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Trade Deadline Special: Trammell for Reyes and Allen



This Team Makes Me Drink is back! I’ve got quite a few thoughts about the Padres season thus far that I’ll get around to publishing later, but let’s talk about the news of the day: with the trade deadline fast approaching, the Padres were involved in a deal for Trevor Bauer, who they've been linked to for months. 

Except, of course, Trevor Bauer will not be going to San Diego.  Instead, he’ll be going to the Reds as part of a three-team-deal with the Indians. The Padres, for their part, acquired Reds top prospect Taylor Trammell, and sent Franmil Reyes and Logan Allen (plus 19 year old minor leaguer Victor Nova, who to be quite honest I had never heard of before yesterday) to the Indians.

People have… a lot of feelings about this trade, mostly because of Franmil Reyes, but from the Padres’ perspective this was too good of a deal to pass up. Just WATCH Taylor Trammell’s performance at the 2018 Futures Game:



Yeah, if that doesn’t make you excited about getting this guy, I don’t know what will. He’s a typical AJ Preller quality-over-quantity acquisition- he was a consensus top 15 prospect before the season began, and is absolutely dripping with potential; scouts have long envisioned Trammell as an an impact leadoff man in the mold of peak Carl Crawford.  Critics of the trade have pointed to Trammell’s struggles at Double A; and in particular, people seem to be really, REALLY, REALLLLLLY upset that he’s got .236 batting average. 

Fortunately, it’s 2019 and most smart fans have now known for a while what Dodgers executive Branch Rickey knew in the FORTIES: inferring a player’s batting ability from their average is like guessing the exact amount money somebody had on them if they only told you they had 10 coins in their pocket- you get a rough sense of what you’re dealing with, and higher numbers can reasonably imply higher value much of the time... but the datum you've actually just been given is so minimal that you’d be a fool to render a final verdict off of it alone. 

Let’s take a look at Trammell’s other, more informative numbers this year: in Double A, he’s got a 107 wRC+ (a measure of how many runs a player creates for his team, adjusting for context) on Fangraphs, which is average to above average. At .336, his slugging percentage is pretty poor, but he was never expected to hit for 20+ home runs anyways. More importantly, he’s within the top 10 in his league in on base percentage (.349)!!!!!!! This is literally the primary function of the leadoff hitter. People keep calling this a “risky” move for the Padres, but I don’t think it’s all that risky to trade two non-essential pieces for a guy who plays unquestionably good defense and has been at the very least an above average hitter at every level he’s been tested at. If everything comes together, he’s a STAR, and at the very worst he’s Manny Margot 2.0 (I mean that as a compliment, I promise) or we end up packaging him in a deal for Noah Syndergaard (now imagine if I told you we got Noah Syndergaard in exchange for Logan and Fran LMAOOOOO)

Giving up Franmil Reyes and Logan Allen is certainly not insignificant, but I can’t truthfully say that the Padres really had any reason to keep them around. Logan Allen was good in his debut but has struggled since; he’s a good bet to reach his #4 starter projection in a year or two, but the 40 man roster is already replete with starting pitchers that are more talented, and will only get better next year. There simply just wasn’t a spot for Logan on next year’s team- and in truth, he probably already lost his spot on this year’s team too. 

The fans seem to be most upset about losing Franmil. Look, was he a fan favorite? Absolutely. Was he irreplaceable though? Absolutely not. Monster home runs aside, Fran was always a defensive liability and was almost comically prone to chase after any high fastball he saw, no matter how clearly outside of the strike zone the pitch was. It also just so happens that we have a guy already on the roster who can do the same things Fran did without those aforementioned problems, and he goes by the name of Hunter Renfroe, if you haven’t heard of him. Look, I’ll miss Franmil just as much as you will- but we can all find comfort in the fact that just as we will always love Franmil, Franmil will always love us back.... seriously, just try to get through the farewell Instagram video he posted today with dry eyes:


You can't. Man, I need to go grab some tissues now. 

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