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A Rays-esque Trade by a former Rays Front Office Guy

James Click is a product of the Rays front office. It showed on Thursday. 

Click made a surprising move right before the trade deadline sending starting CF Myles Straw to the Indians for reliever Phil Maton and minor league catcher Yanier Diaz. 

The Rays are well known for trying to trade players at the peak of their value from the surplus areas of their team. The Rays did this again yesterday when the traded their closer Diego Castillo to the Mariners for another reliever and a prospect at 3B. Few expected Castillo to be traded, but having received excellent performances from a number of relievers, the Rays dealt from their surplus to gain a prospect. 

Click did something similar here, seeing a surplus (even if a small one) in his stable of center fielders. The Astros will now make Chas McCormick their regular center fielder, and have called up Jake Myers from Sugarland to serve as the team's fourth outfielder. 

McCormick has been a revelation this year as a fourth outfielder, with a 114 OPS+ in 177 PAs and excellent defensive numbers (5 defensive runs saved) in the outfield. Myers has had a breakout season in Sugarland, with a .343/.408/598 slash line in 304 PAs. 

Click saw the development of his young set of centerfielders as an area of surplus. His evaluation is that the Astros will get similar production from this deployment of outfield resources than ones that include Straw, who had an 87 OPS+ and good defensive numbers (2 DRS). 

Straw had an excellent month of June, slashing .330/.413/.432, but he fell back in July slashing .234/.310/.297.  The chart to the right shows Straw's 15-game rolling wRC+ over the season. It shows Straw's steady rise through June, and then his big falloff in July (hat tip to Tony Adams for creating and posting this graph on Twitter). 

The trade of Straw seems to reflect Click's belief that his value is falling and that he would continue to be an offensive drag on the team, and that his trade value was near its peak. 

And while the Rays often trade for future value (as they did in the Castillo trade), Click traded for current value. The Astros have a big need in their bullpen. While their bullpen has been mid-tier this season, it is clearly below a playoff level. In fact, the Astros have the lowest bWAR of any playoff contender. 

Click addressed the bullpen in the three trades he made this week, trading surplus at utilityman for Kendall Graveman (and Rafael Montero) and another surplus outfielder for Yimi Garcia. But Click thought the bullpen needed more help, and he had a surplus to do it with. 

Maton brings swing and miss stuff to a bullpen that could use it. He is strking out 13.3 batters per 9 innings. His whiff rate is in the 98th percentile of all major leaguers. Maton has been wild this season (4.4 BB/9), but that is elevated from his career number of 3.6). 

He has a middling ERA of 4.57 this season, as batters have slashed .237/.331/.434 against him. But there is good reason to think he'll regress to better numbers over time.  His expected slash line is .195/344/.331. Batters have managed a .356 BABIP against Maton this season. The Astros team BABIP against in .266, in large part because of the Astros excellent defense. There is good reason to think that Maton can be trusted to pitch in the 6th or 7th inning in October. 

But the big question in this deal is not about what the Astros got, but about what they gave up. The Astros gave up their starting centerfielder and will replace him with a pair of rookies who were never regarded as top prospects. Both McCormick and Meyers have had breakout seasons, one in a part time role in the majors and one in AAA. Straw may be a limited player, but he was maximizing his value, and his improvement as a defender over the course of the season showed he was working to get better as a player. 

But his limits as an offensive player, particularly his lack of power, mean that there is a ceiling on his value. James Click thinks that he has multiple centerfielders on his current roster who can match that ceiling. If he's right, the Astros added in the bullpen and stayed the same in centerfield.  

We hope Click's evaluation is correct. 

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