Sean Murphy’s trade was foretold by scripture, by which I mean we all figured out he was a goner when the A’s traded for his replacement in March as part of the near-total teardown of a roster that made the postseason for three consecutive seasons before falling short in 2021. He ends up going to Atlanta, but in a more complicated, three-team deal that lacks huge prospect names but may have ended up delivering more value not to Murphy’s former employers in Oakland but to the third team that sneaked its way into the trade.
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Atlanta has now traded away two young catchers who are/will be major-league starters in the span of 10 months, sending Shea Langeliers to Oakland in March and now William Contreras to Milwaukee in this trade, but they got their backstop for the next three years. Murphy is an elite defensive catcher, at least on the short list of the very best in baseball right now, with an 80 arm, strong framing and receiving skills, and a good reputation (for whatever it’s worth) for working with pitchers. He’s got plus power that has been dampened by playing in a septic tank for half his games the last few years, hitting 18 homers in 148 games in 2022. I think he’s going to hit 25+ now that he’s free, maybe with some of those 37 doubles he hit last year going over the fence now, so to speak, enough that he’ll look like he’s improved a lot as a player even if it’s just the change in venue. Contreras had a very credible season for Atlanta last year, so this is only about a 1-2 win improvement, but it gives them more certainty behind the plate, improves the team defensively and frees them up to trade Travis d’Arnaud ($8 million in 2023) to clear a little salary.
The A’s get quantity without quality, at least in terms of high-end prospects — there’s nobody here who has appeared on my top 100 prospects lists in the past or will appear on this year’s, and I don’t feel like there’s anybody who’s that close. Esteury Ruiz is a center fielder and former infielder who went from San Diego to Milwaukee in July’s Josh Hader trade, bringing speed (85 steals in 101 attempts in 2022), patience and high contact rates, although he doesn’t make very much hard contact. That even carried over to his brief time in the majors, where he hit fastballs better than offspeed stuff — same as in the minors — but without much high-quality contact. Because of the speed and defensive value, he could still find his way to becoming a regular, especially if he can keep his walk rate up over 10 percent, but his upside is that of a soft regular unless he improves in that area. It’ll be very interesting to see what the A’s do with Cristian Pache, a plus-plus defender in center with power that he won’t see because he’s completely stalled out as a hitter in the last two years, with an approach that hasn’t progressed at all since Double A.
Kyle Muller has had a couple of go-rounds in the majors already, showing four pitches but working primarily fastball/slider, with above-average velocity but no out pitch, not by results or by Statcast metrics. He’s also long had issues with fastball command, even though the pitch is pretty true, and leaves a lot of them middle-middle. The fastball does have a high spin rate, however, and if the A’s can work with him on getting that out of the middle of the zone and up toward the top, he’d have a viable swing-and-miss pitch against left- and right-handed batters. His curveball should be a more effective pitch than the slider, due to its spin-based direction, but he was more slider-heavy this year. Oakland is a great park for pitchers in general, depressing offense overall and home runs specifically, so while Muller has a lot of reliever risk, being with the A’s improves his chances to stay a starter, and there’s at least size, stuff, and very good extension in his favor.
Freddy Tarnok (Brett Davis / USA Today)Right-hander Freddy Tarnok is the best prospect in the deal, a very athletic pitcher who was a two-way guy in high school and has mid-rotation stuff but hasn’t shown the control or command he’ll need to be a No. 4 starter or better. Tarnok is 93-96 mph, touching 98 mph, with a plus changeup and fringe-average curveball and slider, throwing the fastball for strikes but struggling to do the same with his other pitches. He’ll pitch at age 24 this year, and was a 2017 draft pick, but still has less than 400 professional innings because of the pandemic and workload limits. I think he’s a starter, with further growth in his command/control coming, more of a No. 4-5 now but with the clear upside to be more.
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Right-hander Royber Salinas has a huge fastball up to 99 mph with power to a slider, with a rough, arm-heavy delivery and a very high slot that — along with his lack of a third pitch — point toward a relief future. He’s a very big kid already and may have to work on his conditioning as well. He struck out nearly 38 percent of batters faced between Low A and High A in 2022, but walked 13.5 percent, and I’m not sure that delivery is going to let him cut that to a level that would let him start, even if he does find a better weapon to get lefties out.
Oakland also gets catcher Manny Piña, who I presume becomes the backup to Shea Langeliers, who lost his prospect eligibility at the end of 2022. Langeliers is a lot like Murphy, a plus defender with a plus arm (Murphy’s is better, though) who has 20-homer power but probably won’t hit for a high average or OBP. Langeliers, who came over in the Matt Olson trade with Pache, Ryan Cusick and Joey Estes in March, made Murphy expendable for the rebuilding A’s, and I’d argue put real pressure on the team to trade Murphy now rather than waste Langeliers in Triple A for another half or full season. I’m not sure this deal gets them enough for Murphy, however, given the veteran’s value and three full years remaining (at depressed salaries through arbitration) before free agency.
Milwaukee makes out extremely well by inserting themselves into this trade, nabbing catcher William Contreras, who’s about to turn 25 and just hit .278/.354/.506 in 97 games, by sending Ruiz to Oakland. Contreras isn’t the defensive catcher Murphy is, but he’s a better hitter, with just as much power, a better hit tool and a better eye. He strikes out more than Murphy does, although he’s three years younger and should bring his K rate (which was over 27 percent last year) down going forward. But I’m not entirely sure I’d rather have Murphy than Contreras in a vacuum, and I think it’s easier to argue for Contreras in reality given his youth and additional two years of control. Murphy gets about a win of extra value over Contreras from his framing, although we know framing can improve with coaching, and there’s always the chance that will go away if and when MLB goes to some sort of automated strike zone.
The Brewers also get right-hander Joel Payamps, an intriguing middle reliever due to his high-spin four-seamer and big-breaking slider, from Oakland; and sleeper relief prospect Justin Yeager, who is in the mid-90s with an above-average slider, from Atlanta. Yeager was a 33rd-round pick out of Southern Illinois in 2019, and reached Double A this year, with a few too many walks but a lot of swing-and-miss, as well as weak contact. Hitters whiffed just over a third of the time they swung at his slider, and just under a third of the time at the fastball, which can touch 100 mph and looks like it gets on hitters very quickly. It’s a bit odd to say the team that did the best in the three-team deal neither traded nor received the best individual guy, but I think the Brewers might just have done so.
(Top photo of Sean Murphy: G Fiume / Getty Images)
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