, Jake McCarthy, Chris Bassitt, Andres Munoz, Joe Ryan, Rowdy Tellez
Of those, only Pablo Lopez and Jhoan Duran would go on to be impact fantasy options for their teams, so the risk of regret at giving up a player in this range is low. Even so, the players coming back aren’t without questions.
As I pointed out in Swindell’s off-season profile, Carter has big time power coupled with big time swing and miss. Even though it was a small sample size, Carter didn’t have a single hit against left-handed pitching in the ’23 regular season. Coupled with a BAbip of .422 and a 32% strikeout rate and it’s not hard to project significant regression in 2024.
Steele is a soft-tossing control artist who started to get figured out towards the end of last season as he fatigued. He throws two pitches, one being a fastball which he commands exceptionally and one that’s a slider which plays off the fastball when his command is strong. As it stands though he’s never going to be an elite strikeout pitcher, so his upside is capped at what you saw last season.
Normally these players wouldn’t interest me terribly much, but at end of the draft values and moving to a team that desperately needs depth I am all in on the moves. Sitko gave up very little real value but filled out his stable with reliable and calculated risks. He made his limited resources work for him and he has positioned himself well heading into the draft.
grade: b+
andrew heller
gave: minor league 2nd round draft pick
got: walker buehler
This guy gets it.
Last season Andrew Heller rode a dominant offensive run to a postseason berth where he narrowly missed a trip to the League Championship. The mandate this offseason was clear: Get some pitching help.
The trouble is, with the keepers in three of the first seven rounds of the draft Heller’s keeper slate is beginning to look increasingly top-heavy. The play was to acquire a high-end pitcher without having to give up top ten-round draft picks, and Heller threaded that needle beautifully.
Minor league draft picks are lottery tickets, and Heller is in a position where he should absolutely be looking to compete now with his dominant offensive talent and coming off a very successful season. Getting a player with top 10 pitcher upside for the low-low price of a second-round prospect pick is a genius play. It would have been a genius play in his position if he had traded a first round pick. The cherry on top is that Heller already has Wyatt Langford, a consensus top 5 MLB prospect already rostered, making that second round minor league pick even less valuable to him.
The only place where this gets complicated is if Langford makes the major league team out of camp, forcing Heller to make a potentially difficult decision regarding Nico Hoerner, but that’s a great position to be in.
Does Walker Buehler have significant health questions? Yes. Do we know definitively that he will start the season in the rotation and not on some sort of modified rest plan? No. You don’t get to trade for perfect pitchers with insane draft value for nothing. This is the best deal Heller could have made for this level of upside while giving up next-to-nothing. Well evaluated, well carried out, great fit.
grade: a
james swindell
gave: justin steele, evan carter, junior caminero, and 8th round pick
got: bobby miller and 10th round pick
For the sake of argument let’s call the 8th round pick and 10th round picks a wash, making this a little easier to parse.
It would be incredibly arrogant and self-congratulatory for me to quote myself in my own “Grade the Trade” article… so I’m going to do it anyway.
“Building out a pitching staff will be important [for James] since his current crop skews hitter heavy,” said a very attractive man.
Swindell seemed to take these words to heart and worked to shore up his pitching at the keeper level rather than relying on a draft day upgrade. Steele was never being seriously considered as a keeper so from Swindell’s perspective his loss was mostly to recoup the draft pick that was sent to Cashman’s Cash Outs. Acquiring Miller meant Swindell was now over the limit on keepers so dealing Carter and Caminero became desirable to both get the Steele deal done and to help recoup the draft pick cost.
This was a well thought out set of trades by Swindell where he likely acquired the best player in the deal. Miller’s strikeout upside remains limited until his command and breaking offerings can take another step forward, but he has all the earmarks of a very attractive upside arm due to his youth, above average stuff, and developmental resources with the Dodgers. Coupled with Valdez and Swindell has a solid set of number 2 pitchers. He has now positioned himself well to nab Wheeler, Yamamoto, Nola, or some other similar pitcher to anchor a solid top 3 and solidify his staff.
This trade, coupled with the decision to keep Harris over Arraez has built out Swindell’s keepers to be a much more complete crew. If Caminero or Carter end up starting the year in the minors then Swindell loses an opportunity to nab one of the best options for a minor league keeper in the league, but that’s an acceptable risk to take in this situation.
Don’t worry, there’s a “But” coming.
Swindell’s trade for Miller was the first of the day. If Swindell decided he wasn’t as concerned with the draft pick loss could he have made a play for Musgrove, the better pitcher? Was there a scenario where Caminero, who is 50/50 to start the season in the minors could have been retained at the cost of a minor league pick thrown into the mix? Only these owners can speak on this and I don’t want to diminish the improvement Swindell made to his team at little immediate cost. Also he listened to me, so I shall reward it.
grade: b
richard martindell jr
gave: bobby miller and walker buehler
got: junior caminero, 8th round pick, and 2nd round minor league pick
Richard Martindell Jr has been the most active owner this offseason. With the two trades today, he has brought his total number of deals to 3 in which he has off-loaded 4 players. He now has 12 picks in the first ten rounds of the draft. His self-imposed mandate seems to have been to cull his long list of keeper viable players so he could acquire draft picks, and in that he has succeeded, but more on that overall strategy later.
Richard Martindell Jr loves Bobby Miller like Bobby Hill loves Celery Head, and rightfully so. Miller has been an early darling of fantasy analysts with notable writers such as Nick Pollack ranking him as the 16th ranked starter heading into 2024. Miller has a range of above average pitches with strong velocity, and he pitches for a team that excels in player development with a good defense behind him. That coupled with his exemplary keeper position point to him being just the sort of pitcher Martindell would want to hold onto… so what made him break?
Turns out homer-ism is still undefeated.
Maybe that is a little unfair. Junior Caminero is a consensus top 4 prospect, and an 8th round draft pick isn’t nothing. Last season if you were drafting in the 8th round you could have gotten George Kirby… or Giancarlo Stanton.
The strange development here is when the deal is placed in the context of Martindell’s larger offseason in which he has traded away two other consensus top 20 pitchers in Tyler Glasnow and Walker Buehler. Martindell has gone from having four top 20 starting pitchers available to keep to just one in Joe Musgrove.
Another question is whether Caminero will get a fair shake at full playing time on the notoriously prospect stingy Rays. Caminero ended the 2023 season on the Rays’ roster but the perception around the team is that he may start 2024 in the minors. This can be a feature for some teams wanting to stash Caminero in a minor league spot, but with Martindell’s keepers high on risk and low on star power, immediate regular contribution would be preferred.
“We’ll see where the winter goes,” baseball operations president Erik Neander said before listing off Caminero’s encouraging accomplishments.
Caminero still profiles as a perennial all-star with the bat which is good to have, but the fact that Martindell’s potential keepers are filled with high-upside but risky youths is reason for concern. Martindell has five players in the mix for keeper spots who are either rookies or second year players. After his current crop of trades his projected keepers are:
Joe Musgrove (11)
Zach Eflin (18)
Cedric Mullins (21)
Elly De La Cruz (23)
Nolan Jones (FA)
Junior Caminero (FA)
Let’s assume for a second that Martindell always planned to keep two pitchers and the decision came down to Glasnow, Buehler, Miller, Musgrove, or Eflin. The three pitchers dealt had the highest upside of the group, while Musgrove and Eflin represent lower ceiling but higher floor production. Do I personally disagree with this tactic when it comes to pitching investment? Yes. All pitchers are injury risks and the middle of the pack is full of lower strikeout potential arms who will get you by. I say shoot for the moon with “stuff” and don’t overthink the injury risks too much. You could end up with a game changer like Snell was last season for Mulvey. Having said that, Martindell’s decision to go with a contrasting tactic isn’t necessarily wrong, just risk averse.
And that’s where this all sort of comes to a head. Yesterday, Martindell sold off pitching pieces with varying degrees of risk for options, both in the form of draft picks and a potential elite minor league keeper option. Buehler has several significant questions about what his workload will be in 2024 and Miller still has to flash progress in his command and bat missing ability to take the next step. Martindell’s well documented distrust for high-end starting pitching investment was changed out for draft equity.
I call this the Bill Belichick approach, and Patrick Weaver has been doing it for years. Martindell now has the highest number of draft picks of any team in the first ten rounds, and thus far is the only team that will pick three times in the first two rounds of the Minor League Draft. It’s a cohesive strategy built on faith in the value laden keepers he has amassed and a desire to create flexibility and emphasis on a strong draft, and while I would never carry out such a strategy myself, I acknowledge it has been executed with internal consistency and logic.
When asked if he was finished the winnowing process and what was next, Martindell said, “I would say I’m very happy with the moves I’ve made now and have managed to move a lot of the excess keeper value players I had hoped to. At this point, I’ve narrowed my keepers down to 6-7 instead of 9-10.
So, while I’m very confident in what I’m keeping, I am always open to other deals and now I’m actually more open to swapping players rather than draft picks,”
Sounds like someone who believes in what they’re doing, has a plan, and is executing it. I’m not going to argue with that, but I will say it’s not what I would have done, and these are my rankings… so…
