The Phillies announced that they have traded right-hander Juan Nicasio to the Cardinals in exchange for minor league infielder Eliezer Alvarez. Philadelphia had recently claimed Nicasio off outright waivers from the Pirates. Nicasio will give the Cardinals’ bullpen a boost, though since he’s been acquired after Aug. 31, he won’t be eligible for the postseason roster if St. Louis qualifies. Nicasio is a free agent after the season.
Nicasio’s time with the Phillies will last all of a week, bringing to a close one of the more puzzling sequences in recent August trade history. The Pirates were unable to pass Nicasio through revocable trade waivers last month, ultimately pulling him back off waivers and placing him on outright waivers and instead losing him to the Phillies, who had top waiver priority, for nothing other than salary relief that amounted to roughly $600K.
The move was confusing enough that Pittsburgh GM Neal Huntington felt the need to explain the team’s rationale to the media. Per Huntington, Nicasio was claimed by a “playoff-caliber” team on trade waivers — it’s not clear if that Cardinals were that club, though it’d make sense — and the Bucs opted to place him on outright waivers in hopes of getting him to an AL contender rather than helping a “direct competitor.” (Trade waivers are league-specific, whereas outright waiver priority ignores league and is solely determined in reverse order of MLB standings.)
Nicasio will ultimately end up with a direct competitor of the Pirates anyhow, though he won’t be able to pitch in the postseason. Moreover, the Phillies will make out extremely well in this deal, as Alvarez entered the season ranked 10th on Baseball America’s list of the Cardinals’ top 30 prospects. He currently ranks 19th among St. Louis farmhands in the eyes of Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. In essence, the Phillies were able to claim a Cardinals prospect off waivers, which ultimately cost them about $138K in terms of salary (the pro-rated portion of Nicasio’s week-long tenure with the team).
For the Cardinals, Nicasio immediately becomes one of their best relievers. Through 61 1/3 innings, Nicasio has averaged 8.95 K/9, 2.64 BB/9 and a 46.9 percent ground-ball rate en route to an excellent 2.79 ERA. The 31-year-old has averaged a career-best 95.4 mph on his heater in 2017 and is sporting a 10.7 percent swinging-strike rate that would rank third among current St. Louis relievers (not including the injured Trevor Rosenthal, who led the team’s bullpen in that regard).
Alvarez, 23 next month, has spent the season with St. Louis’ Double-A affiliate, hitting .247/.321/.382 with four homers and eight steals (in 11 tries). Those numbers don’t immediately stand out, though it’s worth noting that Alvarez skipped Class-A Advanced entirely and was considerably younger than the league average in Double-A.
Callis and Mayo note in their free scouting report that Alvarez has a line-drive approach with a knack for making hard contact and could eventually grow into more power. He’s an above-average runner and could profile as a regular at second base down the line if everything breaks right for him. Alvarez was added to the Cardinals’ 40-man roster last winter to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, so he’ll go onto the Phillies’ 40-man roster and fill the spot that was vacated by trading Nicasio.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Juan must’ve done something wrong to someone to be getting bean bagged off to two teams in one week
Probably the team who was trying to get him from the Pirates in the first place.
Bingo!
I wonder if they were the original team to claim him
Steve, or any of the writers, I’d be interested in an article looking at a rundown of September trades. I can’t imagine there have been too many in recent years.
It would not be exciting, ha.
The biggest-name players I can recall off the top of my head are Gordon Beckham going to the Giants and Josh Collmenter going to the Braves last year. The Rockies picked up Octavio Dotel back in 2010 or 2011 (his third team that year as well — like Nicasio).
I will take a look and see if I’m missing anything that makes it worth a retrospective look back though!
Must have been 2010 because in 2011 Dotel was a world champ with the Redbirds
Props to the Phils for getting something for Nicasio unlike PIT.
Everyone seems to forget the pirates picked up George Kontos the same way
The Pirates are never actually given credit for adding salary (between Kontos and Rodriguez, they added a few million in August) only bashed for subtracting it ($600,000).
They only added Kontos, and Rodriguez because they saved money from Kang not being on the team.
They can be given credit for that, but it is easily offset by the inexplicably stupid decision to give Nicasio away for nothing. If the Cards or some other divisional contender claimed him, fine… you pull him back and keep him for the last month. You don’t go ce him away “hoping to get him to an AL contender” when you have zero control over whether or not that happens. I’ve been a supporter of Huntington and the Pirates in general, but the Nicasio saga is a colossal blunder all around, made even more so now that that Phils sent him to St. Louis. There is no excuse for this one.
But if the Bucs leave him on the roster for another month and lose him for nothing in FA how is that any different than losing him now for nothing?
Because they were trying to avoid letting the Cardinals get him, and they got him. Just because you aren’t in the race doesn’t mean you help out a rival, IMO. Besides, it just makes them look mildly clueless and adds fuel to the “Bucs are cheap” fire. If what Neal says they did with Juan is what they meant to do, they should have just said so at the outset.
No one forgets. The Giants were stupid to let him walk away for nothing, just as the Pirates were stupid to do the same thing here.
Several comments from several Giants fans when the Giants were not upset. Were glad to see Kontos go. Some saying they were confused by the deal but not the same bashing that the Pirates FO is getting on this deal
This isn’t the same thing to me. Nicasio is a free agent after the season. Kontos is not. The Giants could at least reasonably argue that they want to go younger and not keep the commitment to Kontos on the books (they could… I think it was a dumb move by them, but it’s a reasonable attempt at an argument). Nicasio is a free agent who possibly could have been re-signed, but even if they don’t want to bring him back, they only have to keep him for another month.
So it is different to have to pay a guy you have no intentions of binging back and losing him for nothing than losing the guy now for nothing but have he benefit of not having to pay him the rest of the year?
I don’t ever recall the Bucs saying that they have no intention of bringing Nicasio back. And if they did say it, they are really being dumb. The guy has been outstanding and wouldn’t be insanely expensive for them to try to keep.
The Phillies probably just got Nicasio because they knew another team was interested in trading for him.
For the love of gob, WHY.
I thought outright waivers were also league specific
They are not. I confirmed as much in the wake of last week’s situation just to be 100 percent certain that we were accurately portraying everything.
No they cover all if MLB
Phillies cornering the market on utility infielders.
I wonder if the Cards will use him as a closer?
Smart use of waiver claim by Phils GM. Makes Pirates GM look even more foolish
Wow!
This was certainly unexpected, however I absolutely love it. Matt Klentak has proven once again to be rather opportunistic. They pretty much got a “free” prospect.
You’re kidding right? As though the Phillies have any need for another 2b prospect with Hernandez, Valentin and Kingery? Alvarez went from being the 19th ranked prospect in STL to the 26th ranked prospect in the Phils org. Klentak drafted Moniak instead of Nick Senzel, gave Odubel an extension after one good year, tendered & resigned Hellickson for $17mil then traded him for Kim (wtf?) and a reliever who STUNK up AA, traded for Buchholz and signed Michael Saunders for three times more than he’d ever made before. Klentak is an unmitigated disaster.
You don’t get it kiddo.
+1 to jleve.
Please tell me what I don’t get son? What am I missing?
Pirates dont care he went to the cards. They gave up when they traded him for nothing
They gave him up for nothing specifically to keep him away from the Cards.
Their plan sure worked then
Oh, I never said it worked. It was 600K of the worst PR any team could buy and will cost them far more than that in the long run. Bad business. They should have just parked him on the bench.
Glad I found you. This crap is EXACTLY why Bucs should have canned Huntington a long time ago. Anyone with a baseball IQ can clearly see that bad-brain Huntington has not a clue under the sun how to manage a MLB roster. God bless Hurdle but we will NEVER be more than a wannabe WC pretender under this braindead GM. It is gutwrenching to me that we signed him another 4 LONG hopeless years. You cannot for a second believe we will compete with ANY of the other clubs in the NL Central. Pathetic!
The Nicasio move is ABSOLUTELY 100% IRRELEVANT from a baseball perspective.
Meaningless.
It was a huge mistake from a PR perspective (and thus a business perspective) because it angers dimwitted yinzers. Ahem.
But it is meaningless as a baseball transaction.
Huntingdon took a team that had virtually no assets at the MLB level or in the system and made the playoffs in 5 years. He won 98 games working for an owner I’m sure you’ll say is cheap and doesn’t want to win, right?
Pretty impressive for a “braindead” guy.
But do go on ranting about a middle reliever who was going to either fetch a nothing prospect or walk for nothing at the end of the season as if it’s the end of the world.
According to Ken Rosenthal, the Cardinals weren’t the claiming team.
According to the Cubs broadcast tonight, it was the Cubs.
I guess that’s one way to clear a 40 man roster spot for the offseason
The Pirates didn’t want to trade Nicasio before the July 31st deadline because they were still in semi-contention and their “fans” would have said they were “cheap” and “don’t want to win.”
Even if they had made an AMAZING trade like Melancon for Rivero, they still would have been slammed for it as they were for that deal because…ignorance and narrative.
So, instead they kept Nicasio and then when the team fell out of contention, they dumped him and were called cheap and stupid for getting nothing for him.
Meanwhile, the exact same people would have screamed the loudest had the Pirates traded him to the Cards for a middling return. “The Pirates are so cheap and don’t care enough about winning to not help the team in their own division they need to beat, etc etc..”
It was literally a no win situation for the team.
U need a dose of freaking baseball reality. The Melancon trade was EZ. The Nats wanted him. Multiple teams wanted him. FA to be closers are the absolute EZest commodity to trade at deadline to a contender. Get off the NH koolaid. Answer this? Were u the guy that liked Lastings Milledge? Fess up.
LOL. Lastings Milledge?
You are whining about them giving a former five tool prospect a look during a year when they were rebuilding and terrible ten years ago?
Dude.
It’s spelt easy, and easiest. How is EZ easier than easy? It’s seriously just two extra letters, one if you count hitting the cap button for Z.
Except that they would never have traded him to the Cards. They might have traded him, but not to St. Louis. Also, why exactly is no one considering the possibility of re-signing Nicasio? The guy has been pretty good. Rivero and he got along fantastically. Unless Nicasio had already told them that he had zero interest in returning, and I doubt that, why not either trade him and get somebody for him, or keep him and try to get a hometown discount in bringing him back? This whole thing was handled stupidly, from both a PR and a roster perspective, IMO.
By just keeping him for the last month, it wouldn’t have been a “win,” but at least they wouldn’t have been risking a “loss.” There’s something to be said for just playing it safe sometimes.
Who is to say that the Cards offered something far less than Alvarez to the Bucs for Nicasio. In the end, who really cares? Losing Nicasio for nothing now is no different than losing him for nothing after the season because he is eligible for free agency. At least they did not help the Cards with a post season pitcher if they by chance get there. The Pirates already have Newman and Tucker blocking Alvarez if that was indeed the player offered. This is not that big of a deal unless you just want to nitpick and use it to bash the Pirates ownership and FO.
I feel like it would have cost more than Alvarez had the trade been done prior to the eligible for postseason cutoff which is what bothers me about the move. Did the Pirates really fear Nicasio was going to help the Cards so much that it was worth not getting anything for him? I don’t think so.
According to Ken Rosenthal, the Cardinals weren’t the claiming team, they just happen to be another rival who ended up with him.
Did Rosenthal give any clue who the claiming club was?
It was the Cubs, according to Len and JD in tonight’s broadcast.
They offered the Bucs Bobby Hill’s son..
Alvarez goes from 19th in the Cardinals’ top 30 to 26th in the Phillies top 30. Nice.
Our plan to keep him out of STL didn’t work
At least the Cards can not use him in the event they get to the playoffs. He is done in St Louis at the end of the regular season and he will hit the market. Not that huge of a deal for the Pirates. He was going to be gone for nothing at the end of the year anyway.
The cardinals could extend him for next year and beyond. Not saying they will but if they were smart they should try. As it stands now they just gave up a prospect for a reliever that will pitch for 3 weeks and can’t play in the postseason.
You have a very broad brush describing him as a prospect. At best he may make a utility IF. He has occasional pop but never excelled even in the minors. He’s 22 and probably would have never made it to the bigs with the Cardinals.
My hope is that he falls in love with STL and will ultimately want to re-sign this offseason. He may be huge down the stretch.
He was starting to give up home runs and leads towards the end of his time in Pittsburgh. Could have been just a rough stretch and he comes around or it could be a sign of things to come. We shall find out.
the end result of the trade isnt that bizzare as the phillies claimed nicasio to trade for a minor leaguer.
lol @ Neil huntington
Phils get a decent prospect for basically nothing. They really did not need him in the bullpen and there was a chance he would test the free agent market this winter. There was no guarantee he would resign with the phils.
I wouldn’t call him decent. His BA write up says that he needs work just to become adequate at 2b. So, if he doesn’t hit (he had an OPS of .703 this past year) what good is he? Also, from scanning some Cardinal blogs, he was a strong candidate to be taken off of the 40 man.
We got Kontos for nothing and gave away Nicasio for nothing. I think we won in the giveaway Dept.
decent?
I still don’t understand why the Pirates gave him up for nothing just so that he wouldn’t end up with a direct competitor (which he ended up going to anyway). If he has value, take advantage of it; he’s a free agent in a few weeks and their playoff push is looking really iffy anyway, so why lose him for nothing just to prove a point?
Huntington’s logic still doesn’t make sense. If they truly didn’t want him going to the Cardinals, they should’ve just kept him for the last month of the season. It’s not like he was making a ton of money or that they’d get anything for him (other than maybe an extra win in the final standings) either way.
Ken Rosenthal on Twitter said the Cardinals didn’t claim him originally, so you really shouldn’t blame the GM for that, they’re just coincidentally another rival who received him.
gotta be a moral boost to nicasio, sure yeah two teams in a week but also to someone in the running (even if he cannot play in the playoffs) and traded for something not insignificant.
im hoping the bucs consider calling him once free angency starts, probably wont work out but still…
I can’t wait to see the Pirates put McCutchen on waivers.
Huntington’s masterpiece.
Someone help me understand how Nicasio was eligible to be traded at all. He didn’t clear revocable waivers with the Pirates. Presumably the Phillies did not place him on revocable waivers. (And even if they did, surely he didn’t clear, right?)
So how is it he can be traded? Anyone know?