On Monday night, the Washington Nationals fortified their bullpen by acquiring Kelvin Herrera from the Kansas City Royals in exchange for outfielder Blake Perkins (#10 prospect according to MLB.com), third baseman Kelvin Gutierrez (#11), and right-hander Yohanse Morel.
That deal is important to talk about, though, as Tim Britton of the Athletic points out could actually serve as a basis of comparison for the Mets if and when they trade Jeurys Familia.
This year, Herrera has been significantly better than Familia, and almost all other relievers as he has a 1.01 ERA with 14 saves and 22 strikeouts in 26 2/3 innings pitched thus far.
Meanwhile, Familia has a 2.70 ERA, which is still solid, to say the least, to go along with 14 saves and 33 strikeouts in 30 innings pitched.
As Britton points out, their stats are very comparable over their careers to date too as Familia has a career 2.64 ERA while Herrera’s is only a smidge higher at 2.75.
However, Familia does best him by a large margin in the saves category (120 to 57), as Herrera did not become the team’s closer until last year.
They have/had similar situations for teams looking to acquire their services as they are both 28-years old and will be free agents later in the offseason.
The difference, though, could be the timing the teams chose to deal their relievers. The Mets are likely to wait it out until much closer to the trade deadline as they weed out offers between now and then, hoping someone gets desperate enough to give them what they want.
Meanwhile, with the Royals having a 22-51 record and 17.5 games out of the division, the team realized there was no reason to not trade Herrera if they liked the package.
Had they waited longer, they could have found a more competitive offer as teams tend to get antsier as the deadline creeps up on everyone.
Now, it’s possible the Mets will end up having to take a package very similar to that of the Royals, but they should chip in money for his $7.925 million contract to get a better prospect, which the Royals did not for Herrera and his $7.937 million deal.
The Mets would be much better off getting a fringe top-100 prospect than acquiring some team’s tenth best prospect as the headliner of a much lighter package.
While I don’t think it would be preferred by anyone, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Mets decided to do a similar thing to what they did last summer when trading off all of their veterans, as they could acquire multiple relief prospects since they are devalued by other teams in prospect rankings simply because they are labeled as relievers.
Despite their apparent willingness to just focus on relief prospects, that probably isn’t the way to go this time as the team has struggled to develop good hitting prospects and probably should look to acquire one in a trade or go for the best available player that is being offered.
