The Detroit Tigers should be making moves like acquiring Joc Pederson. The operative word there is “should.” Here are three trade ideas.
Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Joc Pederson could conceivably be traded this winter. Why, you ask, should you the Tigers fan be interested in Pederson?
Because he’s the perfect fit for Detroit right now—and down the line.
Peterson is essentially good enough now to help expedite the rebuild some. At 26, he’s young enough to be in the picture long-term when the Tigers are back to being perennial playoff contenders.
The breakdown on Pederson essentially reads like this. He’s a 26-year-old outfielder with legit power and the eye to draw a decent number of walks. He registered a .354 wOBA last year, hits left-handed and is a near lock to eclipse the .200 or .220 ISO mark in a season. Pederson also plays passable enough defense in the outfield grass as to not be a deterrent.
In 667.2 innings in left field, the Dodger turned in a -0.4 Def, a +4 DRS, a 1.0 ARM and a 7.0 UZR/150. He also saw time in center field and didn’t entirely embarrass himself there either (187.1 innings, -2.5 Def, -3 DRS, -0.9 ARM, -19.8 UZR/150).
Plus, the outfielder is making an entirely reasonable $5 million in 2019 and has another year of arbitration eligibility remaining after that (both per Spotrac).
And, it looks like the Dodgers are reportedly shopping him. That is, according to the latest tweetfrom NBC LA’s Michael J. Duarte.
Duarte tweeted the following on Wednesday morning:
While it remains to be seen what teams Pederson is being shopped to, the Tigers make sense as a speculative fit. Beyond the statistical fit mentioned above, Detroit could slot him in as Nicholas Castellanos’ long-term successor in the outfield and alongside Miguel Cabrera, Christin Stewart and Jeimer Candelario in the middle of the order.
There are a number of ways to go about trading for Joc Pederson. Here are some ideas.
(Mind you this is all speculative.)
Option One: The Prospect Swap
Tigers acquire: Joc Pederson
Dodgers acquire: Kyle Funkhouser, Gregory Soto and Drew VerHagen
The Tigers probably shouldn’t be looking to give up any prospects at this point, but Pederson’s potential availability brings up an interesting situation.
Detroit could trade prospects (like Funkhouser and Soto) not exactly the Casey Mizes, Matt Mannings and Franklin Perezes of the system, but quality prospects all the same.
Then, the team could eventually move Castellanos and try and get similar net value in return from a prospect standpoint. It’s a risky gamble, but a worthy gamble all the same. If the Tigers can pull it off, they’d be trading one year of Castellanos and his $9.95 million salary for two years of Pederson, who is making $4.95 million less than Detroit’s current right fielder.
Plus, Detroit would be coming away with a similarly potent bat who also doubles as a much better fielder. And they’d still have the same general depth and value in the farm system.
(Admittedly, Peterson doesn’t hit lefties much, but his glove may more than make up for that inability when compared to Castellanos.)
And even if the Tigers can’t recoup the value on Castellanos, dealing Funkhouser and Soto is a justifiable risk at this point.
Detroit has a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of talented pitching prospects climbing the minor league ladder at the moment. A number of those pitchers (Mize, Manning, Perez, Beau Burrows, Alex Faedo Anthony Castro, Funkhouser, Soto, Logan Shore, Grayson Long and Tyler Alexander) will spend the majority of 2019 either at Double-A or higher.
And this is all without mentioning graduated prospects like Spencer Turnbull and Matt Hall, who both made their Major League debuts late last season.
Not all of those players are going to stay starters. Purely from a mathematical standpoint, it isn’t going to work. Even if the Tigers use about 6-10 starters in a season (which is a normal number per year for most teams) when the aforementioned group are all ready to crack the Majors, there’s simply too much depth. And this is all assuming Michael Fulmer, Daniel Norris and Matthew Boyd all have no roles with the team going forward.
There are simply too many starters, and Detroit would do well to delve into some of that depth now, especially when a pitcher like Soto is still viewed as a starter and not a high-octane reliever. (There’s nothing wrong with Soto moving to the bullpen, but there’s more value in starters purely from an inning standpoint.)
To get back to the trade proposal, Funkhouser by-and-large looks like a future back end or mid-rotation starter. Soto has a similar ceiling, with his fastball and curveball in particular standing out. Both look like they could be quality starters. And if they are in Los Angeles, that’s great.
The Tigers have plenty of other arms with similar upsides in Shore and Long, not to mention better prospects like Mize, Manning, Perez, Burrows and Faedo. And even if all the pieces sent to the Dodgers find success in Los Angeles, Detroit is still dealing from a position of strength to nab a position player with an impact bat that, aside from Christin Stewart and potentially Jeimer Candelario, has been so sorely missing from the rebuild.
Drew VerHagen
The last player in the deal, Drew VerHagen, would give the Dodgers beef up a bullpen that was decent, but not great last season. (We’ll get to that in a bit.)
VerHagen quietly turned in a 3.10 FIP in 52.2 innings, and while his 4.18 xFIP paints a bit of a different picture, the right-hander decidedly came into his own last year as a reliever, with a 13.0 SwStr% as one of Ron Gardenhire’s most trusted options.
Option Two: The Relievers
Tigers acquire: Joc Pederson
Dodgers acquire: Shane Greene and Drew VerHagen
Ok. Maybe not a bit. The Los Angeles Dodgers need bullpen help.
Greene’s inclusion here doesn’t necessarily mean he has the same trade value as both Funkhouser and Soto, but the Dodgers have a definite need in the bullpen.
They’ve got Joe Kelly now to build the bridge to Kenley Jansen, but there aren’t a ton of established options. There’re certainly some talented relievers in the Dodgers’ pen, but just three Los Angeles relievers accounted for at least 50 innings last season.
The Tigers, for all their woes, had six. That may speak a bit more to the team’s dearth of options, but the numbers are what they are.
Adding Greene to the mix would give Dave Roberts another reliable, established late-inning arm to turn to. Like Kelly, he could serve as a backup closer of sorts to Jansen.
Definitively speaking, Greene had a down year in 2018. His fWAR dropped to -0.1. His FIP rose to 4.61. He surrendered 1.71 home runs per nine innings. Not a lot of great metrics there.
But the Dodgers reportedly scouted Greene during said down season, per Boston Globe articleby Nick Cafardo from July 28, 2018. Plus, the 30-year-old reliever comes with another year of controllability after 2019, per Spotrac, and is just a season removed from a two-year stretch that saw him register a 3.48 FIP, 9.50 K/9, a 10.8 SwStr% and a 1.26 WHIP.
If he can return to those levels, the inclusion of him and VerHagen (52.2 IP, 3.10 FIP, 0.6 fWAR last year) would be a significant boost to what was a middling Dodgers bullpen last season.
Fun fact, only one Los Angeles reliever (Pedro Baez) had a higher fWAR than Drew VerHagen last year. Yes, that’s right, Drew VerHagen had a higher fWAR than Kenley Jansen in 2018.
Option Three: The Blockbuster
Tigers acquire: Joc Pederson and outfield prospect Jeren Kendall
Dodgers acquire: Nicholas Castellanos and Matthew Boyd
Castellanos and Pederson are similar offensive presences in the sense both are run-producing bats with power.
However, for all his defensive warts, Castellanos may be a better fit in Los Angeles. He doesn’t require a platoon partner like Pederson does, was slightly better at the dish than the current Dodgers outfielder in 2018 and could be in for an even better offensive season in 2019.
What’s more, Castellanos also hits right-handed, which would help balance out the Dodgers’ lefty-heavy lineup a bit more.
Castellanos was largely impressive at the dish last year, turning in a 130 wRC+ to go along with a .202 ISO and a .354 OBP. He also registered a sparkling .363 wOBA. And, if you’re into that sort of stat, hat the best BsR (FanGraphs’ “all-encompassing base running statistic”) output of his career with a 3.2 number.
More good things could be coming from the right fielder, who routinely hit the ball hard. In fact, only Matt Carpenter, David Peralta, Eugenio Suarez, Joey Gallo and Tommy Pham had a higher hard-hit rate in the Majors than Castellanos’ 47.9% metric last year. That’s it, only those five routinely hit the ball harder more often than Detroit’s right fielder.
A.J. Pollock signing or no, the Dodgers are still going to need another corner outfielder, and like with all National League clubs, they can mitigate Castellanos’ fielding in the outfield a bit by using late-game defensive replacements.
Matthew Boyd
Now on to Boyd and Kendall.
At first glance, the Dodgers don’t necessarily need the Tigers’ southpaw. They’ve got Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Kenta Maeda, Hyun-jin Ryu, Rich Hill and Ross Stripling in the rotation mix, with Brock Stewart in reserve.
But Los Angeles routinely relies on numerous starters to log heavy-ish workloads. Seven different Dodgers threw at least 80 innings as a starter last year, and one of them (Alex Wood) is now a member of the Cincinnati Reds.
The reasoning for including Boyd in the deal is two-fold, or three-fold rather, from the Dodgers perspective.
In addition to Wood being gone, Hill hasn’t thrown more than 138 innings in each of the last three seasons, and both he and Ryu are free agents after next season. Bringing Boyd into the fold would give the team a dependable starter to rely on if their starters hit the disabled list in the short term. Long term, he’s a cost-efficient rotation replacement for an organization that is paying Hill $18.666 million (per Spotrac) and Ryu $17.9 million (also per Spotrac) this season.
Jeren Kendall
We now move to Jeren Kendall.
Kendall is a bit like JaCoby Jones. He’s a plus defender with elite speed and some raw power. Also, like Jones, he strikes out a lot.
To continue with the Jones comparisons, if Kendall can cut down on the strikeouts, he’s got immense upside. While the strikeouts aren’t ideal, Kendall is the kind of high-ceiling prospect Detroit should be looking at. They started going after players of the ilk by drafting Parker Meadows and Kingston Liniak in the draft, so why not continue the trend with trades?
Kendall’s production in the low minors hasn’t been too ideal, but he’s still a recent first-round pick (23rd overall in 2017), has a high ceiling and spent all of 2018 in Advanced-A.
In a ranking of the top 23 Dodgers prospects in May, FanGraphs had him 13th among Los Angeles prospects, noting the tool grade similarities to George Springer when the Houston outfielder came out of college. Speaking of tool grades, FanGraphs has Kendall’s future and present tools at the following:
(Current grades on the left, future grades on the right.)
- Hit: 30/40
- Raw power: 55/55
- Game Power 30/50
- Run: 70/70
- Fielding: 50/60
- Throw: 50/50
The hit tool obviously isn’t ideal, but the prospect has the potential across the board. It should also be noted that for all the strikeouts and lack of contact, the outfielder did turn in a 10.5% walk rate last year, an improvement from the 8.4% number he displayed in 2017 at Single-A.
If you want encouraging player comps for Kendall, MLB.com’s MLB Pipeline noted that the outfielder “has earned comparisons to a vintage Jacoby Ellsbury.” Like FanGraphs, they too ranked Kendall 13th among Dodger farmhands.
Player comps obviously aren’t an exact science, but it speaks to Kendall’s tools and upside that he’s drawn comparisons to both Springer and Ellsbury.
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