Pirates Add Sanchez & Qualls in Deadline Deals

By Paul Sporer

I’m pleased to have started my new job on Monday, but I should’ve told them I wasn’t available until August 1^st so I could’ve been home to enjoy the trade deadline festivities today.  It was a fun, active day and the Pirates stayed involved after their move last night with a pair of moves, the first setting up the second.

The first move saw them buy low on Miami Marlins first baseman Gaby Sanchez who has labored through a horrendous season after back-to-back above average seasons that seemed to signify his emergence as solid middle tier option at the position.  Sanchez was sent with reliever Kyle Kaminska from the Marlins for Gorkys Hernandez and the competitive balance lottery pick that the Pirates were awarded a while back.  Kaminska provides some organizational depth out of the bullpen as a control-first (1.8 BB/9 in 461 IP) arm.  He could be a 25^th guy one day wearing out a path between Indy and Pittsburgh.

Back to Sanchez, his meltdown has been just a crumbling of skills across the board.  Take a look at his particulars the last three years:

As you can see, he was basically the same exact player the last two years and even showed some incremental improvement in his strikeout and walk rates.  He wasn’t a huge power threat home run-wise, but his 72 doubles were 5^th-most among first basemen from 2010-2011.  He has fallen apart this year resulting in a pair of demotions to AAA, though the second one came on the heels of a nice little five game streak where it looked like he might be coming out of it.  Five games is a tiny sample, of course, but he was hitting .278/.381/.444 with a homer and three walks against three strikeouts.  Is it just a poor run of 196 PA or something more to Sanchez?  You usually don’t see a walk rate just crumble like that from a veteran hitter.

The Pirates will bring Sanchez to their major league team and he is slated to join the club in Chicago on Wednesday.  He is slated to split time at first base with Garrett Jones, though Neal Huntington says it won’t be a strict platoon according to reports.  A straight platoon wouldn’t be a bad idea, though, as the two have clear splits favoring their opposite hand pitchers.  Jones has a .275/.344/.491 line with 60 HR in 1402 plate appearances against righties in his career.  That’s about 25 bombs per season’s worth of plate appearances.  Sanchez mashes lefties to the tune of a .298/.390/.488 line with 13 HR in 391 plate appearances, which is about 20 per season.

Hernandez, a 24-year old outfielder, was repeating AAA with uninspiring results (.257/.353/.348 in 281 PA this year).  He is a defense-first speedster who can play a legitimate centerfield, but with the bat lagging so far behind and some Andrew guy playing center for the foreseeable future, he was definitely expendable.  Even more so because Starling Marte plays a mean centerfield himself and projects to have a much better bat so he can spell Cutch when necessary.

The draft pick sent in the deal is the #2 pick in that competitive balance lottery and should be a solid pick (estimated between 32-37 depending how free agency plays out).  In fact, that is the real return here for Miami as Hernandez doesn’t project as much beyond a fourth, maybe even fifth, outfielder.  Sanchez’s track record doesn’t get wiped out because of 55 crummy games so the Pirates had to give something of value to complete deal.  This was a nice buy-low by the club.  Sanchez is under team control through 2015.

This trade made Casey McGehee expendable so instead of just eventually DFA’ing him, the Pirates got Chad Qualls from New York, who was staring down the barrel of DFA himself with Joba Chamberlain on his way back to the Bronx.  Qualls’ best days seem well behind him as he has been quite hittable of late (11.4 H/9) and his once-usable peripherals have all but collapsed.  He posted an 8.2 K/9 and 2.4 BB/9 (3.4 K/BB) in 267 innings from 2007-2010.  The walk rate maintained last year (2.4), but the strikeout rate imploded to a measly 5.2 K/9.

This year has been even worse.  He started off basically emulating 2011 in Philly with 5.5 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9 in 31 innings before being traded to New York where he has been abysmal in seven innings striking out just a pair and walking three.  Seven innings is really a nothing sample, but if you’ve seen any of them you know he’s been really struggling.  Plus, even his 2011/Philly numbers are far from special especially if he is supposed to be the de factor Brad Lincoln replacement in the pen.

John mentioned that he was hoping to see Bryan Morris given the chance to actually fill the Lincoln role.  I like that idea a lot given the way he has been pitching in Indy.  We’ll see if it comes to pass.  The Pirates saw a chance to get a more usable commodity than the one they had.  Both Qualls and McGehee have been well below average assets.  Exchanging one 25^th guy for another who could have some more use to your team is never a bad idea.  Worst case is they move on and pluck someone from Indy (hopefully Morris).