White Sox MAKING MOVES, Acquire Alex Colome From Mariners For Omar Narvaez
Real quick – Omar Narvaez has turned into a perfectly suitable platoon catcher someway, somehow. The dude can hit a little bit. Here’s his slash line the last 2+ years:
221 games, .246/.324/.379 with a .745 OPS and .108 wRC+ with
And in 2018, he slashed .275/.366/.429 with a .794 OPS and 122 wRC+
His best asset is that he can REALLY walk and makes good contact for a catcher with about a 12% walk rate and 17% K rate since he’s become a big league regular. No, he’s not some all star, but someone you insert in a lineup and expect better than league average results. Fine and dandy.
But he kinda stinks at catcher. I’m in the cube and am not going to both looking up all of those fancy metrics, but he frames like shit. Decent enough arm, but he just straight up strugglesreceiving the baseball. One of the most important jobs for a catcher is to make balls look like strikes and he does the opposite more often than not. Anyone who’s watched a White Sox game over the last 2 years would agree.
Major league 25 man guy? For sure. A guy you want catching 120 games a year? For sure not. I do like Narvaez as placeholder on a rebuilding team, but I wasn’t in any way penciling him into the “#Pray4TheLeague” lineup. So that’s that.
Now what about Alex Colome?
Well, he’s a very good reliever. Not a GREAT one, but definitely a guy who can come in under any circumstances and retire the oppositions meat of the lineup. And for Omar Narvaez? LOVE IT. To show how good Colome has been over the last 4 seasons, he’s been good for at least 1.0 WAR out of the pen each year since 2015. That’s a great number for a reliever. His K/BB rate was great last year and has steadily been very good since 2015.
When acquiring a pitcher, I immediately look at how their fastball velocity has paced throughout their career. A quick glance will show that he’s held steady at 95ish MPH since 2015.
Another good sign. Unless he falls off a cliff, one could assume he’ll be as steady as ever in 2019, and by steady I mean a more than quality back end option to close games.
There have been rumors galore this season about the Sox. I’vebeen presented with scenarios where people are ready to start trading from the wealthy prospect capital the Sox have had, and I’ve been pretty vehemently against it. This isn’t a trade that does that. It’s a platoon catcher for a closer with 3 cheap arbyears of control left. Again, there’s nothing not to love about this.
The Sox pen will be an area of strength moving forward. They’ve done an absurdly good job of trading international money they literally cannot spend and acquiring cheap, young, power, late inning options that will shorten games for their young rotation. They have studs on studs on the cusp of breaking through to The Show. Hypothetically, they have 6-8 guys who could be high leverage relievers in their competitive window of 2019 and beyond that could/should afford them payroll flexibility so much to the point where they won’t need to trade or sign an expensive reliever in the mold of a David Robertson from 2015 or any of the big names this year.
GIVE ME MORE. Let’s fucking go. Give me Harper goddamnit!!!!