The July trade deadline and the August waiver period are filled with a lot of veteran-for-prospect trades. Rarely do you see a real baseball trade where major league talent is swapped for equivalent major league talent due to redundancies on both teams' roster. Even more rare than that is a deadline deal involving all prospects. There is generally no driving force for making that kind of deal at that moment.
So, when the Indians swapped Connor Capel and Jhon Torres to the Cardinals for Oscar Mercado it should have raised some eyebrows. Besides the standard reporting of the trade I don't remember at the time that there was a lot of fanfare.
Here is my summary with details below: The Indians traded two legitimate prospects in Capel and Torres and got back a 4th outfielder type in Mercado. Mercado, despite spending the entire year in AAA, is hardly even mentioned in discussions about who will make the Indians as an outfielder this year, something that doesn't bode well. He appears to be nothing more than a slightly better version of Greg Allen and we don't need any more Greg Allens on our team or in our system. Bottom line: Not a good trade at all or one that is likely to positively impact the 2019 Indians.
On the surface it appeared that the Indians were just moving the timeline up for incorporating another prospect into their major league roster. By that I mean they were trading future major league outfielders who would be ready sometime in the next 3-4 years for one who would be ready in 2019.
Makes sense, right, given our competitive window and lack of outfield prospects at the high levels of the minors.
Plus the Indians were trading high on Capel who had exceeded all expectations with his power over the 1 1/2 years before the trade. And Torres was nothing more than a lottery ticket, right?
Well, with time comes clarity and right now it looks like the Indians were robbed in this trade.
Mercado had a history of being a fringy hitter which made evaluators think he was nothing more than a 4th outfielder. He was a good defender in CF but with little power but with plus speed. Think Greg Allen with 5-6 more HRs a year.
The scary thing about Mercado is that virtually no one mentions him as an option to make the ML roster this spring. If this guy was a good prospect wouldn't you think, after a full year at AAA, that he would be given more than polite mention in the few writers who were trying to be inclusive of all possibilities? I would, which makes me wonder if he is really more than a AAAA player at this point.
Capel is still Capel with that power thing and that strong outfield arm and a tick above average speed. He was, however, still a questionable hitter as his 2017 season was spent mostly flirting with the Mendoza line until a late season push left him closer to .240. In 2018 he traded some of that power for better selectivity at the plate and a slightly higher average making me think that he might not profile as more than a tweener as he wasn't fast enough for center and didn't have the power for right or the BA for left.
Torres is another story. At first I thought he was just a throw-in on this deal. However, he is so much more than that, being the #2 prospect in the AZL this past season and, although he played less than a month after being traded to the Cardinals, he was the #5 prospect in the GCL. Basically, he was one of the highest rated prospects the Indians have ever had in the AZL. Here is the list of all of our prospects that made the top 20 list for the AZL:
2017 - None
2016 - Justin Hillman (12), Gabe Mejia (15)
2015 - Bobby Bradley (3), Justus Sheffield (4), Yu Cheng (12)
2014 - Clint Frazier (1), Francisco Mejia (7),
I could go on but you get the idea. Being the #2 prospect in a league when you don't even play the last month there and then being the #6 prospect in a league where you play less than a year is a big deal. While Torres is not a top 10 prospect for the Cardinals by MLB or Baseball America, he is still far from being a throw-in on this deal.
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