Front Office Originals News & Rumors

This week's mailbag attempts to find a blueprint for the Royals, considers the Cubs' needs, ponders a Jordan Walker extension, examines Braves trade targets, explains how minor league options work, and much more!

D.T. asks:

Another season lost for the Royals. Other than BWJ and possibly Caglianone, their draft picks, which have all been very high, have traditionally been complete busts. What will it take to turn this organization around?

To answer this question, I'll start by taking roughly an eight-hour drive from Kansas City to Milwaukee.  The Brewers seem to be the model for small market contention.  How are they pulling it off?

Let's look at 2023 to present for the Brewers.  Their position players have totaled 83.7 WAR since 2023, excluding those who were negative in that metric.  Almost three-quarters of that WAR is concentrated in seven players.  Here's how they were acquired:

William Contreras: 19.6% of total WAR.  The Brewers picked up outfielder Esteury Ruiz as part of the Josh Hader trade at the 2022 deadline.  Ruiz was a 45-grade prospect lacking in power who didn't profile as a likely regular.  The Brewers then inserted themselves into the Braves-A's Sean Murphy trade a few months later, prying a controllable Contreras loose from Atlanta after a breakout 2022 season.  But the Brewers had Ruiz because they first had Hader, an All-Star dominant reliever with a year and a couple months of control left.  They had Hader because former GM Doug Melvin snagged him in a deal that sent Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers to the Astros in 2015.

Putting aside the significant work the David Stearns regime did to develop Hader into a star, Stearns was also willing to trade Hader while the Brewers sat in first place with a 90% chance at the playoffs.  Aside from the need for bold trades and strong player development, the Brewers willingly put their 2022 playoff chances at risk (and they did miss the playoffs that year) to set in motion of sequence of trades that netted them Contreras, who became crucial in their 2023-26 run.

The Royals had zero playoff shot at the time, but J.J. Picollo did pull off his own masterstroke trade by shipping Aroldis Chapman to Texas for Cole Ragans in 2023 before the calendar turned to July.  But assuming Ragans bounces back health and production-wise, he's the type of player the Brewers would be looking at trading this winter or at next year's trade deadline.  So my point is that selling high on Ragans, if possible, could help set the Royals up for more sustained success.

Christian Yelich: 11.5% of WAR.  Stearns made a "go for it" trade to acquire Yelich in January 2018 with five years left on his contract, extending him a couple years later.  To do so they gave up a 60-grade medium risk prospect in Lewis Brinson, a 50-grade high risk in Isan Diaz, and a 60 grade high risk in Monte Harrison.  So the Brewers gave up their first, fifth, and ninth-ranked prospects, presumably well-regarded around the game, yet none of them panned out.  Would the Royals put Blake Mitchell, Kendry Chourio, and another good prospect in a deal for a controllable 4-5 WAR Major Leaguer?  They probably haven't drafted well enough to feel they could sacrifice those players.

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This week's mailbag gets into the Tigers' decision points on Tarik Skubal, whether the Nationals can be taken seriously, how the Rays could upgrade, the current trade value of James Tibbs III, and more.

Chuck asks:

With the Tigers collapsing in the absence of Tarik Skubal, even with his return relatively imminent, the national media are salivating at the prospect of his escape from Detroit toward the bright lights (and easier access) of, I guess, the media centers of Los Angeles or New York. Assuming the Tigers don't recover to even .500 by late July, my questions are: (1) Is trading Skubal the only reasonable option the Tigers would have? (2) Is there a real scenario in which it would be better to retain Skubal and let him walk, accepting the sandwich pick instead? (3) If a trade is certain, are there actually any teams likely to give up true top-of-system value in return for two-plus months of Skubal, and which teams would those be? For the final question, please focus on your estimation of the best those teams would likely offer, rather than an estimation of what PBO Scott Harris would accept.

After a 10-6 loss Tuesday evening at the hands of the equally lousy Angels, the Tigers stand at 21-34 wth 34% of their season in the books.  The Tigers still play in an AL Central where only the Guardians are projected to finish above .500, and in a league where the third Wild Card team is two games under.  There seems to be a decent chance that in the AL this year, a .500 finish could net a playoff spot.

The Tigers have won only three of their last 20 games, yet still hold a 16.5% playoff chance.  68 days remain until the trade deadline, during which time the Tigers will play 58 games.  The Tigers could reasonably let another third of their season play out before making a decision on Skubal, even if they need to lay some groundwork in July.

Skubal's last start was April 29th, and today marks the fifth start he's missed.  In the immediate aftermath of the injury, I wrote in this mailbag that I found it unlikely we'd see Skubal before the August 3rd trade deadline.  Then we learned about the NanoNeedle, a new smaller scope used to remove the loose body in Skubal's elbow.  This was the first time this tool was used on an MLB player.  Skubal threw a simulated game less than three weeks out from surgery, and there's talk of him returning in June.  Remarkably, it seems like Skubal could make, say, nine or so big league starts before the deadline barring any setbacks.  To answer Chuck's questions:

No, trading Skubal is not the only reasonable option the Tigers have.  The 2024 Tigers didn't look like a playoff team on May 27th either (20.1% chance) and they did indeed have a postseason run.  Simply holding onto Skubal for one last playoff push is perfectly reasonable if the team's chances hover in the 1-in-5 range or better.  I'm sure Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris will take heat for holding onto Skubal if the Tigers do miss the playoffs, but I'd have no problem with it.

I don't think there's a scenario where the compensatory draft pick the Tigers would receive is more valuable than the players they'd get from trading for Skubal, in a vacuum.  The Tigers are a revenue sharing recipient that will not pay the competitive balance tax this year, and Skubal will almost certainly get more than $50MM in guaranteed money in free agency.  That puts the draft pick after the first round next year.  I haven't reverse-engineered the 2027 draft too closely yet, but we can safely put that pick in the #29-33 range.

You know I love mini-studies.  So I spot-checked the #30 pick for the 20-year period of 2001-2020, adding a few compensatory picks the following year for #30s who didn't sign (like the Dodgers failing to sign J.T. Ginn and drafting Michael Busch 31st in 2019).

I didn't want to get bogged down in control windows, and cutting this off at 2001 does exclude some very good #30s: Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, as well as David Wells, Jerry Reuss, Travis Fryman, and Brian Jordan.  Still, it'd be reasonable to say that the chances the #30 pick amounts to nothing in the Majors might be around two-thirds.  Although I will note that if you count Busch, the last few years have provided a relative bounty at this spot, as it also gave us Cole Ragans, Anthony Volpe, and Jordan Westburg.

The Tigers' trade return for Skubal, assuming he returns healthy in June, would come with more certainty and value than a draft pick around #30 would.  A multi-player trade package would also diversify Detroit's risk.

What makes this so hard for Harris is that he does not face a simple "#30-ish draft pick vs best possible trade package" choice.  That's because the #30-ish draft pick scenario means keeping Skubal for the 2026 season, which adds a big boost to the Tigers' playoff odds.  Let's say 25% playoff odds can be boosted to 40% with Skubal.  How does that and the draft pick compare to the trade deadline package?  This equation becomes much easier for Harris if the Tigers' playoff odds plummet toward 10% by late July.

So, a trade is not certain.  A trade is realistic, though, so the Tigers need to be prepared for sell, hold, and possibly even buy scenarios.  Would a team give up "top-of-system value" to rent 6-WAR type ace starting pitcher for two months of the regular season plus the playoffs?  We can search for precedents, though Skubal's surgery was literally unprecedented, so it won't be perfect.

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