The trade: The New York Yankees acquire RHPs Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino from the Oakland Athletics for LHP Ken Waldichuk, RHP Luis Medina, LHP JP Sears and INF Cooper Bowman.
After the Mariners outbid the Yankees for Luis Castillo, GM Brian Cashman turned to the second-best starting pitcher available in Montas and got his man, giving up a package of four players for the veteran right-hander, plus reliever Trivino, who has struggled with a 6.47 ERA in 2022.
The grades:
Let's start here: The Yankees get a pitcher pretty comparable to Castillo in Montas without giving up a prospect rated near as high as Noelvi Marte, the shortstop the Mariners traded as the key part of the Castillo deal. Witness their numbers the past two seasons:
Castillo: 272⅔ IP, 244 H, 26 HR, 103 BB, 282 SO, 3.63 ERA, 127 ERA+
Montas: 291⅔ IP, 255 H, 32 HR, 85 BB, 316 SO, 3.30 ERA, 121 ERA+
Both are under team control through 2023 and even had sore shoulders this season, with Castillo missing all of April and Montas missing two weeks in early July. Castillo has been dominant the past month, which pushed his value above Montas in recent weeks, but if Montas is healthy -- he returned from his shoulder issue to make two abbreviated starts of 53 and 78 pitches and looked OK -- the Yankees acquired a pitcher who could reasonably slide in as their No. 2 starter behind Gerrit Cole in the postseason.
Indeed, while the rotation has been a strength all season, ranking third in the majors in ERA behind the Dodgers and Astros, Cashman had reasons to be concerned about the state of his group:
Luis Severino is out with a lat strain, with a potential return date around Sept. 1.
Domingo German has taken his place in the rotation and remains homer-prone.
Jameson Taillon has a 5.36 ERA over his past 10 starts, averaging just five innings per outing, and that includes six scoreless innings in his latest outing against the Royals.
Nestor Cortes is nearing his career high in innings and hasn't dominated like he did the first two months.
Jordan Montgomery has scuffled badly his past two starts.
Note as well the rotation ERA by month:
April: 2.71
May: 2.83
June: 3.49
July: 4.38
Worried about fatigue, workload and health, it made sense for Cashman to add another starter. Montas works off a 95 mph four-seamer and sinker, but it's his splitter and slider that he utilizes with great effectiveness as his big swing-and-miss offerings, plus a cutter that he'll throw nine or 10 times per game. It's a five-pitch power arsenal, and he's a pitcher you can be comfortable with going through the lineup three times. Manager Aaron Boone can now go to a six-man rotation or spot-start German if he wants to give some extra rest to the likes of Cortes or Taillon. Either way, it should make for a more rested group heading into October.
Another reason to add a frontline starter: The Yankees are battling the Astros for best overall record in the American League, and while teams don't usually worry too much about home-field advantage, it's something the Yankees should push for, given they are 40-13 at home and 29-21 on the road.
While the Mariners gave up a consensus top-15 overall prospect in Marte to get Castillo (plus shortstop Edwin Arroyo, who has hit over. 300 as an 18-year-old in the California League), the Yankees didn't have to surrender any of their top three or four prospects -- Anthony Volpe, Oswald Peraza, Jasson Dominguez or Austin Wells.
Grade: A-
That's not to say the A's necessarily got fleeced here. Waldichuk is the headliner, a 24-year-old lefty with Randy Johnson-type strikeout numbers between Double-A and Triple-A in 2022: 2.71 ERA, 76.1 IP, 54 H, 33 BB, 116 SO, 7 HR. You have to love that 13.7 K's per nine, and he's held that since his promotion to Scranton, averaging 13.2 K's per nine. Working from a three-quarters delivery, Waldichuk throws 92-95 mph but with a pretty active/violent delivery that is a lot of arms and legs coming at the hitter and perhaps works to his advantage.
He has also averaged 3.9 walks per nine (4.3 in Triple-A), so the command is a little spotty, and he's also averaged just 4.3 innings per start in Triple-A, so he still has to prove he's more than just a five-and-dive starter. Or four-and-dive. The A's will give him a chance to start, maybe even down the stretch, since he hasn't thrown that many innings in the minors, but there's a chance he ends up as a reliever.
Medina is a pitcher we've been hearing out about for years -- after all, he first hit 100 mph as a 16-year-old. He's finally in Double-A at age 23, still throwing hard and still having trouble throwing consistent strikes, with 40 walks in 72 innings. He has averaged just 4⅔ innings per start -- the Yankees, like most teams these days, play it so conservatively with their prospects that we have no idea if these guys can actually pitch five innings on a regular basis -- and has limited batters to a .179 average. His pure stuff is absolutely electric, but there's high reliever risk here as well.
Sears is the sleeper, a lefty originally drafted by the Mariners in 2017 who has been up and down with the Yankees in 2022, posting a 2.05 ERA across 22 innings while also dominating in Triple-A (1.67 ERA, 55 K's and just seven walks in 43 innings, mostly as a starter). He throws hard enough for a lefty -- his fastball averaged 93.7 when he was up and he threw it 60% of the time, mixing in a slider and changeup. He's probably not going to survive as a starter in the majors throwing his fastball that often, but given the way he has pitched the past two seasons, he deserves every opportunity to prove himself in a big league rotation.
Bowman is a 2021 fourth-round pick out of Louisville, hitting .217/.343/.355 at high A.
It's an interesting package for the A's. If everything breaks right, they end up with three starting pitchers, maybe even a top-of-the-rotation guy in a best-case scenario for Waldichuk or Medina. But they might also end up with three relievers. I don't mind going for the ceiling over floor here, but you do wonder what they might have received if they had traded Montas in spring training like they did with Matt Olson and Matt Chapman.