Deadline Wrap-up

A few housekeeping issues before I start dispensing my thoughts on today’s action. First, slap a big, fat “Lance Manly Approved” sticker on the day Wyatt had today, keeping you posted on all the rumors and movement. Second, check out our new Contact Us page.

Okay, on to the deals.

Early this morning, the White Sox swooped in and grabbed Ken Griffey, Jr. from the Reds for second baseman Danny Richar and right handed pitcher Nick Masset. Richar’s career minor league line is .288 avg/.339 obp/.440 slugging, not bad for a second baseman. The thing is, the Reds already have Brandon Phillips, who happens to be a better hitter than that, and an above average defender. If Richar hits closer to his 2008 minor league line of .262/.321/.427, he’s still a nice player, but doesn’t fit with the Reds. The White Sox didn’t have a need for him as long as they have Alexei Ramirez and Orlando Cabrera in the middle infield and Chris Getz waiting in the wings. Masset looks like a back of the rotation starter or a low-leverage middle reliever, nothing more.
So the White Sox got The (38 year old) Kid for a couple of expendable parts, right? Right, except I just don’t think he fits with their team very well. Jermaine Dye and Carlos Quentin are better players than Junior in 2008, so that eliminates the outfield corners. Jim Thome is entrenched at DH, and The Paul Konerko Disappearing Act is playing first base. Apparently Griffey only approved the trade after some sort of handshake agreement that he would be the everyday centerfielder. In 1997, that would have been awesome, in 2008, that’s a scary proposition. No one except for White Sox GM Ken Williams Junior himself seems to think he can be an everyday centerfielder (I even mentioned his, um, “adventurous” defense after our recent trip to a Reds game), and even if he can, where does that leave Nick Swisher? It’s going to be interesting to watch this play out.

The Marlins pried lefty Arthur Rhodes from the Mariners for Gaby Hernandez. Wyatt saw this one coming yesterday. Hernandez has struggled at AAA this year, but he’s still only 22, has a high strikeout rate, and until this year, has kept his home run rate pretty low. He looks like a very real pitching prospect. Rhodes has always been one of the best lefty relievers in the game, able to handle whole innings rather than just one lefty at a time. Over the past couple of years, however, he’s definitely declined, and this year has only 22 innings in 32 appearances, a pretty typical “specialist” sort of ratio. You don’t give up real prospects for guys like that.

The Yankees and Nationals made a minor league swap, the Yanks getting Jhonny Nunez and the Nats getting Alberto Gonzalez. Nothing too exciting there, move along.

Ah, now for the big one. The Red Sox sent Manny Ramirez and the remainder of his salary to the Dodgers and Craig Hansen and Brandon Moss to the Pirates; the Dodgers sent Andy LaRoche and Bryan Morris to the Pirates, and the Pirates sent Jason Bay to the Red Sox. This is the sort of deal everyone wins, in a way.
The Red Sox have to be happy that they moved their biggest headache, and while Bay is not quite the name that Manny is, he fits nicely into this Red Sox team – another lefty might have pushed them too far left, as they already have David Ortiz and JD Drew in the middle of the order. Plus, while Manny’s raw rate stats are slightly ahead of Bay’s (.299/.398/.529 vs. .282/.375/.519), Baseball Prospectus’s park-, league-, opponent-, and era-adjusted numbers give Bay the slight edge (.308/.400/.601 vs. .290/.395/.577). A lot of that is probably due to the Green Monster, which can turn some routine fly outs into hits and turn doubles into homers. Bay’s defensive translations look really ugly, but I don’t think you’ll many people in baseball who actually think Manny’s a better defender than Bay. Boston’s centerfielders – Coco Crisp and Jacoby Ellsbury – are both significanly better defenders than Nate McLouth, too. Once upon a time, Craig Hansen looked like Boston’s closer of the future, but now it’s hard to see why. He’s probably got a career as a serviceable middle reliever ahead of him. Moss really had no place in Boston, where he was a fifth outfielder. He can hit a little bit and defend an outfield corner pretty well, but the Sawx will be okay without him.

The Dodgers outfield before this trade was any three of Andruw Jones, Juan Pierre, Andre Ethier, and Matt Kemp. The trade makes it so that there is an obvious starting three: Ethier, Kemp, and Ramirez. You just can’t make a good argument for either of the other two to take much playing time from the lead three, so it will be interesting to see if Joe Torre makes the right call there. If they were going to continue to treat Andy LaRoche like he was expendable, better that they moved him before he lost all sorts of value, I suppose, but I just never understood why he didn’t have a place in that organization. Bryan Morris is still in class A, but also only 21, and the Dodgers are loaded with arms in a way few teams outside of maybe the Twins and Rays are.

The Pirates must be pleased with the deal, too. As I mentioned, I like LaRoche quite a bit; he looks like the sort of guy the Pirates can put at third for the next few years and just not worry about; he’ll be one of the Pirates four best position players the minute he puts on a uniform unless something goes terribly wrong. In the NL Central, the only third baseman clearly better than him is Aramis Ramirez; he might be in the same class as Troy Glaus and Edwin Encarnacion right now, in my opinion.
The other guys are a little less exciting; as I said, Hansen looks like a middle reliever, Morris is significantly far from the Bigs, and Moss is a stopgap corner outfield solution. However, all three of those guys can be a part of the next good Pirates team, and trading Bay gives them some payroll flexibility for next year.

Thus ends the 2008 non-waiver trade deadline; We’ll continue to cover any interesting player movement during August. Thanks for reading.

Manny to Dodgers, Bay to Sox

I’m hearing both of these, and I’ll keep you informed, but I don’t want to write an article about it, like earlier today, only to find it’s been shot down.

UPDATE: Wow.

The new deal appears to be this:

Dodgers get: Manny and cash

Pirates get: from BOS- P Craig Hansen, OF Brandon Moss from LAD- P Bryan Morris, 3B Andy LaRoche.

Red Sox get: Jason Bay

Here’s a breakdown of the storylines that come from this trade:

• Torre will manage Manny.
• The Pirates will have the LaRoche brothers at first and third.
• The Dodgers hate young talent.
• This might not be a problem but, after watching Kent and Bonds, will Kent and Ramirez pose a similar problem?
• The Sox have now traded two of their three biggest stars of the past decade in two surprising, nobody-gets-news-of-the-deal-til-half-an-hour-past-the-deadline, deals over the past four years.
• The Pirates have set themselves up for a heckuva future with a lineup that will include: Pedro Alvarez, Andy LaRoche, Andrew McCutchen, Nate McLouth and Brandon Moss.

Jason Bay Not a Ray

A nail has just been driven through the coffin of the three-way Manny deal, as Jason Bay has been traded to the Tampa Bay Rays. The Pirates got back quite a haul in return, landing shortstop Reid Brignac and pitcher Jeff Niemann. Niemann should enter the Pirates rotation immediately, and Brignac oughtta be a solid shortstop of the future, that can hit well enough to land him in the middle of the Pirates’ order. Although, giving up Niemann wasn’t very hard for the Rays to do given the surplus of young starting pitchers they already have, unloading Brignac is a different story, by doing so they have put all their trust in Tim Beckham, this year’s number one, as their shortstop of the future.

UPDATE: The second rumored Jason Bay deal thought to be done has fallen through just like the first and it looks as if Bay will stay in Pittsburgh.