The Pirates trade for Wandy Rodriguez
There are a lot of things to be discussed right now, but before we start discussing them we need to get the obvious thing out of the way: the Pirates traded for Wandy Rodriguez last night and they sent Rudy Owens, Robbie Grossman, and Colton Cain to the Astros in return.
There are some particulars that need hashed out: the Astros owe Rodriguez $13 million in 2013, when he'll be 34, and they have a $13 million team option ($2.5 million buyout) in 2014. On one hand, this means the Pirates aren't just picking up a two-month rental to help them in this particular playoff run. On the other, it means that Wandy is old and expensive. The good news is that the Astros are eating some cost in the deal; according to Dejan Kovacevic, the Pirates will pay Rodriguez $8.5 million this year and the option will be $7.5 million in 2014 (DK calls the option a player option instead of a team option, which is different from how Baseball Prospectus/Cot's has it listed; I'm honestly not sure which it is). That's expensive, but it's manageable.
With that out of the way, let's start with the Pirates' end of things. I don't think the Pirates' rotation is quite the strength right now that many others make it out to be; James McDonald is struggling after the break, Erik Bedard is constantly walking a fine line between effectiveness, disaster, and injury, AJ Burnett is old, I don't understand Jeff Karstens, Kevin Correia has sold his soul for low-K-rate success, and not one of the three Indianapolis lefties (Owens, Jeff Locke, Justin Wilson) impress me enough to think that they can help in a pennant race. There's talent there, for sure, but there's plenty of downside, too. Because of this, I've been constantly pricking my ears up at any rumor that attaches the Pirates to a pitcher: the obvious fix all year has been to add a slugger or a leadoff hitter, but that doesn't mean that the team couldn't be equally improved by adding a starting pitcher.
Still, I wasn't crazy about the idea of selling the farm for a rental, no matter how excellent (Hamels/Greinke), and the next tier down (Dempster) didn't seem that appealing to me given the likely price. I threw Rodriguez's name out in my trade deadline preview as a guy that made some sense to me; he's probably as talented as Dempster, but not nearly as over-valued and he's signed for longer. Since 2008, he's got a 2.74 K/BB ratio and 7.9 K/9 to go with his 3.45 ERA and he's mostly fixed the home run problem that haunted him early in his career and I don't see a velocity dip in 2012 even though his numbers are down a bit. Basically, he's Paul Maholm with a nasty curveball. That fits well in PNC Park, which is tough on right-handed hitters, and it helps stablize the Pirates' rotation a lot. Instead of wondering if Correia is going to implode and how Brad Lincoln will fare in the rotation in his place (or instead of him how Locke/Wilson/Owens adopt to the big leauges), the Pirates have a proven and consistent and pretty good big league starter to put in his place, and they'll have him at least through 2013, too, which is a good thing given Erik Bedard's pending free agency.
In return, the Pirates are giving the Astros some quantity, if not quality. Rudy Owens and Colton Cain are pretty similar prospects at different points of development; they're lefties with good control but without much in the way of swing-and-miss type stuff. Owens, in his bounceback season at Indianapolis this year, is only striking out 6.5 hitters per nine innings. Cain is 21 and in Advanced-A and only striking out 6.1 hitters per nine. Both of these guys could be serviceable big league pitchers, but the reality is that you want to see minor leaguers miss more bats than they do. Really, in my mind, they both were trending towards Zach Duke on the "Zach Duke <-------> Paul Maholm" scale of serviceable left-handed big leaguers.
That leaves Grossman. Really, Grossman's served as an interesting counterpoint to Starling Marte as the two of them have risen through the Pirates' system. Marte is basically all tools; he's tall and he's fast and he's lithe and the raw ability is clearly there for him to be a star baseball player, even though his strikeouts and his walks raise some big red flags. Grossman isn't built the same way as Marte, he doesn't play defense the same way, and even though he's taken some time to really develop, he's always drawn walks and he's consistently cutting down on his strikeouts and he's done all the things that make Major League players under-rated. Grossman's not a Major Leaguer, though, and so there's always been real questions about whether his power and speed and patience would develop into a big league regular. Compared to Marte he makes an interesting study, but he's just not the same type of prospect.
It's easy to sell these prospects short now that they're leaving town; this isn't really my intention. Grossman and Owens and Cain are among the Pirates' best prospects behind the Marte/Taillon/Cole/Heredia/Hanson/Polanco cluster. Three young players for a 33-year old will always be at least a little bit of a gamble. The thing is, there's a big gap between the Pirates' top tier of prospects and their second tier; these guys are almost certainly depth at best. Sometimes these sorts of deals for depth pan out far better than expected (Jeff Karstens), but lots of times, they don't. As a Pirate fan, I feel like I've spent much of my life waiting on guys like Owens and Grossman and Cain, only to see them fall short for any one of a hundred reasons.
That's really the heart of this deal; the Pirates got a pitcher in Wandy Rodriguez that will almost certainly make them better down the stretch this year and next year. They did so without giving up any of their top prospects and really, with Rodriguez in the fold, the depth that a pitcher like Owens provides is far less necessary. In short, the Pirates improved themselves and managed to minimize their risk. That's what the trade deadline is all about for a team in contention, right?
I also like the deal, especially for a lefty that is a fairly power arm. I don't think we'll miss any of the three that we dealt much and now, I like the idea of Correia as a "long-man" type, if that's what Hurdle is going to do with the rotation. Does that mean Lincoln and Correia as long men or is one to be dealt for a bat? My guess is that Lincoln would get dealt of the two, no question.
I would agree that this is a very solid deal for the Pirates; Cain and Owens are back-end rotation filler at best, and Grossman strikes me as a bit of a tweener--he'll have a career, but I think it's a good 4th outfielder/second-tier starter type of career, an upscale Alex Presley type of career. It's not an overpay on the Randall Delgado for Ryan Dempster proposal scale, where you're trading a young solution to a problem for a "proven veteran" solution to the same problem. It's a win-now move without being an all-in move. This is nice work by NH.
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I think where the option confusion comes in is I've read that it was a team option for 2014 unless he was traded and then it converted into a player option (basically an escape hatch in case he gets traded somewhere he hates).
I like this deal. I've been saying all along the Pirates needed another quality starter, not necessarily an ace type (although I'd take a one year ace rental at a reasonable price) but somebody who could be a nice solid middle of the rotation innings eater. I got sticker shock reading MLBtraderumors where people are saying the asking price for a decent #3 type like TB's Shields or Minny's Liriano is going to be in the Marte/Hanson/Bell range. This was a very reasonable deal from the Pirates' perspective (I'm guessing the ridiculous contract knocked down the price some).
I wonder how Wandy is gonna fit into the rotation. I've heard Hurdle say they're thinking of a 6 man which makes sense given Bedard/AJ/KC's age and injury history and Karstens/JMac's tendency to fizzle out as the season drags on. Speaking of which, what happened to McDonald? I think he needs a short trip to the DL with "arm fatigue" *Nudge**wink* because he's been positively awful since the break.
@Carnegie Chip McDonald was fine today, really. Obviously it's not the outing you want, but things may well look at lot different without that absurd IBB. He was way too good for the first four innings to be considering pulling him out of a rotation that includes KEVIN CORREIA of all people.
