Phillies Trade Sanchez and Alfaro for Realmuto

The Phillies continue an offseason of ok value moves by shipping their top prospect and one of their top young hitters to the Marlins for arguably the best catcher in baseball. Before going into what the Phillies gave up, it is important to acknowledge that J.T. Realmuto is very good. He is a well above average hitter, who doesn’t walk a ton, but he does make plenty of contact, has power, and can run a bit. He has been trapped in a pitcher’s park for years and on a bad team for all of last season. He is the Phillies best position player, for now.

What the Phillies gave up in this deal was a lot of upside. Sixto Sanchez has been injured in the past year, but he is a 20 year old right hander with rare stuff. His fastball is electric, sitting 94-99, routinely touching 100-102 over the past two seasons. His offspeed pitches all flash plus with his changeup showing good fade and drop, and a sharp slider around 90mph starting with supplant a power curveball. Sanchez still needs to locate his pitches better, but he can throw all of his pitches for strikes. He has yet shoulder a large season workload, but most young starters in the low minors have the same weakness. The whole reason he was available in trade is his injuries during the 2018 season that saw him miss 3 months with elbow soreness and then get shut down during instructs due to collarbone soreness. The upside for Sanchez is immense, and he could be the best pitcher in baseball. However, there is plenty of risk.

The same could be said of Jorge Alfaro. Alfaro is a player of extremes. At the plate he hits the ball very hard, strikes out a ton, rarely walks, and runs like few catchers do. He showed improvement all year and has yet to tap into his power, but he is unlikely to be an elite level batter. Behind the plate, Alfaro’s framing rated out very well by Baseball Prospectus’ metrics. His pitch blocking improved, but is still generously poor. He has an incredibly strong arm, but his footwork on throws can slow him down. His athleticism does make him one of the best defenders around the plate as well. All together Alfaro rates out very well defensively. If Alfaro can just improve incrementally on both sides he could be a monster player. That also has been the scouting report on Alfaro for most of a decade.

Will Stewart is the third piece of the trade, and a large step down from the top two and from the rumored Marlins demands. He is a solid enough prospect with an average two seam fastball, above average changeup, and a potentially future average slider. Stewart’s pitches all generate large ground ball rates, and he was one of the best in the minors at generating grounders. He profiles as a back end starter, with an easy to see reliever fall back. Also in the deal is $250,000 in international slot money, or what the Phillies got for the Rule 5 draft pick.

The trade comes down to a couple of things.

• How big is the gap for Alfaro to Realmuto?
• What else could the Phillies have trade Sixto for?
• How risky did the Phillies feel that Sanchez was?
• Does Realmuto actually move the needle for the Phillies?

The first thing comes down to how you feel about framing. Realmuto is definitely a better blocker of pitches and throws as well in aggregate as Alfaro. When it comes to framing Alfaro was much better than Realmuto in 2018, however Realmuto was coming off a 2017 where he was perfectly fine behind the plate. If you think that Alfaro’s framing is sustainable and Realmuto’s 2018 is more indicative of things than 2017, then there is a decent defensive gap here in favor of Alfaro. Realmuto is a better hitter than Alfaro, despite Alfaro’s upside. There is some idea that based on home/road splits and what Christian Yelich did in 2018 that there is more in Realmuto’s bat. Even without the untapped upside, the difference between Alfaro and Realmuto looks to be 2 to 3 wins. Now that hides some of the reality, and the reality is that barring an injury, Realmuto is pretty safe to provide his value, and Alfaro’s offensive holes could lead to him being unplayable. So the gap here is only a few wins (wins that are important), but also some certainty in getting those wins. This fits with the Phillies previous moves with Segura and McCutchen.

The trade market is hard to judge, because when we are talking about prospects of Sanchez’s caliber the players available aren’t those necessarily being shopped. Of those that have been shopped it is safe to say that Sixto would at very least get the Phillies a phone call on Corey Kluber or Robbie Ray, probably could have gotten them Edwin Diaz or Paul Goldschmidt during this offseason and Manny Machado last deadline. If the Phillies had not made a trade now, a healthy Sixto Sanchez would have been one of the biggest trade chips on the market for the Phillies to fill any of their holes. Some of those players are better than Realmuto, some are not.

The million dollar question is how healthy the Phillies think that Sanchez is. He ended the year throwing at full strength, and the Phillies claim he will be fully healthy in Spring Training. Now that is no guarantee of future health, but also is less of the death sentence most have pronounced on his right arm. The track record for pitching prospects is not great, but Sanchez is also young enough that Tommy John surgery would set him back, but not completely. The answer to all of this is that we just don’t know. Given that they traded Sanchez, it is likely that the Phillies aren’t 100% sure of Sanchez’s health. However, he cannot be injured enough that he scared the Marlins away.

The good news for getting a picture of how much Realmuto helps the Phillies is that Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA Projected Standings that came out today. The NL East had the Nationals and Mets at 89 wins and the Phillies and Braves at 84 wins. All of these projections have a natural +/- of 2 wins built in. So just on the surface, this move makes the Phillies 3^rd in the division. It puts them in contention for the division title, but not the favorite.

That is the biggest knock against the trade. Those 2-3 wins are important, but they don’t actually get the Phillies there, and the Phillies paid a ton to get that value. The trade is an overpay by almost any measure. Overpays are fine, if they get the team to where it needs to be. The Phillies have now made two trades where they have swapped out youth and upside for reliability and present performance. They “overpaid” Andrew McCutchen to provide the same type of impact. What they haven’t done is add the upside and the performance to make them a division winning caliber team. As with all the Phillies moves this offseason, without signing Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, all of these moves are going to feel a bit hollow and aimless. With either of those signings, the Phillies slot together very nicely and should be the NL East favorite and in position to challenge the top of the NL for a World Series spot.

On a personal note, it is sad to lose Sixto Sanchez. In my 6+ years of writing he is far and away the most exciting player I have ever covered. Jorge Alfaro may be one of the my favorite major league Phillies, but Sixto Sanchez might be my favorite Phillies prospect ever, and I hope he goes on to a dominant career, because he is an amazing pitcher to watch.