Trading Relievers

If you had to name one thing Oakland has done an excellent job at over the past few years, developing relievers would probably be high on your list. Recently, the A's have been able to crank out quality bullpen arms in virtually every way an organization can: through the draft (Bailey), via trade (Devine, Wuertz, Blevins), by picking up other teams' junk off waivers (Breslow), and by signing minor league free agents (Ziegler, H-Rod).

Since they appear to have a comparative advantage over other teams in cheaply developing relievers, it makes sense for the team to deal from this area of strength in order to bolster other areas where development has not been so successful. And the trade deadline is the ideal time to do this, as every year teams convince themselves around this time that one more good reliever is essential to a playoff push.

As anyone who has paid even cursory attention to the A's can tell you, the offense stinks this season. The organization has legitimate prospects in the system at every position, but they vary in quality and distance from the majors. In the near term, there seems to be a fairly heavy reliance on the success of Chris Carter and Michael Taylor. Adding a hitter or two who projects as a decent major leaguer in the next couple of years would really brighten the team's outlook. Two questions remain: who would the A's trade, and what kind of return could they hope to receive?

Among guys currently on the roster, there are only a couple that are likely to fetch a worthwhile return in trade. Rodriguez and Wolf don't have the track records relievers need to be attractive to other teams, and Cedrick Bowers is just not very good. Blevins and Ziegler are good pitchers, but they seem to be viewed as specialists and are likely to be underrated. Bailey now has injury concerns, and his value may not have peaked. That leaves Wuertz and Breslow, and that pair matches up with the buzz that's out there right now.

For an idea of what the A's might get in return, let's take a look at a couple of trades that went down last July:

Trade 1: Arizona Diamondbacks trade Tony Pena to Chicago White Sox for Brandon Allen

Erik Manning of FanGraphs analyzed the deal at the time and called it a win for the Diamondbacks. Allen is a promising first base prospect who hit 29 home runs between A+ and AA in 2008, and followed that with 20 in 447 at bats between AA and AAA last season. He did receive a callup last year that did not go well, but he's taking plenty of walks and smoking the ball in AAA this year, with a .261/.404/.538 line. John Sickels gave him a B- grade coming into this season. Pena, meanwhile, displayed some similarities to Breslow, despite throwing with the opposite hand. He was set to enter arbitration at the end of the season, and he had a strong track record of throwing strikes and missing a reasonable number of bats. He was 27 at the time, while Breslow is about to turn 30. Breslow has been a little better at striking batters out, but he has also issued more walks. Overall, Breslow is probably slightly better now than Pena was at the time.

Trade 2: Baltimore Orioles trade George Sherrill to Los Angeles Dodgers for Josh Bell and Steve Johnson

In this trade, the Orioles sent their left-handed closer of the moment to the Dodgers in return for two promising prospects. Bell was doing well in AA as a 22-year-old third baseman, hitting .296/.386/.497 to that point in the season. Sickels rated him at C+ going into 2009, but moved him up to B prior to this season. Keith Law ranked him the 61st prospect in MLB in his pre-2010 list. Johnson was a long-shot righty with great stuff but some problems with control. Sickels gave him a C+ coming into this season. On the other side of the ledger was Sherrill, who at the time was in his first arbitration year and making $2.75 million. He and Wuertz also throw with opposite hands, but 2009 Sherrill did match up well with 2010 Wuertz, strikeout artists with good enough control. Again, Sherrill was probably of slightly lower quality than what the A's have.

Apart from handedness, Pena and Sherrill compare fairly well with what Breslow and Wuertz are right now, both in performance and in contract status. Neither of the former two have performed well this season, but the acquiring teams did not have that information at the time. Both returned solid prospects in trades -- not sure stars, but players with legitimate shots to become above-average major leaguers. Based on prospect grades, they are comparable in quality to Adrian Cardenas and Jemile Weeks in our system, or, for a possible trade partner that has been mentioned, Josh Reddick and Lars Anderson in the Red Sox system.

Lots of trades for relievers happen, some good, some bad. Based on the public stance of the A's, I think we can assume they won't give away Breslow or Wuertz. I picked out the above deals specifically for the quality of the hitters they returned. They're likely the ceiling, meaning you could do worse, but you probably are not going to get a can't-miss prospect in this type of deal. The equivalent of Josh Bell, or perhaps someone a tad better, might be the best the A's could hope for if they did decide to trade Wuertz or Breslow. That's certainly not a trivial return, but whether they should make such a trade is a different question which I'll leave for the comments.