Trevor Bauer's last moments in a Cleveland Indians uniform won't soon be forgotten, as he's now on the move to Cincinnati in a strange three-team deal in which the side I like the most belongs to the team that didn't get a major leaguer in return.
The San Diego Padres look like the biggest winners here, though that's assuming Taylor Trammell is the player we saw the past two years and not the guy who has had a disappointing season as a 21-year-old in Double-A this year. Trammell was the 35th overall pick in 2016 but signed well over slot and showed in his first full pro season that his approach at the plate was far more advanced than the typical two-sport high school player's.
Trammell is a four-tool guy, lacking the arm for anywhere but left field, but he shows good bat control, plus speed, potentially plus range in left and projected above-average power. He was No. 14 on my updated midseason top prospect list, despite a .236/.350/.338 line this year because he's still making a ton of contact, and everything that made him an elite prospect before this year -- his swing, his speed, his batting eye -- is intact. I'm betting on a bounceback, and the Padres obviously are too, perhaps seeing this as a chance to buy low on Trammell.
The Cincinnati Reds' side makes the least sense to me, as they traded away their top prospect plus two months of Yasiel Puig for a year plus two months of a good-not-great starting pitcher. Trevor Bauer the pitcher has had one outstanding year, 2018, and has otherwise been a little bit above average, adding value as much for his ability to take the ball every fifth day as for his performance. He's currently leading the American League in innings (that's good) and walks (that's bad), in batters faced (that's good) and in batters hit (that's bad), and he's eighth in the AL in homers allowed.
Bauer is now heading to a homer-friendly ballpark as a fairly fly-ball-prone pitcher who has had high home run/fly ball rates in every year of his career except for his outlier 2018. If he pitches like that again next year, the Reds could end up winning their end of the deal. Even if they don't contend in 2020, as seems likely right now, he'd have a lot of value at the deadline, though I'm not sure they'd get a prospect of Trammell's caliber in return if they're trading two months of Bauer next July.
The most likely outcome would be that Bauer gives them a lot of innings with an ERA a bit better than league average, and they don't contend -- again -- in a tight division. That's before we consider the headache of Bauer's behavior, which surfaced again this Sunday when he was frustrated with how a decent start unraveled on him, only the latest in a string of incidents that don't look good for a 28-year-old veteran.
Then there's Cleveland, which might have been as motivated to make this deal by Bauer's recent antics as by the need to improve its major league team, which I think the Indians did in the long term. They move Bauer and end up with three players in Yasiel Puig (an impending free agent) plus young, cost-controlled Franmil Reyes and Logan Allen.
The league figured out Puig a few years ago. Since 2014, he has been a slightly above-average hitter, making up for some of his OBP deficiencies with power, and an above-average defender in right, all of which adds up to a little under 2.0 WAR per year. This year is his worst to date, with career lows in OBP and wRC+. Before, teams just pounded him inside with fastballs, knowing he couldn't get his hands inside them, but now they can also get him to chase sliders down and away or even changeups down in the zone. He's only 28 years old, but he has aged like a player much older. And while it's tantalizing to think of the impact he could have if he were still the player he was in 2013-14, that guy has been gone for a long time, and he's probably best suited to spell Tyler Naquin against lefties.
That makes me wonder if, for Cleveland, the deal was more about the young players it got back, especially Franmil Reyes. Reyes should push Jake Bauers, also a former Padres farmhand, back to the minors. Bauers is hitting .237/.311/.386 with an 81 wRC+ that puts him below replacement level, while Reyes is at .263/.312/.535 for a 112 wRC+, the latter of which is park-adjusted for the fact that he has played half his games at pitcher-friendly Petco. That's an immediate upgrade for Cleveland at the DH spot, maybe worth a win the rest of the way, and it could solve the Indians' DH spot for some time.
Allen was a top-100 prospect for me before this season, but he hasn't been effective in Triple-A or in brief stints in the majors, with uncharacteristic problems with command and control. That could be related to the move to the juiced ball in use at those levels (but not Double-A or below), as his stuff is intact, and there's no indication that he isn't healthy. He probably needs to go to Triple-A for now -- though at least that's not hitter-friendly El Paso -- with an eye toward making some starts in Cleveland in September and perhaps serving as the fifth starter next year.
Cleveland also added lefty Scott Moss from the Reds organization. Moss works with an average fastball and slider but has walked 57 guys in 102 innings this year in Double-A. He's probably a long reliever. The Indians also got Rookie-ball Arizona League performer Victor Nova from the Padres, hitting .330/.421/.451 out there, but at 19 years old and probably not a prospect.
This deal probably doesn't make the Indians any better on net this year -- they lose some in the rotation and gain it back with Reyes replacing Bauers -- but it gets them a couple of players whose rights they control for at least five more years and who should produce enough to make the deal worthwhile.