Game 104, Mariners at Rangers – Deadline Day Fall-out

Logan Gilbert vs. Kolby Allard, 5:05pm

Soooo, a day after gutting the team by trading closer Kendall Graveman to the division-leading Astros, Jerry Dipoto made good on his statement that the move couldn’t be seen in isolation, and that he had plenty more irons in the fire. The M’s moved prospect 3B/1B Austin Shenton to Tampa Bay in exchange for new closer, Diego Castillo. Castillo’s a hard-throwing FB/SL righty who generates more whiffs and strikeouts than Graveman, but doesn’t have Graveman’s sinker, and thus his ground ball rate. Castillo’s arb eligible this coming off season, so could be with the M’s for several years.

So, the M’s raised the white flag the other day, and are now…taking it down? I think Jerry Dipoto simply couldn’t resist turning two months of Graveman into 3-4 years of a comparable player, and, in effect, swapping Austin Shenton for an older, more MLB-ready IF was just gravy. I’ll be honest: I absolutely love Shenton, who’s hit from Day 1 as a professional. While he started the year as the #17 or whatever prospect means nothing; he was shooting up the rankings, but is clearly beneath some of the Untouchables in the M’s system. Tampa got a good one. But if you do not care a whit about the M’s clubhouse, or how the team would take this, I kind of understand where Dipoto is coming from, especially if you see this team for what it is: a flawed team that’s where they are largely due to factors not directly related to their talent.

So the M’s didn’t foolishly go all-in after a lucky start, kept their prospects, and got precious club control to boot? That’s pretty good, right? Well, not exactly. Much of the anger surrounding the first trade comes down to the fact that a team that hasn’t been to the postseason in 20 years would be so blasé about punting on a year like this one. There’s simply no doubt that the M’s are lucky, and that counting on them to keep up…whatever it is that’s causing this is a fool’s errand. Jake Mailhot looked into it at LL, I’ve done it here, national writers have talked about it. The M’s have not played like a 90-win team, but they were in a position to get there. It wasn’t exactly *likely*, but they had a chance, because all of their “lucky” wins are already in the bank. They don’t have to win 90 anymore, just 35. And a team that has a great bullpen can get to 35 in a number of ways, and *especially* if they can upgrade their line-up.

But the M’s *real* contending year is 2022, right? Won’t they have more/better chances then? Here’s the rub: I honestly don’t know, but I kind of doubt it. Dipoto’s repeatedly said that the rebuild may be a bit ahead of schedule, but I think looking at *how* this unlikely team got to 55 wins is instructive. If the team got to 55 because the young stars that they’ve been hyping arrived and immediately put the league on notice, that would be one thing. If they got there partially through breakout years, and partly through unreal performances by non-roster invitees, journeymen, and sequencing, that would be rather another.

I’ve said for a while that something seems off in how the M’s hitters handle the transition from the minors to the majors. This season began with Evan White and Taylor Trammell face-planting. White’s now rehabbing a serious injury, and Trammell is in AAA. Jarred Kelenic finally made his debut, and has…hit worse than Evan White, somehow. The stars of previous ad campaigns like Shed Long and Marco Gonzales have had down years. The team really made the case that Justus Sheffield was an elite starter after 2020, then watched him put up a sub-replacement level campaign in 2021. Now, all of this could turn around, of course. Young players can be volatile. But it has to be at least a little concerning that the M’s have whiffed on so many young hitters. Kyle Lewis hit right from the get-go, and while he’s had some severe ups and downs, he can’t be lumped in with the rest of these guys. JP Crawford has been, well, I guess it depends a bit on what month we’re looking at, but he’s still a starting MLB SS. But it does not take a completely contrarian, needlessly-negative view to worry that next year might not be a walk in the park, *even with* positive regression from Kelenic, Trammell, Sheffield-and-or-Dunn, Gonzales, etc.

Because of that, I think punting on 2021 would make no sense. Yes, the team may be better from a true talent standpoint (and even that’s debatable), but if this year’s taught us anything, it’s that true talent does not correlate to wins 1:1. When you’re in a position to win, I think you’ve got to improve your team. I’ll be honest, I’m fine with the M’s not trading any of their top 5 prospects. I don’t think you go hog-wild just because you’re a game out of the second wild card. But you can’t just say “our prospects will lead us to glory” when Kelenic, Trammell, White, Sheffield, Long, etc. are playing the way they are.

Further, as so many have ably said, the time to *really* improve without moving top prospects isn’t at the trade deadline, it’s in the offseason. The M’s have essentially sat out the past two hot stove leagues, saying that the time wasn’t quite right. That excuse is now gone. Dipoto’s “ahead of schedule” comments all but closed the door on saying that they need to wait and see what they have. It’s still a great free agent class, and the M’s have major, major needs in their rotation and line-up. They cannot – cannot! – fail to address them. I’m not sure anyone’s convinced that they will.

1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: France, 1B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Torrens, DH
6: Toro, 2B
7: Murphy, C
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Moore, LF
SP: Gilbert

Reasonable people can differ on what Dipoto “owes” the team or the fans. Reasonable people can differ on how to weight the cost to M’s morale in making the Graveman swap, and reasonable people clearly do differ on Abraham Toro’s current and future value. That’s great. But reasonable people cannot say that Toro projects to produce more WAR in 2021 than Graveman. I’m sorry, this is just a pet peeve, but I’ve seen it a lot in the analysis of the trade. Such a comparison (and it’s true, per Fangraphs’ rest-of-season WAR projections from ZiPS or Steamer, or your projection of choice) ignores what teams are buying when they get a closer, and what’s driving a player’s WAR totals. Relievers get a lot less WAR because they play less. Fewer innings, fewer chances to rack up what’s essentially a counting stat. But those innings are insanely high leverage, and especially after the deadline, the games in which he appears mean so much to playoff odds and playoff seeding. In a vacuum, sure, 20 IP of Kendall Graveman isn’t valuable. But that doesn’t mean the Astros “overpaid” any more than the White Sox just did when they acquired Craig Kimbrel. Great teams want to win every game they have a lead in, because some of them will be playoff games. They have no need for the *additional* WAR some random IF would produce should he get the playing time.

The best way to illustrate this is through an example. At present, Fangraphs projects Elvis Andrus to be more valuable from now through the end of the season than Graveman or Craig Kimbrel. Andrus projects to add about as much WAR as Graveman and Kimbrel combined. Why are teams irrationally sending away prospects and young big-leaguers for closers? Why not add some veteran grit in Andrus? I would hope the answer’s obvious here, so please, don’t claim that Graveman’s ROS WAR or his WAR in comparison to another player answers anything. It doesn’t. You can love the trade and make all sorts of wonderful arguments for it, but not this one.