So the A’s made a minor move today, flipping swingman Drew Pomeranz, minor league pitcher Jose Torres and a PTBNL or cash to the Padres for first baseman Yonder Alonso and left-handed reliever Mark Rzepczynski. I get the impression that Oakland wanted to plug some holes ahead of the winter meetings and San Diego was motivated to squeeze some value out of two players they weren’t planning to tender contracts to today.
My knee-jerk reaction to the deal when the news broke on Twitter was I’d rather see Pomeranz pitching out of the A’s bullpen in 2016 over watching Alonso’s all-leather, no-power routine at first base and Rzepczynski’s attempt to bounce back from a lackluster 2015 season.
In terms of money, Alonso and Rzepczynski are due arbitration raises on their $1.65 million and $2.4 million 2015 salaries compared to Pomeranz’s bump from his $517,500 pay which is all chump change in a world where David Price just agreed to a deal that will pay him more than $30 million a season. The A’s have plenty of payroll flexibility this winter and adding Alonso and Rzepczynski to the books probably won’t have any significant impact on the team’s ability to make any other roster moves between now and Opening Day.
For the moment, the A’s have a slick-fielding platoon first baseman with strong on-base skills and a veteran LOOGY who may be a decent bet to bounce back to the form that made him one of the better left-handed relievers of the past few years. But that could all change very quickly with the way the A’s tend to wheel and deal in the offseason. Give it a month and Alonso and Rzepczynski could be on to new destinations without ever lacing up a pair of white cleats.
Even though I’m mildly annoyed to see Pomeranz go because I thought he could thrive in a full-time relief role in Oakland for a very affordable price, I can easily imagine him plagued by injuries and control problems in San Diego. Of course, the pessimistic, frustrated A’s fan in me can also easily imagine Pomeranz following in the footsteps of Tyson Ross and developing into a stud for the Padres.
But as much as the 2016 roster implications of this trade intrigues me, it’s the long, winding transaction trail that amuses me the most about the Pomeranz-Alonso/Rzepczynski deal. Because you can’t get to today’s move without good old Mark Mulder.
Mulder, a 1998 first-round draft pick and beloved member of the Big Three, was traded to the Cardinals for Dan Haren who was traded to the Diamondbacks for Brett Anderson who was traded to the Rockies for Pomeranz who was just traded for Alonso and Rzepczynski … who will probably be traded one of these days for a few young players who will continue to give the A’s some tangible value for Mulder’s acquisition 17 years ago.
It’s kind of a neat trick to squeeze almost 20 years of roster moves out of one late-’90s draft pick. Sure, that’s about as trivial as it gets but at the moment winding through all the transactions associated with today’s trade is a lot more entertaining than looking at Alonso’s and Rzepczynski’s pedestrian, uninspiring stats from last season.
Despite my tepid initial reaction to seeing Pomeranz dealt to San Diego, I’ll cross my fingers that today’s little trade just netted the A’s a couple of reasonably-priced, key, complementary pieces to an entertaining 2016 club that can be in the playoff hunt in the last couple of months of the season.
At a bare minimum, the A’s snagged a couple of trade chips that can eventually be used to stretch out Mark Mulder’s seemingly neverending impact on the franchise. That’s a halfway decent amount of entertainment value for a minor trade leading into the winter meetings.
The switch pitcher’s long-awaited major league debut was one of the few highlights in a dismal 2015 season for the A’s. Venditte’s 4.40 ERA wasn’t particularly impressive but he held opposing hitters to a .210 average and struck out almost twice as many hitters as he walked. Right-handed hitters crushed him to the tune of a .896 OPS but he held lefties to a paltry .407 mark. One amusing tidbit (OK, it’s more like a sad, frustrating tidbit): $30 million man Billy Butler posted a abysmal -0.9 WAR in 2015 while little Pat Venditte came in on the positive side at 0.1. Best of luck to Mr. Venditte as he heads north of the border.
Rambo. I’m enough of a Baseball Reference stats geek to like any player coming to the A’s with a history of slugging percentages north of .500 throughout his minor league career. The natural pie-in-the-sky hope is that Lambo excels in the A’s organization and blossoms into the second coming of Brandon Moss. Moss’ career Triple A line? .276/.354/.497 in 5 years. Lambo’s? .267/.336/.495 in 3 seasons. The chances of Lambo being lost on waivers in the near future are far more likely than him emerging as a poor man’s Brandon Moss but it doesn’t hurt to dream on a slow day in the offseason does it?
Jays back in 2012. And now that he’s advancing into his 30s with a price tag climbing over $2.1 million he’s been flipped back to Toronto for a younger, cheaper, much-needed relief pitcher. At the moment, it looks like a good deal all around for everyone involved. Hendriks has bounced around over the past several years but it looks like he’s found his niche and some extra velocity since he switched from starting to relieving last year in Toronto. The A’s bullpen can use all the help it can get and Hendriks is the first of what’s likely to be a few new additions to the beleaguered relief corps.
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