The trade: The Minnesota Twins acquire RHP Sonny Gray from the Cincinnati Reds for RHPs Francis Peguero and Chase Petty
On Sunday, a trade was completed between a club that finished in the cellar last season (Minnesota) and a team that finished over .500 but just outside of the wild-card chase (Cincinnati). One team in the deal traded a top-of-the-rotation starter on a team-friendly contract, while the other traded for a quality pitching prospect years away from debuting. All of this perhaps makes these teams natural trade partners, but there’s a twist: It was the cellar-dwelling Twins that made the win-now move in snagging Gray to anchor a new-look rotation.
The Twins’ stunning collapse last season from two-time defending AL Central champs to last place certainly provided ample excuse for the Twins’ braintrust to hit the reset button. Instead, the clear direction in Minnesota is for a makeover, not a do-over. That, in itself, is the basis for a solid grade. That this lands Gray, and his alluring contract, in Minneapolis for a modest return earns the Twins high marks.
After a lackluster conclusion to his time with the Yankees, Gray flourished in the pitching program established in Cincinnati by Derek Johnson, who joined the Reds as pitching coach in 2019 and was promoted to director of pitching earlier this offseason. He was a key part of the reason why the Reds were finally able to turn starting pitching – a longtime organizational Achilles heel – into the foundation for the club’s modest run of success.
Gray followed strong campaigns in 2019 and 2020 with an up-and-down performance last season. His sinker was still effective, but he lost velocity on his four-seamer and spin on both that pitch and his curveball, and the results on those offerings slipped. While the loss of spin might unfurl some sticky-gate red flags, his game-by-game metrics didn’t really track with MLB’s in-season crackdown on foreign substances.
Instead, Gray’s stuff ebbed as he battled a series of soft tissue injuries that led to four stints on the injured list, the last ending when he was activated on July 18. Some of the lagging pitch metrics recovered by the end of the season, but the results never followed suit, as Gray finished with a 5.03 second-half ERA built on shaky control and command.
Still, none of the maladies that mucked up Gray’s 2021 season were arm-related. The Twins have also had mostly excellent results in acquiring veteran starters and turning them over to manager Rocco Baldelli and pitching coach Wes Johnson. Over 2019 and 2020, only four NL hurlers compiled more fWAR than Gray, and that’s the pitcher the Twins hope they are getting.
According to Cot’s Contracts, Gray will earn $10 million this season, then has a club option on 2023 for $12 million. If he is able to anchor a Twins’ rotation that is likely to look almost entirely different than the one that opened 2021, that contract will be one of baseball’s better bargains.
Instead of hitting reset, the Twins have added a pair of veterans to their rotation (Gray and Dylan Bundy, signed before the lockout) and acquired a new everyday shortstop in Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whom they got from Texas on Saturday.
There’s still plenty of work to do but at least the Twins are trying.
Twins grade: A-
With the Reds, let’s start with this: Cincinnati went 83-79 last season with a run profile that backs up that mark. The rotation around which the roster was built was more solid than outstanding, as Gray battled injury and inconsistency, and Luis Castillo had a disappointing campaign.
Still: Tyler Mahle had a breakout season, rookie Vladimir Gutierrez showed promise and veteran Wade Miley had a resurgent campaign. Gray has that team-friendly deal, Mahle and Castillo are still in their arbitration windows, Gutierrez is early in his service time count and Miley had a club option for $10 million. Plus top prospects Nick Lodolo and Hunter Greene are poised to compete for big league time this spring.
It’s a good, deep rotation, capable of even better than good, and all for less money than Max Scherzer will make this season with the Mets. If the Reds filled in the gaps of the roster around that group they were positioned to be a factor in the NL playoff race, especially with the addition of a sixth playoff slot in both circuits.
That does not seem to be the plan. First, the Reds decided to skip Miley’s option and rather than pay his $1 million buyout fee, they put him on waivers, where he was quickly claimed by the NL Central rival Cubs. That happened before the lockout, so the playoff expansion hadn’t happened, but still, even in the previous format, 83 wins is good foundation on which to build, not for giving away good players.
Now, Gray is gone as well and Castillo’s name keeps coming up in the rumor mill. The club’s top run producer, Nick Castellanos, is a free agent and the Reds apparently waved the white flag in the fight to keep him early on. During the CBA negotiations, when the players kept talking about their concerns around competitiveness, this is what they were talking about.
Unlike with Miley, the Reds did get back two pitching prospects. Peguero is a righty reliever who had a 4.96 ERA at age 23 in High-A last season, and has a 4.72 ERA overall in four pro seasons. He’s a lottery ticket.
That means the primary return for Gray was Petty, and he’s a quality pick-up. Petty, who doesn’t turn 19 until April 4, was the 26th pick of last summer’s draft. He’s a hard-throwing, 6-foot-1 righty out of New Jersey who has teased triple digits on the radar. He doesn’t have much of a performance record yet to speak of.
ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel tweeted, “Chase Petty and J.T. Ginn (headliner going to Oakland in two-player package for Chris Bassitt) are pretty similar prospects in value, though obviously differ in plenty of ways. I slightly prefer Petty but that may be a true coin flip within the industry.”
Petty is exactly the kind of talent a rebuilding team wants to acquire. The problem I have here is the Reds are not and should not be a rebuilding team. Maybe Cy Young awards lie ahead in Petty’s future, but that’s down the line. For a team with the Reds’ talent core and with a future Hall-of-Famer like Joey Votto in the latter part of his career, I’m more concerned with now.
This Reds team, right here, right now, could contend for the playoffs with the right acquisitions. Instead, the team has chosen to pare payroll at a time the franchise marks a full decade since the last time it won a postseason game.
Despite all of this, it’s still not impossible for the Reds to hang in the new watered-down playoff format. But if they do, it’ll be despite the organization’s moves, not because of them.