Here's a rough estimate of how many talented starting pitchers are available this winter: like, a million. And for virtually all of them, the prices are pretty steep.
Save for one apparent exception. Let's just call him Carlos Carrasco.
Because, you know, that's his name.
There hasn't been a ton of noise lately about the Cleveland Indians actually trading Carrasco. But we bring him up because the 28-year-old right-hander was a popular name during the summer trading season and because Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe reported in October that there's "no question the Indians are going to deal a starting pitcher for a hitter this offseason."
If that was true then, it may be even more true now. The Tribe was dealt a blow earlier this month when star outfielder Michael Brantley underwent right shoulder surgery. He's likely going to miss the first month of 2015, which ups the pressure on Cleveland to find a bat.
To do so, it makes sense for Cleveland to deal from its starting pitcher surplus. And among its options, Carrasco is the most logical. Trevor Bauer isn't good enough to trade. Corey Kluber is too good to trade. Danny Salazar is too young and, for now, too cheap to trade.
Next to these three, Carrasco offers some nice middle ground. He's a very good pitcher, for one. And though he's not quite young anymore, 28 is far from ancient. He also has a contract that could last through 2020 at very team-friendly rates.
As for what it would take to acquire a pitcher like that, Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer expects that Cleveland would set its asking price at "an established big league player and at least one quality prospect" if it did choose to deal one of its top starters. And while that's not a small asking price, it sounds reasonable relative to where the asking prices are for the winter's other aces.
In David Price, Zack Greinke, Jordan Zimmermann and Johnny Cueto, the free-agent market is home to four ace-type pitchers. And if you ask Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors, it will take $200 million to sign Price and over $100 million to sign any of the other three. Those aren't small sums of money, particularly for four guys who will be on the wrong side of 30 in 2016.
As for the aces on the trade market, B/R's Scott Miller says there's a huge asking price on Washington Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg, who is just a year from free agency. The asking prices for guys like Matt Harvey, Chris Sale and Sonny Gray, meanwhile, are probably beyond huge. That's assuming they're even available, and indications are that they aren't.
Which brings us back to Carrasco. One major league player and at least a quality prospect in return sounds about right, and it really doesn't sound so bad for a 28-year-old with a club-friendly contract. Especially one who's an ace.
By the way, did we mention that Carrasco is an ace? Because he is an ace.
Certainly, we're talking about a very recent addition to the ace brotherhood.
Carrasco was a key part of the 2009 trade that sent Cliff Lee to the Philadelphia Phillies, but he struggled to find himself between 2009 and 2011. Then came Tommy John surgery that sidelined him in 2012, and a less-than-triumphant return in 2013. And by August of 2014, his career as a starter seemed over.
But then the Tribe put him back in the rotation, and magic happened.
In 10 starts at the end of 2014, Carrasco posted a 1.30 ERA and held hitters to a .179 average. That landed him on all sorts of breakout watch lists for 2015, and he largely made good on the hype. Though he only posted a 3.63 ERA in 30 starts, ERA estimators like FIP and xFIP placed Carrasco among MLB's top 10 pitchers.
In all, what Carrasco has done in 40 starts since moving into Cleveland's rotation is darned impressive:
As for how Carrasco got this good, that's a story with multiple sides.
As Carrasco told Terry Pluto of the Plain Dealer, one very big component is that he's simply more confident than he was before. It's also often been noted that he's done himself a favor by pitching exclusively out of the stretch. Brooks Baseball can show how that's led to more consistency with his release point. In turn, his control has improved.
Probably the biggest key to Carrasco's success, though, is good, old-fashioned stuff.
Ever since Carrasco returned from Tommy John surgery in 2013, one thing he has now that he didn't before is exceptional velocity. He sat 92-93 before his surgery and now sits 94-95. He's had little trouble maintaining this velocity as a starter, as Baseball Savant tells us that he's thrown more 95-plus fastballs than all but 18 other pitchers.
In addition to his high-velocity fastball, Carrasco has two overpowering secondary pitches.
One is his changeup. On a good day, it has the velocity and diving action of a splitter, which makes sense given that he uses a splitter grip to throw it. To illustrate, here's a GIF from the Pitcher List:
Per Brooks Baseball, 22.1 percent of Carrasco's changeups have gotten whiffs since he moved into Cleveland's rotation in 2014. For perspective, that's a tick above the career whiff rate that Felix Hernandez has on his changeup, which is considered by many to be baseball's best.
And Carrasco's changeup isn't even his money pitch. That's his slider, which clocks in the high 80s and has sharp, Frisbee-like glove-side run. It has a 26.1 whiff percentage since late 2014, a rate just short of what Clayton Kershaw has done with his world-crushing slider over the last two years.
It's because of these three pitches—fastball, changeup, slider—that Carrasco has racked up more swinging strikes than all but eight other pitchers since he moved into Cleveland's rotation. And as Carrasco showed in a 15-strikeout one-hitter against the Kansas City Royals, a team that doesn't strike out, there's no opponent too tough for him:
"Carrasco would have beaten anybody tonight with that stuff," said Royals skipper Ned Yost after that game, via the Associated Press. "He was just simply electric, a 97-mph four-seamer, a 94-mph two-seamer with a lot of action and a tremendous split, hard slider, throwing them all for strikes. That's as good as stuff as we've seen all year long."
Of course, the big question going forward is whether Carrasco will be able to maintain his stuff. Though he's not old yet, he is getting pretty close to the danger zone for starting pitchers. According to research posted by Bill Petti at FanGraphs, starting pitchers generally start to see their key skills take a turn for the worse at around the age of 29.
However, there is room for optimism that Carrasco can be an exception to the rule.
With only 556 major league innings on his arm, he's a lot better preserved than your typical 28-year-old starter. And though he has only recently been asked to handle a big workload, he has the size (6'4" and 210 pounds) for the job. That helps alleviate some of the concern that stems not just from his age but from his past Tommy John operation and his seemingly high-effort delivery.
Even if Carrasco were to break down, what would soften the blow is the reality that he basically can't become an albatross with his contract.
The next three seasons will only pay Carrasco $19 million. After that, his contract has two options worth a total of $18.5 million. He can thus be controlled for five more seasons at less than $40 million. That's probably half of what he would get on the open market if he were a free agent. Heck, at least half.
That plus the reality that the Tribe, with all its starting pitching depth, doesn't figure to ask for the whole farm for Carrasco highlight him as the biggest potential value buy on the offseason pitching market. Where other big-name aces will require either $100-200 million in free agency or several top prospects, an arm and/or a leg in trades, Carrasco is an underrated ace who should cost considerably less.
So, teams in need of an ace now have a good place to look. All they have to do now is talk Cleveland into it.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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