Welcome, friends, to the 2015 MLB trade deadline and to the second edition of Rolling Out the Barrel. With the deadline just recently passed, we’ve already seen a ton of movement around the league, and the Brewers have been front and center for it. As you have search for updates about the trade of Gerardo Parra and perhaps others from late last week, here’s a little bit to get you caught up on the week’s action:
Wednesday was one of the strangest days of my baseball-following lifetime. Two days before the non-waiver trade deadline, the best shortstop in the league was dealt to the NL East and a top-ten pitcher was finally released from baseball hell (AKA Philadelphia) 12 years after he was drafted. However, absolutely no one cared because the Mets butchered the evening so badly that the baseball world couldn’t take its eyes off the train wreck.
It’s hard to know where to even begin to describe how thoroughly the Mets blew the day. They refused to remove a visibly emotional Wilmer Flores – who was to be a part of the trade that wasn’t – until well after he and the rest of the world was informed of his pending trade. After the deal fell through as the Mets turned the evening into a weird episode of Extreme Couponing, Mets GM Sandy Alderson dragged Carlos Gomez’s health through the mud in a shockingly absurd attempt to save face following another blunder from the league’s most farcical franchise this side of the Grand Canyon.
Baseball Prospectus || Transaction Analyis: Houston is Hip to Gomez
Surprising absolutely no one, it turned out that the rest of the league didn’t care about the Mets’ fictional worries regarding Gomez’s hip. On Thursday, the former Brewers center fielder (boy, is it hard to write that) was dealt for the second time in two days when Houston offered a monster deal for him and right-hander Mike Fiers. Led by our own J.P. Breen, the Baseball Prospectus team takes an in-depth look at Thursday’s blockbuster — including in-depth looks at the quartet of prospects now in Milwaukee’s system.
Grantland || Trading Futures: The Sub-.500 Rangers Get Cole Hamels for 2016 and Beyond
Jonah Keri has a nice write-up of the Rangers’ somewhat puzzling (at first glance) trade for Cole Hamels, given Texas’s current position in the standings. Trailing the division-leading Astros (I can’t believe I’m typing those words in late July and it’s not 2017) by eight games and the wild card by four, the Rangers are barely in the race for a playoff spot. However, anticipating the healthy return of Yu Darvish (knock on wood) and the permanent addition of top prospect Joey Gallo to the lineup next season, they pulled the trigger on a trade for an affordable ace who is signed through at least 2018. However, as Brewers fans are acutely aware, deals that take pitchers into their mid-late 30s rarely end well, and the Rangers will be paying the second half of a deal for a pitcher who will turn 32 in the offseason. The Rangers hope that Hamels can be one of the rare 30-somethings who age gracefully.
You’ll be able to find plenty of information about Brett Phillips, Domingo Santana, and Josh Hader, the three impact prospects the Brewers acquired in the Gomez and Fiers trade. Here, Noah Jarosh has a nice piece about the fourth player Milwaukee received in yesterday’s blockbuster, right-handed pitcher Adrian Houser. A second-round pick in 2011, Houser has not developed the way the Astros had hoped, but he hasn’t been Eric Arnett-awful (he owns a 4.30 ERA and has only walked some of the batters he’s faced, instead of all of them) and perhaps a change of scenery can help the 22-year-old right the ship.
Baltimore Sun || Zach Davies’ selection to Futures Game ‘well deserved’
News broke on Friday morning that Gerardo Parra was dealt to Baltimore in exchange for right-hander Zach Davies, the Orioles third-best prospect according to MLB.com (he will disappear from this list when the trade becomes official):
Source: #Orioles closing in on #Brewers’ Parra. Deal expected to be Parra for RHP Zack Davies, straight up.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 31, 2015
Ken will want to note that Zach spells his first name correctly, with an H, so as not to be confused with the actual Zack Davies, who is literally a racist homicidal maniac. The above article from Jon Meoli earlier this month is about Davies being selected to participate in the All-Star Futures Game. Davies is a great return for a two-month rental who would have provided Milwaukee no value beyond helping them win a couple of meaningless ballgames the rest of the way in 2015.