An interesting series of takes of these trades. There's a lot more baseball under the surface than he writes about.
On the Vasquez trade, Houston traded two players they were not going to ever see for a rental catcher. Valdez and maybe Abreau would have opted for Minor League free agency. Vasquez helped them including winning a game for them in the WS. While Valdez is starting to pay off, he's way behind where he should be defensively. Abreau is an old school on-base machine. I think he's reputed to have a nice arm, but I don't know for sure. As a pure baseball move, the only way this is a positive is if the Red Sox were going to lose Vasquez. That was not the case. We also had to tie up two roster spots in November, which cost us spots to keep a pitcher or two that were gut punches to lose.
The Pham trade was a win for the Reds if anyone. They shed payroll, which is still costing the Red Sox $1.5M this year due to a buyout clause. I say "shed". For most teams $5M is not a shed, but for the Reds, it is. We gave up someone who would likely never play for us due to a massive K-rate. To suggest Pham was a "solid" player is really a stretch. His OF play was interesting, he hit .234 with over 31% K-rate while hitting only 6 HRs for us.
It's sad to see how poorly Groom has pitched since not making the Padres early season 6-man rotation. He was the odd man out and the pitching turned to crap with the demotion. He did rebound from a dreadful outing last week (8ER in 4.1IP) with a nice 6-innings of no-hit ball with 3BBs and 9K's. Point is that it's still too early to pull the plug on Groome when looking at this trade. Interesting note on Rosier is he's been traded in the middle of his first two pro seasons. 11HRs and 63SB's in 157 games in the minors ain't too shabby.
Now the trade that the writer is calling a phenomenal trade for Bloom. Diekman for McGuire and Broadway. Any trade that results in a team getting an over 300BA platoon catcher for a aging reliever that has subsequently fizzled should be a definitive win. However, this still feels like a consolation prize because of an entirely different trade. On top of that, it feels tainted because the utility catcher in question is having some throwing difficulties. At the time of the trade, this was a win for Chicago. We got worse with it by losing Diekman, as iffy as he was. Him being here or not likely had no effect on our last place result.
In the end, Chicago gave up a Catcher that was soon to be DFA'd with a throw in of a once promising pitcher they were cutting ties with for trade deadline BP help. That's one helluva trade for Chicago. Diekman also gave them a really nice effort until their wheels fell off in mid-September last year. Diekman's numbers were slightly better with them until then. After then, he allowed 10 runs in 6.1 IP over 7 games. Yikes!!!
The 3rd piece of that trade, Broadway's last couple outings this season did lower his ERA to 5.10. It's also only that low because his first outing of the year had a strange pitching line. 1IP, 4H, 0ER, 1HR, 2K's and 5R's. Yup, 5 unearned. Baseball is not without poetic irony, it seems. The error that caused this line was part of that first trade, the aforementioned Enmanuel Valdez. Good times!!!
