Looking Back At A Rare Trade Miss For The Rays

Why do teams even bother trading with the Rays? The club has built a reputation as one that wins every deal it makes, a legend that goes back to at least 2014, based on this classic Tweet. Whenever they swing a deal, there are inevitable comments with observers wondering why other clubs even bother getting involved with Tampa when they’re bound to get fleeced.

It’s understandable why that discourse exists as the Rays have shown a knack to turn unheralded players into stars. Looking at the current roster, we find players like Randy Arozarena, Yandy Díaz, Drew Rasmussen and others who seemed to completely alter their trajectory after moving to Tampa. It’s a testament to the organization that they seem to continually get the best out of their players, whether it’s ones they’ve traded for or those they originally drafted or signed.

It’s also what helps them repeatedly field competitive clubs despite rarely spending money. They’ve made the playoffs in eight of the past 15 seasons, including each of the past four, and seem well on their way to get back there again despite playing in the stacked AL East. In the last 20 years, they’ve only once spent enough to get out of the bottom five, per the figures from Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

That being said, no club is perfect. They are run by human beings just like all the others and they make mistakes. Let’s take a look at a deal from December 2019 that looks like a whiff.

• Padres get outfielder Tommy Pham and infield prospect Jake Cronenworth
• Rays get outfielder Hunter Renfroe, infield prospect Xavier Edwards and a player to be named later, eventually revealed as infield prospect Esteban Quiroz

This deal has the vague feel of a classic Rays trade, as they often take quality players and flip them for others who are almost as good but cheaper and with more control. If they help the new player become just as good or better than the one they gave up, then it works out as a nice bit of business for a low-spending club.

There’s no doubt Pham was better than Renfroe at that time. In the three years leading up to the deal, he had hit 65 home runs and slashed .284/.381/.475 for a wRC+ of 133. Renfroe’s batting line was .231/.291/.486 for a wRC+ of 102. He actually hit significantly more homers than Pham with 85, but his 7.3% walk rate was well below Pham’s 12.5% clip. He also struck out 28.5% of the time compared to Pham’s 21.7% rate. The defensive edge was debatable, as Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average preferred Renfroe while Ultimate Zone Rating gave the nod to Pham, though a lot of Pham’s work came in the more-demanding position of center field. Pham definitely provided more value on the basepaths, including stealing 65 bases to Renfroe’s 10. His 13.1 wins above replacement tally from FanGraphs in those three years was well ahead of Renfroe’s 4.3.

But turning to the financials, Pham had two years of remaining club control and was projected to make $8.6MM in 2020. Renfroe just qualified for arbitration as a Super Two player, meaning he had four years of control remaining and was projected for a $3.4MM salary. If the Rays could somehow coax some better plate discipline out of Renfroe, they could wind up with a fairly similar player for less money and more control.

Pham went on to struggle in 2020 but bounce back with a serviceable 2021 campaign. Renfroe, however, had a dismal season in 2020. He did make some slight improvements at the plate, walking at a 10.1% clip and striking out at a 26.6% rate, but he hit just .156/.252/.393 for a wRC+ of 78. His .141 batting average on balls in play certainly points to a lot of bad luck, and he’s been better since then, but the Rays decided to move on by designating him for assignment at season’s end.

There’s always risk in taking this path, assuming that the lesser player can simply be changed in a way that they replace the better player, but the Rays also had some insurance. They were getting a young prospect on the rise in Edwards. He was just the Padres’ #21 prospect coming into 2019, per Baseball America, but he hit .322/.375/.396 for a 121 wRC+ between Single-A and High-A that year. He only hit one home run, but he struck out at a tiny 9.6% rate and stole 34 bases. After the deal, BA ranked him the #85 prospect in the entire league.

Unfortunately, he never really developed any more power and the speed proved less game-changing as he moved up the minor league ladder. After the minor leagues were canceled in 2020, he went up to Double-A in 2021. He didn’t hit a single home run in 337 plate appearances over 79 games. His .302/.377/.368 batting line was still above average, translating to a wRC+ 113, but it was a bit of a drop from his breakout.

Last year, he got bumped to Triple-A and managed to hit five home runs in 400 trips to the plate, but the rest of the picture wasn’t as pretty. His 18.8% strikeout rate was still a bit below average, but it was much higher than any season before. His .246/.328/.350 line amounted to a wRC+ of 84 and he only stole seven bases in 11 tries over 93 games. This past offseason, with the Rays facing a roster crunch, they dealt Edwards and JT Chargois to the Marlins for prospects Marcus Johnson and Santiago Suarez. Johnson and Suarez were respectively ranked the club’s #25 and #17 prospects by BA coming into this year. Those youngsters mean the Rays could still salvage something from Edwards indirectly, but it’s surely not the outcome they envisioned when they initially brought him aboard. Neither Johnson nor Suarez has reached even High-A yet, so any forthcoming payday will have to wait.

The best saving grace of the deal from Tampa’s perspective right now is that the player to be named later, Quiroz, had a nice season in 2021 and was flipped to the Cubs for Harold Ramírez. This is more the classic Rays trade that we all know, where a somewhat flawed player seems to find their ceiling in Tampa. Ramírez had cracked BA’s top 100 list back in 2016 while with the Pirates, but later bounced around to Toronto, Miami and Cleveland. By the end of 2021, he had received 818 major league plate appearances but had hit .271/.308/.405 for a wRC+ of 91. For a guy with little speed and subpar defense, that wasn’t terribly exciting.

Cleveland designated Ramírez for assignment after 2021 and then flipped him to the Cubs for cash. At the end of March, the Cubs sent him to the Rays for Quiroz, seeming to indicate he wouldn’t make the team out of spring. Since he was out of options, they couldn’t send him down and at least got Quiroz out of it. The Rays would have to keep Ramírez on the active roster as well, though that hasn’t been a problem as he has mashed since the deal. In 139 games as a Ray, he’s hit .308/.353/.442 for a wRC+ of 132. He still doesn’t walk much and his defense is still subpar, but he’s hard to strike out and hits the ball hard. The Rays can control him through 2025.

From the Padres’ point of view, Pham was just okay in his two seasons there but the real coup was getting Cronenworth. A seventh round draft pick, he was never at the top of any prospect lists while in the minors. He was ranked #18 in the Rays’ system by BA in 2018 and then #15 in the Padres’ system in 2020 after the deal. He then cracked the Opening Day roster in the shortened season, striking out in just 15.6% of his plate appearances that year while hitting .285/.354/.477 for a wRC+ of 126. He hasn’t quite maintained that pace but has continued to be above average, with his career batting line now at .254/.336/.433, translating to a 114 wRC+.

He’s also provided tremendous defensive versatility, bouncing around the infield as needed. He’s mostly played second base but has also spent time at third and shortstop. When the Friars signed Xander Bogaerts to take over at short, they seemed to have little hesitation about moving Ha-Seong Kim to second and Cronenworth over to first. His DRS numbers at short are subpar, but he’s considered average or better at the other spots, while UZR and OAA think he’s average or better everywhere. The club is so enamored with him that they signed him to a seven-year, $80MM extension in the offseason.

In the end, the deal wasn’t a total loss for the Rays, since they were able to flip one of the pieces to get a solid player in Ramírez. But it shows that MLB decision makers don’t necessarily need to block phone calls coming from Tampa. You could get someone like Cronenworth or perhaps Nathaniel Lowe or maybe Willy Adames or even Blake Snell or how about José Alvarado or someone like Joe Ryan?