The Trade(s)

Published by on August 2, 2010 | 8 Responses

I’m a bit late on responding to the Giants deadline deals, but I wanted to briefly write a few words about the two relievers the Giants picked up.

Giants Lose: OF John Bowker, RHP Joe Martinez

Giants Get: LHP Javier Lopez

I guess this means the quest for the LOOGY is over. I’ll state up front that I don’t really love this trade for the Giants. My gut reaction is that the Pirates did very well while the Giants got a guy that throws baseballs with his left arm.

First, what the Giants lost: John Bowker has been a bit of a poster boy for the ‘Let the Kids Play’ movement. That’s despite already being 27-years-old — Bowker turned 27 this July, he’s playing in his age 26 baseball season — and never really hitting well over a couple of brief major league stints. Of course, Bowker’s appeal was his revamped hitting approach that he exhibited in 2009 while playing for the AAA Fresno Grizzlies. Yet, he struggled again in this season in less than 90 at-bats. It’s hard to totally write off Bowker at this point and I think the Pirates did well to acquire him. In addition to Bowker, the Pirates netted personal BCB favorite, Joe Martinez. The Pirates always seem hungry for starting pitching and hopefully Joe will get a crack. I think his upside is a +2 win starter in the NL — meaning a league average starter. He’s not a flame-thrower but he’s got good control, some groundball tendencies, and a nice 2-seam fastball. That might not sound glamorous, but if he’s a league average SP it becomes quite valuable. Considering that the Pirates will now control both Bowker and Martinez until 2015, I think it’s a solid pick up.

In return the Giants landed 32-year-old Javier Lopez. Lopez owns a career 4.30 FIP across 8 seasons and 282 innings. He’s a side-arming, baseball slinging specialist. His fastball doesn’t break 86 mph often and he’s primarily a two-pitch guy with a fastball/slider combo. His career walk-rate is 4.17 walks per 9 vs. a strikeout-rate of 5.54 strikeouts per 9. Underwhelmed yet? Lopez, being a LOOGY, is somewhat tough on left-handed batters. He’s held them to a slash line of .242/.336/.350 over his career. Going forward, for better or worse, he’ll be the go-to guy in the bullpen for tough LHBs. Lopez is also a FA at the end of this season, effectively making him a rental.

Bottom line: Can I say meh? Meh. Lopez is a nice addition to the bullpen, but not one that I would give up 4 years of control of both Bowker and Martinez for. Furthermore, I wonder if the Giants really had to trade for a guy with Lopez’s skill-set. Shouldn’t any GM be able to cruise the minor leagues and find a slinging lefty like Lopez on the cheap? I’m not so sure the Giants didn’t already have Javier Lopez in their system in the form of Geno Espineli (a side-arming south paw in Fresno). A quick look-see on minor leauge splits tells us that Espineli has held LHBs to a 3.37 FIP over his minor league career. Run that through the MLE conversion and it comes out to a 3.90-ish FIP against LHBs. Lopez owns a career 3.80 FIP against LHBs in the majors.

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Trade #2

Giants Lose: RHP Daniel Turpen

Giants Get: RHP Ramon Ramirez

Ramirez is a much better reliever than Lopez and the Giants got him for much less. Go figure.

Daniel Turpen was drafted by the Giants in the 8th round of the 2007 First Year Player Draft. Currently pitching for AA Richmond, Turpen has posted a 4.09 ERA to go with a 7.5 K/9 and a 3.4 BB/9. Almost every minor league system has 10 Daniel Turpen’s floating around at any time. He’s the definition of a trade-able, low upside reliever. I’d love to know what the Red Sox saw in him. Ramon Ramirez is a right-handed reliever that works primarily off of a low-90′s fastball and a slider. He had an excellent 2008 with the Royals (2.84 FIP, 71.2 IP) and was then sent to the Red Sox in the Coco Crisp trade. Since joining the Sox, Ramirez hasn’t had the same success. He posted a 4.46 FIP last season and currently has a 4.62 FIP this year. Getting out of the AL East should help Ramirez some and he’s decent insurance for any one of Bautista/Mota/Casilla. The Giants will control Ramirez until 2013, making him a bullpen candidate down the road if he doesn’t crack this year’s ‘pen.

Bottom Line: Not bad. Ramirez is obviously better than Turpen right now and the Giants are in the ‘right now’ mode. It’s also a bonus that they’ll have him under control for a couple of more seasons if they want him.

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daveinexile
daveinexile

Granted I am not wild about the Lopez trade. ( Sabean way over paying for at best Meh production: again. At least his is not quite Hillenbrand level). 22 Gigantes mention MLB experience let me ask him this, Who usually has the advantage the first time or two in Pitcher vs Hitter match up? This kind of move is ALL about what the guy can deliver in the next 60 days. To make Lopez truly worth while he better had some fantastic splits vs some better LHB in our division or have pitch that the coaches feel is being underutilized. If neither true might as well roll the dice with pitcher that cheaper to acquire and use the Martinez and Bowker parts to aquire someone else. Over all I really expected Sabean to do much worse damage this midseason.

Chris Quick
Chris Quick

Merkled (great name, btw), Lopez vs. Geno. It's just hard for me to see the difference between the two. Furthermore, it's hard for me to see the difference between the two that's worth the cost of John Bowker and Joe Martinez. Neither Bowker or Martinez are players that are (most likely) going to come back and bite the Giants, but it still seems like an overpay. And for a pitcher with an extremely limited scope of uses.

Chris Quick
Chris Quick

Tedford, Well put. Thanks, that clarifies things some for me. So, it appears that if Cots' service time is correct, the Giants would possess control of Lopez for another season. Whether they would actually want to do that or not is another question.

tedfordfan
tedfordfan

Chris, my understanding is that major league service time issue is the determining factor in free agency. A team always has the option of offering arbitration to a player with less than 6 years of service time. If they don't, he effectively becomes a free agent for the coming year and is free to sign with any team he chooses. But that new team with whom he signs then possesses the right to offer him arbitration after the season to retain his rights if he has less than 6 full years service time.

The Crazy Crabbers
The Crazy Crabbers

According to baseball-reference Javier Lopez still has one more season of team control and will be become a Free-Agent in 2012. So not quite a rental as he can be around next season too, but again he most likely wont be much better then what will be available in the minors or among free agents. The thing that really gets me is that it seems like this Giants bullpen needs another guy with control issues like it needs a whole in the head.

Merkled
Merkled

Chris - You are right that this is a bit of a reach but there is no way that a guy with MLB experience (Lopez) can be compared to a guy pitching out of Fresno (Espineli etc). All things equal, the experience alone in the approach to getting out major league hitters is enough to sway me. It was a lot to give up Bowker AND Martinez when maybe one of them would have been equitable, but the league knows what hand Sabean has so the leverage was all in their favor.

22gigantes
22gigantes

Career wise, Lopez is 13-9 with a 4.36 ERA and a 5.5 K/9 rate. Against lefties, as you noted, Lopez has held batters to a .242/.336/.350 batting line with 115 SO—more than double against right-handed batters in his career. In the month of August, the Giants will face the Rockies, Cubs, Braves, Padres, Phillies, Cardinals, Reds and Diamondbacks, which means they will be dealing with a 60/40 split in favor of left-handed batters. Maybe now you can see why the Giants needed a lefty specialist sooner than later.

Chris Quick
Chris Quick

Crabbers, Interesting. Rotoworld has him listed as a FA in 2011. Cots has this to say about his current contract: <pre># 1 year/$0.775M (2010) * signed by Pittsburgh as a free agent 12/18/09 * may earn $0.55M in performance bonuses for games 35-70 * acquired by San Francisco in trade from Pittsburgh 7/31/10</pre> If he's a FA, and on a 1-year deal, wouldn't he become a FA at the end of this season? Currently, he has 4.167 years of service time by Cots. IIRC, Arb. eligible players are those (basically) with less than 6 years service time. So, the Giants might control him for next year. I'm not sure. Can anyone else clarify?