Some final notes on a couple of trade deadline deals involving prospects that I didn’t cover in my notebooks from Monday (on the Padres deals and several other trades):
The Blue Jays were quietly active at the trade deadline, bringing in 60 percent of a rotation and a very useful utilityman, giving up just one significant prospect across all of those deals, as well as a pair of lesser ones and one more player to be named later.
Advertisement
Ross Stripling is the best of the three starters the Blue Jays acquired, although his 2020 has been a disaster thanks to an NL-high 12 homers allowed in just 33.2 innings, all but one off his four-seamer. He’s been using that pitch a bit more this year, but it’s coming out harder and straighter, producing career-worst batted ball numbers from hard-hit rate to HR/flyball rate to straight-up contact, along with a career-high walk rate. It’s only seven starts, but the underlying pitch data on that four-seamer isn’t promising, and I don’t think this is entirely bad luck.
For Stripling, the Jays gave up two players, one a PTBNL and the other their second-round pick from 2019, projectable right-hander Kendall Williams. Williams, the Jays’ No. 15 prospect coming into the year, is 6-foot-6 but not very physically mature yet, showing good velocity and spin on his curveball, needing more consistency in his delivery — the kind of coaching he should get in a professional player development environment. The Dodgers have a pretty good track record with this sort of pitcher, and are in a position to take chances on low-probability, high-reward pitchers like Williams.
The Jays also picked up Taijuan Walker from Seattle and Robbie Ray from Arizona, both of whom have been above-average starters in the past. Walker threw just 14 innings in the majors in 2018-19 around Tommy John surgery. His average four-seamer velocity this year has been his lowest ever, but his curveball has looked better — he used to have a great one before Arizona screwed with his delivery back in 2017 — and his cutter has become a legitimate swing-and-miss offering. Ray walked a man an inning for Arizona, and in 31 innings that’s not really a fluke, and right-handed batters have destroyed him this year because the pitches he’d primarily use to get them out, his slider and curveball, have been out of the zone far more often. He’s actually throwing harder this year, which you’d think might make his stuff more effective, but if more velocity means more effort and thus more wildness, maybe he needs to take his foot off the gas. They’re both wild cards but absolutely worth adding for a team in the playoff hunt with just two solid starters on their roster.
The Mariners do get a good low-level prospect in return in right fielder Alberto Rodriguez, who played in the Gulf Coast League the last two years. Rodriguez has a solid swing and makes hard contact with a good approach for his age. He’s an average runner but has good instincts, and there’s some chance he could move to center given his feel for the game even with the lack of foot speed. For a month of Walker’s services, it’s a very good return.
The Mets were also active in the lower reaches of the market, but did make one trade involving a named prospect, sending lefty Kevin Smith (No. 8 in their system) to Baltimore for right-hander Miguel Castro. Castro was having one of the best stretches of his career since the start of this season, the second year in which he’d de-emphasized his sinker in favor of using his slider and changeup more often. He misses a lot of bats with both secondary pitches, with the slider especially improving since he got to Baltimore, with its spin rate increasing from the 2,500-2,700 rpm range up to nearly 3000 rpm, with steady swing-and-miss rates even as he’s used the pitch more often. His stat line for the Orioles this year was marred by a much wider platoon split than he’s shown the last few years, which looks like a small sample size variation (they have 7 hits in 22 PA, with an .800 BABIP off his sinker).
Advertisement
The Orioles do get a solid prospect back for Castro in the southpaw Smith, who has shown big-time life on his fastball and an out pitch against lefties in his breaking ball. The Mets had tried to raise his arm slot and cost him some fastball movement, so the Orioles may still have some tinkering to do there, and Smith needs a better changeup — it’s a below-average pitch now, although better than it was when the Mets took him in the eighth round in 2018 — to end up a starter.
The Mets also added Robinson Chirinos and Todd Frazier for two PTBNLs from the Rangers. Chirinos fills a critical need for the Mets, who lost Tomas Nido to injury and are down to Wilson Ramos, off to a bad start after a solid 2019; and Ali Sanchez, who’s really an emergency call-up at best.
(Photo of Walker: Charles Krupa / Associated Press)
