The final detail of the Pirates trade with the Phillies for Antonio Bastardo is in place, as we now know that the return to Philadelphia will be Joely Rodriguez. It sort of seems like this deal came together quickly, but Bastardo’s name was mentioned in relation to the Pirates at the trade deadline, so the Pirates’ interest in here goes beyond this year’s winter meetings.
Bastardo seems like a solid addition to the Pirates’ bullpen, especially since Justin Wilson is a Yankee now and Tony Watson is presumably locked into an inflexible late-inning role. He’s been a fixture in the Phillies’ bullpen since 2011, and even though his ERA has fluctuated since then, he’s always struck a ton of hitters out (279 Ks in 216 2/3 innings since 2011), which balances his not-great-walk-rate, and he seems to have solved the home run problem that plagued him a bit early in his career. In 2011, he gave up six homers in 58 innings, in 2012 he gave up seven in 52, but in 2013 and 2014 combined he’s allowed six in 106 2/3. If you tab over to Fangraphs you can see that he doesn’t throw exceptionally hard (~92 mph on the fastball) and that he doesn’t have a great groundball rate (~30%), but I suspect that a big portion of his value comes from his lack of platoon split, as Neal Huntington said explicitly this morning that he didn’t want a LOOGY. It’s possible that this is a bit naive and that I’m giving the Pirates too much credit, but pretty much anytime I see that they have sustained interested in a pitcher, I assume that it’s because Jim Benedict and Ray Searage must think that that pitcher has something that they can work on improving, and so even though Bastardo doesn’t quite fit the Pirates’ usual mold, as far as pitchers go, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here.
Joely Rodriguez looked decent in the Arizona Fall League this year, but he’s never had big minor league numbers and he flirted with a Zach Duke (uhh, the old Zach Duke, I guess) strikeout rate in Altoona this year as a 22-year old. I would suspect that his ultimate future is as an Antonio Bastardo type reliever, though it’s hard to see much of anything in his numbers to this point to ensure that he’ll get there. Obviously, for a team in the Phillies’ position it makes sense to take a flyer on a guy with some talent as opposed to keeping around a third-year arbitration eligible reliever.
If you want to do some quick payroll analysis, Bastardo is projected to make $2.8 million in arbitration this year, which combined with Francisco Liriano’s contract, should bring the Pirates pretty close to the $90 million figure that they’ve been tossing around. Still, I kind of suspect that they’re not quite done yet this winter, though maybe that’s just me projecting my own wishes onto the club. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
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