Faux Winter Meetings: Reddick, Jaso Traded

We talked about it briefly before, but in case you haven’t heard, the MLB division at FanSided is conducting our own Winter Meetings simulation, with each team’s page controlling their team’s transactions for two weeks. We all have to operate within the financial constraints of our team, so this exercise has been a little maddening for us at Swingin’ A’s. After arbitration, we were left with roughly $8M to attract free agents. Needless to say, in our simulation, we couldn’t sign Billy Butler. Well, not yet.

Thursday evening, we were in contact with the Braves page, and they went hard after Josh Reddick. They offered up Evan Gattis off the bat, which is a decent place to start. Since Gattis is a OF/C, we asked if they would like to take John Jaso as well, since we will have enough catchers on the roster, as well as first basemen. With Reddick and Jaso making a combined $7M after arbitration, that frees up some money to attract free agents.

So what did we end up getting for these two? Well, Gattis, who hit .263 with a .317 OBP in 2014 for starters. Gattis also hit 22 homers and drove in 52 in 369 at-bats. By comparison, Reddick hit .264 with a .316 OBP, while hitting 12 home runs and driving in 54 in 363 at-bats. So, Gattis has a little more pop, but Reddick is a better defender. The plan is to have Sam Fuld and Craig Gentry play right field, while Gattis takes left.

We also acquired David Hale, who went 4-5 with a 3.30 ERA in 2014. With Hale, we have another option in the rotation moving forward, until Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin return from injuries. This also opens the door to being able to include either Scott Kazmir or Drew Pomeranz in a future deal. We will be in contact with the Diamondbacks shortly.

The last player included in the deal was prospect Cody Martin. The 25-year old righty held a 3.52 ERA in Triple-A last season. From our perspective, Jaso isn’t going to be catching next season, the A’s already have four first basemen, and Jaso hit just .208 as a DH in 2014. Jaso was excess that was costing $3.3M, so we moved him.

Now we are putting in an offer on Billy Butler (whom we were unable to afford before), and are going to try to acquire Didi Gregorius and Mark Trumbo from Arizona.

We’ll keep you updated!