O’s Trade Oscar Salazar For Pitcher Cla Meredith
July 19th, 2009 | by Daniel Moroz |With the Orioles needing to free up a roster spot, they have dealt Oscar Salazar to the San Diego Padres for pitcher Cla Meredith. Salazar has been a nice righty bat off the bench for the team, hitting .419/.455/.613 this year after a solid .284/.372/.506 in 94 at bats last year. He doesn’t really have a set position currently, being mostly limited to first and third – the former of which he plays just OK and the latter fairly poorly. He should be much more valuable in the NL, as the will get more opportunities to do what he does best (hit). Salazar is already 31 years old though, so it’s not exactly a huge loss for the O’s.
Meredith is a 26 year-old right-handed reliever. His strike-out rate is down some this year (4.91 K/9, compared to a career 6.2 mark) and his walks are up (3.19 BB/9, 2.4 career), but he’s still getting a ton of groundballs (62.2%, though that’s lower than his 67.4% career rate). His FIPs for his career are 2.93, 3.49, 3.91, and 3.54 this year, with tRAs of (and keep in mind these are total runs and not earned runs) 2.58, 3.65, 3.87, and 4.21. Those indicate a solid, though unspectacular, pitcher who should fit in just fine in the O’s bullpen - possibly allowing them to more easily trade another reliever. As a side-arming sinkerballer, Meredith may bring back some memories of Chad Bradford. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
I would have preferred the O’s pick up a younger prospect, but I think this is an OK haul. There was talk of Salazar taking over for Mora at third next year, but I never thought that was going to be a concrete plan so it makes some sense to get a major leaguer – even if it’s a reliever – instead of risk losing Salazar on waivers for nothing in attempting to send him down to the minors (or trading Felix Pie instead, who I still believe in). I’m pretty happy with the deal overall.
[Edit: Just realized that there still needs to be another move made to free up that roster spot, assuming Meredith takes a place in the pen. Perhaps that means that a trade of a reliever - Baez? Sherrill? - is really imminent.]
Tags: Cla Meredith, Orioles, Oscar Salazar, Padres, Trades
By Dempsey's Army on Jul 20, 2009
OK, so this trade in a vacuum is 31-year old Salazar for 26-year old middle reliever. But in this case I don’t care how old Salazar is because he is a) cheap and under control (not even a full season of MLB experience yet) and b) the Orioles have a need for a bat at both corner spots in the infield, certainly this year and even more so in 2010.
The Warehouse will not pick up the option on Mora and will probably not resign Huff unless Aubrey is ready to take a big paycut. That leaves Ty Wigginton to play third base and…who’d on first? Salazar could have filled that need and given Brandon Snyder (who is not exactly tearing up AAA) more time to develop. It’s cheap offense and buys time for one of our few position player prospects. That’s value.
People act like the only choice was to trade either Salazar or Pie. There was another. Cut Melvin Mora. MacPhail seems to understand the concept of a sunk cost and with only $3 million still owed to Mora, it would have been fairly easy to do. Even with Salazar’s poor defense at third, he would still more valuable than Mora. Shift Wiggy to third and let Salazar get ABs at first, the defense is even less of an issue.
Cla Meredith is bad away from PETCO and against AL competition:
http://dempseysarmy.blogspot.com/2009/07/oscar-salazar-gone-to-san-diego.html
The splits are ugly and he may contribute absolutely nothing to the team.
A team like Baltimore needs to be creative in filling holes. They can’t attract top free agents quite yet. Who’s going to play third base next year? Or first? Retreads, has-beens or “good field, no-hit” types. Seems to me Salazar would have been at least a shot at filling the spot cheaply and maybe even produce on a regualr basis. His major league OPS is .880 . His last two years in Norfolk he’s had an OPS well over .900 . Worth a shot, I think.
Now maybe MacPhail has irons in the fire that will garner Baltimore a 1B or 3B for next year. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt with the rotation this year and they really didn’t have a great plan in place for that deficiency. On the face of it, I’m calling this trade shortsighted.
Thanks for the space to ramble!
By frostking on Jul 20, 2009
All your points are well taken. Cutting Mora would certainly have been a good option – I agree with you there. I was mostly just looking at the trade itself (which we obviously disagree on, but the differences in absolute terms probably aren’t that large), and not at all of the possible things the team could have done otherwise. Salazar was put on waivers before the season and nobody claimed him, so it’s not at all crazy to think that another player of similar ability will be available to the O’s this off-season.
As I mentioned before, the O’s really need someone other than both Mora and Salazar at third next year, and so this trade may give the team some extra bullpen depth to make another deal to get that player.
I won’t disagree that it wasn’t the best possible thing the team could have done, nor that Salazar isn’t better than nothing at 1B or 3B next year. I don’t love the trade, but I think it was pretty solid.