Likely portending a worrisome move in the offing, the Royals and Athletics have agreed to a trade sending Royals’ 1B/DH Brandon Moss back to Oakland along with lefty reliever Ryan Buchter in return for pitchers Jesse Hahn and minor-leaguer Heath Fillmyer. The Royals are also kicking in $3.25MM of the $8.25MM owed Moss, per Jeffrey Flanagan.
Jeffrey Flanagan appears to be the first to report the news, and his tweet on the deal has what we’re all expecting:
Royals have traded LHP Ryan Buchter and DH/1B Brandon Moss to Oakland for right-hander Jesse Hahn and Minor League right-hander Heath Fillmyer. This could clear some payroll space for a certain free-agent first baseman you know.
— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) January 30, 2018
Moving right on past the deal that many have dreaded for months, the Royals move a chunk of Brandon Moss’s salary commitment, trimming $5MM off their payroll obligations. Neither Ryan Buchter nor Jesse Hahn are eligible for arbitration yet, as they will not accrue the service time necessary for a pay raise until next year.
Moss gets to return the last team that saw him play well, even serving as Oakland’s All-Star Game representative in 2014, the same season that saw them face off against the Royals in a raucous Wild Card Game in which Moss sent two dongs screaming into the stands off Royals’ hurlers.
As for Buchter? Well, Ryan, we hardly knew you.
Both pitchers coming back to Kansas City are righties. Jesse Hahn made his major-league debut in 2014, and in the four years that followed a combination of injuries and poor performance have hampered him. Though drafted by the Devil Rays in 2010, Hahn did not make his professional pitching debut until the 2012 season, after going under the knife in 2010 for Tommy John surgery.
Hahn advanced through the minors rather quickly after that, spending a season each in the New York - Penn League (low-A), Florida State League (high-A), and Texas League (AA), the third stop coming after being traded to the Padres in a seven-player deal that you can read about here should you so desire. The Padres gave him 42.1 innings of seasoning in San Antonio before giving him The Call.
Buoyed by a solid strikeout rate, beneficent .270 BABIP, kind home ballpark, and depressed offensive environment, Hahn’s first season in the majors was an unequivocal success. 2014 saw him break out with a 3.07 ERA, 3.40 FIP, 22.9K% and 10.5 BB%, good for 1.1 fWAR and 1.2 rWAR in just 73.1 IP.
Hahn was dealt to Oakland the following offseason in the deal that sent Derek Norris to San Diego. He was solid in 2015, notching a 3.35 ERA and 3.51 FIP en route to being worth 1.6 fWAR and 1.1 rWAR, but he was only healthy enough to throw 96.2 innings, getting shut down in late July with a right forearm strain. That right forearm strain bothered him from the onset of an ineffective 2016 season, one that was ultimately cut short by a right shoulder injury in August. In 46.1 innings at the major-league level, he managed just a 6.02 ERA and 5.63 FIP. As you can imagine, that was a below-replacement-level performance by any measure.
2017? Injury-shortened again with a strain to his right triceps. The second Tommy John time-bomb is ticking pretty loudly here. His ERA in 69.2 major-league innings last season was a miserable 5.30, but he did maintain a 3.62 FIP for whatever that’s worth. His strand-rate was a comically poor 60.6% and his BABIP was .326, so there’s cause for hope in regards to his ERA regressing to the mean, but any hope for solid contribution from Hahn going forward needs to be seriously counterbalanced by his massive injury history.
As for Heath Fillmyer, the 2014 fifth-rounder was selected from the JUCO ranks, coming out of Mercer County Community College, surely a fine institution. Fillmyer only had one year of wear and tear on his arm before being drafted by Oakland, having made the conversion from to the mound from the infield in the 2014 collegiate season.
A fastball/curveball/change-up guy, the 6’1” righty gets points for his relative proximity to the majors, looking like he should be ticketed for an assignment to AAA - Omaha after a 149.2 inning stretch in the Texas League last year. For someone who doesn’t have a long history as a pitcher, there is obviously a decent amount of growth that could still come, but his minor-league results sure look like those of a back-of-the-rotation starter. At least his acquisition could conceivably negate the need to go out and re-sign Jeremy Guthrie for a lot of money.
Flanagan probed Dayton Moore on the matter of signing Hosmer, and the Hosmer idolator was predictably tight-lipped, saying:
I asked Dayton Moore about the speculation that will surely occur about Eric Hosmer after this trade: "It would be inappropriate for me to comment about a free-agent right now," Moore said. "(But) I"ve been very clear what our thoughts are about Eric Hosmer."
— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) January 30, 2018
Expect the signing soon.