Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.

 
Royals acquire Graeme Lloyd

Kansas City Royals get: Graeme Lloyd.
New York Mets get: Jeremy Hill.

The biggest problems the Royals are facing right now are their need for more offense and their bullpen. While you can certainly argue that their rotation is a candidate to become a major problem pretty quickly, the fact is that the team doesn't have a tremendous amount of resources, and they need to focus on fixing the things that they can reasonably expect to within their means. Getting Curtis Leskanic at the beginning of the month was an excellent start, and he's pitched even better than expected thus far (admittedly, in very limited work), allowing just three hits and three walks (no runs) while striking out 11 over 7.1 innings.

So that's one guy down. Unfortunately, even with the move of Jeremy Affeldt to relief this week, this is still a pretty bad bullpen. Optimally, you'd really like to be able to shift Affeldt back to the rotation anyway, so if you have a chance to acquire some relievers for a marginal cost, you do it with a division title within reach as the deadline approaches. While he's getting up in years, getting Graeme Lloyd for Jeremy Hill fits the bill. In making this trade, you realize Lloyd's limitations...he's a guy who can face just a couple of batters and get lefties out. This year for the Mets vs. lefties he's allowed a .222/.222/.267 line against in 45 plate appearances against, numbers the Royals would love to see from their bullpen. Not that it means a ton, but Lloyd's also got previous significant playoff experience, so should the Royals get there, he's got that going for him.

The cost to the Royals ends up being Jeremy Hill, a minor league reliever - the sixth that Mets' interim general manager has acquired since he took over (Royce Ring, Edwin Almonte, Kole Strayhorn, Joselo Diaz, Jason Anderson and now Hill). While he pitched in the majors a little bit last season, he's having a dreadful 2003 campaign at AAA Omaha, and basically has one pitch: a mid-to-high 90s fastball. While it's not the worst one pitch to have, it's likely he'll need a bit more to succeed at the major league level for any extended period of time. While he's almost 26 already, his age isn't as big a factor in his development as a pitcher as might be assumed, as this is only his third season as a pitcher following five years in the Royals system as a failed catching prospect.

Graeme Lloyd was pretty useless to the Mets at this point, as last place teams don't have much need for a one out lefty specialist, and I guess if Allard Baird called up Jim Duquette and offered this trade, the Mets had to take it. At the very least, the Mets acquire someone who could be of some value to them in the future as they give up a guy who would not have been. While there are a lot of guys in the Royals system I like a lot better than Hill, he's more valuable to the organization at this stage than Lloyd was. At the same time, the Royals weren't going to be helped in their divisional title push this year by Hill, and going after a legitimate major league reliever like Lloyd was the right move.
posted by VZW Watcher at 2:10 AM -