The Marlins are willing to move players, including their best hitter. Let’s talk about Otto Lopez.
You can view our larger trade deadline piece here as we discuss a wider pool of options the Guardians may consider. To make my position clear, I expect the Guardians to make smaller moves, like trading Bo Naylor and getting a castoff/undervalued reliever. But, in the interest of exploring potential larger moves, we are doing a series looking at some of those bigger names. So far, we have discussed Spencer
Steer, Luis Arraez, Shea Langeliers, Taylor Ward, Heliot Ramos, Jo Adell, Ty France, Tyler Soderstrom, Heriberto Hernandez, Kyle Stowers and Alec Burleson. Although the Guardians’ greatest need is hitting, the market is aflush with starting pitching so it also may make sense for the Guardians to see if they can find a good value there, as we wrote here and looked at specifically with Jose Soriano and Reid Detmers.
Lopez is a right-handed hitter who is almost 28 years old and having the best season of his life with a 131 wRC+ as a good shortstop, putting up 4.4 fWAR so far. For his career, he has a 103 wRC+ with a 14.8/6.2 K/BB%. Weirdly for his career, he has a 77 wRC+ against LHP and 113 wRC+ vs RHP. He has figured southpaws out this season to the tune of a 156 wRC+ and I do think that is probably something he can continue to do well (reverse splits are very rare so his early struggles against lefties were probably just small sample size).
Lopez is a good defender at second (15 DRS, 22 OAA) and short (14 DRS, 5 OAA). He has also stolen 47 of 61 bases over the past three seasons, so he is a threat there. He is under team control through 2029.
Lopez is a great trade target. I think he Will offer good defense and above average hitting for the length of his arbitration years. But, the Marlins are only making him available because 1. He is having a late breakout year, and 2. He is almost 29. Both of those are reasons to not want to pay a premium return to acquire Lopez… which is why I remain skeptical he gets moved.
Lopez probably requires the equivalent of two top 100 prospects. Like… are the Guardians wiling to trade Travis Bazzana and Braylon Doughty and potentially toss in Daniel Espino to get Lopez? I would say (rightly) not. And if the Marlins can’t secure that kind of return, I don’t know why they would trade Lopez.
But, hey, if the Marlins can be made to consider a more reasonable return based on Lopez’s career numbers, I am offering Genao and their choice of a dominant minor league arm not named Braylon Doughty. And, hey, another lotto ticket of their choice. Lopez would move Bazzana to DH until Bazzana can learn outfield. It looks like Bazzana can handle DHing, so that would work.
As you can probably tell, I find this deal unlikely. But I love Otto and would love to be wrong. Do us a favor and give us, Lopez, Peter B!
Let me know what you think about Lopez in the comments below
