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https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/07/blue-jays-trade-rowdy-tellez-brewers.html


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Richards is on the move for the second time in six weeks, after being traded with Willy Adames by the Tampa Bay Rays to Milwaukee for J.P. Feyerseisen and Drew Rasmussen.

The 28-year-old with three more years of club control has a cumulative 3.69 ERA and 1.137 WHIP with 41 strikeouts in 31.2 innings.

Francis, 25, has a 3.62 ERA and 1.022 WHIP with 65 strikeouts in 59.2 innings over 11 starts between double-A Biloxi and triple-A Nashville.

We got players for Tellez. I'm calling this a win.

I would have been very happy with just Richards but this Bowden Francis guy is icing on the cake. 25 years old, 6-5, and decent numbers as a starter in the minors...let Pete Walker do his magic eventually.

nice story on him just a couple of days ago:
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And what's up with the Brewers acquiring our Left-handed stiffs? (Shaw, Smoak....Lind?...Volgebach?)

Bowden Francis looks like organizational depth, at least to begin with. The pitching right now at New Hampshire in particular is rather lame. SWR is heading to the US Olympic team following a couple of poor outings with the Fisher Cats. Richards would be meh on some staffs, but on the Jays, he has decent innings-eating potential

Good trade for both teams and Rowdy has a legit opportunity to step into a starting 1B role for a division leader.

I'm rooting for him to do well, and with another reliever in our pen it should mean we're one step closer to a Chatwood DFA. I consider that a win-win.

Yeah this is a win. Richards is an upgrade in the bullpen, and Francis could turn into a back end rotation piece or a reliever. Both have years of team control. Not an overwhelming return by any means, but if all we're giving up is Tellez then it's a win. Mediocre defensive 1B with no positional versatility have to hit a lot to justify a roster spot, and Tellez hasn't been hitting. Tellez looks like an AAAA player right now, but he may yet find a MLB role. At the end of the day the Jays couldn't afford to wait on him any longer. It's just too bad this kind of deal couldn't have happened sooner.

And1Skip wrote:I would have been very happy with just Richards but this Bowden Francis guy is icing on the cake. 25 years old, 6-5, and decent numbers as a starter in the minors...let Pete Walker do his magic eventually.

nice story on him just a couple of days ago:

Read on Twitter

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And what's up with the Brewers acquiring our Left-handed stiffs? (Shaw, Smoak....Lind?...Volgebach?)

Billy McKinney.

Going way back. Corey Koskie.

Have to say, I like the work they're doing on acquiring relievers. We've now acquired two competent, if unspectacular, relievers with plenty of team control remaining, and it has cost us two players that were liable to get DFAed anyway. Better than spending a bunch of assets on rentals, because it'll mean much less work in the offseason shoring up the 'pen again.

Schad wrote:Have to say, I like the work they're doing on acquiring relievers. We've now acquired two competent, if unspectacular, relievers with plenty of team control remaining, and it has cost us two players that were liable to get DFAed anyway. Better than spending a bunch of assets on rentals, because it'll mean much less work in the offseason shoring up the 'pen again.

I saw the Kimbrel talk on the pre-game, but do you see the Cubs dealing Hendricks at all?

The_Hater wrote:
I saw the Kimbrel talk on the pre-game, but do you see the Cubs dealing Hendricks at all?

I really don't want to spend the resources on Kimbrel, who has been great this season, but atrocious the past two, and is either a rental (with a $1m buyout) or a $16m reliever next season. I'm more concerned about having the bullpen depth to get leads to the ninth, rather than spending big on someone to serve as closer.

I've been a fan of Hendricks, and wanted us to acquire him in the offseason, but it would depend on price. His contact stats earlier in the year were absolutely alarming, and while he has improved in recent weeks, his seasonal numbers still suck. I'd be willing to risk that, but not if the Cubs want "#2 starter with years of affordable control" assets in return.

Cyrus wrote:

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He’ll be disappointed to find out that Rowdy Tellez just isn’t very good. He’s had more at bats during his “sluggish start” this year, than he had all last year when he had that 133 wRC+.

vaff87 wrote:

Cyrus wrote:

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He’ll be disappointed to find out that Rowdy Tellez just isn’t very good. He’s had more at bats during his “sluggish start” this year, than he had all last year when he had that 133 wRC+.

Well, Tellez probably won't get a better opportunity than this to prove his worth in the majors. Brewers are first in their division with an abysmal first base situation. If he can't beat out Daniel Vogelbach (.216/.323/.709) and Keston Hiura (.161/.259/.554) for the job, he should honestly just head to Japan and make some money.

Natural11 wrote:

vaff87 wrote:

Cyrus wrote:

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He’ll be disappointed to find out that Rowdy Tellez just isn’t very good. He’s had more at bats during his “sluggish start” this year, than he had all last year when he had that 133 wRC+.

Well, Tellez probably won't get a better opportunity than this to prove his worth in the majors. Brewers are first in their division with an abysmal first base situation. If he can't beat out Daniel Vogelbach (.216/.323/.709) and Keston Hiura (.161/.259/.554) for the job, he should honestly just head to Japan and make some money.

Interesting that Hiura has been so bad over the last two years. That guy was supposed to be a really good hitter.

vaff87 wrote:Interesting that Hiura has been so bad over the last two years. That guy was supposed to be a really good hitter.

He has had contact woes since reaching the bigs, but could mash fastballs. Once teams stopped throwing challenging him with plenty of fastballs early in counts (why is this still a thing with rookies? Everyone who makes it to the majors in 2021 can hit good fastballs), poor pitch recognition seems to have done him in, not dissimilar to Rowdy, really. And now he can't hit secondary stuff or fastballs because his timing and confidence is shot. He has the third-worst swinging strike rate in the bigs from 2019-2021, and the second-worst swinging strike + called strike rate, while not having a crazy-high swing rate on pitches out of the zone...he's just completely at sea when trying to put swings on pitches around the zone, presumably because he can't pick up pitch type.

He's young enough that he could still figure it out, but it's not looking good.

Schad wrote:Have to say, I like the work they're doing on acquiring relievers. We've now acquired two competent, if unspectacular, relievers with plenty of team control remaining, and it has cost us two players that were liable to get DFAed anyway. Better than spending a bunch of assets on rentals, because it'll mean much less work in the offseason shoring up the 'pen again.

Honestly, 'competent, if unspectacular' is exactly what we should be going for right now.

If we can get our relief corps to a slightly better than league average, and trustworthy state, we'll be dancing.

vaff87 wrote:

Cyrus wrote:

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He’ll be disappointed to find out that Rowdy Tellez just isn’t very good. He’s had more at bats during his “sluggish start” this year, than he had all last year when he had that 133 wRC+.

You’ve got a 1st baseman with no speed, no defensive value or versatility who didn’t hit in the minors and has posted a .701 career OPS in the majors. Nobody should ever be excited about getting a guy like that.

Parataxis wrote:=

Honestly, 'competent, if unspectacular' is exactly what we should be going for right now.

If we can get our relief corps to a slightly better than league average, and trustworthy state, we'll be dancing.

Pretty much. A guy like Richards absolutely isn't ideal for high-leverage (he gives up a lot of hard contact), but he's adequate, which is a substantial step up from outright bad. And if you acquire a couple merely above-average relievers, then you have Romano closing (and he's a perfectly fine closing option), and enough depth that you aren't turning to a complete schlub when your actual useful late-inning reliever has pitched back-to-back games. Then someone like Richards gets pushed into that 'down a run in the 6th' role where we've seen a fair number of games slip away.

The rest of the team is good enough that we just need to aim to not throw away leads (most of the time) and keep games close (most of the time). And the better route there is to have five or six guys who aren't trainwrecks, rather than having a couple lights-out guys at the end of the game.

Man have you seen Tellez numbers recently, he must have went on a short tear - .357 AVG / .457 OBP / 1.171 OPS Only 4 strikeouts since with Brewers.