Tuesday night finally brought us the Mookie Betts trade that has seemed inevitable since last summer. The only surprise was that the trade involved a third team, the Twins, who inserted themselves into the deal between the Red Sox and Dodgers to get another starter, while Boston focused primarily on moving money.
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The Dodgers will get Mookie Betts for a year, plus three years of David Price and his uncertain health outlook, without requiring me to change my ranking of their top prospects at all. Betts is one of the top five position players in baseball; in the last five seasons, only Mike Trout has produced more WAR, and Betts is about 30 percent ahead of the next player in both Baseball Reference’s and FanGraphs’ calculations. He does everything you could ask a position player to do: He hits for average, gets on base, rarely strikes out, hits for power (averaging 29 homers over the last four years), fields his position exceptionally, adds value on the bases (a career SB rate of 83 percent), and plays just about every day. The Dodgers didn’t necessarily need Mookie Betts, not after winning their division by 21 games last year and losing nothing from their lineup, but of course they’re better off with him by several wins.
Price is far more of a wild card, coming off wrist surgery and his second season in the last three where he didn’t throw enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. Price’s last great season was 2015, and his last 200-inning season was 2016. It’s tempting to say that his BABIP spike last year, to more than 40 points above his career average, was a fluke, but his stuff was also down across the board, with the worst fastball velocity of his career, and he hasn’t demonstrated he can pitch that effectively with reduced velocity yet. The Dodgers will get three years to see if Price can get past the wrist issue and then see if either his stuff bounces back or he learns to pitch with less stuff. Right now, he’d be one of the five starters in their Opening Day rotation unless we assume Dustin May gets a spot and Alex Wood is healthy and effective enough to take another, but that could be short-lived if Price isn’t effective early — in which case they might do better to see if he can pitch as a long reliever to work through this transition to pitching with less stuff.
The Red Sox’s main return in this deal is salary relief, not the long-term starting pitching help their system needs right now. They moved $59 million in 2020 salaries, and $32 million each of the next two years, less the cash they’re sending to the Dodgers in the deal. Whether the Red Sox — one of the sport’s revenue juggernauts — should be prioritizing salary relief over adding pitching to return this team to contention in the short term while they still have a good offensive core in place is a matter of opinion. Mine is that this is unseemly.
Boston will get two players back who’ll help the team in 2020, at least. Alex Verdugo was quite productive in a partial season for the Dodgers, hitting for average with some power while playing plus defense in left field. He has more than enough arm to slide over to right field, and I could see some four-win seasons here with his defense, average and the potential for 60+ extra-base hits. He’s not Mookie Betts, but he’s a regular.
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Right-hander Brusdar Graterol debuted in the bullpen last year for the Twins, and I think it’s more likely that that’s where he ends up in the long term. Working in relief, Graterol averaged 99 mph on his fastball, and his tight slider averaged 88.3 mph, with both pitches showing plus, the slider in particular missing bats. He missed the first half of the year with a shoulder impingement, which may have contributed to the decision to move him to the pen, but with a high-effort delivery, below-average command and the lack of an average changeup to get lefties out, that was his most likely destination anyway. He could be a very high-end reliever if he’s left in that role.
The problem for the Sox is that their long-term pitching weakness remains unaddressed. They have a few arms in the system, but probably don’t have anyone who’ll pitch at the top of a rotation, and right now they have exactly one clearly above-average major-league starter in Eduardo Rodríguez, who is a free agent after 2021. This team isn’t contending any time in the near future, or even the medium future, without more pitching and the Betts trade hasn’t addressed that (unless Graterol defies expectations and becomes a starter). They could take the money they saved and invest it in pitching, although that wouldn’t happen until at least next winter, and that doesn’t do anything to make the 2020 Red Sox more competitive. It feels like a lost opportunity to use Betts, who was still valuable in trade even as a one-year rental, to try to address a long-term organizational need.
The Twins will trade Graterol and pick up Maeda, adding to their stable of back-end starters who might be league-average. Maeda was even better in relief last year, but he’s one of the five best starters on the Twins’ roster right now. His slider is an out pitch, one of the most effective sliders in baseball last year per FanGraphs’ pitch values (6th among pitchers with at least 150 IP), and his split-change is borderline plus as well. If they’re judicious with his innings, he could be one of their three best starters this year and definitely does a bit more to push them back to the playoffs than Graterol would out of the pen. They’ll get four years of Maeda, who is under contract through 2023, for six years of control of Graterol – although if Graterol’s role change is permanent, I’m not sure that six years of any reliever is that valuable given the volatility of reliever health and performance.
The Dodgers swung a second, related deal on Tuesday to get themselves back under the salary cap … er, the luxury tax, which is a de facto salary cap for most clubs right now, enough so that the union needs to push back hard on this issue in the upcoming CBA negotiations. The Dodgers made a crosstown trade with the Angels and will send outfielder Joc Pederson to Orange County for infielder Luis Rengifo to get under the cap and move a player for whom they no longer had at-bats. Pederson has turned into a solid platoon outfielder, playing above-average defense in either outfield corner, hitting 36 homers last year with a .339 OBP thanks to a walk rate that has hovered between 9 and 10 percent the last two years. He’s a platoon bat rather than a regular because he doesn’t hit left-handed pitching at all, although the Angels could just play Michael Hermosillo against lefties and probably get above-average production in total from the tandem. Pederson’s a free agent after the year, while Rengifo, now on his fourth organization, is just entering his second year in the majors. He’s a great utility player who can handle short, second and the outfield corners on a part-time basis, and he’s played a little third in the minors. He’s an above-average defender at short and should be plus at second base in time, with plus speed — I have no idea why he stopped stealing bases last year, but he stole 41 in the minors in 2018 — and a good eye at the plate, with plate discipline last year in line with major-league averages, even though he was a 22-year-old rookie. At worst, the Dodgers have a great utility player for several years, but I think he will eventually be someone’s regular at second base, and if that’s not the Dodgers, it makes him more valuable in trade.
I’m sure Padres fans are disappointed that their team didn’t land Betts, but if the primary motivation for Boston was to save money rather than add young talent, San Diego probably didn’t stand a chance. The Padres still have plenty of prospects to swing another deal, now or at midseason, although their playoff odds for 2020 just took a hit. Their best path to contention this year is through the wild card, and they may be just as likely to get there through progress from their young core rather than trading a bunch of prospects for another veteran star — and the Dodgers will likely lose Betts to free agency after the season while lacking payroll flexibility as long as the current luxury tax system is in place. It’s not much of a silver lining for Padres fans but it’s all I’ve got for you right now.
(Photo of Betts: Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)