One of the commenters on the Daulton Varsho lab asked if I would do a lab on Trevor Larnach. Usually, I don’t pay much attention to what hasn’t been done, but multiple reports have now indicated that a deal was in place to send Bryan Abreu to the Twins in exchange for Larnach. According to all of those sources, Jim Crane nixed the deal. Before I dive into numbers, we should probably look at the differences between the two deals.
Everyone has opined about the Varsho deal. The primary criticism is that
you traded away a pitcher with years of control (can become a free agent following the 2029 season) for a player with no control beyond this season. However, Arrighetti had minimal present value. He was 7-5 with a 4.60 ERA, but virtually all of those wins came in a brilliant first month that saw him win the Pitcher of the Month Award. He was not currently in the Astros rotation and some would argue that he wouldn’t likely rejoin it unless there were major injuries. So, this was a classic get something now for someone that could help in the future kind of deal.
As much as I have enjoyed covering performance in spurts lately, the overall numbers on Arrighetti tell a story. He is 15-23 with a 4.66 ERA. He had a really good month in 2024 and a really good month this season. Take those two months away and he is a 5.00 ERA pitcher. Naturally, the Blue Jays are thinking but what if he can become THAT pitcher again? The deal makes sense for them because they aren’t going anywhere this season anyway, so why not trade for a lottery ticket?
The Larnach trade is different because you would have traded a pitcher that has an ERA near 2.00 since May 1st. Abreu is useful to you right now and certainly has been lately. The fact that the trade was vetoed by ownership means one of two things (both can be true at the same time). First, Jim Crane has little confidence in Dana Brown, so he is micromanaging him through the end of his contract. Secondly, Crane might actually be interested in re-signing Abreu and that wouldn’t happen if he is dealt.
Both of those statements deserves some additional focus, but I will save that for another piece. In this piece, we will look at what Brown was thinking and whether there was some upside there. Larnach has only been a regular for three seasons, so we will go back three years instead of five like we did for Varsho. However, we are looking at the same numbers as yesterday’s piece except I will jettison bases per out for now.
I seriously doubt that Jim Crane or his buddy Jeff Bagwell are crunching Statcast numbers in their spare time. However. there is an axiom here that even traditionalists can follow. When a player is having a career year, they are rarely ever really THAT good. Things are just coming together and there is always the possibility that they will stop at any moment.
The current average OPS in MLB is around .720. That means that Larnach has largely been an above average big league hitter over the last three seasons even if you look just at the Statcast numbers. We can call the Varsho deal a something for currently nothing deal and feel somewhat good about it if we couch it in those terms. However, Varsho is not a middle of the order hitter no matter how badly Joe Espada wants to call him one. Larnach would be a lot closer to what they were looking for and he has another season of control left beyond this season.
Again, I seriously doubt Crane and Bagwell are looking at THESE numbers, but I could be wrong. The hard hit percentage in particular is troubling. 40 percent is the league average, so he has been better than average until this season. The fact that he has better overall numbers in spite of making softer contact jumps off the page. However, the rest of the numbers are music to my ears.
Keep in mind that the average chase rate is 30 percent. The average swing rate is also higher than what he is currently doing as well (46-48 percent). So, he is a patient hitter and my little sabermetric heart loves those kinds of hitters. The contact rates are a little below league average (76-78 percent) but they are not drastically low. Essentially this guy has the profile of an above average major league hitter. Having that in the outfield sure would look nice.
However, as we saw with Varsho, fielding is a concern and one of the reasons why Varsho was considered a plus. Larnach could charitably be called a corner bat, but he is listed as a left fielder and designated hitter. We already have a designated hitter, so he would be the left fielder everyday. How does he look according to the defensive metrics?
Yikes. This looks even worse when you include the defensive innings. A standard everyday player plays about 1200 defensive innings over the course of a full season. Larnach had 429, 441, and 629 so far this season. So, any average fan with a calculator on their phone could prorate those numbers over the course of a full season’s worth of innings. It isn’t a pretty sight.
Now, certainly Dana Brown could look at the short porch in Daikan Park and talk himself into saying it is an easier left field to play than for most ballparks. That makes some sense. You could even talk yourself into the idea that you needed that bat and were willing to stomach the glove. I did not include BWAR or FWAR in the Varsho piece, but it is fair to point out that Larnach has been worth 2.1 FWAR this season. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
Abreu has been worth 0.5, but there are tons of analysts out there that would say that WAR does not do a good job of capturing relief pitcher’s contributions. It is hard to account for leverage and he definitely would be given more leverage from here until the end of the season. However, it is also not hard to see what Dana Brown was thinking. Those of us that have been critical of him should take this deal into account when evaluating his baseball acumen. After all, he reached an agreement according to multiple sources. Ownership simply vetoed the deal. We will have to explore that angle down the road.
