Padres Trade Brad Hand

Well guys- the day has finally come. After months (years?) of speculation, Padres All-Star closer Brad Hand and submarine-throwing relief pitcher Adam Cimber were traded to the Cleveland Indians for top prospect Francisco Mejia.

How'd the deal turn out for the Friars? I'd say Padres GM AJ Preller deserves quite a Hand for making this trade possible (I swear that's the last time there will ever be a Brad Hand-pun on this blog, btw- the Editor).

Hand was great for the Padres- the team picked him up off the scrap heap and turned him into a dominant reliever with one of the best sliders in the game. It didn't hurt that they also signed him to a great, team-friendly contract to boot. Cimber, a career minor-leaguer prior to making the team out of spring training this year, also put up solid numbers his rookie season. They'll both be valuable contributors to the Indians' beleaguered bullpen, which has been one of the worst in the league without Andrew Miller this season.

That said- relief pitchers are volatile and easily replaceable assets.

Relievers like Brad Hand and Adam Cimber are the players on a baseball team that we see the least, and as such, they have the smallest sample size from which to gauge their effectiveness. If you think about it, it's rather intuitive: it's harder to evaluate the true value of a reliever because most of the time, they're only pitching one inning per game.

AJ Preller's decision to sell high on these two relievers was incredibly smart- especially because there have been some signs of Hand's regression this year (*cough* when Anthony Rizzo drove in the game-winning run vs. Hand in the 9th last week *cough*). Besides, the Padres churn out effective relievers like no other organization in baseball. Kirby Yates and Craig Stammen are more than capable of picking up where Hand left off.

That brings us to Mejia. By all accounts, he's a premium prospect- according to MLB.com, he's currently the 15th-best prospect in the game, and he's even ranked as high as #5 by ESPN's Keith Law. Fangraphs rates Mejia as a grade 60 prospect on a 20-80 scale (which is really, really good, if you weren't sure lol).

As of now, the Padres are reportedly going to allow Mejia to continue catching, but will also try to play him in the outfield and at third base. As an Austin Hedges apologist, I'm personally not sold that he'll be the Padres' catcher of the future (and I'm tantalized by the thought of a Mejia-Margot-Myers outfield)- but no matter where he ends up playing, he'll be an impact bat for a team that sorely needs one.

It's clear now: the Padres have the best collection of young talent in baseball- and as Baseball America's JJ Cooper put it: this farm system is comparable to the pipeline of players that propelled the 2012 Royals and 2015 Cubs to World Series championships. Indeed, this was a masterstroke of a trade by AJ Preller.

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