Hey, you there. Unnamed general manager. Word is you’re interested in a blockbuster trade for Jose Fernandez.
Well, good luck convincing the Miami Marlins to do it. But if you can…well, let’s just say you have the right idea.
But first, some background. The Fernandez trade smoke started circulating when Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reported that the young ace had rejected a long-term contract offer, and when the Marlins made it known that Scott Boras, Fernandez’s agent, would no longer be included in discussions about the 23-year-old’s workload.
Then came the fire: a report from SiriusXM host Craig Mish stating there’s “growing sentiment” that Fernandez could be dealt this winter. Fanning the flames was a report from Andy Slater of SlaterScoops.com that effectively painted Fernandez as Miami’s problem child.
Things have since calmed. Marlins president David Samson downplayed the Fernandez rumors in a text to Jackson, and MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro and Jon Heyman of CBS Sports (via Frisaro) have both heard that Fernandez isn’t on the block.
Still, it’s difficult to disregard the idea. The Marlins have a reputation for dealing star talent—especially when said star talent is about to get expensive, as Fernandez is about to in his first tango with arbitration this winter. He’s poised to go from making $650,000 to being a multimillionaire.
Oh, and there’s the possibility of the Marlins landing an unprecedented haul for Fernandez.
If the Marlins do put the young right-hander on the block, the trade market will be getting a true rarity. He’s a 23-year-old with an ace track record and three years of club control left. It’s not often that pitchers with such things are traded, you know.
Within recent memory, the only trades that provide insight into what the Marlins can demand are the ones that changed the addresses of Erik Bedard, Matt Garza, Mat Latos and Gio Gonzalez. Each was in a position similar to the one Fernandez is in now, and each brought back at least four pieces of young talent.
But if it’s these trades the Marlins were to point to, they wouldn’t be saying “We want that.” They’d be saying “We want a lot more than that.”
Fernandez is not only younger now than any of those pitchers were but is also considerably better. Among pitchers who have logged at least 250 innings since 2013, he ranks among the elites not just in ERA but in three stats (FIP, xFIP and SIERA) that are designed to see through the imperfections of ERA:
On either side of Fernandez’s Tommy John operation in 2014, he’s been at least a top-10 starter. More realistically, he’s been a top-five starter.
And even saying that much isn’t doing him proper justice. If we use ERA+ to adjust Fernandez’s 2.40 career ERA for league average, we find that he’s been better in his age-20 to age-22 seasons than any pitcher in 100 years. That’s a one followed by two zeroes. So, yeah.
As such, Fernandez would be worth a lot more in a trade than Bedard, Garza, Latos and Gonzalez were. Maybe it wouldn’t take more than four pieces of young talent to acquire him, but the quality of the talent would have to be better.
Case in point: David Schoenfield of ESPN.com brought up names like Yoan Moncada, Julio Urias and Jose Berrios—three of MLB.com’s top 20 prospects—as mere starting points. In all likelihood, landing Fernandez would require at least one elite prospect and additional well-regarded pieces of young talent.
This is to say that any team that trades for Fernandez will basically be pulling off a Herschel Walker swap. Gone will be a whole bunch of young talent, and in its place will be just one player.
As for whether Fernandez could be worth such a deal, let’s keep it simple. Since any team that deals for him would only care about winning in the short term, let’s assume that his new club would be happy if he helped it do so by being his best, healthiest self.
And you know what? That’s a very real possibility.
Fernandez is pretty much the platonic ideal of a power pitcher. Beyond being an athletic 6’2″ and 215 pounds, he strikes out a ton of batters with mid- to high-90s heat, a wicked curveball and an underrated changeup, and his walk rate in the last two seasons shows how he’s improved as a control artist.
There will come a time when age will be a threat to chip away at these abilities. But with Fernandez, that’s not an imminent threat.
According to the starting pitcher aging curves presented by Bill Petti at FanGraphs, starters don’t tend to begin leaking velocity at a rapid rate until around 26 years of age. Fernandez’s remaining three seasons of club control will only take him to his age-25 campaign, so scratch that as a reason to worry.
Elsewhere, history shows that starters typically don’t have to worry about their strikeout and walk rates going into sharp decline phases until they get closer to 30. You can scratch those as well.
The elephant in the room, of course, is Fernandez’s health. He’s already missed a year due to Tommy John surgery and had to hit the disabled list with a biceps strain after he returned in 2015. It’s not unfair to wonder whether he’s inherently prone to injuries.
And yet, it’s surprisingly easy to be optimistic.
It’s a good look that Fernandez’s stuff was A-OK in 11 starts in 2015. As Brooks Baseball shows below, his velocity was a combination of par for the course and more consistent. Elsewhere, his fastball, curveball and changeup were as good or better at missing bats than they were in 2013.
Fernandez’s command was also on point. He walked a career-low 1.95 batters per nine innings in 2015. Also, PITCHf/x tells us he threw a career-high 58.9 percent of his fastballs in the strike zone.
A related story is that he had no trouble with his mechanics. Doug Thorburn of Baseball Prospectus noted that Fernandez’s balance, momentum, torque and posture were as good as ever. Just as important, he also got his arm slot back up again after it dropped in 2014.
That was by design, specifically where his curveball was concerned. As he told Christina De Nicola of Fox Sports, keeping his arm up and staying on top of his curveball was “very important” because “obviously [it puts] a lot of pressure to my elbow, and that’s the main reason I got hurt in my opinion.”
Granted, all this doesn’t mean there’s no concern whatsoever. Fernandez has already gone under the knife, and noted surgeon Dr. Neal ElAttrache told Jonah Keri of Grantland (RIP, Grantland) in July that for every one mile per hour a pitcher throws, “there’s an exponentially higher force applied to the [surgical] graft.” Knowing how hard Fernandez throws, that’s a worry that applies to him.
Even still, this is only a dissenting observation. A pitcher who undergoes one Tommy John surgery is hardly doomed to undergo another. And if anyone can avoid another, it’s a pitcher like Fernandez, who is young, strong and athletic with good mechanics.
Another thing to be mindful of is that, though he may be about to get expensive for the Marlins, Fernandez wouldn’t be expensive for anyone else. Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors only projects him to make $2.2 million in arbitration. He’ll surely make a lot more in his second and third years of arbitration eligibility, but on the whole he’s destined to be drastically underpaid in the next three seasons.
This leaves just one question: Would Fernandez be too much of a pain in the butt in the clubhouse to be worth it?
If you believe Slater’s report, possibly. One player source claimed Fernandez spoke to management like they were children in 2015 and had his own teammates rooting against him.
So, there’s that. But while it can’t be ignored, it sounds like it can be taken with a grain of salt.
Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports has a report out that begs to differ with Slater’s. His sources told him that Fernandez was actually more receptive to veteran criticism in 2015, and that he “for the most part endeared himself to teammates, showing greater maturity.” Besides which, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney was right to argue that Miami’s leadership issues in 2015 were hardly conducive to upstanding behavior.
So, let’s recap. Talent-wise, dealing for Fernandez is the next-best thing to dealing for Clayton Kershaw. Health-wise, he has what he needs to avoid further catastrophic injuries. Attitude-wise, it’s not a given that he’d be a clubhouse problem.
In light of all this, Fernandez is exactly the kind of player teams in win-now mode should want to deal for. The cost would be high, but there’s a strong chance of clubs getting exactly what they expect in return: an elite starting pitcher who could definitely help with the whole “win now” thing.
Teams should be interested, all right. Now all they have to do is convince the Marlins to do it.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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