The Orioles missed their ideal window for trading Manny Machado, which would have been last offseason so the acquiring team would have gotten a whole year of playing time plus the potential to get a draft pick as compensation when he hits free agency this winter. Waiting until there is less than half a season left for the acquiring team led to fewer interested teams and generally lower market valuations on him, with teams refusing to part with their No. 1 prospects. And indeed, the Orioles did not get the Dodgers' best prospect, or their second-best one, instead getting a quantity return that might yield four or five big leaguers but seems unlikely to give them back a star.
The Dodgers lost Corey Seager for the year earlier this season, but shortstop hasn't been their biggest problem in 2018 -- second base has, where all Dodgers hitters combined have hit .221/.323/.336, by far their worst production at any position. Chris Taylor has regressed from last season, but he's still hitting well above the league average for a shortstop. The goal should be to get Logan Forsythe out of the lineup on a regular basis, which could mean putting Taylor at second and Machado at short, or putting Machado at third and sliding Justin Turner, when he's healthy, over to second, which was his primary position before he joined the Dodgers. That's probably their best defensive alignment, as Machado's defensive numbers at shortstop this year have looked like those of a player returning to a position he hasn't played since six years and 30 pounds ago.
That lineup also would give opposing pitchers no respite, as the Dodgers would have an above-average hitter at all eight field positions. (They still have a bit of a logjam with Max Muncy, who can stand at third but doesn't play it well, and Cody Bellinger both ideally suited to first base, and some ripple effect in the outfield, but adding Machado shouldn't exacerbate this further given his defensive value at third and Muncy's liability there.)
The Dodgers were the best team in the NL West on paper, but just a half-game up in the standings on Arizona and only four games ahead of the fourth-place Giants, so adding a win or two from Machado the rest of the way should be meaningful to their odds of making the playoffs and winning the division.
Yusniel Diaz looks like a solid regular with a chance to be more depending on his ultimate position and power output. He's a high OBP guy and has generally shown good plate discipline, with a swing that always seemed more geared to contact than power. Diaz's biggest problem since he signed as a free agent out of Cuba has been staying on the field: He played in only 86 games in 2016, 114 last year, and missed two weeks in April and two more in May this year, the latter for a hip injury. He's probably not a center fielder in the long run, lacking the speed normally required for the position, and his bat profiles as a regular in a corner if he doesn't develop more power. He does have some loft in his swing and rotates his hips to get some strength from his lower half, although he glides out over his front side, giving back a little bit of the advantage he might get from his legs.
Dean Kremer is the most interesting name in the package. A 14th-round pick in 2016 out of UNLV, he ranks third in minor league baseball this year in strikeouts, mostly working in high-A Rancho Cucamonga, a great hitters' park, before a promotion this month to Double-A. The athletic right-hander is up to 97 and will throw four pitches, coming from a good three-quarters slot and getting on top of the ball well, with the curveball his one above-average off-speed pitch. He cuts himself off badly in his landing, meaning he has to come way across his body to work to his glove side, a potential hazard both for effectiveness against left-handed batters (not a problem this year) and for long-term arm health. He profiles as a back-end starter or late-inning reliever.
Outfielder Rylan Bannon has had a big year in Rancho but, as I said above, it's a great park for hitters (he's barely hitting on the road), and he's not young for the level; he has a chance to be a bench piece.
Zach Pop is a pure reliever who will work in the mid-90s, touching 97 with some sink, and has gone from wild in college to a strike-thrower in pro ball, although his delivery is rough and he's probably going to be a middle guy if he makes it. Breyvic Valera is a potential utility infielder who has strong contact rates in the upper minors and has played all over the field, probably not bringing enough stick to be a regular anywhere, although he might just make enough contact to be a second-division regular at shortstop.
The end of the Manny Machado era in Baltimore thus comes with something of a whimper, as it's unlikely -- not impossible, of course, baseball being what it is -- that the Orioles got a future star or even above-average regular in return for a player who, by Baseball-Reference.com, ranks 15th in franchise history in WAR for position players, despite playing just 860 games in orange and black. (Only Hall of Famer Frank Robinson and should-be Hall of Famer Bobby Grich had more value in fewer games.) It is probably a fair return for two-plus months of Machado, but it will be hard to look at this trade without thinking of what might have been had the franchise shopped him last winter.