Seattle Sports Insider

What's a main battle Tank worth?

Patton knew

Posted by

7/10/16

Short and sweet this morning:

We've tossed about a lot of discussion in regards to trade targets we might want and trade bait we might have. Getting an arm seems to be our gretest interest, understandably. Any pitcher acquisition that is likely to really help us is going to cost us several pretty young parts. Since it makes no sense to trade pretty young Paxton or Walker for another pitcher (Heaven help us) that means our trade discussions are always going to include D.J Peterson and/or Tank O'Neill.

Somehow Peterson has emersed himself in the holy waters and has become a reborn slugger. This is very cool. He very well coud get to swing at MLB pitches sometime this year.

But I can't help thinking that it isn't Tank O'Neill that would be at the top of most teams want list. And I wouldn't blame them for that. At the age of 21, Tank is pretty well laying minor waste to the Southern League. .308-.375-.545 with 16 homers is worth noting. He's 9th in Avg., 19th in OBP, 3rd in Slg. and 2nd in HR's. OK, his 85 K's are 4th in the league and his 24% K rate isn't all that wonderful, but taken with his whacking numbers it shouldn't scare you away.

So let me make a comparison with a guy we know well, one who is leading the AL in homers as we speak: Mark Trumbo. Trumbo is in his 6th fulltime MLB season and has never really had a bad year, minus an injury-plagued '14, and even then he wasn't terrible. When healthy, you can figure Trumbo to club 25-35 homers and he may well go north of 40 this season.

I know he wasn't the most popular guy around here, but ask Baltimore what they think about him.

At age 22 in AA (134 PA's), Trumbo ran a .276-.311-.496 line with 21% K's. In a full AA season at 23 (531 PA's) he was .291-.333-.452 with a 16% K rate. Trumbo K's about 25% of the time in the bigs, btw.

Our Tank is the (way) better hitter, in terms of Avg.-OBP-.Slg than Trumbo was in his AA years. O'Neill does K a bit more. I'm not afraid about projecting O'Neill out to a Trumbo-like MLB line. That's reasonable, I think. Heck, it may be his floor.

So let's say that we might be able to get a young arm like Julio Teheran from the Braves. They've sort of indicated that he might be available, maybe. But they have sorta/kinda made it clear that you have to bring your A-list farmhands to the discussion, and several of them. Teheran has been a fine thrower in the bigs and is inked to a very user-friendly contract up until 2020, BTW.

So assuming that we have to ante up several of our A-list MiLB'ers, that means that talks likely start with BOTH O'Neill and Peterson on the table. Then you add a couple of more. You can surmise who those might be. Heck, Atlanta may want a Montgomery AND O'Neill +. It will be their sellers market, after all.

So here the question class: What is a Trumbo worth? Well, that's easy. Trumbo for Teheran would be a bit like stealing, maybe. But our Trumbo is going to be boxed up with a bunch of other nice things, likley a Deej, Maybe a Montgomery (were I Atlanta, I would push for MiMo).

Reminder: 30+ HR COF's still have value guys. Assuming O'Neill is one of course....

A guy like Teheran, the real deal and relatively cheap in terms of $, would light my fire. Paxton-Walker-Teheran is the young arm trifecta. Dynasties have been built on stuff like that. Add Karns and whooooo-weeeee. And I haven't even mentioned Felix.

But maybe Montgomery is the equal of a Teheran.

How much of your thin farm system are you willing to trade away. A fair question and one every GM has to come to grips with.

There you go.....stuff to chew on, because you know DiPoto is chewing on stuff sort of like this.

Hey, it's possible Tank is in Seattle in '18, and has 200 homers before he's 30. I suppose it's possible he becomes Joe Charboneau, too. Or Bucky Jacobson. But it's just as possible that a Teheran (or another chucker) has their arm explode tomorrow.

There's a dice roll coming. Lay your bets down.

Moe

Comments

If Tank was in the Cardinal or Boston system...

Since the M's really have not had a high profile position player with power actually make it in the MLB in quite a while, I am sure every team is a bit leery of Tank, Petersen, Alex Jackson and probably even Kyle Lewis now.

However, in other organizations, Tank could be valued as much as Teheran almost by himself.

Thus, in my opinion, I think JeDi needs to keep throwing spaghetti for now, and hope that a couple players emerge over the next year or so, and prove his concept of teaching in the minors is working... because M's minor league players are ALL under valued by the MLB as a whole.

Trumbo vs. O'Neill

I think the defensive and baserunning differences are stark. O'Neill is just not a guy I'd trade very easily. Consider our outfield to be Peter right now and find a Paul that won't steal from it.

I mentioned Drew Jackson as a possible headliner in the previous trade post but if DJ has the value required I'm kind of ok with that too. It would be nice to see DJ and Tank both playing for spots next spring but if Lee is brought back there won't be as much room for DJ. Him fitting would then require Cruz in the outfield some which isn't horrible in doses but lessens the defensive improvement. I'm more hopeful to see a Heredia/Martin/Tank outfield sometime next year than DJ over Lee or both together.

With Karns and Monty (Good point, Jemanji) LeBlanc, etc. acquiring SP seems to be a reaction to injuries that shouldn't be long term anyway. Felix, Kuma, Walker, Paxton, Miley, Karns, MiMo, LeBlanc...do we need to add there? I do like the idea of Teheran but the need is more like a couple weeks to get Walker and Felix back then we'd be truly overstocked in the rotation. I like 8 options that we have at that point, considering Diaz in there. Except without him in the pen we're 2+ arms short there. I think the focus should be on adding 1 or 2 of the right arms to the pen and roll with what you've got otherwise.

Kuma to the pen sounded good at first but he's been probably the best starter on the year. Deep consideration on most of the starters doesn't make much sense to move them to the bullpen. Maybe Paxton once Felix and Walker are back, though I hate the idea. Paxton, Diaz, Cishek + an acquisition for the back end could transform the bullpen into a plus at which point OF defense is my biggest concern.

OF Defense

OF defense is an easy fix. Trade Lind, 1B Lee and DH Cruz. Add a talented COF and you only have to carry Smith's glove. But then Lind finds his stroke whereever he is. Drats on that.

But I would likely make that move, too.

And it is days like today that indicate that just perhaps a MiMo is the equal of a Teheran.

Atlanta will really want him now.

Lind going is the right call

In my estimation as well. If Lind starts hitting once moved, we'd still be better off with improved OF defense. Then we might get to see Heredia get a shot? There are a few options from within with no guarantees except for defensive improvement. I guess speed on the basepaths as well.

Blowers in the 8th today was saying "there's going to be some changes, I'm assuming, when they come back from the break" when discussing with Aaron how the team will reassess Aokis fit over the break. There's another that could be moved. It makes some sense to try him back and see if he can regain some value at least. If not, oh well. Seemed like the right player when he was signed. Well,for considerably less than Heyward at least.

Yeah, how many guys do we have that could be as valuable in the next 3 years of starts as Teheran? It's possible, just counting controlled guys with time on the 25, we've got 5 now. I'm not even counting LeBlanc. There's 10 guys here that'd probably be in somebody's rotation, if not on the DL. I'm confident they'll find their stride with some combination. Not so confident those younguns will all outpace Teheran.

Trumbo's an odd duck

Thanks for the article Mo'! :- )

Trumbo is following in the grand tradition of Michael Saunderses and Carlos Guillens who got out of Seattle and went bananas. Right now he's hitting .288/.341/.582 (!) on par for 4.5 WAR. If Tyler O'Neill did that in his second year (cost-controlled) he'd be what, one of the 20 most valuable assets in the game?

But I'm with you Keith. Tyler O'Neill is 30% of a lotto card that says "Shin-Soo Choo value" on it. If he can frontline a deal for something we really need, that's what the minors system is for ... well, sort of ...