The Rockies announced that they’ve acquired right-hander Pat Neshek from the Phillies in exchange for minor league infielder Jose Gomez and minor league right-handers J.D. Hammer and Alejandro Requena. Lefty Tyler Anderson has been moved to the 60-day DL to clear a roster spot.
[Related: Updated Colorado Rockies depth chart and Philadelphia Phillies depth chart]
Neshek, 37 in September, has proven to be a strong offseason pickup for the Phillies, who effectively acquired the side-armer and his $6.5MM contract in a salary dump. Through 40 1/3 innings out of the Philadelphia bullpen, Neshek has averaged 10.0 K/9 and 1.1 BB/9 with a 37 percent ground-ball rate en route to a pristine 1.12 ERA. Neshek’s 13.6 percent swinging-strike rate is the best mark he’s posted since his rookie year with the Twins way back in 2006, and the paltry 24.5 percent hard-contact rate he’s allowed ranks as the 24th-best out of 163 qualified relievers.
In Neshek, the Rockies are adding a rental arm — Neshek is a free agent at season’s end — to a relief corps that has looked to show signs of fatigue in recent weeks. Colorado had a top-heavy bullpen that posted middle-of-the-pack results in April and May but has fallen off considerably since the calendar flipped to June. Over the past 30 days, Rockies relievers have posted a 4.74 ERA and a 4.92 FIP, each of which rank among the worst collective marks in baseball. Adam Ottavino and Jordan Lyles, in particular, have struggled as of late, but adding Neshek to the mix will give first-year manager Bud Black another quality arm to pair with the likes of Greg Holland and Jake McGee, taking some pressure off other arms further down the pecking order.
The 20-year-old Gomez ranked 21st in a deep Rockies farm system on the recently released midseason top 30 prospect list from Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. He’s played all over the infield but profiles best at second base in the long run, per that report, though he’s a ways off from the Majors anyhow after spending the bulk of the season in Class-A. Gomez is hitting .324/.374/.437 with four homers, 20 doubles and a pair of triples thus far in 2017. He’s also swiped 18 bases, though he’s been caught on another 11 attempts, suggesting that he needs further refinement in that area if he’s to be much of a threat on the bases later in his pro career.
In addition to having an excellent name, the 23-year-old Hammer boasts an outstanding strikeout rate thus far through the first year-plus of his professional career. The Marshall University product was Colorado’s 24th-round pick in the 2016 draft and has pitched to a 3.15 ERA with 12.3 K/9 against 2.6 BB/9 since joining the Rockies organization. Hammer, who has also posted a ground-ball rate north of 50 percent as a pro, has worked exclusively out of the bullpen, though he’s pitched in Class-A this season and is older than much of his competition. Fangraphs’ lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen tweets that Hammer possesses a plus fastball and average curveball but presently has below-average control.
Requena, 20, has worked as a starter at the Class-A level this season, totaling 117 innings across 19 starts with 7.5 K/9, 1.9 BB/9 and a 47.5 percent ground-ball rate. He’s demonstrated very strong control throughout his professional career to date and is enjoying solid results in his first year of full-season ball despite being nearly two years younger than the average age of his competition.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Good job by philly turning a salary dump into three guys with good stats this year
nice!
Can’t stand Dombrowski he’s always late for the bell
I’m not liking the moves/lack of moves this season, but DD is the last guy you can say is “always late.” Last year he made the first big move of July about 2 weeks before the deadline to get Pomeranz (hated it at the time, but we’d be toast without it now) and one of the first reliever moves too when he stole Zeigler from Arizona for the Basabe who wasn’t the good one. He pounced on Kimberly and Sale pretty quick in the off season too. His rep is that he makes out his shopping list and he fills it too fast, even when he’s got to pay too much.
Please don’t remind us about the Ziegler trade. DBacks fans are still mad (as they should be) about the return they got for him.
Exactly.
Sale and Kimbrel would beg to differ.
Yeah he grabbed Ziegler and Hill last year pretty early on, and Nunez was before the deadline too. I do wish they had gotten Neshek, but you can’t say he’s always late getting the guys he wants.
And the Phillies bullpen is now all the way bad
Well maybe now we can focus on losing 3 and 4 run games instead of 1 run games.
Luis Garcia has been pretty good this year.
I’d like to see him get a crack at the closer’s role and move Neris back to the 8th where he seems more comfortable.
He’s got the best stuff in that bullpen.
Can’t be worse than Chisox! All sub 4era guys are gone.
Not all, they still have Jennings, though who knows for how long? The Sox are going to be as bad as Philly from here on out, but Philly got a head start on the sucking, so I think Chicago gets the #2 overall pick.
VV needs to be the closer
it doesnt matter. the season is lost and the point of getting Neshek was to trade him for prospects at the trade deadline. Plus you didnt just get place fillers, you got 3 decent players. Big win for the Phillies!
Just want to say wrong Jose Gomez link the Phillies got Shortstop Jose Gomez from the Rockies not the D-backs Pitcher Jose Gomez
s/o to mlbtr got the notification from them before anyone else
Thanks bro
Thaks bro
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Just a sheep following the crowd for no particular reason.
Thanks bro
I feel like he’s going to either be really good in Colorado or get rocked. No in between.
Good Deal for Both Teams , Phillies get Young Players , Rockies get Veteran Reliever who can help them down the stretch !
Starting to look more and more like the Dodgers are going to sit idle which I understand, we have a great team but watching other teams around us get better is a tab bit frustrating when we clearly need to add a starter and could really use another reliever. Hope we don’t make a meaningless trade that doesn’t help or even worse not make a trade at all. Good pick up by the Rockies by the way! And I like that trade the Diamondbacks made for Martinez as well, even that cubs trade to help their rotation. All good moves. Hope we can do something similar soon.
Remember last year the dodgers didn’t make the hill/redick deal til deadline day
Corey…yea I know and I like Hill but Reddick was no help at all. They never make the right moves it doesn’t seem to me and we are always in the same position which is one starter and reliever and possibly one power bar away but we never make the move. This year I’m fine with all the position players but we absolutely need a God starter like Darvish or Gray and we need to go get Britton.
There never seems to be a strategy to Andrew Friedman’s plan. It’s all about getting a great team and maintaining a great farm. Friedman has done both well but he needs to go for it at some point.
Our sorry front office does this every year.we are always in the running to get somebody but we end up with nothing and that is why we will go out in the nlds or nlcs again this year like we do every year.need a frontline pitcher and a lefty reliever and another right handed bat wouldn’t hurt but not going to happen
I agree. I just don’t understand. I know we don’t want to gut our stellar farm system but we can make some moves without giving up every good minor league player. We have plenty of depth. I don’t even think we need another bat but for sure a frontline starter and lefty reliever.
Im not really sure you can jump to conclusions this year. Yes other teams have made moves, but they haven’t really been moves the Dodgers needed to make. They were never really going to jump the market or be able to acquire players without letting it play out. The Rangers were always going to take it to the wire. They had to judge the health and see if Britton returned to form. Same in performance aspect for Verlander. So really it was always going to be an 11th hour type dealings. I’m not really going to judge until guys that they needed to picky about like Darvish and/or Wilson are off the board.
That’s fair, but you can’t blame any Dodger fans for holding their breath right now. This team looks like it’s in the midst of a historic season and a couple of moves away from being just this side of inevitable. The suspense is in the air.
Oh I’m not blaming anybody. I’m just saying it’s a little premature to panic. It’s pretty short list of their needs. Other options are sort of a luxury, but reality is what they’d like and who they’d like is going to come down to the wire. It might even come down in August if they feel like they might like to take another look at a guy like Verlander, who would probably pass through waivers.
Now that said I don’t think they have interest in Verlander or Gray.
I don’t think with as good as Houston is that you can say anything is inevitable. LA has been incredible over the past couple of months, but Houston’s offense is stacked and Kershaw, while not Price in the playoffs, isn’t Bumgarner, either.
Kershaw good at choking I the playoffs
I said, “just this side of inevitable” because I know nothing is ever truly inevitable in baseball. In any case the Dodgers are currently on a pace for 113 wins. They win over 100 by doing no better breaking even for the remainder of the season. That’s historic no matter what other ideas you might have. They are a couple of moves away from being the toughest team anyone has seen in decades.
It just bothers me that the phils got another infielder to sit in their system, Phillies need bullpen help, neshek for some young Relievers would have been fine, maybe a starter too, Phils are fine on offense and defense, pitching is their weak link
One of the players is a reliever with a 14 K/9, which is stupidly good.
Another one is a BOTR-MOTR arm who doesn’t walk guys
The Hammer born to close.
Hey maybe the Phillies got someone that can put the hammer down in the 9th inning! Lol
Honestly they probably sold them on the marketing factor that comes with that if he pans out lol
Hammer really does have effective stuff. He pitched well at Marshall against solid competition in Conference USA. He has a chance.
If anything, this gives the Phillies a chance to try out one of their young relievers in AAA.
VV needs to be the closer
Love this deal!
I read somewhere that the Phillies were looking for prospects who did not need to be protected from the Rule V draft and these kids have decent upside for A ball.
Phillies fans can all breathe a sigh of relief right now
i see what you did there.. sigh of “relief”
If the Rockies trade for Lucroy and get the Brewer version instead of the Ranger version, they’d have a real chance to win it all.
Of course…that’s what the Rangers thought, too.
Lol
Rocks pen is legit!
DBacks should have been able to match this package. Neshek would’ve been a nice fit. Hopefully they’ll go after someone who’s not a rental though, like Brach
Reed of Mets !
Addison Reed was already a disaster with the dbacks. They gave him to the mets for nothing in the first place
Good thing guys can never improve. Cubs were stupid to trade for Arrieta, couldn’t they see he wasn’t very good in Baltimore?
You dont see guys trade a bad pitcher then trade back for him. Just doesn’t happen. Any team but the dbacks would make sense for Reed.
I mean, they won a WS with him so you can’t say it was bad, but really only good for a year and a half to two though.
My comment was supposed to be blatant sarcasm. Arrieta is a huge regret for the O’s without a shadow of a doubt.
Well, after he left Baltimore, he got super strong doing…yoga, he says.
Lol, maybe it’s time to try yoga
In fairness, the Rockies should have been able to match the package for JD Martinez as well. So it seems they are even.
First, matching isn’t enough, you have to beat the offer. Secondly, being able to isn’t enough. It’s the team that’s willing to that makes the deal.
Why in gods name does Klentak get a prospect that projects at 2nd base when you have Kingery as your future there ? Not sure Klentak knows what the F he’s doing
The Phillies have prospects, good ones, at all positions. What’s not to like? I have a feeling you’re hating just to hate.
because systems need to be more than one player deep? if this guy is good, and kingery is good, there are these things called trades which the phils can make..
now, the one thing that could be questioned is that the Phillies already have a pretty good second base prospect in Daniel Brito playing in low a as well, though looks like Gomez will play short, and i guess Phils may like him more than Gamboa who they currently have there in low a.
Should he have taken a weaker prospect at a different position? That might have been the choice.
Exactly. Are Phils fans afraid they’ll have too many good players? At this point (where they are this year) gather up as much talent as you can; sort it out later.
Exactly this. This was a win-win trade for both sides. Colorado got a solid rental middle reliever to add to their contending ballclub. The Phillies got back 3 decent (but far from top) prospects for a guy who had no future with them. And despite many teams having interest in Neshek, he was never going to command a top prospect. So they got 3 players having good years in low-A and more importantly, only 1 is rule V eligible this coming offseason in Gomez and he’s so far from the majors, there’s next to no chance he’d be selected. Like you said, it’s about accumulating talent at all positions, at all levels, and hoping a few of them eventually pan out.
With a name like J.D. Hammer, he’d better have a good curveball.
meh its an okay deal for both clubs.. hammer is more intriguing than neshek as far as the phils are concerned.