Phillies acquire Jay Bruce from Mariners (for Jake Scheiner)

andyb 2019-06-02 17:58:33 UTC #41

Look at the section to the right for 2019. That is the AAV calculation that shows a little less than $18 million available

zambonir 2019-06-02 18:01:54 UTC #42

IMO there's no way they are taking on so much of Bruce's salary that they'd be unable to sign Kimbrel or acquire someone like Hamels. Of course they could just go over the tax.

Taudawg 2019-06-02 18:06:27 UTC #43

Ah thanks. Completely missed that. I suppose we will know soon enough if the Phillies are willing to go beyond 206.

zambonir 2019-06-02 18:26:54 UTC #44

zambonir 2019-06-02 19:39:40 UTC #45

Seatlle is paying 18.5 of remaining 21 million so yeah, expect someone of value going back (at the moment I post, this AP story still doesn't say).

bkeich 2019-06-02 20:09:29 UTC #46

With that amount of money we are not going to be happy about this. I would have rather looked at salary dumps, this has young controllable talent going the wrong way, we have a below average farm system, this will probably make it worse.

That would be so bad except what we got was NOT what we needed. We needed a CF, this locks Cutch into playing more CF than we wil want to see. Bruce is really a DH at this point, having him in the field is going to be worse than having Hoskins playing LF and in today’s game it is hard to have a bench player that should not take the field.

julio 2019-06-02 20:13:54 UTC #47

Article from KOMO Seattle with more details of the Bruce trade (but no indication of what the Phils are giving up...):

zambonir 2019-06-02 20:28:14 UTC #48

I really think this has nothing to do with Herrera and CF (though Herrera being a LHB is certainly another hole, especially with Quinn no longer being a switch-hitter). If Bruce earns the playing time it might put McCutchen in CF more frequently but I think they've been looking for a LH bench bat for awhile (at minimum, since they optioned Williams).

Salary dump acquisition would have made it harder to improve the team further in July.

I just hope Bruce is actually good, and embraces the more limited role.

julio 2019-06-02 20:35:20 UTC #49

Scheiner is in Clearwater (A+). His current slash: .256/.324/.356/.680. He's 23 (24 in August). Had a nice season in Lakewood last year (.842 OPS) but really hasn't gotten it going this year.

saycheese 2019-06-02 20:46:10 UTC #50

The Phillies are giving cash in this deal? So they are taking on a bloated contract and giving money, Desperation move.

julio 2019-06-02 20:50:31 UTC #51

Read the KOMO article at the link above. The Mariners are going to be paying the Phillies $18,567,204 on January 15, 2020.

The Phillies gave up Jake Scheiner, and will be on the hook for about $2.75 million, for a season and a half of Jay Bruce. The Mariners will pay $18.5 million; the Mets (!) are on the hook for $1.5 million of the signing bonus (payable to Bruce next spring).

Regardless of your opinion of Jay Bruce, this looks like a pretty good deal by Klentak.

Lucky_Beagle 2019-06-02 21:02:32 UTC #52

I agree this seems to be a good trade. If Bruce doesn't work out he can easily be released at the amount of money the Phillies are on the hook for.

julio 2019-06-02 21:02:52 UTC #53

The remaining question (to be answered after the Phils-Dodgers game ends) is, What 25-man roster adjustment will the Phils make to accommodate Bruce? Option Nick Williams again, or DFA Gosselin or Rodriguez? Then down the road, what happens if/when Quinn comes off the Injured List?

bkeich 2019-06-02 21:03:25 UTC #54

I freely admit I expected this to be worse. Seattle got very little salary relief and an almost non-prospect. Win for Klentak

Worse comes to worse we could release Bruce with little issue. I still don’t really see a good bench slot for him and don’t think he is much of a match to what we need, but it certainly wasn’t a bad trade.

bkeich 2019-06-02 21:07:57 UTC #55

I think it makes it clear that Quinn is going to have to get some infield innings in his rehab. He will need to have that extra flexibility, because if he can’t at least take some infield innings, we really shouldn’t have 2 of our 3 bench players as OF only (not counting Knapp as he is just a backup C).

Sadly it was Herrera that I hoped could go back to playing some 2B if / when he lost his starting job and moved to the bench.

julio 2019-06-02 21:08:58 UTC #56

Yeah... It's a fair question whether this really addresses the key weaknesses of the club, but it doesn't appear that we really have much to lose here. I mean, Scheiner could somehow blossom into something of value - but he's almost 24, he's in single-A (high-A, technically), and he's not dominating there. The upside seems to be major-league utility man, the downside would be replacement level or less. So it's not zero risk, but pretty close - and Bruce may contribute.

frylock 2019-06-02 21:13:09 UTC #57

Agreed.

Happy with how the trade turned out.

andyb 2019-06-02 21:20:47 UTC #58

I am fine with this trade, even if I think Williams was a good bet to be better now. $15 million and EDLS would have been too much. $2.75 million and Scheiner is much less. Utility guys are a dime a dozen (as in do we really expect Scheiner to be better than Rodriguez or Gosselin or guys we can sign off the street). And the money is shockingly low. Low enough that Seattle just wanted to play a younger player and did not even want to go to the deadline and get more value.

Bonus is we now can trade Williams for something. Send him down to AAA and maybe he hits .300 and gets us an arm by the deadline.

nycphils 2019-06-02 21:24:12 UTC #59

Right - this amounts to “we traded Jake Scheiner” “Great trade, who’d we get?”

zambonir 2019-06-02 21:35:09 UTC #60

Yeah I suspect they will send Williams back down, the goal was to get him ABs. While it's hardly fair, this trade also came as he flunked his latest audition - 0 for 8 with no walks in four games since coming back.

(Also, while still entirely his prerogative, you can't tell me his decision to report late and his desire to go back to Austin a mere 36 hours after reporting helped his cause. Between May 18 and May 28 he took two round-trip flights and had just eight AAA ABs. Of course he wasn't going to come back and start hitting.)

If and when Quinn comes back I think you can afford to DFA Gosselin (and probably won't lose him). You certainly don't need both Gosselin and Rodriguez (and in addition to being a Kapler croney the guy has a postive WAR and .865 OPS).

Yeah but if Quinn is back he's essentially the starting CF so your bench is Kingery, Bruce, Knapp, Rodriguez. That's two IFs. No way Williams is staying (if not tomorrow, he'll go down when Quinn gets back). In any case, so long as you have Kingery to move around the board they're fine in a pinch.