NEWSLETTER
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The drip-drip of the trade breaking is now over, and while the deal hasn’t been officially announced yet, we know the full construction of the trade that is sending Joey Gallo to the Yankees.
Per Joel Sherman and others, it looks like this:
⇒ Yankees get OF Joey Gallo, LHP Joely Rodriguez, and the cash to cover the rest of their salaries this year
⇒ Rangers get four prospects: Ezequiel Duran, Trevor Hauver, Glen Otto, and Josh Smith
That’s a good bit different than the initial reports last night, which had six prospects going to the Rangers, and no mention of cash. Rodriguez was also only starting to be discussed, but he’s struggled so much this year that I’m not so sure he’s a significant addition (i.e., enough to change our conception of this trade for evaluation purposes).
So the Yankees are getting Gallo for this year and for next year, plus about $2.3 million kicked in to finish off this year’s $6.2 million salary. In exchange, they’re giving up four prospects whose pre-season rankings were not overly impressive, but according to all the prospecting pundits out there, had dramatically raised their stock so far this season.
For example, FanGraphs had already updated for midseason, and was placing Duran in the top 100-ish prospects (post-draft) in all of baseball as a 50 FV, Smith is top 20 in the Yankees’ very deep system, Hauver is top 30, and Otto is top 40.
Baseball America went ahead and pushed their re-rank overnight just so folks could see: Duran is even higher to them (6th in the system, so possibly top 100 to BA, too), Smith is way higher (8th – ahead of guys like Clarke Schmidt and Deivi Garcia), Otto is 20th, and Hauver is 22nd.
That gives you significantly different context to the value of those prospects. Still, is it what you would expect for a year and a half of Gallo, with salary included for this year? It’s close, depending on just how highly Duran and Smith are valued. If Duran were a clear top 100 at this point and if Smith were a borderline to some services, then you’re talking about those two and another couple top 30 system guys (or better). I guess that’s a pretty sizable package. (A FanGraphs tweet from last night indicated that LOSING those guys would drop the Yankees’ farm system ranking from 4th in baseball all the way down to 11th, though it’s unclear if they knew at that point that it was just the four names, and not the previously-rumored six.)
If the Yankees wanted cash in this deal, by the way, you can bet almost EVERY team is going to value cash this year, either given their own limitations overall, or given the luxury tax implications (with the conceivable exceptions of the Dodgers (who are already way over), the Mets (who might just have their wealthy new owner pony up), and Giants (who are safely under the tax and have money). I hope the Cubs are ready to take advantage of that situation, given their ability to eat salary that is already on the books anyway.
