The Angels probably should trade Shohei Ohtani, at least from a baseball perspective, but who among us could really criticize them for going for it in Ohtani’s walk year, acquiring two pitchers from the White Sox for two prospects.
Lucas Giolito seemed like he’d be the best pitcher to be traded this July until the Ohtani rumors started up, and it’s quite likely he will be the best pitcher to change teams this month. A first-rounder back in 2012, Giolito went from the Nationals to the White Sox in the Adam Eaton trade in 2016, and eventually revamped his whole arm action to make it shorter and easier to repeat, while also developing a changeup that became his best offspeed pitch. He’s long ditched the curveball that was his out pitch when he was an amateur, while he’s turned to a slider that’s maybe average at its best. He’s been very durable since 2012 Tommy John surgery, and gets everything to play up a little because he gets such great extension with his 6-foot-6 frame. He’s probably more of a mid-rotation guy at this point, although getting him to a strong pitchers’ park might help given how much he lives in the strike zone.
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• Blum: Angels made a rushed and risky decision to pull Ohtani off the market
• Rosenthal: Angels — in keeping Ohtani, adding Giolito, Lopez —go all in
• Trade grades: Angels get the best pure rental starter on the market
Reynaldo López was in the Eaton deal with Giolito and current Rangers starter Dane Dunning, and López had the best fastball at the time of the trade, with a delivery and lack of quality secondaries that gave him reliever risk. Since the White Sox moved him to the bullpen, he’s held hitters to a .206/.268/.341 line, and he’s been effective enough against lefties to be a full-inning, high-leverage option. He might be the Angels’ best reliever right now, and Giolito is probably their second-best starter, which more than justifies giving up two of the team’s top half-dozen prospects even with both pitchers heading for free agency after 2023.
The White Sox get two prospects in return, one of them from my preseason top 100, catcher Edgar Quero. Quero had an incredible season in 2022 as a 19-year-old in Low A, with a .312/.435/.530 line, but the Angels chose to skip him over High A this year and he has struggled, with a .246/.386/.332 line buoyed mostly by the fact that he’s walked more (55) than he’s struck out (53). He doesn’t make very hard contact, at least not yet, but he should get to 10-15 homers a year and show enough contact quality to help that on-base skill play up. He remains a work in progress on defense both receiving and throwing, although I think getting older and stronger will at least help him with the former. He could be an above-average regular in time if the White Sox slow him down and let him get a full 2024 in the minors too.
Ky Bush was the Angels’ second-round pick in 2021 and had a solid full-season debut last year in Double A, an aggressive promotion for someone from a mid-major program with some command work to do. He started this year on the injured list with oblique and then groin injuries, and has been awful since his return. Bush’s velocity has been consistently 92-94 mph since the draft, down from where he was in college, with a 55 changeup, while he’s had a reverse platoon split since he signed even with a solid-average curveball. He’s also had much more trouble with control this year, only throwing about 60 percent of pitches for strikes, although you could argue that might still be the aftereffects of the injuries. I would try to start him and maybe see if de-emphasizing the slider against lefties in favor of the curve helps his results.
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Of course the Angels could have traded Ohtani last winter for a king’s ransom, and maybe could have gotten a prince’s ransom or at least a viscount’s ransom if they traded him right now. The baseball argument there is pretty straightforward – they’re on the outside of the playoff picture looking in right now, and have to pass multiple teams to make the playoffs, whether for the division title or a wild-card spot. Trading Ohtani could bring back several young pieces to build a stronger contender. I’m usually just the person to make that argument, but not in this case.
This is probably the Angels’ best chance to make the playoffs since they signed Ohtani, and I do think it says something to the players and the fans that they’re deciding to go for it one last time before he leaves in free agency. Maybe it helps convince him to re-sign. Maybe it just gets more fans in the park for the last two months. If they get even a single playoff series out of it, I think it’ll have been worth it, given their long drought and the sense that they’ve wasted the peaks of two of the greatest players in MLB history. It’s a trade that makes sense for both teams, even if the White Sox probably end up winning on paper when Quero has a solid career as a big leaguer.
(Photo of Lucas Giolito: Joe Nicholson / USA Today)
