Napoli for Francisco: Winners, Winners, Chicken Dinners
Mike Napoli is underrated. Relief pitchers are inherently overrated. We hold these truths to be (supposedly) self-evident. So why does today’s trade of Napoli for Frank Francisco look just as good for the Jays as it does for the Rangers?
Let’s start with the basics. Both players are slated for arbitration. Francisco has asked for $4.875 million, while Texas countered with $3.5 million. Napoli asked the Angels for $6.1 million, and was offered $5.3 million…before the trade that saddened America. The Rangers will reportedly send less than $1 million to the Jays. So if both players win their arbitration cases, the Jays figure to save something like $2 million.
Napoli, 29, will help the Rangers, though he’ll likely fill several different roles to do so, and won’t play full-time. Texas’s Adrian Beltre signing pushed Michael Young to DH, and more than made up for the loss of Vladimir Guerrero‘s right-handed bat. The Rangers also signed free agent Yorvit Torrealba to be the starting catcher, coming off a solid 2.4 WAR season with the Padres last year. But the Rangers still lacked a starting first baseman vs. lefties to platoon with Mitch Moreland, a role Napoli will fill ably, and the most obvious use for his services.
He’ll almost certainly see more than the 200 plate appearances you might expect from a typical platoon man, though. Aside from his stellar .310/.406/.581 line vs. left-handers over the past seasons, Napoli has also hit a respectable .239/.316/.473 vs. righties. His win value has remained remarkably steady the past three seasons (2.8, 2.7, 2.7 WAR, 2008-2010), though he’s needed progressively more playing time to keep that value constant, though: The more Napoli plays, the more right-handers he faces, and the more he looks like the defensively-challenged strikeout king who Mike Scioscia seemed eager to leave by the roadside at the nearest El Torito. Still, there’s no getting around those sky-high ISO numbers, and Napoli’s power could get a further boost from the House That Wayne Tolleson Built.
Indeed, Napoli could end up catching almost as much as he did in Anaheim (not counting last season’s Kendry Morales fill-in job), despite Torrealba’s presence. Torrealba has been a part-time player nearly his entire career, and doubled his win value in 2010 compared to his next-best season. Throw in some spot starts at DH to give Young (or Beltre) an occasional day off, and the Rangers should fare well leveraging one of baseball’s most perplexing beards.
Napoli’s 20-plus-homer power would have surely fit well on a Jays team coming off the highest home run total for any major league team in half a decade. But the Jays feel they’re set at catcher already, with J.P. Arencibia coming off a 34-homer campaign last year (32 at Triple-A). Toronto didn’t even have the same right-handed utility first base/DH need that the Rangers had, not after roping in Edwin Encarnacion — an average 20 HR guy himself over the past three seasons, and a pretty solid lefty masher in his own right.
We’ve noted the Jays’ full house when it came to playing time options for Napoli. At first glance, Francisco would seem to be somewhat redundant himself. He’s the third hard-throwing, right-handed reliever to be plucked off the free agent wire this off-season, joining Octavio Dotel and Jon Rauch – as well as Shawn Camp, Casey Janssen, and the very capable Jason Frasor in a deep, righty-laden pen.
But the 31-year-old Francisco isn’t some generic arm; the Jays got a criminally underrated relief pitcher here. Fueled by elite strikeout rates (11.8, 10.4, 10.3 per 9 IP) and manageable walk rates, Francisco has put impressive fielding-independent numbers over the past three seasons, with xFIPs of 3.34, 3.53 and 3.31 from 2008 to 2010. You could argue that Francisco’s a more valuable relief pitcher at this point in his career than, say, Jonathan Papelbon. And that’s before mentioning that Papelbon could make more than three times Francisco’s salary this year.
The big concern for Francisco is his health. A frequent visitor to the DL, he’s tossed just 102 innings in the past two years. Though we usually advocate using your best relief pitchers in the highest-leverage situations, all else being equal, Francisco could benefit from a lighter closer’s workload, rather than the high-leverage fireman work that a top set-up man must often endure. Even that’s no sure thing, of course, as Francisco has suffered injuries playing multiple roles, and couldn’t even crack the Rangers’ playoff roster last year due to a strained rib muscle.
From a roster perspective, we know the Jays had other options for Napoli’s spot. But the benefit to the bullpen could be greater than it might first appear. Dotel struggles so mightily against left-handed hitting that he should be deployed as a ROOGY if the Jays know what’s good for them. If that still leaves the Jays with a deep bullpen, that’s not a bad problem to have either. I’ve already covered the importance (and threat) of cascading twice for FanGraphs: Defense helps keep a pitching staff healthy and effective, but so too does having multiple quality arms to avoid overusing any one man. Ironically, one of the team’s that seems to understand this best is Francisco’s old employer the Rangers (though it’d sure be nice to see Neftali Feliz in that Texas rotation).
Napoli is a more valuable player on an absolute win basis, as any productive hitter would be vs. any relief pitcher, even a really good one. But there’s a good chance that a near-elite reliever like Francisco could fetch more in a deadline trade than a defensively-challenged two-and-half-true-outcome hitter like Napoli, should the Jays fall out of contention. The Jays could also reap a compensation draft pick or two, assuming Francisco enjoys a strong (and healthy) season, and the new collective bargaining agreement doesn’t radically alter MLB’s free agent-compensation system (the CBA might be the bigger threat of the two). The extra $2 million won’t hurt either, not with the Jays likely not vying for the kind of playoff run that the defending AL champs in Arlington expect.
The more you look at this trade, the more it says win-win.
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If I had to guess, I’d say AA will make another swap before all is said and done. That bullpen doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
doesn’t it though? healthy competition in the pen?
The Rangers also have Matt Treanor, who should stays above Napoli in the depth charts at catcher (especially after looking at Beyond the Box Score’s 2010 Catcher Defense Rankings). Hopefully, us Rangers fans won’t see much of Mike behind the plate.
Right, the assumption that Napoli is going to get 200 ABs at catcher is quite optimistic. Wash and Ryan value catcher defense, which is why Treanor and his really awful bat played so much last season. He’ll get plenty of AB’s, but I think ironically this deal just pigeonholed him as even more of a DH who can catch occasionally than that perception was in Anaheim.
No, Napoli will primarily platoon with Moreland at first, against tough lefties. So you mean he’s pigeonholed as a platoon first baseman who can occasionally catch or DH.
i.e. Dotel, most pitchers, especially relievers, struggle against left hand pitching yet that often doesn’t affect they way they are deployed on the mound. :)
I kid of course.
With Rauch, Dotel, Frasor, Camp, Jansen – I could see that making room for Jo Jo Reyes and Purcey in the Pen. I think the league has figured out Carlson and Roenicke just isn’t effective, especially against lefties. Jo Jo hopefully could be the answer vs lhb this year.
I think carlson is quite good against lefties…
Carlson throws to righties and lefties pretty evenly. 4.25 career xFIP vs. L and 4.39 xFIP vs. R
the last major move i can se AA making is signing russel branyan. Under this scenario, lind can dh, encarnacion can platoon with branyan and bautista can play third, with juan rivera in left field and snyder in right. Option two could be bautista in right, snyder in left, rivera splitting time with branyan in the dh role, lind at 1b and encarnacion at 3rd.
AA is gathering all cheaply-acquirable relief pitchers. It’s a pretty awesome strategy – either trade them at the deadline or offer them arbitration after the season. Both are good options. Because he signed so many, AA will have a large portion of a small market (RPs) available at the deadline. And relievers are chronically overvalued in terms of the comp. picks they net.
You are assuming that comps will be in the cards for next year of course
even if they’re not, they’re also chronically overvalued at the trade deadline.
Huntington and Co have been doing this for years, yet are nearly universally maligned for such tactics. Me thinks that “AA” is getting the benefit of the doubt after completely man-handling the halos in the Wells deal. If you truly want to compete in the AL East you need players like Napoli on your bench in the event of injury or inefectiveness. Obviously people will argue that the Jays need pitching over offense right now, but this wasn’t the way to do it.
http://ducksonthepondkid.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/well-that-was-fast/
watch out for the blue jays….
….in 2013
I think AA is trying deal his surplus of really good to elite RPs if they (most likely) fall out of contention. They have a very good team on paper but defense will be the Archilles heel. If they sign Russel Branyan and he somehows stays healthy and effective, The Jays may just have a shot at the wildcard.
…..defense and the fact they do not get on base well at all, and they traded their best pitcher…I don’t see playoffs in 2011
On base issues are the result of Murphy’s batting strategy with waiting on your pitch in an at bat. And trading their best pitcher. Marcum was not their best pitcher. Probably their 3rd best. 4th even maybe with how well Cecil played
Ricky Romero is still there.
I wish people would stop saying that Marcum was their best pitcher, and that they won’t be better off with a full season of Morrow and Drabek in 2011. Not to mention Lawrie, who wouldn’t surprise me if he’s at 3B by June.
But Marcum clearly was their best pitcher, at least for last year. Best WHIP, better K/9 than Romero or Cecil.
Doesn’t mean he would have been the best this year (though I think it’s likely), but it’s certainly not ridiculous to assert.
The Jays have an average or above player at every position but first base. Up the middle D with Escobar, Hill and Davis is especially strong. Snider, Bautista and Rivera have typically provided average D and Arencibia projects to do the same.
Vernon wells for Napoli and Rivera? Napoli for Frank Francisco?
What is heck is this? These are like fantasy baseball trades.
Hah. very true! AA is pulling off some crazy things this off season.
Its like AA played the Wells trade into fear of not enough offense for the Rangers.
It may look like that, to people who think Mike Napoli is underrated.
Wells for a bag of balls would still be in the realms of fanatasy baseball
What’s really interesting is how Tony Reagins has helped to increase the gulf between the Rangers and Angels by making his team weaker and the Rangers stronger within a matter of days.
Off the top of my head, potential blue jays free agents returning draft pick compensation next winter:
Frasor
Francisco
Dotel
Rauch
Camp
Encarnacion
Bautista
Rivera
I assume Bautista will either be traded at the deadline (possibly more value than the draft picks) or signed long-term mid-season.
Assuming that compensation is still in the cards.
I would assume compensation will remain for contracts ending in 2011, regardless of what the upcoming CBA decides.
The new CBA will apply for the 2012 season. The expiration of the contract is not what yields the pick under the current system, it’s the offer of arbitration for the following year.
The flaw in your assumption is that the comp picks are somehow tied to expiring contracts, but they aren’t. It’s tied to an 2012 arbitration offer (under the current system). Presumably the 2012 arbitration process (and any compensation derived from it) would be under whatever guidelines are set forth in the next CBA that applies to that year…
This is in reply to Joe:
Yes, but to qualify as a free agent, a player must have 6 or years of service time and an expiring contract.
So, an expiring contract is a precondition or precursor to the compensation process. So the players listed above are potential sources of compensation picks, which I think was the point.
And, you’re right–an offer of arbitration needs to be made by the player’s old team to a player by a certain date(and rejected) for the team to gain compensation. I think the major dilemma/issue here is that each offseason, the offer of arbitration needs to be made by late November/early December. If it is made by that time and rejected, the team losing the player will gain compensation picks in the next year’s draft.
But how will that work next offseason, when the CBA expires in late December and the draft is held in June 2012? I guess I’m assuming that the current system will be in place and teams will still be able to do as they’ve done for the past several years. The new CBA negotiated this year will take effect for 2012 arbitration offers to free agents(in November/December 2012), effecting the 2013 Draft. Or at least that’s how I read it. :)
Indeed.
What a terrible trade for the Rangers! If they are serious about giving Neftali Feliz a chance to start, that leaves them with Alexi Ogando as their closer and pretty much nobody as their setup man. Just look at their roster. They have nobody else in the bullpen! They give up the guy who, at worst, was their 7′th inning guy in a Francisco, Ogando, Feliz bullpen, and who might have taken back the closer job if Feliz goes to the rotation for a guy who might get more than 200 AB’s as the RH side of a DH/1B platoon? Maybe AA is a genius after all?
I agree. The Rangers are (obviously) a win now team. They can’t afford to have question marks in the pen. With the glut of DH types on the market and the fact that they don’t need a catcher, why not just sign one of them? Re-up Vlad and hope he returns to his first half success or they could have pursued Manny or Damon. If the Jays strategy is to trade their relievers to a team that needs them at the deadline, FF could be heading right back to Texas next Summer, but this time Texas needs to throw in prospects.
Texas clearly is leaving Feliz in the bullpen, at least for this year, if not forever. Unlike the Chapman situation, the Rangers don’t have a lot of money tied up in Feliz pressuring them to start him.
I totally agree. It’s true they are a lefty heavy at 1B with both Moreland and Davis, but Moreland hangs in well against lefties (remember the 13 pitch ab against a good lefty in the playoffs, ending with a big homer). This move seems desperate and unnecessary to me, and I really don’t see how it makes them better.
It was always unrealistic to expect Feliz to start this year. His secondary pitches have taken a significant step back from when he first came up as a rookie and he would need a lot of time at AAA to stretch out and refine those again. Realistically, after last year’s (over)reliance on the fastball, the only way chance Feliz had at starting got pushed to 2012 at the earliest.
Jon Rausch is a “hard throwing” right hander?
His average fastball speed last year was just a tick under 91mph last year – that’s not exactly a hard thrower out of the pen.
But he’s 8 feet tall, that adds at least 5 mph to his perceived velocity.
That’s just what his baseball card says. He’s 7’11″ tops.
The Napoli trade means the Rangers are better positioned to trade Michael Young for something of value (depending on how much salary they eat). They get a DH in Napoli who can also platoon at 1B and C.
Toronto gets a more than serviceable RP’er for a guy they had little use for, but was simply one of the costs to dump Vernon Wells 86 million dollar contract. A good trade just got better. Lets see what they get for Rivera.
Blue Jays starting to make me nervous as a Red Sox fan. They might be in a position financially to land Pujols next year, and seems they got a GM with brains.
It also pretty much forces Texas to keep Neftali Feliz in the bullpen, unless they can trade Michael Young for a closer. I can’t imagine anybody giving up much for Young who’s defensive inabilities were on full display in the World Series.
The Rangers could have traded Michael Young already, but seem unwilling to eat a lot of his salary. He’s a great pickup for some team in the $6 mil/year for 3 years or so. $16 mil/year for 3 years? Good luck with that, Rangers.
The Rangers will keep Michael Young as a utility infielder and backup for the inevitable Kinsler DL stint before they ship Michael Young off with the 20-30 mil another team is going to demand to take him.
Maybe they should temporarily hire AA to dump his salary.
Another benefit for the Jays is that it seems like AA is content with watching Arencibia catch and Lind play 1B on a daily basis. We’re not making the playoffs this year, so we might as well see what we’ve got with these 2 moving forward.
Dotel struggles against left handed pitching? is he eschewing the dh for when he pitches?
Don’t dismiss the possibility of Feliz in the rotation, still. The Rangers like what Ogando can do. Their bullpen is very deep. Guys like Michael Kirkman, Omar Beltre, Matt Harrison, Pedro Strop, Mason Tobin, Eric Hurley, Zach Phillips and Tanner Scheppers are ready or are poised to contribute in 2011. Yoshinori Tateyama, Mark Lowe, and Scott Feldman are also fighting for roster spots behind O’Day, Oliver, and Rhodes.
That’s an awful lot of question marks. Pretty much every team in the league has a list of talented relief pitchers who have done nothing at the MLB level. Don’t get me wrong, I like a few of those guys, but Francisco was a proven commodity. The probability is that this move weakens their pen, especially since the combined age for the lefties is 179.
My question: how would Francisco have looked in the Angels pen? Assuming the Rangers would have made a trade in their division (it’s not like we’re talking MVP or Cy Young candidates here), it would have been nice from their perspective to have made that trade and kept that boat load of cash parked in their outfield.
It really looks like Texas might keep Neftali Feliz in the bullpen another year. I think they still have to try him in the rotation though, right? A lot of people surmise that he could end up as a reliever eventually anyways, but the only way to see if he can firm up his secondary stuff further is to allow him an earnest opportunity to join the rotation. Feliz is already a dynamite short reliever but the Rangers, in my opinion, almost owe it to themselves & he to maximize his value.
I still think Texas can afford to test Feliz as a starter because of their relief depth. I’m putting alot o faith in Ogando, and despite the age of their lefty relievers, they’re all performing at or near career bests. When you consider Feliz’s upside, making him a starter has the potential of maximizing his value. In the playoffs, it’s good to have guys like Lee, Lincecum, Halladay, etc.. While I like the abilities of CJ, Colby and Tommy, pitchers like Feliz and Holland have the ability to be better. Brandon Webb is the biggest uncertainty in the rotation. Besides Feliz, Michael Kirkman might have the best shot at winning a rotation spot if Webb or Hunter falters or injuries become a factor. Besides, it’s usually much easier to pick up a new bullpen arm (versus a starter) during the season. If either Feliz or Holland can become an elite starter, I can see the Rangers rotation improving upon their AL 3rd best performance from last year. I don’t think most people realize that Cliff Lee worsened the Rangers team ERA in his 15 starts during the 2010 regular season.
The only thing Jason Frasor is ‘very capable’ of is blowing saves, throwing straight fastballs, and letting down his team in any high-leverage situation. The quicker that guy is gone or pitching meaningless fifth inning mop-ups the better.
Frasor gets alot of flack that is underved. Is he good in high leverage situations no. But he’s a solid 7th inning arm and occasional set-up man.
I am sure the bluejays are not done dealing. The Jays didn’t want Fraser back and expected him to decline arbitration and get a pick for him. When he accepted arbitration the plan changed to sign him and trade him for a prospect ( my guess is a decent first baseman who is atleast AA by the end of last season so he can play at Las Vegas this season)