The Royals announced they’ve acquired right-handed pitching prospect Zach Willeman from the Dodgers. The move completes the clubs’ July 29 deal that sent left-hander Danny Duffy to Los Angeles.
Willeman, 25, is a former 19th-round pick by Los Angeles. A starter early in his minor league career, he worked exclusively out of the bullpen this past season with Double-A Tulsa. Over 47 2/3 frames of relief, he pitched to a 3.78 ERA with an above-average 28.2% strikeout rate but an elevated 11% walk percentage. The Royals will need to add Willeman to the 40-man roster or leave him exposed in the upcoming Rule 5 draft. If he earns a spot on the 40-man, he could be a bullpen option at the big league level at some point next season.
The Dodgers ultimately got nothing out of their low-cost flier on Duffy. The veteran southpaw was on the injured list with a flexor strain at the time of the deal. Expected to return a few weeks after the trade, Duffy unfortunately had a setback and was shut down for the season. He’ll be a free agent this winter.
And the powerball number is…
Sad to see Duffy’s career likely end this way as he’s staring down TJ #3.
Win for the Royals. At 33 I imagine Duffy gets the surgery. You never know how prospects will work out. See 62nd round Mike Piazza who just happened to annihilate my favorite team on a regular basis years ago.
How bad is Duffy’s injury? I know it must be pretty bad but at 33 years old I didn’t think it would be a career ender. Didn’t he always say he wanted to retire as a Royal? I could see them signing him on a cheap deal for next season if he’s healthy enough. If not I could see them doing it in 2023. I figure a minor league deal at the very least for either 2022 or 2023 would be in order from the Royals. Man… You know it’s bad when all the Dodgers gave up was a low end minor league reliever who posted an ERA close to 4.00 and they still already lost the trade by a landslide. Don’t trade for injured players with less than 3 months left on their contract. Unless it’s Eddie Rosario. Then trade the farm because he is going to keep hitting for the cycle+ and win it all for you. Plus you only have to give up Kung-Fu Panda to get him and the other team will still eat all of Panda’s contract. That might end up being the biggest steal the Braves traded for all season considering they literally gave up nothing and Panda was immediately released by Cleveland.
Any Dodgers prospect folks have any insight on this kid? My expectations are less than nothing. If he throws a single pitch in the bigs, the Royals have won this trade.
He’s a college reliever who was drafted in 2017 who still hasn’t made it to the bigs.
Ok let me rephrase, does anyone know anything about this guy I can’t get from spending 5 seconds looking at his BaseballReference page?
You can read?
Willeman slept with Friedman’s wife who lied to him by saying that she and her husband had an open and mature marriage. Friedman only found out because Willeman accidentally left his jock strap in the Friedman family van. He didn’t know the owner initially as the statement “Free Wille” was embroidered on the strap and Willeman was not a coveted prospect,
It was only on re-doing his minor league rankings one late night that Andrew eventually came across the last name which seemed to fit like a lock & key into the mysterious jock strap inscription. “Okay, motherf*cker. Let’s see how you thrive in Missouri.” The sordid history is more pronounced than the actual stats.
This is actually comedy gold
Fastball comes in around 92-96 MPH, uses a slider that sits in the upper-70’s/low-80’s. Based on like the three videos there are of him pitching on YouTube, his slider looks good.
youtube.com/watch?v=yb2bHhXLJB0
youtube.com/watch?v=jNj32InzvD8
He’s 25 and never pitched above AA ball, likely 5 years older than anyone he’s facing. Theirs your eye test
Ron Tingley:
So what you’re saying is, he’s like Kramer in the dojo(?) –
youtu.be/7t8xwpW8gJQ
And for the record, it’s not the size of the opponent, it’s the ferocity
He was a college starter his senior year and was starting some last year in AA. This year they switched him to a constant relief pitcher and showed some very good stats. I guarantee he makes it to the majors as a relief pitcher!
The Royals won the trade the second it happened even if this guy never throws an inning at any level in the organization.
crescent-news.com/sports/local_sports/baseball-nap… Here’s the most in depth article I could find on him. Sounds like he’s been through a lot, between TJ surgery before starting his professional career, and a line drive off the head last year. Overall though, he had a solid year at AA at age 25, and who knows, if he pitches solid at AAA next year, he could find his way to the bullpen by year’s end or next year.
Royals already won the trade. Royals got a young pitcher and the Dodgers got a patient.
Some trades aren’t worth winning.
It was worth the risk, I suppose. Coke Hamels on the other hand?
Suspended indefinitely for hanging out with Steve Howe
Hamels was zero risk though – only cost money.
Coke Zero risk*
Duffy to the Angels next year for $10 mil.
No. I’m sure he wants a chance at the postseason.
I was being facetious since the Angels always give big $$ to injured or past their prime pitchers.
The angels then would give him 5/80
If you have to explain you being facetious then you’re not facetious ⚾️
Only to people who didn’t understand…like you!
That is incorrect, @lady1959. Whether you liked the joke or not, the joke was pretty easy to follow if you look at how the Angels sign pitchers (and a pretty good joke, at that), and it is not kingsfan’s fault if it goes over another reader’s head, or if the reader brings up a tangential point that strays away from the original joke.
So you’re saying that my Pirates won’t be able to pick him up for $900,000?
Duffy was a straight salary dump. Inconsistent at best in his career with the Royals. When he left the KC fans were all boo hoo. The guy was a journeyman at best and I am a lifelong Royals fan. Just because you hang around for a long time and have a couple of decent seasons doesn’t make you all that and a bag of candy.
“Duffy was a straight salary dump.”
Yep It is: The Royals paid his full salary this year as part of the trade. So, not a salary dump.
And, as any Royals fan would know, Duffy was much more than “inconsistent at best.” 19.8 WAR over ten and a half years. He was good for 13.0 of those WARs from 2014-17 with 136+ innings each of those years, so a very solid starter while the team was in contention.
I am sure many of us Royals fans will be happy if Dayton Moore brings him back home next year. He will have a very good influence on the young arms.
Where was it reported that they paid all of his salary? I remember seeing it was an undisclosed amount of cash, but he was owed about $5.5M at that point in the season so for all we know KC was still able to save some money on that.
per cot’s contracts, royals did indeed eat all the salary.
Danny Duffy giants 2022
He’s headed for TJ #3. His career is over.
No
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the Royals won this deal.
Yes, the Royals won this trade. But it’s like winning $5 after spending $20.
@tdat1979 lol’d at my cubicle. Thanks.
What’s the obsession with trying to say the Royals won a deal of little importance? On one level, getting anything for Duffy can be called a win, but maybe not. Here’s why…
This was likely a deal of no consequence for either team. The Dodgers gave up a 26-year-old AA reliever who they didn’t particularly value. The Royals paid the remaining value of Duffy’s contract for the right to acquire Willeman, so that’s somewhere in the $5-6M range to now own Willeman. But do they? Willeman has to be added to the 40-man roster, which is why the Dodgers were likely fine adding him to the PTBNL pool the Royals could select from. 40-man roster spots are very valuable and carry an assigned value, one which the Royals will have to pay. The Royals now have to assign a valuable 40-man roster spot to keep Willeman, or leave him exposed to other teams. So if they keep him, there is a real cost that he may not be worth, one that’s already in the millions. If they don’t protect him, he could be a Rule 5 claim, including by the Dodgers! That means the Royals lose because they could have traded Duffy for full or partial salary relief.
So, I’ve written way too many words for a deal of likely no consequence, but, yes, the Royals can still “lose” this deal depending on what happens in the coming months.
Interesting perspective. But I could see two advantages.
The first would be that they now have maybe two months to examine, watch him throw, etc., before the Rule 5 draft.
The second would be that, if they don’t add him to the 40-man, and he gets drafted, they pick up $100k. If he doesn’t get drafted, then he remains KC’s property. Presumably, if LA exposed him to the draft, KC could’ve claimed him for the same $100k, but then they’d be obliged to keep him on the 25-man squad.
Doesn’t really seem like a strong candidate to go in the Rule 5 for the same reasons you describe above.
Absolutely. My main point as many were saying the Royals won the deal is either way this is likely not of consequence to either team.
Most of the trades for older guys, whose salaries are far higher than their contributions, amount to almost nothing. I think 90% involve a contender picking up the salary of a player with little value, and then sending back their #15 prospect, just so it looks like a real trade, instead of salary dump.
That said, teams can get lucky, like Clase for Kluber.
lord99 is also the same guy who said the dodgers wouldn’t be giving up a prospect in this deal, only cash considerations. check the previous post on this topic. he likes to play monday morning qb but knows the game of baseball, just a keyboard warrior who posts mid-day while most of us are working because we have careers
Anyone who has spent any time following Dayton Moore’s career will understand this – they traded Danny for Danny. They gave him an opportunity to play for his childhood team and go win a ring to close out his career. Anything we get out of this trade is gravy.
IMO this is the most likely scenario. I would go further and suggest that the risk of him not pitching the rest of the season was real and this explains the royals only getting a 25 y.o. AA arm that has the upside the 5th or 6th arm out of the pen.
They were going to eat the remainder of his salary anyways so they did him a favor and “gave” him to LA so if he was able to pitch at all he was going to do it for a good team.
It’s also possible that the PTBNL would have been a better prospect had Duffy actually pitched for LA.
If he hadn’t had that setback then it’s possible he could have possibly made the playoff roster as a reliever. Unfortunately it looks like his career is headed towards a possible surgery maybe maybe not. He may even be able to sign somewhere as a reliever for maybe $2 or $3 million
Andrew Friedman needs to be replaced. He wasn’t the architect for the Dodger’s success.. Zahidi was the one who allowed this team to come to fruition by keeping the farm in tact. He didn’t trade away top prospects for rentals, nor did he make any long-term free agent signings that would bottleneck the flow of young talent. Zahidi built the best bullpen in the game and found hidden gems such as Taylor and Muncy.
Friedman dismantled the bullpen and tried rebuild it be basically signing any recently released pitcher to see if he can stick. Hardly the work of a genius. He also let Joc Pederson and Kiki Hernandez walk, then he takes the money he could of given them and uses it to sign Trevor Baurer to an obscene contract. He gave Mookie Betts the year before an even more ridiculous contract that has the Dodgers paying him $170,000,000 for five years after Betts turns 35 years of age. Then, during the season he trades away the Dodgers top two prospects -something Zahidi would never do- for a short-term rental in Scherzer and what is essentially a replacement for Corey Seager. in Trea Turner.
He also made longshot deals like trade for Duffy, the signing of Cole Hamels and Albert Pujols and leaned on them as viable options.
Andrew Friedman, a genius? Don’t make me laugh.
Farhan was great and I definitely agree about signing Bauer over Joc and Kike being a bad move.
Albert Pujols on a minimum, Max and Trea for prospects were good moves.
Even trading for Danny Duffy only cost a guy they were going to expose to the rule 5 draft anyway.
Friedman has built up too much bullpen depth in the minors. Losing players like Jordan Sheffield and Brett deGues in last year’s rule 5 draft.
Despite a few deficiencies, he’s done an overall good job, this year included.
Calling out Friedman for signing Pujols, and trading for Max/Trea, seems silly to me.
Signing Bauer and letting Joc and Kike walk look really bad though.