Here’s the latest from around the NL West…
- The Padres’ trade of James Shields puts an end to the “spending spree” chapter of A.J. Preller’s tenure as San Diego’s GM, FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal observes, and it seemed like the club was eager to put this era behind it. “How exactly did the Padres make the White Sox hurt” in the trade, Rosenthal asks, noting that the Friars didn’t receive a significant player return in exchange for the veteran righty and they’ll still be paying the majority of Shields’ remaining contract. In a general overview of San Diego’s situation, Rosenthal notes that the franchise is relying on a big influx of prospects in both the draft and the next international market to help make up for all of the young talent lost in the Padres’ flurry of moves during the 2014-15 offseason.
- Gerardo Parra has yet to take off at the plate since joining the Rockies, though he tells MLB.com’s Thomas Harding that he feels it’s only a matter of time before he becomes more consistent at the plate. Parra entered Sunday hitting .269/.281/.429 over 218 PA, with a 1.8% walk rate that is far below even his modest 6.1% career mark. Parra has struggled badly (.681 OPS) against right-handed pitching and away from Coors Field. Between his bat and lackluster defensive metrics, Parra has been a sub-replacement level (-0.4 fWAR) player for Colorado in the first year of a three-year, $27.5MM free agent contract.
- Trayce Thompson is having a breakout season for the Dodgers and become a part of the club’s growing young core, ESPN.com’s Doug Padilla writes. Thompson’s emergence played a big role in L.A. designating Carl Crawford for assignment earlier today. “[Crawford has] had a great run and where we’re at right now, and where this organization wants to go, you have a lot of young guys coming,” manager Dave Roberts said.
- In other NL West news from today, Hunter Pence’s date for hamstring surgery was set for Thursday and we collected some Diamondbacks notes.
I get some of Prellers’ trades have been bad, but it would seem to me that buying one year and selling the next wouldn’t work regardless of how well you trade. The Braves for instance can’t start trading off prospects for major leaguers and the Dbacks can’t start a firesale for prospects. Whichever route you take you have to stay the course for at least 4 years. Like Theo did in Boston and has done now Chicago.
If you go the rebuild route you have to stick with it and not blow your was early, but if you go all in and suck and then not blow it up you are just doing even more long term damage. The pads know they aren’t competing until 2019 minimum now so it’s time to blow up the big league team, see if fringe guys can stick, sign free agents looking for pillow deals and hope to hit to trade, get lucky in the draft. Get some guys in I.f.a. and make sure you hit on ALL trades even if you don’t get stars. Take guys farther away rather than big league ready so you don’t burn control and the prearb years on bad teams.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t rebuild, I was merely stating an aggressive switch in philosophy and wondering aloud when it becomes apparent to rebuild. I. E. Boston won a world series then did nothing for a couple of years, but they never broke it down, they added Price/ Kimbrel and a few youngsters broke out. Maybe other teams should try more patience and see if the same result happens.
Wrong! The ONLY thing he’s done right is noticeable he screwed up and start getting young talent in. Still is t doing great. But if he had kept spending money on aging free agents and trading prospects for veterans….. They would be depleted, and been very bad for a very long time.
Young talent……using talent pretty loosely aren’t you?
Here’s what the talent is doing thus far.
*Jace Peterson- ..182/.260/.205 with a 26% K rate on a decent .250 BABIP. Also posted a negative defensive rating thus far.
*Dustin Peterson- AA he’s hitting .248/.317/.396
*Max Fried- posting an fip 4.84 and even before his bout with tjs he has command issues posting BB/9 4.25 in 13′ and 5.40 in 14′ and afterwards 5.40 in 16′
*Jesse Hahn- posted a concerning 5.96 K/9 in 15′ and now in 16′ he’s got 4.35 k/9 to go with an xfip 4.72. On top of injuries influencing those numbers.
*Matt Wisler- posted an xfip 5.10 in 15′ and has a 4.68 xfip in 16′ which will only go up after todays outing.
*Jake Bauers- hitting .260/.357/.403 at the Rays AA club.
*Yasmani Grandal- despite an excellent 15′ campaign, which also saw him post a dwar of 0.2 he’s mustering a .190/.301/.353 with a -0.2 dwar so far with a 23.5% k rate.
*Jordan Paroubeck- batting .200/.262/.317 for the dodgers A club….and that’s with a BABIP of .423 and 50.8% k rate LOL
*Johnny Barbato- posting an fip 4.20 xfip of 3.44 but 20% HR/9!
*Burch Smith- recovering from tjs but last time he pitched he had a fip of 10.26
*Alex Torres- 4.79 xfip with the mets and subsequently cut.
*Rj Alvarez- gave the athletics 5.79 xfip in 15′ and has been injured thus far in 16′
*Mallex Smith- .244/.301/.427 on a BABIP that is a little high with .315
*Zach Eflin- putting up a solid 2.42 fip for the phillies AAA club
Had the padres kept these they’d be worse off than they already are, although it would cost a lot less for them to have a worse record then they do now. Turner Ross and possibly eflin were his mistakes but he kept jankowski over smith, spangenberg over peterson,
Preller has 3 1sts, 6 picks within the 1st 86, and having those extra picks allots him more draft money. He’s expected to be highly active during the international period. He tore down their farm system and with what he got from kimbrel, gets from upton jr, gets from pomeranz, gets for rodney, etc. it will be quickly turned around.in addition to the international free agents and draft picks.
Majority of the roster is under team control between 2019-2021. Which is about the time they will be cleared of Kemps and Shields and Upton Jrs financial commitments to extend people as need be or replace them with talent acquired last year and this year.
Thank you. Losing turner and Ross hurts a ton don’t get me wrong but other than those guys they really didn’t give up any impact prospects. And don’t get me wrong all of this has blown up in the Padres faces. But Kimbrel was a solid haul to this point. We got more for our trade than when we traded for him. Kemp looks awful but other than Eflin we did not give up that much value. Grandal has always been overrated. The outlook is awful for the next three years at least but hopefully they hit on their draft picks and international signings and could have some good talent around 2020. Now this is the Padres we are talking about so I shouldn’t get my hopes up hahaha
People are harping on Mallex Smith but the future outfield is Jankowski , Renfoe, and Margot as early as 2018. Jankowski could potentially take over after the trade deadline if Jon Jay is dealt.
Course Trea Turner hurts, but if Preller produces a ss in Rondon, Giron, Guerrera or any ss he drafts signs then it becomes a moot point as he has a ss and wil myers who’s been healthy and productive at 1st.
They look at Joe Ross but forget the padres always manage to find pitching in the most unlikely place. Pomeranz, Tyson Ross, even Vargas, Friedrich have given them decent innings this year. Pitching isn’t an issue for SD and between Rodney, Jay, Alexi Ramierez they may get a 4 or 5 starter out of the deal.
But here’s how the future looks. Pomeranz, Norris are up in 2019, Myers Solarte Maurer Kemp(off the books) in 2020, Bethancourt Spangenberg Quackenbush 2021, Jankowski Rea up in 2022.
People act like Preller bet the farm yet majority of the roster is under control for another 2+ years at this point.
Even if he sells low on Tyson Ross Preller will net more than what the Padres gave up to acquire Ross.
Agree… Padres fans are too critical/cynical of what AJ tried to do (so it didn’t work, what did it really cost? You and bigh outlined it well ..Particularly the ‘recovery’ trades AJ made.. (actually the loss of the 13th pick and the $30mm they are paying the sox for shields was probably the worst move… But at the time the ‘last piece’)..
I doubt many of the cynical pads fans have the patience (i.e. 3-4 years) it takes to see these picks develop .. I have a distance fondness of the Padres. So the rebuilding begins in 2016 vs 2015 (with AJ having to guys to try something in 2015). Give him his 5 years and see what he comes up with (yes, 2 years have ticked away)
Also, even looking at Joe Ross he’s not the same pitcher he was last year; his strike out rate is down about 1.5% while his HR/9 is down about 2.6% and he’s sporting an xfip 4.09. So he’s been worse this year than last. Did he drop in velocity at all?
Don’t use dWAR, dWAR gives you a bonus if you play C,2B,SS,3B,CF and penalizes you if you’re a DH,1B,LF,RF. Which is why David Ortiz has a negative dWAR despite not fielding any games this year.
Use DRS, UZR and if you’re judging a catcher, pitch framing metrics.
It doesn’t matter how bad this team is now. This is a rebuilding team.
If we hadn’t made the Justin Upton trade we would have Fried, Smith and the two Petersons. We could have hoped one of them made good on their potential or traded them for someone who wasn’t going to just leave after one season. Really, it comes down to whether or not you think that draft pick has more value than Fried, Smith and the two Petersons combined. Not just individually, all four combined.
And for the last time. KEMP. HAS. NEGATIVE. TRADE. VALUE. The issue isn’t that we traded Grandal and Eflin, it’s who we traded them for. Kemp’s production shouldn’t be costing us $18m. It’s a miracle the Dodgers got anything for him. But keep pretending that Kemp has any value at all. If anyone agreed with you he would have been traded weeks ago.
Oh Matt Kemp definitely has zero trade value don’t get me wrong. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dreaming. But it was probably ownership that inspired the ill fated moves and people were genuinely excited about Padres baseball last year so all of the splashy moves worked in the eyes of ownership. It just blew up in their face
I never once said kemp has trade value but his bat in the lineup offers more than grandals does. Costs a lot more, but the team would be worse with grandal. Simple fact hes still dangerous as a hitter. Grandal offers nothing but low average with some power and only thing hes good at defensively is pitch framing-otherwise he’s mediocre in pretty much every area defensively.
Considering the performance of both petersons and fried pre and post tjs the 1st round pick may offer more value at this point as both petersons and fried are currently not living up to their potential.
Could have hoped they lived up to the talent lol like they wait for matt bush, cesar carrillo, cesar ramos, matt antonelli, nick schmidt, kyle burke, kellen kulbacki, drew cumberland, mitch canham, danny payne, allan dykstra, jaff decker, donovan tate, michael kelly, walker weickel to do so? Padres dont exactly have a great track record of hoping a guy pans out despite a high draft status.
No this team wouldn’t be better with Grandal because they would have $15.5m extra to spend and Kemp’s overall production (0.4 WAR in 2015) should cost much less than that to replace.
Just out of curiosity what would you see the padres doing with the 15.5 million that would actually make the team better without sacrificing draft picks to sign the players?
I applaud you bigh52334 for bringing some facts to the table. Really the only players Padres fans might miss are Joe Ross and Trae Turner, but the Padres still have Wil Myers who has played pretty well this year and has value if they want to go full rebuild and deal him.
I can slowly see what Preller has been doing, but the problem is that it takes 3-4 years to see the results. He went for it in 2015 probably with some motivation from management, but I bet you prior to that he listed what players he thought they should keep and who they should deal. Based on the long list of those who aren’t doing much so far, he has been right more often than not.
Just saw your post .. You are right on..
What it Crawford goes to SF to help fill the void in the outfield from Pence injury and he actually does a decent job. That would suck as a Dodgers fan lol. I’m very glad they got rid of him though. Gotta stop blocking young guys with old washed up guys. Crawford has been coating guys like Van Slyke playing time and it’s frustrating. I can’t wait for Ethier to come back, then they can trade Puig plus a package of minor leaguers for some pitching.
So will aj make it trough the the rebuilding process
He shouldn’t.. If I was the owner I would have fired him after last season. Not because he went all-in and failed, but because he didn’t correct his mistake and get better value in trades from Ross, Norris, and Cashner in the offseason
Just out of curiosoty do you know or have links to post as to what teams offered preller for ross cashner norris?
Cause if it was like what he was offered for upton and kennedy he was better off keeping them hoping theyd have a resurgence and trade them this year.
Cubs offered junior lake for ian kennedy, preller took the 1st.
Mets offered Fulmer for Upton, Preller too the 1st.
Norris isnt a free agent until 2019 and Ross isnt until 2018. Why should he trade them when the value is low? They have time. Ross comes out swinging next year preller gets better offers. Last year ross had an alarming walk rate.
No I don’t. I do know that Ross is now injured and Norris is playing very bad. Clearly they had better value in the offseason. There were “rumors” maybe Joey Gallo or Profar could be had for come combination of Ross and Norris and money, but again those were rumors.
No way Ross, Norris, and money would net Gallo. Talking about it and dreaming is about as far as it got. Again, Ross isn’t a FA until 2018. That’s 1.5 more seasons to establish value. Norris isn’t a FA 2019 which is 2.5 more seasons to establish value. Also, despite a slow start Norris has picked things up lately. A dreadful March/April, subpar May, and he’s picking things up in June. Also, 4 years in a row he had a BABIP of roughly .300. It’s down to around .240. So he’s hitting the ball, but not through the hole or right at guys in the outfield.
As for Ross, without knowing what was offered Preller has a 50-50 shot of making the right move. If it was a low ball offer for Ross cause of his walk rates, over 3 a game close to 4 last year 3 years in a row and he’s close to 30, then Preller took a calculated risk. If Ross finishes the year strong Preller can still get a trade out of him come next off season.