Something happened that didn’t involve Dan Duquette, the Toronto Blue Jays, and media confusion! Thank God.
On Tuesday night, the Baltimore Orioles completed their first noteworthy transaction since signing Delmon Young to a major league deal on January 9th: they dealt 21 year old A ball pitcher Stephen Tarpley and a Player to Be Named Later to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Travis Snider, a guy so far removed from his 2006 first-round pick status that it feels almost like false advertising to continue to include that bit of information in every one of these little bullet point bios about him.
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Much ado has been made about Snider since the acquisition — specifically, much ado has been made about his second half season split of 2014, where Snider hit .288/.356/.524 (.880 OPS) in 188 PA for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Now that the heady first 72 hours post-trade have passed, we can probably admit to ourselves that a half-season split constituting fewer than 200 PA isn’t significantly more meaningful than the rest of his career just because it happened most recently. Over his entire career, Snider is a .246/.310/.406 (.716 OPS) hitter with no discernable platoon tendencies (he’s been much better against LHP over the past couple seasons in Pittsburgh, but has faced them fewer than 100 times), decent-to-good defense in right field with one impressive highlight reel homerun steal that doesn’t particularly speak to his normal range or instincts, and a whole bag of tools that have yet to cohere into anything resembling a solid everyday player.
“Guys with a whole bunch of tools that have yet to cohere into anything” is, of course, a profile that occasionally leads to players like Jose Bautista — and chasing those tools is why guys like Snider keep hanging around at the major league level, despite massive inconsistency at the plate from year to year and only passable value in the field and on the basepaths. While very few of them turn into Bautista, there’s at least hope Snider can turn into a guy like fellow former first-round pick Delmon Young, who has fashioned a tidy career as a part-time and rotational player out of a bunch of talent that didn’t pan out.
The problem, of course, is who plays where. And it’s a problem complicated by a big elephant in the room: the very possible regression of 2014 world-beater Steve Pearce.
The corner outfield rotation currently has Alejandro de Aza, David Lough, Pearce, Young, and now Snider all definitely in camp and on the 25-man roster for Opening Day barring trades or cuts — Lough is the most likely candidate to get zapped here, by far. Alex Hassan is on the active roster after a waiver claim from Oakland, but he’s only lurking around until the Orioles think they can pass him through waivers like they did with catcher Ryan Lavarnway. Ryan Flaherty and Jimmy Paredes technically have outfield experience but are far more likely to be used in the infield, where Flaherty will once again be a super-sub and Paredes will probably get traded or designated for assignment if Manny Machado is healthy.
Regularly platooning one corner outfield position with a modern bullpen of seven or eight guys is easily feasible. Regularly platooning two gives the team far less flexibility. And while Young spent almost 200 innings in the outfield last year, there’s no actual benefit for giving him that playing time besides throwing the player a bone to keep him happy — Young has been a middling DH who you sit against tough lefties for a couple years now. Which leaves the outfield with Steve Pearce in left and either de Aza or Snider in right, depending on who is swinging the bat better that day — with preference for Snider due to a stronger arm and better overall defense, and de Aza spelling Pearce on days when it makes sense for him to DH.
But what if Steve Pearce goes back to being 2007-2013 Steve Pearce? That is to say, a guy with middling defensive value at non-premium defensive positions like LF and 1B whose only notable skill is hitting for decent power against left-handed pitching? Then the Orioles have a problem, because now instead of one corner OF rotation, they’ve got a DH platoon of Young/Pearce being juggled with an OF platoon of de Aza/Pearce and Snider playing the corners everyday with David Lough as the fourth outfielder.
That’s…not a good outfield. It’s about as defensively middling as last year, requiring Adam Jones to continue to carry the guys to his left and right, and loses a whole bunch of power with the departure of Nelson Cruz. This is clearly the contingency for which the Orioles are planning; even with his great 2014, Pearce still showed a huge split, with a 1.109 OPS against LHP and an .856 OPS vs. RHP, and Snider, for all his inconsistency and faults, has shown that over the long term at least he’s got a similar performance profile against lefties and righties.
Snider’s hit the proper checklist of humble words about coming to the Orioles and just doing what he can to help the team, and barring injury he’s almost certain to be the starting rightfielder on Opening Day. He is not a particularly inspiring replacement for Nelson Cruz in the lineup; he wouldn’t be a particularly inspiring replacement for a healthy Nick Markakis either in my opinion, besides still having some possible mystery-box upside, but ‘healthy Nick Markakis’ doesn’t seem to be on offer for 2015. Besides, anyone trying to use “Travis Snider could be better than Nick Markakis in 2015” as a gotcha is banking on you not having paid attention to Markakis for the past couple years.
The good news is that, pending the revelation of who the second Player to Be Named Later in the trade is, the Orioles didn’t give up much of anything to get Snider, and he’s much more likely to return positive value at the major league level than Tarpley ever will. Snider’s still in arbitration so he’s not making a ton of money, and if he has a truly horrid season the Orioles can always non-tender him. It’s a safe move that has far less upside than parsing the end of Snider’s 2014 might suggest (and honestly, for a “turn it around” show-me split over 180 PA, I’d hope to see something better than an .880 OPS), but considering the real hope to replace Cruz’s bat lies not in Snider but in whether or not his return to league-sanctioned Adderall use gets Chris Davis back into 2013 form, it’s a perfectly acceptable move.
The Baltimore Orioles have someone who can stand in right field for a full season and probably not embarrass himself. Past that, everything else from Travis Snider should be considered a pleasant surprise.
Jonathan is a contributing writer for VICE Sports. His work has previously appeared in Sports on Earth, Baseball Prospectus, The Classical, and ESPN’s SweetSpot Network. Born in central Maryland, Bernhardt currently lives in the New York metropolitan area.