Skip to main content

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.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

.500

So.......... Raise your hand if you thought that 10 games in to the season, the Padres would be at .500? *waits patiently* Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way: THE PADRES ARE AT .500! Not only that, but we've won two of our first three series- one of which was against the Giants, who have more or less dominated the NL West this decade. This is the same team that ESPN could not find a single reason to have hope for before the season kicked off. They couldn't be more wrong- this team is overflowing with reasons to hope.  First off, Manny Margot. The man looks like an absolute star in the making- before, we knew that he could be a first division regular easily. The only thing missing was the power- if it developed, he'd be a bona fide five-tool star. And boy, does it look like it's developing. He's currently tied for eighth in the league with three home runs, and has also shown impressive gap power.  Even though small sample size i...
Post a Comment
Read more

This Team Makes Me Drink Turns 1- A Padres Game Celebration

Hard to believe that I've been writing this blog for an entire year now! It's even harder to believe that, of all things, I felt compelled to start This Team Makes Me Drink because I vehemently disagreed with Melvin Upton, Jr. being traded - that hot take ( Melvin Upton goes to the 6!!!) didn't age too well. I genuinely thought that I would write a couple posts, get bored, and completely forget about ever writing about sports again- but alas, here we are, a full trip around the sun later- and what better way to celebrate TTMMD turning a year old than by going to a Padre game ? And what a celebration it was. The Padres won, 7-5, splitting the series with the Mets, and more importantly, allowing me to experience my first Padres W in over two calendar years. My thoughts/stray observations from my experience are below, but first, a few acknowledgments: I'd like to give a big shoutout to my Mom being my #1 reader and for unfailingly promoting this blog on all of h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Who Will Manage the Padres Next?

The 2019 season was the year the Padres were supposed to materialize their immense potential into tangible results on the field, and manager Andy Green was supposed to be the guy that led that charge.  Instead, 2019 was the year that the Padres abruptly pulled the plug on the Green administration after the team limped to the end of yet another lost season, only two years after they had extended his contract. 2019 was supposed to be different- and there were times when it was: the Padres were .500 at the All Star break for the first time in seemingly forever. However, they’ve been abysmal since then, sporting a 25-47 record since then.  Certainly, the onus for the Padres second half collapse does not fall squarely on Andy Green- but it appears that Barry Bloom of Forbes was (as much as I’m loathe to admit it) correct: Green had lost the respect of his players.  I mean- look at Wil Myers in this video; he can barely hide the smirk on his face when...
Post a Comment
Read more