D-backs 40 Man Roster Weighted Toward Trades, In a Good Way

When Michael Bourn was signed to a minor league deal a week ago, that had no impact on the 40-man roster — the D-backs do those kinds of signings all the time. To bring him up to the majors on Sunday, though, the team had to add him to the 40-man to add him to the 25-man. Since the 40-man was full, that meant taking someone off the 40-man — and that turned out to be reliever Cody Hall, who had been added this January via trade with the Giants. Hall was a likely candidate, one of a few relief pitchers in the minors that would be the first guys jettisoned. It didn’t necessarily hurt that he currently sports an oversized 7.98 ERA with Triple-A Reno.

The top guys on a 40-man roster are probably hundreds of times more important than the very last few guys. But with the Hall DFA, another thing happened: the D-backs went from having half their 40-man acquired via trade to merely having 19 players from trades. Even before that, it’s not like the D-backs were leading the majors in that regard — Oakland has 22 from trades. But they were second, and are still tied for second with the Padres.

Just seven teams have fewer homegrown players on their 40-man rosters (I used “draft” here, but that includes international amateur signings); the D-backs are a little unusual, but not exactly an outlier. Free agency makes the D-backs a little different — the only teams with fewer free agents on their 40-mans are the Rays (3), Blue Jays (6), and Astros (6). Trades really are the difference-maker, though. League average may be higher than you thought, but 19 is still really hard to manage.

Trades have a lot in common with waiver claims and Rule 5 draft selections — they’re all an indication that the particular team liked a particular player more than most other teams. It’s not a long leap from there to “they think differently.” And if you group those three categories, it’s the Athletics (26), Padres (22), D-backs (21), Cubs (19), Rays (19), Blue Jays (19), and Angels (19) at the head of the class. Here are the team-by-team breakdowns, in order of “Another Man’s Treasure” totals:

What do those teams have in common? To me, there’s one thread that has to do with turnover in the front office — a new regime frequently develops different opinions about some players, but also has the mandate to cut some losses and make changes without each change being put under a microscope. Three of those top 7 “Another Man’s Treasure” teams still bear Jerry Dipoto‘s imprint, for example.

Another thread, though, is just being “different.” The Rays and Cubs evaluate players differently than most (and the Astros are only one rung behind, with 18 players). The Padres and Blue Jays looked at contention differently, going for broke with some big trades while trying to re-align their contention windows (San Diego before the 2015 season, Toronto before the 2013 season) — and maybe the Padres got another little bump by tearing things back down a year later. The Athletics have done a lot of both things, evaluating players differently and constantly tinkering with contention runs, so it makes sense that they’re the far-and-away leaders.

But the D-backs are a lot like the Athletics, too. In addition to rigging a Contention Window of their own, the new regime has absolutely evaluated players a lot differently than most teams, especially on the pitching side, with what appears to be an emphasis on ERA and ground ball percentage. It makes sense that if you evaluate players a different way and if most other teams evaluate players some other way, you’re going to get turnover; teams will call about guys you don’t actually like (e.g., Mike Bolsinger, Will Harris), and you’ll call other teams about players other teams seem not to value as high as you think they should (e.g., Chris Herrmann, Zack Godley).

Here’s the thing: maybe the projections were right about the D-backs, who have underwhelmed in a lot of ways up to this point in the season. But don’t blame the guys that came via trade. Leaving out the waiver claim (Edwin Escobar, who hasn’t pitched) and Rule 5 draftee (Oscar Hernandez, who wasn’t intended for MLB time this season), compare the projected breakdown of value on the 40-man this season (per ZiPS, pre-season) with what’s actually happened.

The current D-backs regime’s unusual approach to roster building hasn’t completely caught up to the roster yet: the heavy emphasis on college players was just last year, and none of those players are on the 40-man. The front office’s second draft is in just a few weeks, and we’ll see whether that was a one-time burst, or something different (two-time burst? A Harold Reynolds version of Moneyball?). The front office has put its stamp on the team through free agency (the only free agents included above that they didn’t sign are David Peralta and Tuffy Gosewisch). And absolutely through trades.

Of the 19 players on the 40-man who came via trades, 2 are Dipoto holdovers (Patrick Corbin, Daniel Hudson), and 5 are still Towers guys. The Gunslinger’s number of acquisitions from 2010 through 2012 has dwindled to exactly one (Brad Ziegler), but the team still has Brandon Drury, Nick Ahmed, and Randall Delgado from the Justin Upton trade, and Peter O’Brien is on the 40-man as well. Towers’s stamp on the 40-man could conceivably get bigger over the next few years, as Anthony Banda looks like a prospect who may pan out, and Sean Jamieson, Todd Glaesmann, Zach Borenstein and Mitch Haniger could all be guys that at least get a cup of coffee.

This season, the team’s trade-acquired players have overperformed, even with Shelby Miller falling well short of projection so far, and into some big negative numbers. The homegrown players? Not so much. And the free agents have actually done worse, if you think about it on a per player basis. It’s just been the trade guys, really. And with that, we can drill down even more.

Yep. For the most part, if a guy survives in the organization for several years, he’s probably not bad; guys get older and worse, but bad players also get sifted out. We’d expect that the farther back we go, the higher the overall quality of the players we’re talking about. Corbin and Hudson looks like a pretty good resume for Dipoto, and the quintet of Towers players look pretty darn good too. But it’s not them that are performing up to snuff. It’s the new front office’s guys, especially Jean Segura, Rubby De La Rosa, Welington Castillo and even Tyler Wagner.

Something to continue to watch. The D-backs have gotten a lot of abuse for seeing the game differently, but the result of their approach has been a roster populated largely by trades. At the moment, that part of things looks pretty good.