After the Colorado Rockies announced yesterday that they had traded RHP Seth Halvorsen to the Los Angeles Dodgers for RHP Nick Frasso and OF Landyn Vidourek, general manager Josh Byrnes took questions from media.
Below are his comments, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
Nick Frasso
First of all, Nick Frasso was a high pick. We (the Dodgers) traded for him, and he went to Double-A. So as his prospect star was rising — he was a top 100 prospect, doing really well — he got hurt and missed the entire 2024
season. Last year, (he) didn’t quite return to form coming off the missed time and the surgeries. So they took him off the 40-man roster
This year, he kind of is back to what he was pre-injury. So we’ve been asking about him for a while. I think the catch is, he’s out of options at the end of the year, so I think to us that was more palatable than the Dodgers as they think through their depth.
He’s 6’5”. He’s very athletic, very deceptive, mid-to-upper 90s, real secondary pitches behind him. I think he’ll throw more strikes. He’s throwing his fastball in the zone, and he threw a lot of strikes before the surgery. I think it’s real stuff and hard to hit from a very, very unique angle.
So he’s excited to come our way, and we’ll see. He’s going to Albuquerque, but obviously he’s knocking on the door.
—
Never say never, but I would probably say (he will stay in the) bullpen. He was a reliever in college, also. Even trading for him and having him start was ambitious and probably worth it. But I think the good thing about him as a reliever is he gets righties in, lefties out. Even now, he’s built up to throw multiple innings, so he’s in that gray area of at least helping us with some degree of length and the ability to go through a lineup. So we’ll see. If that’s of what he is for a period of time, and we revisit it, maybe we do (stretch him out), but I think for now, that would help us a great deal.
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Well, they (Frasso and Seth Halvorsen) both have great arms, and it’s different.
I think we always are peeling layers on the fastball, the entire arsenal. It’s hard to hit, so I think with Frasso, it’s about as an extreme angle extension, third-base side. It’s a really tough angle for hitters. In addition to the velocity and the results underneath his fastball are a high, high level. So that was attractive to us, and obviously the Dodgers have done it a lot. I mean, their current bullpen guys, like Will Klein and Edgardo Henriquez and Kyle Hurt, were similarly great arms and not quite refined as strike throwers, but they’ve solved it, and they’re meaningful parts of a good team right now.
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I don’t think (being in the same division) gets in the way.
Obviously, any time you make a trade and you’re wrong, it hurts. If it’s in your division, it’s in your face a little bit more. Hopefully, we’re not wrong.
But we got to do business with 29 teams. So as corny as it is, I hope it turns out to be a good trade for us and good trade for them.
—
I don’t even think this is a true “deadline trade.” This is more like a long-term baseball trade for both teams. I think the buyer-seller part of the trade deadline, obviously, where we are in the standings, I think we have to enter the market as where we are in the standings. I think there are trades like this one where there could be a baseball trade that could be open. There could be trades with a financial component. We really have pretty low commitments going into next year. So how we improve our team and use that that spending power, (it) could be off season. It could be next 10 days.
Landyn Vidourek
Landyn Vidourek was our third rounder when I was with the Dodgers last year (from) the University of Cincinnati. Probably, (he was) the most tooled, athletic player in the draft — top-of-the-scale exit velocity, top-of-the-scale speed, arm. (He) had his breakout year that year as a junior in Cincinnati. He doesn’t chase and strikes out too much, so that was sort of the rub, and that’s continued in this year. (The Dodgers) have a lot of outfield depth. Even though he’s a year out of college, I think of his backstory — he’s probably still in the learning phases of baseball development. It’s clear we’ve got to solve the strikeout issue, but the tool package and the other things he can do are high end.
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He played quarterback in high school, and then he was also a pitcher, so a very good athlete, (who) grew up in Hamilton, Ohio. Then (he had) sort of a slow progression through his time in Cincinnati, and the last year was kind of the breakout.
I think unlike a lot of guys at his age, he hasn’t had the sort of “training age” or resources or exposure that a lot of guys have. And, again, I think we have a clear issue to solve that we’ve just got to make more contact. We’ve got to knock down the strikeout rate. We’ve got ideas, and he’s got ideas, so we’ll get to work.
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I think there’s always these sort of “sliding scales.” In his case, he doesn’t swing a lot, he doesn’t chase a lot, and he’s missing too much. There’s good and bad with all that. I think even when we met with him before the draft, he was aware of that, and he was hitting leadoff in college. A lot of his strikeouts were called third-strike. He’s trying to table set. He stole 40 bases, so we felt like “Okay, you actually do need to swing more and understand what taking shots early in counts entails and covering pitches and locations.”
It hasn’t gone great this year, but I think the same idea from 12 months ago holds true today. How do I win at-bats? All of these components, these process stats, lead to results. Are you hitting for average, getting on base, and slugging? He’s in the early stages of learning how to do that. He doesn’t chase a whole lot, and when he hits it, he hits it really hard. So we’ve got to build off that.
Trading with the Dodgers
(My background with the Dodgers helped) quite a bit. I know those two guys very well, and obviously, any trade discussion, they’re always complicated. But I think we could share ideas and figure out how to make it work. That it would makes sense for both sides. So I think it helped, but, again, I know the longer history of both those players and where they are now and hopefully what the future holds. So it’s unusual just because it’s two players I know very well.
Takeaways
Josh Byrnes’ comments here are interesting for a few reasons.
First, he’s clear that the Rockies need to have relationships with all MLB teams, not just the Los Angeles Angels, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Guardians, and New York Yankees.
Second, as the Rockies work on their rebuild, Byrnes is drawing on his knowledge of the Dodgers system and what he learned through scouting there to build a Rockies team he and Paul DePodesta believe will work. (His occasional slips into “we” when referring to the Dodgers is pretty interesting.)
The third point, I think, is that even though these are players who are at the mercy of the decisions their organization makes are eager to move to Colorado to continue their player development under the system that DePodesta and Byrnes are building.
It’s a new day at 20th and Blake.
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