The Rays made it official this afternoon, they’ve finalized a deal with the White Sox for 32 year-old RHP All-Star reliever Jesse Crain. Tampa Bay traded future considerations for Crain, yet the terms of the contract are uncertain. It can be assumed, however, that the cost will likely to be low since he is in the final year of his contract.
The White Sox initially placed Crain on the 15-day DL back on July 3rd (retroactive to June 30), and he is eligible to be activated now. Nevertheless, the Rays have placed him on 15-day DL for the time being. The Rays made room on the 40-man roster by shifting Brandon Gomes to 60-day DL, though he is close to being reinstated.
Crain has a career 45-30 record and 3.05 ERA with the Twins and the White Sox, and his 2.10 ERA since joining Sox in 2011 is the eighth best in majors. Crain was having an excellent season prior to going on the DL, posting an 11.29 K/9 while only walking 2.70 batters per nine.
This acquisition is intriguing. If he is healthy, he’d immediately slide into the back of the Rays bullpen, alleviating the pressure on Joel Peralta.
Per Marc Topkin, Andrew Friedman said he would expect the compensation for Crain to finalized after season. Topkin went on to note that it’s “too early to speculate” exactly when Crain will be ready to pitch, but he (Friedman) has extreme confidence in the medical staff to get him back. It will be interesting to see how the Rays fit Crain on the 25-man roster at the point of his reactivation.
Daniel Russell of DRaysBay asserts that,
The return of Alex Cobb will force one pitcher off of the 25-man roster, and any pitcher with an option available (Jake McGee, Alex Torres, Chris Archer) is projected to remain with the team. One player has to go. Why not get something in return before he hits waivers?
The Rays could potentially deal one of three pitchers in order to make room for Crain on the 25-man roster: Cesar Ramos, Jamey Wright, and Kyle Farnsworth.
Of those three players, Russell notes,
- LHRP Cesar Ramos is out of options, and projects to have his role of longman consumed by Roberto Hernandez for the rest of this season. He is under team control until 2017. Cesar Ramos has had terrible luck. His BABIP has jumped from .221 to .326 this season, which may be impacting his low groundball numbers (down 13.4% from last season’s 30 innings) and his 4.50 ERA. His FIP is down at 3.14 and he’s walking a career low 6.6%. He’s still able to carry a load when not performing as a LOOGY; Ramos has 11 appearances of 2.0+ innings this season.
- RHRP Jamey Wright is the resident groundball specialist who can eat innings as necessary, but has not lived up to his groundball percentages (mid 50% range, not the 60%+ expected). He is a free agent next year. As I mentioned above, Jamey Wright’s groundball numbers have not lived up to the hype (down 13.3% from last season), even though his ability to go multiple innings has been a pleasant surprise (10 games longer than one full inning, including two 3.0 IP performances). He has 44.1 innings on the season thus far, and has actually improved his totals for walks, hits, and earned runs compared to last year. He’s not the same, but he’s not bad either.
- RHRP Kyle Farnsworth has the potential of being a high leverage arm, but seems to get himself into trouble on the mound and has been the lease effective pitcher in the ‘pen; also a free agent next year. Kyle Farnsworth is the real glaring issue. He’s been trusted with only 28 innings over 35 games thus far, with seven walks and only 18 strikeouts. He owns a 5.14 ERA, 4.47 FIP, 45% ground ball rate, and 70% LOB. Not horrible for your worst guy, but that doesn’t mean the Rays can’t improve from those numbers.
In my opinion, Farnsworth seems to be the most expendable player in the bullpen. As Russell noted above, he’s a free agent at the end of the season and Tampa Bay hasn’t trusted him with a good number of innings this year — presumably as a result of the outcome of his outings. Furthermore, at $1.25 MM the Rays wouldn’t be losing much money, while they’d be be able to do away with an injury prone player.
Then the question begs, how exactly can they part ways with Farnsworth? What’s more, how are they going to make room for Cobb when he returns? Questions for another day, I suppose.