Minnesota traded two minor league relief pitchers for MAT:
- Steven Cruz looks like a "never will be", or, at least, he has never shown much in the minors. His highest level was AA, last season, where he had a 5.14 ERA. https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=cruz--000ste
- Evan Sisk is a 26-year-old "maybe" who pitched well in AA and AAA last season. https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=sisk--000eva
While the Nats organization has plenty of minor league relievers with numbers that look like Cruz, Sisk looks like the sort of guy Washington would have pulled up to the majors last season. Sadly.
This looks like a deal the Nats could not have made for a short-term CF.
He projects as a lefty bullpen option with a fastball/cutter/slider combination out of a low arm slot. There’s a lot of modern pitching design to his game; he pairs a sweeping slider with a tailing fastball and uses a cutter more often than a changeup as a pitch to get righties out. He sits 91–93 and sometimes touches 95, but his game is less about velocity than deception. . . . I think Sisk has a future as an up-and-down reliever who gets lefties out reliably, and it wouldn’t shock me to see him end up as the best lefty in a bullpen someday, though that would be an upside surprise for sure.
Steven Cruz is a bigger prospect, both on our lists and literally, though like Sisk he’s not yet on the 40-man roster. He’s a mountain of a man, 6-foot-7 and strong, which lets him top 100 mph with his fastball and sit in the upper 90s. Despite his height, his stride and arm slot give his fastball that coveted shallow shape that lets four-seamers play well up in the zone. There’s not much danger here of him being one of those hollow-velo types.
...
That’s a nice haul for a Royals team that wasn’t realistically contending this year, and it probably doesn’t hurt that their assistant pitching coach, Zach Bove, came over from the Twins this offseason, where he’d been the assistant minor league pitching coordinator (title inflation in baseball is so hot right now). Teams in contending windows either need to have relievers like Sisk and Cruz in their system or trade for them as the need arises. I don’t think either of them has a ton of value as a standalone trade piece, but if the Royals are good in a few years, their bullpen will have more length as a result of this trade.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/michael-a-taylor-is-the-second-center-fielder-the-twins-needed/I guess the equivalent for us would be Cronin for the Sisk piece and a raw, hard thrower for the Cruz piece. I agree with the conclusion that this was a good get KC given the non-contending status. I don't see how on Earth Taylor would have pushed us into contention, so I can't see why we would be willing to give as much as the Twins. TBH, if there's value for glove first back up outfielders, we'd be much better off trying to sneak out a passable 1st half of the season from Robles and then dealing him for a similar package.
