The trade: The St. Louis Cardinals acquire LHP Jose Quintana and RHP Chris Stratton from the Pittsburgh Pirates for RHP Johan Oviedo and IF Malcom Nunez.
After the top two pitchers in this year's trade market moved to two contenders in recent days, another team in the hunt for a pitching upgrade pivoted into the next tier. In plucking Jose Quintana from division foe Pittsburgh, St. Louis adds a needed arm. But does this trade really move the needle for the Cardinals?
Let's start this with a comparison.
Pitcher A: 9.1 K/9; 3.2 W/9; 1.2 HR/9; 4.02 FIP; 96 ERA+
Pitcher B: 7.8 K/9; 2.7 W/9; 0.6 HR/9; 3.24 FIP; 119 ERA+
Surprise! Both pitchers are Quintana. The first line reflects Quintana's aggregate numbers from 2017 through the end of last season. The second line reflects what Quintana did for the Pirates this season. The key question for the Cardinals will be which is more indicative of what Quintana will do for the rest of this season.
Honestly, it could go either way. Digging into his advanced numbers, Quintana's .307 BABIP this season is right around his career norm. It could improve in St. Louis, where he will play in front of what I rate as the best team defense in baseball. His strikeout rate has dropped, and Quintana has induced more soft contact this season. He isn't an extreme fly ball pitcher, but he has benefited from a stark drop in homers per fly ball rate. That's really been the driver of his success this season.
Maybe some of that has to do with the deadened baseball, but with no obvious changes in his pitch arsenal, this newfound ability to keep the ball in the park seems tied to Quintana simply locating his pitches better. According to StatCast, his career "meatball" percentage is 7%. (The MLB average this season is 7.2%.) Quintana this season is at 4.7%. He has stayed out of the middle of the plate.
Busch Stadium and PNC Park play similarly in terms of park factors, but if anything, St. Louis will be a little bit more of a comfortable spot for Quintana. Another point in his favor.
Now another comparison.
Pitcher A: 7.4 K/9; 2.3 W/9; 0.8 HR/9; 3.47 FIP, 118 ERA+
Pitcher B: 7.8 K/9; 2.7 W/9; 0.6 HR/9; 3.24 FIP; 119 ERA+
All Quintana again. You've seen that second line before; it's the one the Cardinals are hoping for. And it looks a lot like what he did in the aggregate for the Chicago White Sox during his best seasons from 2012 to 2016.
So, you have a pitcher having a terrific season with no glaring indicators calling for regression moving into a support system (defense and park) better than the one he is leaving. One who will be a free agent after the season and now will be auditioning for potential suitors while helping the St. Louis playoff push. And all he's trying to do is to continue to be the pitcher he once was, before he lost his way for a time.
Sure, even this version of Quintana would be at best a marginal upgrade to a Cardinals rotation that still featured Steven Matz. But Matz, who suffered a knee injury, isn't there, and according to recent updates, he will be hard-pressed to get back in time to play a meaningful role in the playoff race. And Quintana, if he keeps doing what he was doing for Pittsburgh, is more than a marginal upgrade from St. Louis' other internal options.
Still, he will require bullpen support. Quintana is just 3-5 over his 20 starts for Pittsburgh, with the low victory count a product of not just the Pirates' quality but the fact that he has barely pitched five innings per start. Over 20 starts, the Pirates limited Quintana to just 72 batters faced after the first two times through the order. Of the 34 pitchers with at least 20 starts through Monday, that's the fewest batters faced at that time. Yet Quintana's results in those spots have been good, with a .607 OPS allowed that is actually better than during his first two times facing a hitter.
Thus, it's possible the Cardinals can coax more of a workload out of Quintana than the Pirates were willing to try to extract. But he'll need help, and some of it will come from Stratton, who deepens a Cardinals bullpen that needed more depth. Stratton's ERA is bloated by a meltdown appearance against the Atlanta Braves in June, but he has had a mostly successful run with the Pirates, though he struggled for the past few weeks.
Stratton has been hit harder this season, without a doubt. But he still has top-of-the-line spin rates, and if the Cardinals can help him iron out some command issues, he is a veteran arm with a long track record who is capable of working in high-leverage spots. Oviedo had been pitching fairly well of late out of the bullpen for St. Louis, but he was used primarily in low-leverage spots.
This move doesn't make the Cardinals a deadline winner by itself. The team that never seems to make that in-season splash still hasn't done that. Maybe the big move is yet to come or there will be a series of smaller upgrades. Or maybe this is it.
Quintana is solid but not an ace. Those options were Luis Castillo and Frankie Montas, who might have been too costly for St. Louis if the return were to take them out of the running on a star player. (Yes, we're talking about Juan Soto.)
Whatever happens, Quintana is a solid upgrade, and Stratton lengthens the bullpen. But if this is it for the Cardinals at the deadline, it's not enough. In a vacuum, the grade listed for this move starts to erode.
St. Louis grade: B
Pretty simple stuff, really, for a rebuilding team. You take a chance on a struggling veteran on a one-year, make-good deal. You help him fix what's ailing him. And if you haven't made the leap into contention, you trade that player and acquire talent that might help you when your window of contention opens.
We don't know when that window will open for the Pirates, but there is a gathering storm of talent in their system. Some of those first drops have already fallen -- Oneil Cruz, Ke'Bryan Hayes. Quintana wasn't likely to be around when the wins start to flow, but Oviedo and Nunez might help them when they do.
With deals like this, the question for the rebuilding club is always whether they could have gotten more. But let's face it, while I like where Quintana is with his game right now, two months of him was only going to fetch so much. And Stratton is being moved at a low point.
With that in mind, this feels like an appropriate return for Pittsburgh. Oviedo, 24, is a big righty with mid-90s velocity on a four-seamer with average spin and subpar results, but he has the raw stuff that the Pirates can work with. The metrics on his slider are better, and this season he has become more of a two-pitch hurler while working more in a relief role. It'll be interesting to see what role the Pirates, known for their ability to get the most out of pitchers, have in mind for Oviedo after they get a chance to work with him.
Before the season, Nunez was rated as the Cardinals' 10th-best prospect by Kiley McDaniel with a 40+ future value. McDaniel wrote, "He can hit, and he has raw power, but his swing plane doesn't leverage all of his raw power, and his pitch selection is just OK. He might fit best at first base, so it's trending a little more toward a corner/utility platoon than every-day player right now."
Since then, Nunez has hit for more power while still being young for his level in Double-A and demonstrating solid strike zone indicators. The Cardinals' system is deep in infielders, so he was expendable for them. But he gives the Pirates another talented bat to add to their prospect pool.