ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle loved the Tyler Mahle and Jorge López trades a year ago. He gave the Minnesota Twins an A- for each, believing that Mahle and López would prop up a declining pitching staff while the Twins tried to create separation in the AL Central. He gave Minnesota a lot of credit for being active at the deadline while the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Guardians stood pat.
Doolittle gave the Cincinnati Reds a C for the Mahle trade, wondering how good the prospects they got in return – Spencer Steer, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, and Steve Hajjar – would turn out to be. And he gave the Baltimore Orioles an F-. He wasn’t necessarily upset with the return: Cade Povich, Yennier Canó, Juan Rojas, and Juan Nunez. It was more that he hated that Baltimore traded Trey Mancini and López while they were in the AL wild-card race.
Well, hindsight is 20/20, and unfortunately, it doesn’t favor the Twins. Doolittle changed ($) Minnesota’s A-minuses to Fs.
On Mahle:
To be sure, this is a harsh revision. The joy of hindsight is we can make our judgments based on what’s already happened, even if those results are a product of bad luck. For the Twins, this is a double whammy, as they got bad luck (Mahle’s injuries) and now appear to have overpaid in giving up two everyday-quality young players in Steer and Encarnacion-Strand.
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Perhaps, with hindsight, we can say the Twins should have seen Mahle’s arm issues as more of a red flag than they did. But, also with hindsight, we can say for sure the production they got over 42 innings from Mahle is going to be dwarfed by what the Reds are going to get from their return in this deal.
On López:
First, that ghastly effort at grading — my work, not Dave’s — ought to be explained. No, I’m not going to beat myself up over not realizing what the Orioles had done when they acquired Cano, who has been arguably the best reliever in the American League this season. No one really saw that one coming. But I was probably too hard on the Orioles at the time because, to be frank, I was angry with them.
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It doesn’t help the Twins’ case that even though there was evidence in Lopez’s underlying metrics that his relief ascendancy was real, he simply has not pitched well for them. Over 55 innings for the Twins, Lopez has posted a 4.58 ERA. Pitching, relief or otherwise, has not been the issue for Minnesota in 2023 and perhaps the Twins were never going to identify the tweaks to Cano’s game that the Orioles did. But, man, does this deal look lopsided after the fact.
The entire post is worth reading if you’re an ESPN+ subscriber. Doolittle goes in-depth on why he revised the grades and what the morale of the story is for the Twins. Unfortunately, there’s nothing they can do about them now as they enter another crucial deadline in a similar spot as last year.
