Tribe Targets: Danny Valencia

With the possible exception of Zach McAllister, the Indians aren’t going to give up pitching to augment their offense. As we have seen with past acquisitions, the organization has a reputation for keeping its payroll low and avoiding big-money acquisitions, which could take them out of the running to pick up a well-compensated trade chip. Athletics third baseman Danny Valencia, who’s on an affordable $3.15 million salary this season and has another trip through arbitration scheduled, however, is a potential target for the Tribe.

As of July 4th, the A’s are 35-47 and effectively out of the playoff picture in the American League. Valencia is a right-handed third baseman who has also bounced around the field throughout his career, including logging some first base time the last couple of years. He also turns 32 in a couple of months, so he’s not in the A’s long-term plans, but he’s made some changes to his game that also should make him an attractive trade target for the team. Valencia is now a legitimate offensive threat, and not just as a platoon guy.

It’s not as if Valencia has been hurting for chances, as teams have long recognized his ability to punish left-handed pitchers who dare enter the strike zone. Valencia has been treated as one of those useful players good enough to have, but not good enough to keep. He debuted in 2010, and Oakland is his sixth major-league team, having been claimed off waivers from the Blue Jays last August. The Blue Jays had themselves a roster crunch, and they weren’t buying the initial evidence that Valencia had made himself more whole. You can understand why Toronto wound up doing what they did, but Oakland seized the opportunity and now seemed to found themselves an asset. The A’s could afford to see how real Valencia really was.

As you can see from the table, Valencia had a 73-point split, and that was 10 points greater than the runner-up and 18 points greater than third. He was almost like a caricature of a platoon hitter, ranking in the top 20 percent against lefties but ranking in the bottom 10 percent against righties. This is why Valencia got opportunities, but also why he floated around as teams are always looking for power. Valencia had a glaring weakness and he didn’t really make up for it in the field. So he was both interesting and replaceable. You can’t blame the Blue Jays for just thinking about his track record.

Yet last season, Valencia looked unfamiliar. Not against lefties, he kept hitting lefties just the same. But against righties, he was better. He finished with a reverse platoon split, by 12 points, mashing righties to the tune of a 140 wRC+ that put him by names like Nelson Cruz, Buster Posey, and Giancarlo Stanton. It’s not even something the A’s were necessarily expecting when they picked him up as they thought they’d use him situationally. Valencia earned more of a look, and he wound up looking a lot like an everyday slugger.

Also last season, in a small sample, Valencia hit right-handed pitching for power for the first time in his career. He hasn’t hit them quite as well this year, but he’s been dramatically better against RHPs than he was previously, putting up a 113 wRC+ against them in 2016. As usual, he’s destroying lefties, so even competent production against right-handed pitching makes Valencia a solid everyday player.

Over the last 365 days, Valencia has put up a 140 wRC+, and his overall batting line is almost indistinguishable from some guy named Kris Bryant. We’re still only talking about 118 games, so you don’t want to expect Valencia to continue hitting at this level, but he’s a guy with a career 104 wRC+ who has been markedly better than that recently and looks to have made some improvements that suggest he could perform better than his career numbers for the near future.