Reaction to Bell Trade, Notes on Hot Stove Developments

Ordinarily, a trade like the one the Rays, Reds and D-backs pulled off yesterday would inspire a lot of media coverage and analysis — it was so unusual, even if no big-time players were involved.  Yesterday was something of a baseball transactions apocalypse, however, and so relatively few people have written about it.  Of those that have written, many have focused on what it means for the next steps Towers is likely to make.

To review, my take on the trade was that it was brilliant.  Effective, in that it accomplished something good (losing the Bell contract) while cashing in an asset that was particularly good for the D-backs to cash in (David Holmberg).  Trading a legitimate prospect away to shed a contract is highly, highly unusual — I really can’t think of another example in the last ten years.  That makes it innovative, in my book.  And I also liked that Towers made peace with the idea that Arizona’s share of the Bell contract was a sunk loss.

This was my conclusion:

Put it this way: Towers just sold David Holmberg for $5.5M.  Sounds like a good deal to me.  If Towers had simply held a fundraising auction, offering to sell Holmberg to the highest bidder, what price would he have fetched?  My guess is that it might have been a lower figure.  Accordingly, didn’t Towers do pretty well, here?

It was somewhat edifying, then, to see Nick Piecoro reach a similar conclusion in his article last night.  I completely agree with Piecoro: starting pitching depth is what “probably enabled them to make this deal.”  There was just no role in the immediate future for a slightly above replacement starting pitcher who couldn’t be used in short relief.  Piecoro’s conclusion about how Holmberg was used:

But let’s go back to the decision to trade Holmberg. It’s sort of a fascinating move, if you think about it. We don’t know the caliber of the PTBNL, but let’s assume for a moment he’s not a top-flight prospect. That he’s less of a prospect than Holmberg. If that’s the case, then the biggest motivation in the deal was to dump the salary. That is, they essentially sold Holmberg for $6 million.

Spot on.  So is $6 million the right price for a pitcher with a true #5 ceiling, with the floor of a mediocre long reliever, and with stuff that just won’t play up in short stints out of the bullpen?  We really don’t know, because we don’t have data points for outright sales of prospects with almost no service time.  For what it’s worth, it seemed like Jonah Keri agreed that $6 million was in the right ballpark.

In a monster review of a monster day of transactions, ESPN SweetSpot’s David Schoenfield also touched on the trade, although he did so more from the perspective of the Rays, and a bit tongue in cheek:

As for Bell, I don’t quite see what the Rays see in him (he gave up 12 home runs in 2013), but they turned Fernando Rodney into a top closer, so Bell will probably go out and record 45 saves with a 2.50 ERA. Bell is due to make $9 million, but the Marlins are paying $4 million of that, so the Rays get a potential closer for the tidy sum of $5 million.

It’s really difficult to see Bell as a potential closer after watching him so often in 2013, but I agree with Schoenfield — who’s going to bet against the Rays at this point, in terms of what they can do with bullpen arms?  Maybe they see something specific that we don’t.

In fact, most others who addressed the trade focused on the Rays acquiring Bell, including Matt Snyder at CBS Sports and Stephen Loftus at Beyond the Box Score.  The Loftus piece is very enlightening — he pegs the outlook for Bell at 65 IP, 0.8 WAR for 2014.  I don’t see it; he was worth 0.0 in 2013, but just 0.4 in 2012 and 0.5 in 2011.  But, again, it’s hard to bet against the Rays at this point.  If you’re looking for more content on the Bell side of the trade and you have as high a regard for AZ Snake Pit’s Jim McLennan, also check out this conversation between he and Ian Malinowski of DRaysBay.  As usual, Jim is on the money.  Even after reading the other pieces, I’m a little surprised by Malinowski’s optimism.

What fascinates me about this trade is how David Holmberg was used.  I just haven’t seen any other work out there to focus on that innovative use of a minor league asset — hoping we see more soon, as people catch up from yesterday’s news apocalypse.

I do think that Holmberg was getting a little overvalued.  Yes, he’s exhibited great control in the minors, but consider that he was repeating AA this year, and his August spot start was alarming.  One bad start does not a bad career make, but it was how he struggled.  In a rare display, Holmberg seemed to have great command, but bad control: he missed the strike zone over and over again, but seemed to be hitting his intended spots exactly, because he was so consistent in how far he was off the plate.  Jeff Wiser has noted that maybe Holmberg has been getting strike calls from minor league umpires that he’d never get in the bigs — and that is exactly what it looked like in the spot start.  If that’s true (and it is a big if), then I have a high level of confidence that he can make the adjustment of hitting the corners in the bigs.  It’s just maybe his minor league numbers were something of a mirage.  For a pitcher with such high probability of reaching the majors (the command is excellent, after all), there’s still some risk here, quality wise.

Also, for what it’s worth: I feel even more certain than I did yesterday that the player to be named from Tampa Bay will be a player who is not on their 40-man roster, but who is eligible for next week’s Rule V draft.  That means he could get plucked by another team, but chances are it’s someone they were pretty sure no team would want on their major league roster all year.  So it’s not going to be someone poised to help Arizona in 2014.

In other news:

• Do not pass go, do not collect $200.  Make sure you read Jerry Crasnick’s incredible post on the D-backs’ trade posture as of today.  In terms of sizing up Arizona’s needs and assets, Crasnick came out very similarly to how we came out in our Offseason Plan (by the way, while the St. Louis trade section of that Plan is no longer feasible, every other part of the Plan is still valid).
• If you missed coverage of the Kevin Towers conference call yesterday, here’s the link.
• In Ken Rosenthal’s long post this morning, he had an interesting tidbit: before the Athletics obtained Craig Gentry from Texas, they inquired on A.J. Pollock.  Interestingly similar players, although Pollock is obviously cheaper, and the better asset.
• Later on in the day, Rosenthal reported that Pollock was in the mix of a trade discussed with the Althetics involving Yoenis Cespedes (with Skaggs also headed to Oakland).  Jeff Wiser first brought this up in conversation over a month ago, when we started work on the Offseason Plan.  Jeff was very right.  I don’t think I saw anyone else suggest or address this before today.  Jeff wrote about trading for Cespedes last week.
• Speaking of us being pretty much on target, yesterday Jim Bowden published four suggested trades for Jeff Samardzija.  The D-backs version?  Tyler Skaggs and Stryker Trahan.

Check back often over the next two weeks, as we are tracking the latest developments pretty closely, and as always, we’ll defend some ideas of our own.  Next up, for tomorrow: a post on alternatives to Samardzija in the hunt for an ace.