Blogfodder: The Things To Like, And Not Like, From A’s Deadline Deals

Before analyzing this week’s deadline deals, I need to go on my annual rant about how the trading deadline works. I hate the concept of a rental player, which seems like the baseball version of the ringer you bring in for your company softball game. “Oh, Tony? He’s a former college baseball player we just hired to be our new Director of Directionality. His job is to make sure all the staplers are facing the same way. Hey, is our playoff game with you this Sunday?” Tony is, of course, let go Monday, retiring with 3 HRs in your 12-11 win.

I think the rule should be that any player traded needs to have at least three months left on their contract. This means the deadline for the Yankees to acquire Anthony Rizzo would have been June 30th, but the deadline for acquiring Joey Gallo would still have been the end of July. I don’t like this business of having one team most of the year, and then artificially creating another team just for a small portion of the season and the playoffs.

Personally, I think this tweak would make for a better trading season, not one like this week where dozens of players joined their new teams strictly as 2-month rentals. But given the way MLB does it, the A’s participated bigly and rented 4 players who could be key down the stretch.

Overall...

I thought the A’s did well with the personnel they chose to acquire. While they didn’t get the big bat in Nelson Cruz, in Starling Marte they got a very solid hitter whose defense and speed make him far more dynamic than Cruz. The additions of Josh Harrison and Yan Gomes (vs. LHP) complete a trio of high average hitters for an A’s team whose .233 batting average explains why they leave so many runners stranded. And in Andrew Chafin, Oakland strengthens its bullpen, clearly a need, with a classic under-the-radar choice of a pitcher with little name recognition but a very strong career body of work.

As someone who has long believed that batting average, once absurdly over-valued as a staple of the backs of baseball cards, has become undervalued as an important way to move runners around the bases more reliably, I am very pleased to see the A’s add multiple hitters who put the ball in play, hit the ball hard, and don’t try to pull everything. Oakland’s offense has been strictly middle of the pack so far this season, and I won’t be surprised if it bumps up to “upper 3rd” the rest of the way.

As for what the A’s had to give up, I have no issue with the minor leaguers from Lansing, and can easily live with, even if I didn’t like it, the departure of Greg Deichmann who, while intriguing, most likely profiles as a platoon player or fourth outfielder and whose path to the big leagues has been stalled already a couple of times. Also, the A’s still have Luis Barrera as a left-handed outfielder who is a step from the big leagues, and who has higher upside.

Oh, Sweet Lizard...

No doubt the biggest potential “ouch” is the loss Jesus Luzardo from a team that cannot afford to sign #1 and #2 starting pitchers and that wins too much to draft good bets with high picks. That being said, it is uncanny how many times the A’s have found a way to produce a front-end starting pitcher, from reclamation projects like Bartolo Colon and Scott Kazmir to identifying trade targets in Sean Manaea and Chris Bassitt. Still, Luzardo has a chance to be special and only time will tell whether he was too high a price to pay for a rental.

End Goal...?

Ultimately, here’s the only issue I have with the series of deals Oakland made that’s the deadline. They were deals clearly designed to go for it in 2021, at the expense of weakening the farm, and pool of players who could immediately help (Luzardo, Deichmann) as current cheap players may be departing (Canha, possible off-season trades of Bassitt and/or Manaea).

It makes more sense to go for it if you think you can win the division. Luzardo’s 5 years of contract control are an awful lot to give away if what you got back is a one-game playoff in Boston or Tampa Bay. So the A’s made moves as if they plan to give the Astros a run for their money, and I would be fully on board if the team stood 2 games out when the trades were made and if Houston looked vulnerable going forward.

But neither is the case. Sadly, the Astros look very good on paper and very good on the field, with a formidable offense, a solid rotation, and a bullpen they successfully fortified by adding Kendall Graveman (breakout year closer), along with Yimi Garcia (solid), Phil Maton (erratic with strong K-rates), and Rafael Montero (reclamation project), as the A’s were doing their dealings.

In the standings, the Astros lead the A’s by 5.5 games, 6 in the loss column, which becomes a sizable gap when the team you’re chasing is a quality club unlikely to fold. If the A’s pushed all their chips to the middle thinking they can pass Houston, they may be guilty of some wishcasting. If they pushed those chips in hoping to survive a 1-game showdown and then advance deep into the postseason, they did the equivalent of trying to draw to an inside straight.

A fair rebuttal to this concern is that in some ways, every prospect is like trying to draw to an inside straight, and as talented as he is, as high as his ceiling might be, so far Luzardo has only reinforced that reminder. If you don’t believe Luzardo will put it all together, or if you believe strongly enough in Oakland’s ability to pull frontline pitchers out of its A’s, then these deals, in aggregate, start to look pretty darn good.

Addendum...

One final concern is that you just hope Luzardo punched his ticket out of town for the right reasons — that the A’s had an opportunity to make deals they needed to make, and it takes “ouch” talent to get “yay!” talent — and not because he fell out of favor when he ill-advisedly talked back to pitching coach Scott Emerson on that fateful day in New York. You can’t help but wonder if Luzardo was essentially traded on June 19th, when he served a key home run to Gio Urshela and then infuriated the normally even-keeled Emerson during a mound visit. Luzardo was optioned to AAA 2 days later, and the rest is history.

Of course it could all be tied together. Rubbing coaches the wrong way, not taking direction, not showing maturity (by, say, using your pitching hand to express frustration over a video game) are all issues that impact performance and are not just personal. And certainly Luzardo merited a demotion to AAA based solely on performance.

So this is not a “Josh Donaldson called him ‘Billy Boy’” narrative. The A’s had every reason to demote Luzardo and even to question whether his stuff will play in the big leagues as scouts predicted. We will never know the exact reason Luzardo became eminently ‘touchable’, even in play for a 2 month rental. We just know it was a steep price to pay and that the A’s were prepared to pay it even sitting 5.5 games back in the standings.

La Lînea De Fondo...

The bottom line: If the A’s somehow win the West, these moves will look brilliant. If they have to settle for the wild-card, the choice to acquire 4 rentals will be easier to question. But without the benefit of hindsight, I look at the deals in all their context and am generally pleased and impressed with a solid deadline plan and execution. If nothing else these next two months should be exciting and interesting, and as a fan you can’t ask for a whole lot more.