It looks like the hot stove is finally starting to heat up.
“It does seem like there have been more phone calls over the past week or 10 days,” Ben Cherington said during a Zoom call Saturday.
That doesn’t mean anything is imminent yet, but some rumors and names are likely going to start floating around league wide. For the 25-45 Pirates, this is going to be a very important trade deadline to maximize the potential return for some veteran players who likely wouldn’t be around the next time the team is truly competitive.
Mound Visit is going to adjust accordingly. Through the July 30 deadilne, I will be alternating week to week between a trade value series and more traditional analysis of players.
We’ll start with the team’s best pitcher on the market, Richard Rodriguez.
Despite a bit of a bump of a road as of late, Rodriguez has been one of the National League’s premier relievers so far, recording a 1.91 ERA, eight saves, a miniscule 2.9% walk rate, a 2.42 expected ERA and 2.25 FIP. He isn’t skating by, the results have been legitimate. He also comes with two more years of arbitration control, a humongous plus for any team looking to add for now and the near future.
So how much could a closer like him bring back?
I have written about surplus value and future value in the past, but just for a quick refresher, it is the difference between how much value a player provides in WAR against how much they are paid. Future value is a projection of how much surplus value similarly rated prospects produce, based on how they are rated on the 20-80 scale.
Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMicelli of the now defunct The Point of Pittsburgh have the best tool for figuring out how much future value prospects in Baseball America’s top 100 tend to produce. Former FanGraphs writer Craig Edwards created a handy tool for calculating the value of those outside the top 100.
Let’s do some calculations, first to see how much value Rodriguez will bring to a team.
TOTAL VALUE
With the Pirates nearly at the midway point of the season, Rodriguez has been worth 1.1 fWAR. Let’s keep him on roughly that pace and have him finish with 2 WAR. Assuming he is traded closer to the July deadline rather than now, that would mean a team would be acquiring about one-third of his WAR for this year, or about 0.7.
The next couple years are a bit iffy. The ZiPS projection tool is usually a good benchmark, and they have Rodriguez down for 0.5 WAR in 2022 and 0.4 in 2023. If that’s how other teams value Rodriguez, I just don’t see Cherington making a deal now. The luxury of having team control is you can hang onto players until you get a deal you like. Take Joe Musgrove, for example. He was nearly dealt during the last deadline, but Cherington didn’t pull the trigger until this offseason.
Those ZiPS projections are also not taking a potential two-win season into consideration. For simplicity’s sake, let’s double those projections, so he’ll be worth 1 WAR in 2022 and 0.8 in 2023. It’s still a fairly conservative prediction, but fair.
So that’s 0.7 WAR this year, and 1.8 over the next two years, or 2.5 WAR in total. Multiply that by $9 million per win, and it’s a total value of $22.5 million.
WHAT HE COSTS
Rodriguez is making $1.7 million this year in the first of his three arbitration seasons. Assuming that he is traded close to the deadline, that means the new team will take on $0.6 million of his salary.
Going based on the research by The Point of Pittsburgh, a player traditionally makes about 40% of their open market value in their second year of arbitration and 62% in their final year. That would mean Rodriguez would make about $3.6 million in 2022 and $6.2 in 2023.
All told, that would be about $10.5 million in salary commitments for the next three years, meaning his surplus value would be $12 million. We’ll open the potential return to about $10-14 million in surplus value, giving a little wiggle room either way based on demand.
MAKE A FAKE TRADE
Just about every competitive team needs bullpen help, and Rodriguez can be either a closer or a setup man. Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins is on the record saying he will be looking for bullpen help, and one has to imagine the Astros, Braves and White Sox are also going to try to bring in some arms this July.
The Astros have the second-worst win probability added among their relievers (-3.41), meaning it is the bullpen that has been the most detrimental to their early success. Let’s mock up a trade with them:
Astros receive: Richard Rodriguez
Pirates receive: C Korey Lee, OF Colin Barber
Both players are 45-grade hitters, carrying future values of $6 million each. Going by FanGraphs’ rankings, Lee is the 4th-best prospect in a system that doesn’t really have a lot of top-tier talent anymore, and Barber is eighth.
Lee is a low-OBP, high power backstop with a decent glove, a nice complement to Jacob Stallings in the not-so-distant future. Barber is speedy, can play all three outfield positions and is just 20 with room to grow as a hitter. This is the type of player Cherington has traditionally targeted.
Rodriguez won’t bring back a top-100 or mega prospect, but he can bring back a couple guys in a team’s second tier, which could only deepen a rapidly improving farm system. The Pirates don’t have to make a deal if it isn’t right, but it’s hard to see teams not being interested in a cheap, controllable reliever like him.
