The latest move in this flurry of late-March trades involves the Nationals sending utility infielder Alberto Gonzalez to San Diego for minor league righthander Erik Davis.
It’s highly unlikely that this is going to significantly impact the fortunes of either club, but let’s look at it anyway.
If you look up “light-hitting utility infielder” in a baseball dictionary, Gonzalez’s picture is sure to be there. He’s a career .253/.292/.331 hitter who couldn’t even hit up to his career marks in 2010, batting .247/.277/.301. He is, however, a solid defender all around the infield, which is why he’s played in 277 big league games, and also why he managed to be above replacement level last season. Moving to San Diego, of course, won’t help Gonzalez’s sagging bat, nor will his acquisition do anything to help a Padres offense looking to replace Adrian Gonzalez. Still, after the collapse of Everth Cabrera and Lance Zawadzki last year, the Padres know all too well how difficult it is to accumulate depth in the infield.
If you’re the most traditional traditionalist in the grand tradition of tradition, you probably look at Erik Davis‘ line and notice that he’s posted 30 wins the last two seasons, which leads the minors in that timespan. People looking to find non-luck-related reasons for that might point to his Stanford education and go “He’s so intelligent that he can game the system,” but that appears unlikely.
And if you look past the wins, you don’t get excited by much with Davis–he’s the sort of moderately-solid-at-everything righthander who may grow up to be a fifth starter, maybe a middle reliever, or maybe just a Triple-A mainstay. It’s worth noting that his 2010 wasn’t quite the smoke-and-mirrors act of his 16-win 2009, as he kept Cal League hitters and ballparks from crushing him before turning in eight rather inspired upper-minors starts (42/14 K/BB in 44 1/3 IP).
Davis is already 24, and he’s not a guy with particularly impressive stuff, sitting around 90 mph and working in some decent offspeed offerings, so it’s easy to see why he didn’t make the Baseball America Top 30 Prospects. I made a Padres Top 100 prospects list back in August (when I was the lead writer at Chicken Friars)–Davis ranked 39th there, which is probably a fair approximation of the typical view of the righty.
So, like Gonzalez, Davis has the upside of a minor contributor. Obviously, there’s a wider range of outcomes for him, as his upside is probably as a solid back-of-the-rotation starter, which is a bit more than what Gonzalez brings to a team. At the same time, Davis may never find his way onto a big league roster.
San Diego certainly doesn’t need pitching at this point, but Washington could certainly use some upper-minors arms. Davis could play a Luis Atilano sort of role there as soon as the second half of this year.
Both teams helped themselves with this deal by trading unneeded parts for ones that could come in handy.