A New Day, A New Deal

The Royals made a much better trade on Monday and the comments made a lot more sense.

What a difference a day makes. After spending the better part of Monday on various podcasts and radio shows lamenting what I thought was just a horrific deal from Sunday evening, the Royals continued to reshape their roster with a deal that I liked quite a bit. They traded Jose Cuas to the Cubs in exchange for Nelson Velazquez. In contrast to the Nicky Lopez deal where I was wondering what else was coming back, I wondered what else the Royals were including in this trade. So I’d say it was a nice reversal from the day before.

Let’s start with what the Royals are getting in Velazquez. He was a fifth-round pick in the 2017 draft out of Puerto Rico and possesses some big-time power. I talked to one scout who gives him 60-grade power and another one at 55. Fangraphs puts him at 60 as well. On the 20-80 scouting scale, both of those are above average and a definite carrying tool. He’s no longer a prospect because he exhausted that eligibility last season at the big league level, but prior to that he was generally somewhere in the 12-18 range across almost all the rankings.

His career started probably about how you’d expect if you look back now. He hit .236/.333/.536 in rookie ball in 2017 after he was drafted. And then he struggled a bit. He was hitting the ball on the ground quite a bit and wasn’t able to get into his prodigious power. I wonder a little if he was trying to focus on making more contact, which would make total sense, but it wasn’t working terribly well for him. But after the lost 2020 season, Velazquez made a bunch of adjustments and you know what a sucker I am for adjustments.

You can read about them on Fangraphs as they looked at the top-49 Cubs prospects from last year where Velazquez ranked 15th last year. He made some swing changes including eliminating his leg kick, a more conservative toe tap and a shorter stride. And the results came. His ground ball rate that was 47.5 percent in A-ball in 2019 was 36.6 percent in high-A and 30.7 percent in AA in 2021. He hit 20 homers total with a .270/.333/.496 line across the two levels before he had a MONSTER Arizona Fall League that year. He hit .385/.480/.76ers 12 for Mesa with nine homers in 26 games.

Look, the AFL is what it is. It’s Arizona, so the ball flies, but he’s generally facing some very good prospects. And as someone who had just 137 plate appearances above A-ball, that was an impressive performance. That led to his debut in 2022 at the big league level, where he showed off some of the power with 16 extra base hits in 206 plate appearances and he showed off some of the holes in his game as well.

Velazquez has tools. He can run a bit. He has an excellent arm. He has that very real power. But his hit tool isn’t great and he isn’t the most disciplined hitter in the world, but he’s also not horrible either. He’s chased more in his brief big league time in 2023 than he did in his more extensive 2022 action, but he’s also whiffed less, which is sort of interesting. And the batted ball contact is impressive. His maximum exit velocities rank about in the top quarter of the league. His average exit velocity is excellent. His hard-hit rate is excellent. And he does walk a little bit.

Oh and he can turn around velocity.

That’s 97.5 MPH on the inner third and he was able to get the barrel to the ball like it was nothing. I would anticipate he’ll see a lot of breaking balls because of his results on them with a whiff rate of 50 percent this year and 40.2 percent last year. Offspeed stuff has also given him trouble. Pitchers will target that heavily. The man can hit a fastball though. And he can hit a mistake breaking ball. There’s value in that.

Where does he fit on this team? I tweeted this yesterday, but he feels a bit like Edward Olivares in that he has played center but fits better in a corner. The scouting reports say that his defense isn’t bad. The numbers disagree. It’s a small sample and I haven’t seen enough to know, but I guess we’ll see. I’ll get to this in a bit, but I don’t see Olivares as long for this team. Maybe he doesn’t go today, but I think he’ll be moved in the offseason if not. But the Royals outfield currently is pretty well set with MJ Melendez, Kyle Isbel and Drew Waters. Waters has struggled, so maybe he gets a reset in AAA as they rotate players. Maybe one is moved today (though I don’t think so).

Still, when Velazquez gets back to the big leagues for the Royals, whether it’s later today, later this year or next season, the Royals I think made a very nice move to get a power bat with a little upside in exchange for a 29-year old reliever without much of a future. This is the trade to make. Cuas is a middle reliever who has looked really good at times and really bad at times and I get why the Cubs were intrigued. He gets a lot of swings and misses. He has some legit spin on his fastball and he gets strikeouts.

He also gives up a ton of hard contact, doesn’t throw especially hard and has had a dickens of a time with runners on base. In the history of tracking inherited runners for relievers, 3,548 have inherited at least 36 runners in a year, which is the number Cuas has inherited. Only 28 of them had allowed a higher percentage to score. Some of that is usage. At some point, you have to stop putting him in those situations. The options aren’t great for the Royals, so whatever, but still. He’s historically bad at that.

And while he has a ton of team control left, I don’t think there’s any mistake in clearing some space for relief prospects who seem much more likely to help in the future. I think Cuas is a great story and I wish he could have been great, but this is a smart move by the Royals.

I really liked that trade, but I also appreciated the comments from JJ Picollo. This is from a tweet thread from Sam McDowell when McDowell asked the Royals GM about a player’s proximity to the majors:

“We need help in a lot of areas. Our farm system needs help. Our major league team needs help. It comes down to the team…where is their depth, and what are they willing to deal from? I’d like to think we can get guys that can help our major league team a little bit sooner, but that’s not always going to be the case, but it doesn’t deter us from making.a trade. If there’s value in somebody that’s in A ball, we gotta be open-minded to that as well.”

Was that so hard? That’s the absolute perfect answer. I don’t have a huge problem with them being interested in players who can help sooner than later. This front office doesn’t want this rebuild to go on any longer than it has to either. It’s like I wrote yesterday. There are reasonable people who can disagree, but I don’t think it’s out of line to be looking for the upside at the AA or AAA level if it’s there. I think it’s less likely to be there at this time because if a team has that player, they seem likely to just use that player, but as long as there’s an open mind, I’m good with whatever.

I also thought it was interesting to hear about the thought process behind the Lopez deal, and I actually think I hate it just a little bit less (but only a little bit). It seems the reality is that there wasn’t another offer for Lopez out there and he was likely to be designated for assignment if he wasn’t moved. Okay, that’s fine. So I do understand the point of trading him for anything to not have to eat that cost. The money is irrelevant in terms of baseball dollars, but it’s also not nothing and why pay something you don’t need to if you can move the deal?

I still maintain the process was bad to trade for Taylor Hearn. I find it very hard to believe that the Braves wouldn’t have traded any random stiff at any level of their organization who isn’t making big league money and doesn’t require a 40-man spot. No, the Royals aren’t in a pinch there, but they could be sometime soon. They have, by my count, 14 guys who it might be nice to get a look at before the season ends. They don’t need to see all of them, but to have an extra 40-man spot would have been a nice luxury. They can just DFA Hearn (or any other handful of players), but the point is that it just seemed unnecessary. So I’m still very much against the trade. I just hate it maybe 10 percent less.

So the big question now is what do yesterday’s moves mean for the action that will come today before 5pm CDT? I’m not naive enough to think that there’s a big plan in place, but I’ll do my best to read some tea leaves and report back what I’ve heard from asking around.

• I think Olivares is a bit more likely to get moved with the Velazquez acquisition. As I said, they’re similar players and can fill a similar role. I don’t see a huge market for him, but there is a market for him and I think he can bring back something sort of similar to yesterday’s deal in terms of value. I honestly don’t know what the Mariners are doing, but they could trade Teoscar Hernandez and turn around and pick up Olivares and it wouldn’t surprise me.

• I still believe Scott Barlow is traded today. I haven’t changed that percentage from yesterday. We saw Paul Sewald dealt from the Mariners to the Diamondbacks. Sewald, like Barlow, won’t be a free agent until after next season. He doesn’t throw terribly hard and gets a lot of strikeouts. The difference is he’s limited walks much better and is having a better year. The return for him was the #13 and #16 prospects based on Baseball America’s rankings as well as a utility infielder. I think you can expect something similar for Barlow today.

• I don’t know what to think about the Salvador Perez market. I think there’s still a chance he gets traded and it sounds like the Royals are willing to pay down some of his contract to facilitate. But I also think they’d only do it if he’s the one who wants to go. And if that’s the case, I don’t see a spot for him other than Miami and maybe Texas, but I suppose I could be missing something. I just can’t get a good read here.

• I get the sense the Royals have talked with teams about Brady Singer and Carlos Hernandez but I don’t think they’re what teams are offering. Things change fast on deadline day, so you never know, but as of this particular moment, I think they both stay put, and I would say it’s considerably more likely that one goes than both if there is a trade.

• I’ve mentioned Jordan Lyles a few times and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of traction but the Royals are willing to eat some money from what I understand. Weird things happen when the buzzer is about to beep. I don’t think he goes, but nothing would surprise me.

• I’d heard a few weeks ago that teams were interested in Matt Duffy, but that market unsurprisingly seems fairly dry right now. He could go in an inconsequential deal, but I haven’t heard anything on him in awhile.

I don’t think today will be quiet. I don’t know how much will get done, but there will be tons of rumors flying as there are always are on deadline day. A couple of thing I want to mention real quick before I wrap this up. One, the deadline is at 5pm CDT. If a deal isn’t announced then, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Deals just have to be in by then. We saw deals get announced more than an hour after the deadline last year, so be patient. And two, I’ll be on KCTV5 in Kansas City tonight at 6:30 to talk about everything the Royals do, so I hope you’ll tune in!