What’s the most variable part of a baseball team? The bullpen. What’s generally the most overvalued position? The closer.
So if you’re a 99-loss team with a dominant, pre-arb closer, trading him makes sense…right?
Of course. So the news that the Phillies are receiving interest, and apparently listening, on closer Ken Giles shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
Via MLB.com…
It starts with improving the pitching staff. It won’t be easy, so Klentak has to be open to any means of improvement, which includes trading some of the club’s young talent, possibly even closer Ken Giles.
[…]
The Phils already have received calls from teams about Giles.
“It’s not a goal,” Klentak said about trading their closer. “We’re trying as much as possible to collect as many good young controllable quality players as we can. But as I said last week and probably the week before that, we’re trying to be opportunistic at every turn and trying not to operate in absolutes. I think Ken is terrific. He’s great in his role. We want to hold the leads we can hold, but I don’t want to categorically say we will or we won’t do anything.
“I think we do need to be conscious, regardless of how many games we win next year, of making sure from a morale perspective we are winning the games that we are in a position to win and I think having a good bullpen in general is critical to that. And I will also say, when you ask is it a luxury, I think it’s a little different when you’re talking about a guy with one year of service time. If you were talking about a pending free agent then, yeah, that might be a slightly different situation. But Ken Giles, if he’s here, can very easily be a part of our future so I think we have to account for that in our thinking.”
Giles is quite a valuable asset for the Phillies. He just turned 25 in September, and over 115 2/3 career innings, he’s struck out 151, walked just 36, and pitched to a 1.56 ERA. After taking over as the closer when Jonathan Papelbon was traded at the end of July, Giles saved 15 games and blew just two. He also won’t be a free agent until after the 2020 season, giving the Phillies (or whichever team ends up acquiring him) five more years of control, including two that will be before his arbitration years.
But while Giles is still good, and young, and cheap, he’s still a reliever, and things can go off the rails quick for relievers. Steve Cishek was a two-win closer for the Marlins in 2014, and was essentially given to the Cardinals in the summer of 2015. Sean Doolittle was one of the best relievers in baseball from 2012-14, and pitched just 13 2/3 innings in 2015. Hell, Greg Holland was one of the best closers in baseball in both 2013 and 2014, and was nontendered by the Royals this offseason after blowing his elbow out at the close of the 2015 season.
The Phillies and Klentak don’t need to trade Giles just for the hell of it. But if a team that needs bullpen help (like say, the Red Sox) comes calling, Philadelphia would be foolish to not even discuss Giles. Craig Kimbrel got the Braves a bounty of prospects last spring, and there was a lot more money involved in that trade (thanks to the contracts of Kimbrel, Cameron Maybin, Carlos Quentin, and Melvin Upton also being involved). If the Phillies can restock their farm system even more by dealing Giles for several high quality prospects, that’s an opportunity the organization simply cannot afford to pass up.
[MLB.com]
