Editor’s note: This is the Friday, July 30 edition of the Inside the Dodgers newsletter from reporter J.P. Hoornstra. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.
Thursday night, I sent a one-word text to a National League executive: “Wow.”
I received a one-word reply: “Understatement.”
When the trade deadline was over. Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and Danny Duffy are Dodgers. Josiah Gray, Keibert Ruiz, and a handful of other prospects are not.
Here are my off-the-cuff thoughts about the Dodgers’ biggest trade deadline in years:
1. The Dodgers needed Trea Turner more than Max Scherzer
Scherzer’s name comes with more caché, but the headliner of the deal for me is Turner. I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim the Dodgers just acquired Mike Trout with less power and more speed, but here is what each of the two have done since the start of the 2020 season:
Trout: .301 BA .419 OBP .611 SLG 3/4 SB
Turner: .327 BA .378 OBP .546 SLG 33/40 SB
Turner and Trout also have sisters named Teal and sons named Beckham (really).
Unlike Trout, Turner’s defense is at best elite. It’s no worse than good. Your adjective will depend on what metric you choose. Either way, it’s something the Dodgers have lacked this year. According to Defensive Runs Saved, they’re an average fielding club on the whole, but the SS/3B side has been brutal. Third baseman Justin Turner is particularly unhelpful in the Dodgers’ standard shift against left-handed hitters, while Corey Seager and Gavin Lux are both below average fielders at shortstop regardless of what numbers you look at. In that context, I don’t think it’s a given that Trea Turner slots in at second base for the Dodgers and stays there.
Turner is on the injured list with COVID-19, and the Dodgers aren’t sure when he’ll be ready to return. Just remember: his role this season doesn’t have to be his role next season, which leads me to the other reason the Dodgers needed Trea Turner more than they needed Max Scherzer. I’m talking, of course …
2. … about Turner’s contract situation
Unlike Scherzer, Turner is not a one-year rental. He has one year of arbitration left, and can become a free agent after the 2022 season. That’s significant for a team that might lose Seager to free agency after this year. Predicting the Dodgers’ internal budget is a fool’s errand, so I can’t tell you whether the Dodgers will have enough to re-sign Seager and Clayton Kershaw and Chris Taylor and afford Cody Bellinger’s third-year arbitration salary. (Did I mention that Kenley Jansen, AJ Pollock, Jimmy Nelson, Albert Pujols and Corey Knebel are all free agents at the end of this season too?)
That’s a lot of uncertainty — and we should expect that from a team whose player payroll sits north of $260 million. (I’ve seen it reported elsewhere at $275 million.) A payroll that large will come down. Trading for Turner doesn’t merely improve the Dodgers’ 2021 lineup and defense dramatically; it also gives the front office one less position to fill in 2022. Maybe that’s second base (if Corey Seager re-signs). Maybe that’s shortstop.
Either way, the Dodgers will pay Turner perhaps half of what Trout will make over the next season and a half, and receive excellent production in return.
3. The rotation with Scherzer
On July 19, I wrote something that seemed safe at the time: “There’s no Yu Darvish on this trade market. There’s no Justin Verlander, either.” Then the Baltimore Orioles swept the Washington Nationals over the weekend and, well, I don’t know who the Nationals are anymore.
Scherzer, 37, still ranks among the game’s elite at limiting hard contact and missing bats. It’s been a couple years since he was averaging more than six innings per start, but that might simply be how the Nationals decided to limit innings in the age of COVID-19. Scherzer’s stamina might still be an asset in October, and that’s when the Dodgers really need this trade to pay dividends. Here’s how their playoff rotation might line up in a 7-game series:
G1: Walker Buehler
G2: Clayton Kershaw
G3: Max Scherzer
G4: Julio Urías
If Kershaw is healthy, Tony Gonsolin, Danny Duffy and David Price all project to be part of the Dodgers’ bullpen come playoff time. That turned the need to acquire a relief pitcher into a luxury. Craig Kimbrel went to the White Sox at the deadline. Richard Rodriguez went to the Braves. Ian Kennedy is headed to Philadelphia. With the Dodgers’ ability to mix and match Gonsolin, Duffy and Price with their existing parts — Kenley Jansen, Blake Treinen, Jimmy Nelson, (eventually) Corey Knebel, Victor Gonzalez, Scott Alexander, Phil Bickford, etc. — they should feel no fear of missing out on the reliever market.
4. The Dodgers didn’t literally “sell the farm.”
The Turner/Scherzer trade is the most significant deadline deal the Dodgers have made, in my opinion, since the Adrian Gonzalez/Carl Crawford/Josh Beckett/Nick Punto blockbuster in Aug. 2013. That one involved more money, and more players, and required that all four Red Sox improbably pass through waivers unclaimed. It did not, however, bring the Dodgers any future Hall of Famers. Scherzer already belongs in Cooperstown by some measures.
The Dodgers will have traded five prospects all told for Turner, Scherzer and Duffy. They only sent four (plus James Loney) to Boston for the four major leaguers they acquired. Compared to every Dodger trade deadline I’ve ever covered, they gave up more prospects this week — including their No. 1 and No. 2 ranked players. Relatively speaking, they’ve never been more all-in at the deadline.
From a distance, you might say the Dodgers “sold the farm” to get here. That’s what I wrote yesterday on Twitter, and boy did people have some opinions about that phrase. No team’s farm system consists of two players, or four. As of Thursday, 154 different players have appeared in a minor league game for a Dodgers affiliate in 2021. That list doesn’t include some prospects who are injured, or any of their recent draft picks who haven’t been assigned to an affiliate.
Michael Busch, Kody Hoese, Bobby Miller, Diego Cartaya and Ryan Pepiot are the Dodgers’ new Top 5 prospects, according to MLB Pipeline. Peter Gammons of The Athletic reported the Dodgers were unwilling to part with Pepiot, Cartaya, Miller, and pitchers Andre Jackson and Landon Knack in a trade. If your major league roster is deep and healthy enough that the last guy on your bench is literally Albert Pujols, why hold on to a couple highly ranked prospects who are major-league ready (or close to it), like Gray and Ruiz? It made sense for the Dodgers to trade the players they did.
So yes, the Dodgers’ farm system is weaker now than it was before the trade, but that’s the cost of buying at every trade deadline. If you’re the Dodgers, you can trade a couple of high-level, top-50 prospects and still have a good farm system.
The purpose of my tweet was to illustrate that the Dodgers gave up a lot to acquire starting pitching, which they didn’t need to do if Trevor Bauer is coming back.
I don’t think Trevor Bauer is coming back to the Dodgers this season.
Editor’s note: Thanks for reading the Inside the Dodgers newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.
"four" - Google News
August 02, 2021 at 03:53AM
https://ift.tt/3yiab7X
Four takeaways from the Dodgers’ blockbuster trade - OCRegister
"four" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2ZSDCx7
https://ift.tt/3fdGID3
No comments:
Post a Comment