Los Angeles Angels: 5 trade options for rotation help

The Los Angeles Angels lost out on Gerrit Cole, who signed with the New York Yankees, and couldn’t even land Ross Stripling. Here are other rotation options potentially available on the trade market.

Yes, the Los Angeles Angels landed one of the top free agents on the market when they signed infielder Anthony Rendon in December. But fixing a starting rotation that ranked dead last in the majors in quality starts and innings pitched per start was a more difficult problem for the Angels, who couldn’t land their top free-agent target and instead worked on the margins.

The Angels had just 22 quality starts — six innings with three or fewer earned runs allowed — last season, 12 fewer than the next worst team in baseball and 18 less than the next closest teams in the American League in the Detroit Tigers and Toronto Blue Jays.

With 4.2 innings per start, the Angels were behind even the Tampa Bay Rays, who had just one pitcher — Charlie Morton — qualify for the ERA title by pitching at least 162 innings and used 14 different pitchers to start games.

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Los Angeles also tied for last in the majors in ERA- per FanGraphs with an ugly 125 mark matched only by the Pittsburgh Pirates and the starters’ 5.64 standard ERA was better than only the 5.87 posted by Colorado Rockies.

The Los Angeles Angels were hampered by injuries (not to mention the death of Tyler Skaggs on July 1) and had no one start more than 18 games, while 19 pitchers took the ball to start the first inning at least once. Veteran Trevor Cahill, who started 11 games and worked 26 times in relief, led the staff with 102.1 innings pitched.

The club did sign free agent Julio Teheran, who has been durable with at least 30 starts in each of his seven full major-league seasons with the Atlanta Braves and acquired Dylan Bundy in a trade with the Baltimore Orioles.

But neither of those pitchers is a true top-of-the-rotation option such as Gerrit Cole could have been, had the Angels been able to convince him to head west to Anaheim instead of going east to the New York Yankees.

It appeared the club was going to acquire young right-hander Ross Stripling from the Los Angeles Dodgers, but owner Arte Moreno acknowledged on Monday he killed the trade after it was delayed because of problems the Dodgers and Boston Red Sox had completing the deal that sent Mookie Betts and David Price to Los Angeles.

Teheran is 29 years old and has pitched at least 174.2 innings every season since 2013. Last year with the Braves he made 33 starts and had a 3.81 ERA and 1.323 WHIP in 174.2 innings, striking out 162 and walking 83 while allowing 22 home runs.

Since 2013, Teheran has been an All-Star twice (2014 and 2016) and has averaged 32 starts and 191 innings a season while compiling a 3.64 ERA and a 1.208 WHIP with 1,169 strikeouts and 449 walks in 1,334 innings. Last season, Teheran led the National League with 14 hit batsmen and matched a career-high with 8.3 strikeouts per nine innings.

Bundy, now 27, is another right-hander who has started all 89 games in which he’s appeared since 2017. Last season for a dreadful club in Baltimore, Bundy made 30 starts and worked 161.2 innings, posting an ERA of 4.79 with a WHIP of 1.355. He struck out 162 and walked 58 while serving up 29 home runs — 1.6 per nine innings.

His first full season as a starter in 2017 remains his best, when he made 28 starts with an ERA of 4.24 and a WHIP of 1.196 in 169.2 innings. He struck out 152 and walked 41 that season while allowing 26 home runs. The 41 home runs Bundy surrendered in 2018 led the American League and were the most given up by a pitcher since Bronson Arroyo was taken deep 46 times in 2011.

With that, what are some of the other options available to the Angels on the trade market?

One potential candidate went off the market over the weekend. Cleveland Indians righthander Mike Clevinger underwent surgery Friday for a partially torn left meniscus and is expected to be out six to eight weeks.

So who else is available? Let’s take a look. Kenta Maeda was traded from the Dodgers to the Minnesota Twins last week while the Texas Rangers in mid-December took a flyer in two-time Cy Young winner Corey Kluber in a deal with the Indians.

There is one other potential starting option the Los Angeles Angels acquired. Righthander Matt Andriese came from the Arizona Diamondbacks in a Jan. 14 trade and while he worked exclusively out of the bullpen last season, he does have 49 career starts, including 36 in 2016-17 when he was with the Rays.

The problem is he’s got a 4.64 ERA and 1.344 WHIP in 236.2 innings as a starter and a 4.50 ERA and 1.307 WHIP in 192 innings of relief work. So neither option is ideal.

But these five pitchers remain possibilities for trades, even if they may not be ideal No. 1 or No. 2 options in a rotation.

Matthew Boyd, LHP, Detroit Tigers

The Detroit Tigers didn’t aggressively shop lefthander Matthew Boyd over the winter, according to Chris McCosky of the Detroit News, but as Jason Beck of MLB.com reported in January, the club also wasn’t able to come to any sort of long-term deal for Boyd, either.

Boyd did sign a one-year, $5.3 million deal to avoid arbitration, but can’t be a free agent until 2023. Boyd was a sixth-round pick by the Toronto Blue Jays from Oregon State University in 2013 and came to the Tigers in the July 2015 trade for David Price.

Boyd has started 116 games since being acquired by Detroit, including a career-high 32 last season. In 185.1 innings, the 29-year-old posted a 4.56 ERA and 1.230 WHIP with 238 strikeouts and 50 walks, while allowing an American League-high 39 home runs.

The strikeout total was a career-high, as was his 11.6 strikeouts per nine innings, which was a massive spike over the 8.4 per nine Boyd registered in 2018. But at 29, he’s also not brimming with upside and has never shown he has the repertoire to lead a rotation, or even come close to that.

Trevor Bauer, RHP, Cincinnati Reds

Trevor Bauer struggled mightily last season after being traded from the Cleveland Indians to the Cincinnati Reds at the July 31 deadline and can become a free agent next winter after signing a one-year, $17.5 million contract with the Reds in January to avoid arbitration.

As good as Bauer was when he was named an All-Star in 2018 while posting the second-best ERA in the American League at 2.21, he was awful after he was traded to the Reds.

He put up a 3.79 ERA and 1.213 WHIP in 156.2 innings over 24 starts for Cleveland, striking out 185 and walking 63 while allowing 22 homers.

But the wheels fell off when he moved to southern Ohio, to the tune of a 6.39 ERA in 10 starts covering 56.1 innings. He struck out 68, walked 19 and gave up 12 homers, nearly two dingers per nine innings, one year after leading the AL by allowing 0.5 homers per nine.

Even with as good as Bauer was in 2018, that season was the anomaly. Since becoming a full-time starter in 2014, Bauer’s never had another season with an ERA lower than 4.18 or a WHIP of less than last season’s combined 1.249.

And much like Matthew Boyd earlier, how much upside could the 29-year-old Bauer have left?

Throw in his harsh critique of commissioner Rob Manfred over baseball’s handling of the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal and Bauer might just be more trouble than an organization wants to bring on.

Ross Stripling, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers

OK, so the trade was killed by Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno. It’s DOA, done, mort, finished, done, kaput.

But stranger things have happened in baseball than the idea that Ross Stripling might still find his way down the 5 from Dodger Stadium to Angel Stadium of Anaheim even after the proposed deal that would have sent the righthander along with Joc Pederson to the Angels was nixed.

While Dodgers general manager Andrew Friedman says the trade talk is gone and Stripling will be an important piece for the club, it wouldn’t be unheard of for the talks to pick back up at some point.

Stripling, however, is not really a prospect anymore, despite having just four seasons under his belt. At age 30, he was a late bloomer in the Dodgers organization after being selected in the fifth round of the 2012 June Amateur Draft from Texas A&M.

He was 26 before he made his big-league debut in April 2016 and has done more relieving than starting over his career, with 52 starts in 136 career appearances.

Last season, Stripling started 15 times in 32 appearances and had a 3.47 ERA and 1.147 WHIP in 90.2 innings, striking out 93 and walking 20 while surrendering 11 home runs. He was an All-Star in 2018 after posting a 2.08 ERA and 1.080 WHIP in 95.1 innings, but collapsed to a 6.41 ERA and 1.575 WHIP in 26.2 innings after the break.

In his 15 starts last season, Stripling had a 3.60 ERA and 1.129 WHIP in 70 innings, fanning 71 and walking just 14, allowing 10 homers in that role.

He was limited to just one postseason appearance, working the sixth inning of Los Angeles’ Game 4 loss to the Washington Nationals in the NLDS, giving up one run on one hit in his one inning.

Robbie Ray, LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks

Robbie Ray is another former All-Star who might be revitalized with a change of venue and he is also the youngest on this list at age 28 and a birthday not coming until Oct. 1.

Ray signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks this offseason for one year and $9.43 million and can become a free agent next winter.

But since setting the National League on its ear with a 2.89 ERA and 1.154 WHIP in 162 innings in 2017 while leading the league with a rate of 12.1 strikeouts per nine innings, Ray has taken some steps backward.

His strikeout rate has remained consistent, 12.0 per nine in 2018 and 12.1 per nine last season, but his other peripherals have not fared as well.

Last season in 33 starts, Ray had a 4.34 ERA and a 1.342 WHIP in 174.1 innings (matching a career-high), with 235 strikeouts and 84 walks while serving up 30 home runs.

That came after a 3.93 ERA and 1.350 WHIP in 123.2 innings over 24 starts in 2018.

Ray has the stuff to be a top-end guy in a rotation, if he can maintain his location and consistency, but after posting a walk rate of 3.7 per nine innings over 492.2 innings from 2014-17, he walked 5.1 per nine in 2018 and 4.3 last season.

Maybe working with new Angels pitching coach Mickey Calloway, who worked wonders with the Cleveland Indians from 2013-17, could help Ray regain his command of the strike zone.