As you may have heard, the Hot Stove of December kicked off today with the Orioles acquiring catcher Taylor Teagarden from the Rangers in exchange for minor league reliever Randy Henry and a player to be named later.
Teagarden will serve as Matt Wieters‘ backup in Baltimore, and he could be adequate in that role. But what of Henry, the much more unknown commodity in this trade?
Henry is pretty much what you’d expect a fringy backup catcher to return: a fringy minor league arm with a few strengths. He’s strictly a relief pitcher, so right off the bat, this isn’t a guy with huge upside. Furthermore, he’s not a strikeout pitcher, with just 6.93 K/9 in Low-A and 6.60 in High-A this past year.
That gives the impression that he’s just filler, but Henry does have two useful skills. First off, he’s an extreme groundball pitcher, as he put up a 58% groundball rate this year on the strength on his power sinker. Second, he pounds the zone with the pitch, so his walk rates have been miniscule for his whole career.
Obviously, if he can continue avoiding walks and extra-base hits, Henry will be a usable pitcher regardless of his low strikeout rate. He could stand to improve his slider to get more swings and misses and become more than just a situational guy/double-play specialist, but he could hold down a middle relief role in the big leagues. The 21-year-old is still quite far from the majors, but he’s obviously got much more team control left and could end up holding down a big league job more solidly than Teagarden ever has. Depending on the PTBNL, this seems like a fair trade for both sides, as Henry and Teagarden hold similar value.
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