Deal details: Chicago Cubs acquire 3B Isaac Paredes from the Tampa Bay Rays for 3B Christopher Morel, RHP Ty Johnson and RHP Hunter Bigge
The Cubs picked up right-hander Nate Pearson the other day from the Toronto Blue Jays for two very fringy prospects, and now they add Isaac Paredes for not a whole lot more than that, adding a third baseman who has three more full seasons to go before he’s eligible for free agency … although I’d bet he’ll be replaced before that time arrives.
The Rays get three players in return for Paredes, one a project and the others probably just relievers in the long term. Thus far in their sell-off, they have accumulated bodies but by and large aren’t getting high-end prospects in return.
Paredes comes in to replace Christopher Morel, who heads to Tampa in the trade and who has been a replacement-level player this year due to his combination of poor plate discipline, horrendous defense, and some bad BABIP luck — but more on him later. Paredes returns to the organization that first signed him, but comes back as a different player, as he’s become more selective as a hitter and has gone from clearly below average on defense at third to solid-average, with experience at second and first as well.
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Paredes hit the ball fairly hard for a teenager back when he was in the Cubs’ and then the Tigers’ systems, but that impact quality has never improved even as he’s gotten older, and he grades out rather poorly by any measure of batted-ball quality. Instead, he puts the ball in the air a ton, with a ground-ball rate under 29 percent, and he pulls the ball whenever possible, so 12 of his 16 homers have gone out to the left-field corner and none of them have been straightaway or to the opposite field. And he doesn’t whiff or strike out much at all, so he’s putting a lot of balls in play overall, making up a little bit for the middling contact quality.
This is clearly what he is, and the only way to go from here is down. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he aged poorly and started his decline earlier than most hitters, but for right now he fixes the giant vortex of awful the Cubs have had at third base. If only he could catch …
Christopher Morel has been a fan favorite in Chicago but has struggled this season. (Larry Radloff / Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)
Morel is almost the polar opposite of Paredes. He has one major skill — he’s got tremendous bat speed, which leads to hard contact on the rare occasions when he squares up the ball. He whiffs a ton, especially on pitches in the zone, and he’s shown over two-plus years you can get him to expand just off the plate way too easily.
Last year, he was a Statcast darling, with lots of dark red on his Baseball Savant page, including a hard-hit rate, barrel rate and average exit velocity all in the top 10 percent of hitters. It hasn’t translated because he lacks the skills to turn that into real production, through his poor swing decisions and perhaps an issue with his bat being in and out of the zone so fast that he’s missing pitches most hitters at least make contact with.
Morel also has no defensive home. The Cubs have tried him at six different positions, and he’s been bad at all of them, particularly at the spot he’s played the most — third base. Right now, he’s a great Statcast player, but he’s not a good baseball player, and the Rays have a lot of work to do.
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Right-hander Hunter Bigge was a 2019 12th-round pick out of some podunk school I’ve never heard of in Cambridge, Mass., reaching the majors this year after he cut his walk rate in Triple A to a career-low 10.7 percent — which is still on the high side, to be sure. He’s averaged 98 mph in the majors and has three different breaking balls, all with almost identical spin rates but with differing velocities and directions.
Bigge’s actually been better against lefties over the past two-plus years, over a large enough sample to think he can be a full-inning reliever if he can just get to even 45 control (on the 20-80 scouting scale), which he’s only shown in the first half of 2024 but not before that or in his very brief time in the majors.
Right-hander Ty Johnson, a 15th-round pick last year out of Ball State, is 95-97 with good fastball shape and a short, downward-breaking slider, and an extremely short arm action, which looks especially odd on a lanky 6-foot-6 frame. It’s 45 command, his arm is kind of late and I don’t love the stress on the elbow or shoulder. He doesn’t have a third pitch for lefties, with a huge platoon split since he got to High A, so he’s almost certainly a reliever in the long run, but he’s got the two pitches to make it to a big-league bullpen.
One thing I don’t get about the Rays’ strategy so far at the deadline is that they are acquiring a lot of players, and eventually those players have to go on the 40-man roster if they’re not already on it (assuming they’re good enough at some point to merit inclusion). The Rays have had 40-man issues for a long time because they’ve been so good at finding and developing talented players, so picking up nine more players in exchange for three big leaguers would seem to exacerbate the problem.
It makes me wonder if they intend to put together a large package of players to go after someone bigger this offseason. They don’t have much in the way of elite prospects at the moment, but the depth in their system would mean they could just out-body a lot of other teams in the trade market, which could be very appealing to rebuilding clubs with shallow farm systems like the White Sox.
(Top photo of Paredes: Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today)
