Fernando Rodney
Nobody in baseball views relievers as fungible assets quite like Oakland A’s management. Give President Billy Beane or GM David Forst a marketable bullpen guy and they are almost guaranteed to try to turn him for what whatever he will bring.
Enter Fernando Rodney.
After being obtained in a deal with Minnesota for the pennant push, Rodney gave Oakland 20 decent innings down the stretch. But he is owed $5.25 million for 2019 – that’s big money in Oakland – and he could almost certainly bring equally promising, less expensive assets in return.
Given that Rodney has already served his useful purpose in Oakland – he did help them get into post-season play – there is little to no reason for Beane/Forst to hold on to him now.
Oakland has a strong and maturing cast of position players led by Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, and Marcus Semien. But the pitching staff needs re-enforcement. Oakland’s best arm, Sean Manaea, is out all season, and the rest of the rotation it projected to enter 2018 with is unanimously also recovering from arm problems.
So there’s a gaping need for starting help. Rodney obviously won’t bring a top-of-the-line starter, and he may not even bring a patchwork solution for 2019. But he might well bring a prospect capable of helping out in 2020, if not sooner. In Oakland, that’s called progress.