Josh Hader Traded to the Padres

[Eye Black]

The big winner in this trade might be LHP Robert Gasser. He goes from an organization that's really struggled to develop starting pitching to arguably one of the very best at it. 

[Jopal78]

3 minutes ago, bill hAll Star said:

What if Lamet was simply a dominant or good reliever now?  I'd take that.  Of course he struggled earlier this year, but he has gotten it together in AAA.

I agree with whomever else posted it first. Unless they swap Limet off right away, they have 5 starters better than Limet, and he's making 5 million this year (a lot for a long-man/middle inning reliever) and will head to arbitration again after the season. Barring a lights out performance, he probably gets traded or non-tendered after the season. 

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

47 minutes ago, jw5511986 said:

Gasser certainly top 10, Ruiz will depend on your scouting service of choice IMO.

 

*edit*

 

Honestly Gasser might be the top pitcher in the system now.

Interested in seeing what comes next now.

[GAME05]

With more teams making the playoffs now, blow-it-up moves for someone like Soto would be idiotic.

[Sakatarama]

I know there's a trade thread, but it's been brought up enough in this one to at least merit your thoughts for a Reynolds proposal. Small, Ruiz and Lutz?

 

 

[Eye Black]

 

 

[MrTPlush]

5 minutes ago, bill hAll Star said:

Look, I do get that the most dominant closer (well, Diaz is this year) is just different than discussing value of relievers, but...

 

...we're talking about 15-20 innings pitched, in which Rogers is probably 90% the pitcher Hader is.  If that costs us the division...well, it wasn't meant to be.

Maybe it will matter in the playoffs.  Or maybe Hader will give up a brack-breaking homer for the Padres.  It's such a crapshoot and the difference between Hader and Rogers is pretty slim.

Not saying Rogers is garbage...but he isn't anywhere near the pitcher Hader is. If you take Rogers last 3 seasons...its pretty 'meh'. He hasn't been good this year and he has been getting to benefit from Petco Park...his HR/9 is only 0.2 and his career number is 4x that.

Nice arm for the pen, hopefully, but not sure I would put him anywhere near Hader's level.

[Jopal78]

3 minutes ago, SRB said:

We only have him for 1.5 seasons, so even if Lamet became a dominant reliever overnight (a huge if), we'd be trading 1.5 seasons of maybe the best reliever in baseball for 2.0 seasons of elite relievers (0.5 of Rogers, 1.5 of Lamet), plus two non-elite prospects.

The only way I'm not disappointed in this trade is if they think Lamet can be a top-of-the-rotation starter again. Burnes-Woodruff-Peralta-Lamet-Lauer/Ashby would be a crazy rotation.

Lamet has not started a game in over a year, and when he did start for San Diego in 2021 he only made it through the fifth inning twice. Optimistically, maybe they view him as a hard throwing right handed Suter. 

[ecjimg]

15 minutes ago, bill hAll Star said:

Lamet and his elbow likely make him a reliever for the rest of his career.

What information is out there to lead us to believe that he cant recover from his elbow injury like many other starters have?  He finished 4th in the 2020 Cy Young voting.  Not a guy you give up on and DFA.

[Lathund]

I wrote a bit about my take on the return in an earlier post, so won't repeat myself and instead adress some more general points. 

The first one is what kind of value do people think relievers have? I know I and many others have said it before, that teams don't value relievers the same way they did when Miller/Chapman got traded, or Wade Davis got paid etc. Hader would be making something like $15m next year; when you consider that, as far as I know, no reliever has ever topped $20m AAV and very few even $15m, there isn't a great deal of surplus value there. Which doesn't mean he doesn't have value, since the kind of reliever who is worth that kind of money doesn't exactly grow on trees. But it was always going to have an impact. Fans also tend to overstate the importance of relievers, since if you blow a late lead to lose by 1 it's so very clear how that's linked to the reliever who blew it (Most of the time). It's less obvious how a botched double play or a walk and an infield single earlier in the game can have the same impact. A run is a run, and while their impact shifts some based on early vs late it's not a huge difference. The best reliever in the game has far, far less value than the best position player or starter. 

Secondly; I don't think his recent struggles had much, if anything, to do with either the decision to trade him, or the return. Fans and media are short-sighted, while General Managers aren't. Hader has been the best reliever in the game for almost 6 years, he has never been on the IL except for Covid (i.e no arm/shoulder issues), he recently broke a streak of, what was it 40 consecutive scoreless regular season appearances. The fact that he had a couple of rough appearances doesn't meaningfully change either how teams value him, or whether he was available for trade or not. 

He was always going to be traded before his contract was up, as an extension was never ever going to happen. 

I also think that while the more typical closer usage got more flak than it deserved (As long as you use your closer in tied games too, it's actually not at all a bad way to use your best reliever), the Brewers will like getting to be more flexible in the late innings. 

[bill hAll Star]

4 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

I agree with whomever else posted it first. Unless they swap Limet off right away, they have 5 starters better than Limet, and he's making 5 million this year (a lot for a long-man/middle inning reliever) and will head to arbitration again after the season. Barring a lights out performance, he probably gets traded or non-tendered after the season. 

This one is much riskier, but I remember when there was shock and awe when the Brewers traded a utility player (but he was batting .340 at Colorado Springs!) for a pitcher that had a 5.87 ERA with the Giants.

As usual, Stearns knew he had something with Pomeranz.  Could very well be the same with Lamet.

[brooks_quichenick]

https://www.mlb.com/news/dinelson-lamet-gets-career-high-14-strikeouts

 

Just remembered this dominant outing vs. the Crew for Lamet. Hopefully he can regain some of this magic in Milwaukee.

[MrTPlush]

2 minutes ago, Eye Black said:

 

 

In other news water is indeed wet.

[Brewcrew82]

It's also worth noting that Hader's regular season dominance has not translated to postseason dominance since 2018...Despite Hader's historical success, I would take Williams over him these days. Hader has an elite pitch that can be hit hard, as we've seen in recent weeks. Devin has an elite pitch that can't be hit at all....

[bill hAll Star]

4 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

Not saying Rogers is garbage...but he isn't anywhere near the pitcher Hader is. If you take Rogers last 3 seasons...its pretty 'meh'. He hasn't been good this year and he has been getting to benefit from Petco Park...his HR/9 is only 0.2 and his career number is 4x that.

Nice arm for the pen, hopefully, but not sure I would put him anywhere near Hader's level.

Rogers has a pretty similar ERA/FIP/xFIP to Hader recently, over his career, etc.

The difference between the two is that Rogers is a good strikeout guy but does not have the insanely filthy stuff like Hader, an elite strikeout pitcher.

Hader's stuff is borderline unhittable but he'll walk a lot of guys missing the zone.  Also, if you get into one, it can turn into a 3 run inning quickly because the ball leaves the yard a lot.

Rogers doesn't walk as many guys, doesn't strike out as many.  He'll have bad stretches when the BABIP luck hits him the wrong way.

[owbc]

8 minutes ago, Eye Black said:

 

 

I know there's a 0.00001% chance of this happening, but it would be hilarious if the Brewers packaged the Hader return as part of a Soto trade. 

[True Blue Brew Crew]

Hader's postseason contributions to the Brewers since he arrived in 2017 have been 1 save and 2 losses. That's not saying he's not valuable. But what's he's delivered when it matters most, wouldn't be tough to beat

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

If Hader is truly elite, Rogers isn't far below that level. The guy is probably a top 5 closer in MLB. Of course, he's a FA after this year, so the Padres had to up the ante to get Hader for another year. Lamet is an intriguing arm who was pretty dang close to dominant during the COVID-shortened season, finishing 4th in the CY Young balloting. He just turned 30, and is arbitration eligible next year. 

The MLB talent coming back in this deal is far from junk.

[SRB]

14 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

Not saying Rogers is garbage...but he isn't anywhere near the pitcher Hader is. If you take Rogers last 3 seasons...its pretty 'meh'. He hasn't been good this year and he has been getting to benefit from Petco Park...his HR/9 is only 0.2 and his career number is 4x that.

Nice arm for the pen, hopefully, but not sure I would put him anywhere near Hader's level.

I've followed Rogers very closely this year because he's on my fantasy team (sorry) and he's actually looked great. You could have made a case that he was the best closer in baseball this season heading into July, and then he hit a rough patch that involved a lot of flukey hits more than him looking bad. His FIP and other peripherals are still fantastic.

[Zad Fnark]

Maybe our pitching lab can work wonders.

I doubt Stearns is done yet.  I'll let the other shoe drop first.

[owbc]

3 minutes ago, True Blue Brew Crew said:

Hader's postseason contributions to the Brewers since he arrived in 2017 have been 1 save and 2 losses. That's not saying he's not valuable. But what's he's delivered when it matters most, wouldn't be tough to beat

His most valuable contribution was those 3 dominant scoreless innings in game 7 of the NLCS. That was one of those cases where we maybe should have rode him until his arm fell off.

[monty57]

45 minutes ago, Austin Tatious said:

I think what's throwing people off is that Ruiz has been resurgent this year, and that they got a MLB closer back.  Gasser is a good prospect and is touted as having back end of the rotation potential.  Ruiz seems to have restored some of his prospect value back if you read about the work he has done at AA in terms of not chasing pitches.

Agree. Since 2017 (Hader's rookie season), Hader has posted 9.4 fWAR, and Rogers has posted 7.7 (he also had 0.7 in 2016). That is an extra 0.31 WAR/season. With the variability of relievers in baseball, there is a definite possibility that Rogers provides more value to the Brewers for the rest of this season than Hader would have. Probably not much less than a "coin flip's chance." Rogers is a good reliever, so having him in the package certainly limited the amount of "prospect capital" we should expect.

Throw in that Lamet and Ruiz will probably help the team this year, and we might just be a bit better this year than we were prior to the trade.

But we are also trading away the 2023 season of Josh Hader. I though he should be traded prior to exiting via free agency, so the question becomes "is this better than they would have received if they traded him in the offseason." No one knows for sure, but at least it sounds like both Ruiz and Gasser are talented guys who have really raised their prospect rating with their recent play. 

It is entirely possible that Ruiz will be our starting CF from his first day with the Brewers. It at least looks like he will take Davis' spot and split time with Taylor. He has a lot of tools and seems to have worked on his approach and has taken a lot of steps forward. Let's see if it all works out.

Lamet should be Suter with better stuff. If he's over his injuries, he could even be a bit more than that. Middle relievers aren't going to rack up a lot of WAR, but they help you win (or lose) games. He's definitely got talent, but at this stage isn't a huge pickup. He'll probably be a good throw-in though.

Gasser is the wildcard, and appears to be what could really swing this the Brewers' way. If he ends up giving the Brewers six years in the rotation, even as a middle-to-back-of-the-rotation starter, that will provide a lot more value to the Brewers than one year of Hader. Throw in that we're set to lose 4/5 of our rotation in a couple years, and Peralta the year after that, having another young starting pitcher with MLB potential is nice.

[Axman59]

I saw a headline that said the Padres were still in the Soto hunt despite the Hader trade. And I thought, of course they are, they didn't trade anything to the Brewers for Hader that the Nationals would want for Soto.

[True Blue Brew Crew]

1 minute ago, owbc said:

His most valuable contribution was those 3 dominant scoreless innings in game 7 of the NLCS. That was one of those cases where we maybe should have rode him until his arm fell off.

Yep, a game we ultimately lost anyway. The Brewers could very easily match or exceed their one playoff series win during Hader's tenure, this very coming postseason

[Eye Black]

Keith Law's trade recap was pretty complementary of the trade all the way around.

Article Link: https://theathletic.com/3467887/2022/08/01/trade-report-josh-hader-padres-brewers/ 

Opening paragraph:

"The Padres have been linked to everyone in the trade market, as usual, but their deal for Josh Hader feels like a surprise twice over, as it’s not the kind of player I expected them to go after, and they did it without giving up any of their top-tier prospects. This feels like a very strong trade for both sides – the Padres got a clear upgrade in their bullpen; the Brewers probably sold high on Hader, while getting a significant return that shouldn’t affect their playoff odds for 2022, and perhaps even acquired players they could use in a second trade."

Prospects involved:

"Ruiz came over from Kansas City in a trade back in 2017, never quite hit up to the expectations of his time in rookie ball, then broke out this year in Double and Triple A, hitting .333/.467/.560 with 60 steals in 69 attempts. He’s a high-contact, line-drive hitter; perhaps never a 20-homer guy but someone who could get to 40 doubles (and triples). He’s also finally found a defensive home, putting his plus speed to good use in center after he tried to play second base his first four years in the minors. He looks like an everyday guy out there."

"Gasser was San Diego’s second-round pick out of the University of Houston last year and has pitched well as a starter in High A this year, sitting 92-94 mph with a slider that flashes plus and a fringy changeup that’s too close to the fastball, resulting in some platoon split (all eight of his homers allowed have been hit by righties). He’s always been a strike-thrower and competes like a starter, so if the Brewers can help him improve the changeup or, again, find a different weapon, he has mid-rotation upside."

 

Synopsis:

"This seems like a very strong return for a year-plus of Hader, whether the Brewers keep all four guys or use any of them in a subsequent trade before Tuesday’s trade deadline."