I thought the time of the Mets trading away recent draft picks before they even got their feet wet in pro ball might be over, but they’ve done it again, dealing right-hander J.T. Ginn, their second-round pick in 2020, after just a single season in the minors – his first year back from Tommy John surgery – to acquire right-hander Chris Bassitt from Oakland. Ginn was a different pitcher after he came back from the year off, moving away from a power approach with a plus-plus slider, becoming an extreme groundball guy with a strong changeup and better control than he’d shown prior to the injury. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another step forward from him in 2022, now that he’ll be another year removed from surgery. But even as he was last year, he projects as a mid-rotation starter who’ll be able to work deeper into games because he gets so many groundballs and can do so early in counts. There’s still some question about him holding up long-term, but I’d take six years of him for one year of Bassitt all day long.
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The A’s also got Adam Oller, a 27-year-old journeyman whom the Mets got in the Rule 5 draft’s minor league phase in 2019. He’s improved his velocity later in his career, working with a 55 fastball with a ton of action and throwing enough strikes that he could be the A’s fifth starter right now. I don’t think there’s much of a ceiling here given his age, but the difference between Bassitt and whatever Oller and Ginn might produce in the majors in 2022 is probably less than three wins, maybe closer to two.
As for Bassitt, he’s become a much better pitcher over the last three years, but also got a big boost from pitching in Oakland’s forgiving home park – since the start of 2019, he’s given up 11 homers at home and 31 on the road. He succeeds despite a lack of plus velocity or movement on his fastball or any sort of plus secondary pitch by mixing six different pitches, right down to a very slow curveball, getting weak contact on his ordinary four-seamer mostly through deception and tunneling. He drops down on the four-seamer for an unusually low release point, similar to that of all of his pitches except for the curveball, which he probably doesn’t need anyway. There’s no real upside here – the hope is he repeats his 3.3 fWAR/3.9 rWAR season, but I think there’s some likely regression as he leaves a friendlier ballpark, and because he lives in the middle of the strike zone so much. I’d forecast something around 2.5 WAR, and for just one year, Ginn alone seems like a lot to give up, even with his durability question.
Twins, Rangers each fill gaps with trade
The Twins and Rangers also swung a deal on Saturday night, with Minnesota sending catcher Mitch Garver to Texas for shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa and right-handed pitching prospect Ronny Henriquez, who didn’t make my Rangers top 20 this winter.
Kiner-Falefa has made himself into a premium defensive infielder, even more impressive given how much the Rangers moved him around after drafting him in the fourth round in 2013 out of a Hawaii high school, even trying him behind the plate. He’s a below-average hitter, lacking on-base skills and posting some of the lowest exit velocities and hard-hit rates of any MLB regular in 2021. He ranked in the bottom 5 percent for walk rate, average exit velo and barrel rate, while just barely missing it for hard-hit rate (6 percent). He’s a plus defender at third, while the public metrics disagree on his defense at short. MLB’s outs above average rates him as kind of terrible at short, although the deficit is entirely when he’s coming in toward the plate to field groundballs, often when he was positioned back on the edge of the outfield grass to start the play. This could come down to where the Twins position their infielders, although it’s at least possible that Kiner-Falefa isn’t as good of a defender as metrics like DRS and UZR indicate.
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The Twins’ choice to acquire Kiner-Falefa as their shortstop acknowledges that their two main shortstop prospects, Royce Lewis and Austin Martin, aren’t likely to take over at shortstop in the majors any time soon, if ever. Lewis has always been a below-average defender at short and is coming off a season lost to a torn ACL, while Martin has had throwing problems that may impede him from playing anywhere on the left side of the diamond. With Andrelton Simmons, an elite defender who hasn’t hit in two years, departing for the Cubs as a free agent, Kiner-Falefa should at least let the Twins hold steady at the position while they figure out if either of those two prospects can handle it long-term.
Henriquez is a short right-hander with three pitches but a flat fastball that gets hit hard, with 15 homers allowed in 69.2 innings in Double A last year. He was always more likely to end up in the bullpen, but that issue probably seals it, although with two above-average secondaries in his slider and changeup, he could be very effective in one-inning looks.
Garver steps right in as the Rangers’ starter behind the plate, an offensive catcher who’s adequate behind the plate. He’s been worth over 6 WAR since the start of 2019 in 184 games, with 46 homers and a .349 OBP in that span. The only real question is how many games he can handle, as he hasn’t caught 110 games in any pro season since 2016. The Rangers do have depth in backups, with Jose Trevino the premium defender and Sam Huff a sort of poor man’s Garver, with similar power but worse on-base skills. Kiner-Falefa was blocked in the middle infield and doesn’t hit enough to play third (where the Rangers do have a void, with Josh Jung out for most of the season), and Henriquez well down their pitching depth chart, so the Rangers traded a player they didn’t need to fill one of their existing gaps – just as the Twins did, thanks to the emergence of Ryan Jeffers behind the plate in 2021.
(Photo of Chris Bassitt: Frank Jansky / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
