Cotton is trying to join Jabari Blash as Virgin Islands-born players in the major leagues. A’s pitching coach Curt Young will have some more young arms to mold, something he’s been successful at for year. While A’s fans and players are surely sad to see Hill and Reddick depart.
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Oakland yields three prospects in return for three right-handed pitchers: Jharel Cotton, Grant Holmes and Frankie Montas.
Reddick, 29, had a slash line of.296/.368/.449 with eight homers and 28 RBIs this year, but the relatively low home-run total was impacted by those five weeks spent on the DL. He missed almost five weeks with a fractured thumb. So before we all assume this signals the Blue Jays are looking to move on from Bautista and Saunders, keep in mind that Reddick is essentially a rental player and carries no term if acquired by the Blue Jays.
Based on his injury history, trading for Reddick is a slight gamble for the Dodgers. “We’ve been on both sides of it, and we find ourselves in a similar position to where we were a year ago, putting together a team (believed ready) to compete and faced with the reality of where we are in the standings”.
Dodgers front office personnel gave manager Dave Roberts the tools necessary to make a late-season run.
The Los Angeles Dodgers entered Monday needing to address a couple of issues. He made the NL All-Star team for the third time. The Athletics were in the bottom-third of the league in all three categories last month. Reddick was also in his contract year and supposedly wanted to stay in Oakland. He now rates as the Dodgers 13th-best prospect, and scouts project him as a reliever with possible mid-rotation potential. However, his OPS sits at.816, the highest of his career. His.317 BABIP is a bit higher than his career norm, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if it drops a little, but because so much of his contact is in play, Reddick should be fine even if the BABIP regresses to his career.280 mark.
“We’re making good progress and it’s starting to callous over”, Hill said Tuesday in Colorado.
Reddick was one of just three players on the A’s current 40-man roster who were part of the 2012 team that made the memorable final-week rush to a division title, ushering in three consecutive postseason appearances.
Hill, 36, has been fantastic this season. Rosenthal notes that this will now likely lead to him getting traded.
Hill, who’s slated to become a free agent after this season, is 9-3 with a 2.25 ERA and 10.7 strikeouts per nine innings through 14 starts. If Los Angeles wins, though, they won’t worry too much about that point. He has 90 strikeouts in 76.0 innings. Holmes (No. 72) was also ranked as a Top-100 prospect before the season by Baseball America.
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There are other prospects heading to Oakland in the deal.
