Hooray! Trades!
With today’s roster deadline (which actually applies to the big league 40-man, and the minor league rosters, too), this kind of maneuvering was always possible:
Source: #Cubs and #Rangers have made a trade. Names involved unclear.
— Robert Murray (@RobertMurrayFRS) November 20, 2015
#Cubs and #Rangers have indeed made a deal. It is very minor. Players have not been informed and 99% of you have never heard of either guy.
— David Kaplan (@thekapman) November 20, 2015
We’ll see who the names are, but, since we are huge nerds, my guess is we will have heard of at least the Cubs name.
UPDATE: The Cubs are getting righty reliever Spencer Patton, per Murray and Kaplan.
Patton, 27, was a dominating reliever in the Royals system until he was traded to the Rangers for Jason Frasor in July 2014. Thereafter, he’s seen some time in the big leagues with the Rangers with mixed results. His big league strikeout rate is a healthy 25.0%, but his walk rate is a borderline uncomfortable 9.7% (which had been an issue for him in the minors). He gave up 24 runs in his 24 big league innings last year, but that looks to be in large part because of a hellacious 20.0% HR/FB rate.
[adinserter block=”1″]The potential to be a nice bullpen piece, though, is quite clear, and I’ll dig in more on him soon.
For now, this looks like a deal for the Rangers to clear up a 40-man spot for today’s deadline, and the Cubs get a possible reliever for 2016.
We’ll see who the Cubs gave up in the deal.
UPDATE: It’s Low-A infielder Frandy De La Rosa, a youngster with a chance to become a big leaguer down the road, but exactly the kind of guy you deal for a fringy, upside, big league reliever.
De La Rosa, 19, was a big-ish international signing for the Cubs a few years ago, and reached Low-A Eugene this year, hitting .273/.315/.367. He’s a switch hitter, which is always interesting, but he’s already had to make the move to second base. There’s projection in the bat, so it’s conceivable the Cubs will regret this down the line – but, again, this is the kind of move you make, in large part because you can’t keep every single intriguing youngster in the system. De La Rosa was not a top-30 prospect type.