Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.

 
The Kennedy-Speier-Hendrickson three-way

Colorado Rockies get: Joe Kennedy.
Toronto Blue Jays get: Justin Speier.
Tampa Bay Devil Rays get: Mark Hendrickson.

This is an interesting skills-based deal, the kind we generally don't see anymore. None of these guys are making all that much money, so an evaluation of the trade comes down to who is most likely to fit best on their new teams.

Hendrickson, as many of you I'm sure are aware, was a professional basketball player who couldn't really play (at a level that would allow him to have a lengthy career anyway) and is huge (6'9"). As intimidating a presence as he surely must be on the mound releasing the ball from as high as he does, he's 29 and really hasn't been effective as a major league pitcher. While he posted a 2.46 ERA over 36.2 innings (16 games, 4 starts) in 2002, he regressed to a 5.51 ERA over 158.1 innings (30 games, all starts) last season. He's also got a much lower strikeout rate than you'd (or I'd) expect from a guy that tall...he had just 76 last season. The Jays' pitching was pretty weak last season, which allowed Hendrickson to accumulate 30 starts despite their poor quality. Due to the major upgrade they've made heading into 2004 (with the acquisitions of Ted Lilly, Miguel Batista and Pat Hentgen), there really isn't much room for a guy who was this ineffective at this age in an extended trial.

Okay, so why would Tampa Bay trade a promising young (24-year old) starter in Joe Kennedy, even one who had a horrific 2003, for Hendrickson? I'm really not sure. The Rays have a bunch of guys who could be patched together to form a rotation in Jeremi Gonzalez, John Halama, Victor Zambrano, Paul Abbott, Doug Waechter, Chad Gaudin, Jorge Sosa, Dewon Brazelton and now Hendrickson. There are a few young guys in there (Waechter, Gaudin and Brazelton) and Kennedy was another. If you're in Tampa's situation - with three teams likely to be very competitive in your own division - isn't there something to be said for letting the young guys go and seeing what you have? I realize that this (packing the team with young, cheap players) can't go on forever...eventually you've got to show the fans an obvious effort to put a winning team on the field and spend some money...but I'm willing to bet that Tampa could get their fan base more excited about a team centered on guys like Rocco Baldelli, Carl Crawford and Gaudin than it can about a team relying on ancients like the 36-year old Paul Abbott. So I really don't know why Tampa would do this. GM Chuck LaMar has apparently been enamored with Hendrickson for a long time, having drafted him when he was the Braves' scouting director eleven years ago. He's also convinced that, being in the AL East, the Devil Rays need a lefty. (I guess Halama, who he signed less than a month ago and who has a better track record as a major league pitcher, doesn't count for some reason.) In any case, I would think that LaMar would be more concerned with getting guys who can pitch effectively, regardless of what arm they throw with, at this stage of his team's development.

Kennedy is of particular interest to Dan and I, as he's on our Diamond-Mind team. We were rooting for him to do well in Tampa, and while his prospects have dimmed considerably in the past season (due to his awful season last year and now his move to Colorado), he's still just 24 and has already pitched 448 major league innings with some success. I'm certainly not a pitching coach or a doctor, so I don't know exactly what went wrong...but Kennedy was absolutely terrible in 2003, posting a 3-12 record and 6.13 ERA. His numbers got worse pretty much all the way across the board, and he ultimately lost his spot in the rotation, quite a feat on a team as bad as the Devil Rays were last year (63-99, 32 games out of a playoff spot). The Rockies give up Justin Speier in this trade, a pitcher who has been good for them in his roughly two and a half seasons. But the problem in Colorado has never been the pitching out of the bullpen...it's been the rotation. There's been a plethora of ideas proferred about how to best build a staff in Colorado, and while I don't have much to add to the discussion, it seems to me that your best chance for success is to have as many options available as possible. Kennedy is now a candidate (one with a leg up, I would think) along with Scott Elarton, Chin-Hui Tsao, Denny Stark, Aaron Cook and Cory Vance to round out a rotation topped by Shawn Chacon and Jason Jennings. For a team like the Rockies with multiple holes, getting a young starter with potential for an established, solid reliever seems like a reasonable proposition. There's no getting around the horrendous season that Kennedy's coming off of, but the prospect of him being able to resurrect his once-promising career in Denver is mighty intriguing.

Finally, the acquisition of Speier makes sense for the Blue Jays. Having just dramatically improved their rotation (as I mentioned a few blocks of writing ago), Hendrickson was likely to be pitching out the bullpen, if he made the roster at all. At this point in their careers, based on all the evidence we have available to us, Speier's simply a better pitcher. He put up perfectly adequate numbers for a steady, reliable reliever during his time in Colorado, and was, like most pitchers, better away from Coors Field. He'll be away all the time now. And while the Toronto rotation has really improved, the bullpen could stand to add some help to a core that currently consists of Kerry Ligtenberg, Aquilino Lopez and now, Speier. I think the bottom line from Toronto's perspective is that they're getting a superior, more established pitcher as compared to Hendrickson. With the need for Hendrickson's ability to start disappearing, the opportunity to upgrade the bullpen was one they had to take advantage of.

Ultimately, there's good to be taken away from this deal both in Colorado and Toronto...shockingly, it's hard to see exactly how Tampa Bay is improving itself.
posted by VZW Watcher at 9:02 PM -