Blake Snell to the Padres: Keith Law and Eno Sarris weigh in on the trade

The Rays will trade a guy too early rather than too late, in order to trade from the top of a player’s value in order fill more needs and keep the entire 25-man roster humming the way they can. And so, even if Blake Snell’s per-inning numbers looked almost as good as Chris Sale’s at the same point, we all knew Snell had injury issues and figured that this Rays team was going to shop him like they said they would.

Assuming the deal is finalized, did the Rays get enough back to make up for losing a pitcher projected to be in the top 15 among starting pitchers this year? Luis Patiño sits 97 mph on the fastball and has good shape on his four-seam, breaking ball and change-up, so he has the stuff to succeed in one role or another. But the command is a serious question mark. Here’s where Patiño ranks among the worst starters in baseball last year by Command+.

Even if command has some relationship with a pitcher’s ability to pitch deeper into games, and their viability as a starter, you can see that Tyler Glasnow is also on that list. The Rays had some success tightening up his attack regions and making the most of his stuff with a simple plan. Maybe they can do the same with Patiño with the right mix and approach.

Francisco Mejía checks a box that the Rays need at the catcher position. But like Patiño, he might do one thing well enough (he’s at least projected to be a league-average catcher offensively), but with some questions on the other end. He was 31st among 70 catchers by Statcast’s framing metric and was in the bottom quartile by FanGraphs defensive stats over the last three seasons.

But Mejía made sense as a catcher that could play for the Rays in Tampa on Day 1 next season — Luis Campusano might have had more upside, and that’s why he was involved in some trade predictions, but the catcher is in the middle of some legal problems and hasn’t had as much adjustment time in the major leagues.

Will Blake Hunt and Cole Wilcox end up good enough to make up for the risk that neither Patiño and Mejía hit their marks? That’s for Keith to help us figure out — but it does matter. There’s a decent likelihood that neither of the main pieces the Rays get back will be much more than role players.

The Padres needed another starter, having lost Mike Clevenger to Tommy John surgery. That left them with just possible ace Dinelson Lamet; Chris Paddack, coming off a disappointing sophomore season that saw hitters tee off on his fastball; and reliable back-end starter Zach Davies. To return to the playoffs, as should be their goal given their lineup, they needed another high-end starter, and if he were to be left-handed, so much the better.

Snell was the best lefty available in trade or free agency this winter and could end up the best starting pitcher to change teams. He’s averaged 94-96 mph over the last several seasons, but it’s his offspeed stuff that sets him apart, with three pitches that all grade out as above-average to plus, with positive run values (meaning they were more effective than the league average) in 2020 and in his Cy Young season of 2018. Snell’s approach of getting ahead with the fastball and moving away from the zone with his secondary pitches, throwing the curve and slider down and away from lefties and his change-up on the outer third to righties, explains both his very high strikeout rate and slightly high walk rate. His change-up is a major reason he has a small platoon split, and why he’s able to turn a lineup over multiple times effectively, although the Rays often limited him to two turns through the order. He does walk a few more guys than you’d like a frontline starter to walk and was more homer-prone in the truncated 2020 season than he had been before, with eight of the 10 homers he allowed coming off his fastball.

Snell’s Cy Young season does look like an outlier at this point, as he benefited from a .241 BABIP (thanks to the Rays’ outstanding defense) and career-low home run rate. Since then, he’s thrown 150 innings, striking out 211 men with 58 walks and 24 homers allowed, for a 3.96 ERA and 3.65 FIP. He’ll benefit from the move to San Diego’s pitcher-friendly home park, which might help bring his home run/flyball rate down from its 2020 spike, but could give something back moving away from Tampa Bay’s defense. I’d ballpark the gain for the Padres at about 3 extra wins, but Snell has the upside to deliver more than that. With MacKenzie Gore on the way — although it’s concerning that they didn’t call him up at any point in 2020 — they could have two of the best left-handed starters in the NL on their staff by 2022.

The Rays get a big haul in return, as they should, with Snell three years from free agency and under contract to earn $40.8 million over those seasons. They landed the Padres’ No. 2 pitching prospect, right-hander Luis Patiño; catcher Francisco Mejía, once a top-10 overall prospect who has not hit at all in the majors; catching prospect Blake Hunt, blocked in the Padres’ system by Luis Campusano; and 2020 draft pick Cole Wilcox, a first-round talent whom the Padres took in the third round and signed with first-round money.

Patiño could be the Rays’ No. 1 starter in time; he at least has that upside and the benefit of being ready to step right on to the Rays’ staff. He averaged 96.7 mph working mostly as a reliever for the Padres in 2020, his slider is plus, and his change-up is solid-average or better. His command was nowhere near major-league ready in 2020, but he was also just 20 years old and had made only two starts above A-ball. He could join the Rays’ rotation now, if they want to live with some growing pains, or in a year. There is a little effort in the delivery and a slight cutoff when he lands, but he repeats it well and gets huge extension over his front side. If he just stays healthy, he’s going to be a good major-league starter, and I’d bet on it happening sooner rather than later.

Mejía failed to hit at all in 2020, going 3-for-39 with one walk and nine strikeouts before the Padres moved on from him, and it seemed clear his time with San Diego was up even before this trade. He hit absolutely everywhere in the minors, however, and all of his flops in the majors add up to only 458 PA, or less than a full season’s sample. I still believe he will hit, but at what position remains an open question; he can throw, and he’s either a fringy defender or a well below-average one, depending on who you ask. The Rays are the right team for him. They need a catcher, don’t have one on the 40-man or someone close in the minors, and have some history with taking hitters who’ve failed to hit with other clubs and getting more out of their bats.

Blake Hunt is a potential plus defender behind the plate with an above-average arm and excellent receiving skills. As a hitter, he’s more of a power-over-hit guy right now, with a backup floor but the potential to become a regular if his hit tool develops. He is, however, the sort of prospect I think will end up most hurt by the lost year of at-bats in 2020, since what he needs to work on is the sort of thing that generally improves with more repetition.

Wilcox is the wild card in the deal, but the Rays should feel that they just landed an extra first-round pick — more’s the better with their actual first-rounder, Nick Bitsko, undergoing shoulder surgery before he threw his first pitch in a professional game. Wilcox throws hard, up to 100 mph as a sophomore, sitting in the mid-90s, with a solid-average change-up and a slider that can flash plus. His fastball plays below its velocity, however, and his arm action isn’t ideal, which might explain why his command has always been below average. He’s got top-of-the-rotation upside and reliever risk, and a wide range of possible outcomes in between.

This deal only further underscores the fact that the situation in St. Petersburg is untenable. The team’s owner will not spend on players. He has said the stadium situation is the cause, limiting their revenues, and that argument has some merit; they don’t draw, and the stadium — ugly and hard to access — is at least a large part of their problem. Perhaps a new stadium on the Tampa side of the bay would help, but the team and/or MLB would have to pay for it — as they should, since it would profit the Rays and indirectly profit the league as a whole (or at least the teams that pay into revenue sharing). Perhaps they need to relocate to Nashville or Portland. But the current situation isn’t working. The Rays went to the World Series and immediately traded their best pitcher, a recent Cy Young winner, rather than paying him what amounts to fourth starter money in 2021. The MLBPA shouldn’t stand idly by and watch one of the few employers of major-league players all but refuse to pay them major-league salaries. The Rays made a damn good baseball trade here, but baseball is worse off for it.