The Nationals have signed infielder Franklin Barreto to a minor league deal, according to Jon Heyman of The New York Post.
Barreto, 27 in February, was an international amateur signing of the Blue Jays but was traded to Oakland as part of the 2014 Josh Donaldson trade. A highly-touted prospect, Barreto was featured on Baseball America’s list of the top 100 youngsters in the game for four straight seasons beginning in 2015.
Unfortunately, Barreto has struggled as he’s reached higher levels of competition, particularly in terms of strikeouts. From 2017 to 2020, he got into 101 big league games but struck out in 42.2% of his plate appearances. For reference, this year’s league average was 22.4%, barely half of Barreto’s rate. Overall, he’s hit just .175/.207/.342.
Oakland moved on from him in 2020, trading him to the Angels for Tommy La Stella. He underwent Tommy John surgery in May of 2021 and was outrighted at the end of the year. The Astros signed him to a minor league deal for 2022, but he hit just .162/.259/.274 in 73 Triple-A games while striking out 37.2% of the time.
It’s been a pretty rough stretch for Barreto, to say the least. That being said, there’s little harm in the Nats taking a look at him in Spring Training. They were the worst team in baseball in 2022 and aren’t likely to suddenly emerge as contenders in 2023, meaning they’re among the teams best suited to take fliers on faded prospect stars. Barreto is still young enough that he could take a step forward in his age-27 season and make good on his previous pedigree. If he does, the Nats can keep him around fairly cheaply for a few more years via arbitration since he has just over three years of MLB service time.
meh.
……and that’s an overstatement
Amazing someone would give him a contract, even just a minor league contract, after putting up a .162/.259/.274 slash line in AAA last season.
Looks like Andrew Velazquez’s numbers for the Angels as their primary SS in the big leagues.
Minor league stats – they mean nothing!
He’s 27, plenty of time to overhaul that swing. Max Muncy and JDM’s guys should be contacted.
Dude, this was in AAA! A heavy hitter friendly league! And it wasn’t even a small sample size. He had almost 300 plate appearances. This guy is obviously washed up.
It’s hilarious and sad as an A’s fan that he was supposed to be the big prize in the Donaldson trade.
Yes, what a bad deal that was for Oakland, but it’s not like the Jays won a title with him, he wasnt the piece they needed, so its a F trade both sides (altho Kendall Graveman is nothing to sneeze at).
Kevin Smith was awful at the AAA hitters league last season too, but it doesnt mean he doesnt deserve a minor league deal – you were was saying Barreto doesnt even deserve that, thats wrong. Maybe if Barreto was 31 he wouldnt, but 27 is still enough to time to turn it around, Max Muncy style.
I suppose he has time to turn it around, but I’m just saying it’s highly unlikely.
Kevin Smith was actually red hot in the last few weeks of the season in AAA. He got off to a slow start in AAA when he was sent down, but started hitting homers and even a cycle in the last month.
From what I remember AA saying Billy kept saying NO until he included Brett Lawrie in the deal, I feel like Brett had a good chance to be a nice MLB player but everything he did he did at 150% all the time and hurt him self. In retrospect it had a chance at being a good deal for both sides. They got a young major league 3b with potential a highend prospect in Barreto and a nice prospect in Gravenan plus another guy named Nolin. While they were giving up the best player the teams with perennial low spending have to make deals like this. In another universe Lawrie gives them 1.5 or 2 years of nice play and gets traded for something nice and Barreto becomes a big bat 2b with average D
Front offices see the potential in his tools and he was once a top prospect in the game. There is not any risk in sending him to triple a and see if he can gain any of the shine he was once projected to show. Former top prospects get far more looks then others because the tool are there, even if it is extremely unlikely he takes that leap forward. This isn’t anything new.
I’ll never forget how stunned I was when the Halos gave up La Stella for this guy. Never made since even till this day.
Salary dump? It was a pointless trade.
I liked La Stella as an Angel, but I believe he was going to be a free agent and the Angels weren’t in contention. So, just an opportunity to pick up a young player with upswing. Usually these moves don’t work out but sometimes they turn out to be Patrick Sandoval or Luis Rengifo.
I dont understand why any team would trade for Barreto and not immediately tell him “look at your numbers, your swing is the longest in the league and the batspeed aint there, lets figure out something better that gets you hits.” – the Angels went “ok keep trying out there”.
This is a prime example of why teams should not over value prospects at the expense of getting proven MLB talent, especially when said team is competing for a championship.
Hopefully Brian Cashman is reading this, but I seriously doubt it.
So trade Volpe.
I don’t believe I said trade every prospect…… but they should’ve acquired a SS nonetheless because the past several seasons have been a catastrophic failure at that position. And, Volpe may not even work out – we will have to wait and see.
Shoulda traded Judge when he was in the Minors.
Nats are taking more flyers than Buddy the Elf.
Cool
Time to trade him for Josh Donaldson again.
The sad part is the Yankees would take that deal all day long
Please take him
Trade your prospects, folks
One of the 2 most lopsided trades in Bluejays history. The Donaldson trade(3 great years in T.O.including the 2015 MVP),and the J.Bautista trade with Pittsburgh. I can’t even remember the catcher we gave up for Joeybats
Yeah and both those trades resulted in zero titles, so it doesn’t matter overall.
Every trade is a failure unless it gets you a World Series? That’s an interesting take. By your reasoning 99% of Trades are failures.
It amazes to me that guys like this can’t figure out that what they are doing isn’t working at all and that, they can’t or won’t scrap what they are doing. I mean come on start over or just plain simplify things in your stance and approach. I mean come on you have a chance to be successful. Learn how to make consistent contact then go from there
I was shocked when Stephen Piscotty was really vocal about not “buying into the launch angle craze” – my brother, you hit 27 homers in a season, proving you have MLB-level power, the “launch angle craze” was invented for YOU to profit from.
Instead he said he was “committed to line drives” which is like saying “I dont want homers, I want more flyouts”.
Someone should tell him he’s blowing it.
But when you hit line drives, they fall for hits over 60% of the time and some of those will be homers.
60%? Lmao, not true – show me where you saw that
The link may take a while to be moderated. Go to Baseball Reference. Look up any league batting split by hit trajectory.
baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&…
If it were that simple I’m sure he would have done it. Must be very hard to hit a well pitched baseball. But maybe the Nats think some adjustments like those will do the trick.
There’s a lot of players like this who have all the tools but cannot put it all together at the plate. His swing and approach are flat out garbage. Swing doctors are needed. Send them to Cristian Pache next.
This is neat. I hope the best for him.
Another “can’t miss” prospect who’s done nothing but miss at every level.
What a strange signing!