H-Town gets
Patrick Wisdom $8
4th round pick
Beantown Butchers gets
Eric Lauer $5
Brusdar Graterol
My first thought was this trade wasn’t worth writing up. I view Lauer as a soft tossing lefty who gives up way more hits per inning than you want. And who the hell is Patrick Wisdom?
Well I was surprised on both fronts by their 2021 seasons. Lauer actually gave up less than a hit per inning and was serviceable and Patrick Wisdom at age 29 hit 28 HR’s in 338 AB’s. I think I missed all 28. A former 1st round pick from 2012…. Could we just go back to 2012 for a minute and gangnum style dance once more with no covid hysteria.
So yeah I was surprised both players performed better than i would have guessed. I’m no sabermetrician but Lauer seems to have gotten a little more luck as hitters against BABIP dropped all the way down to .254 while all 3 previous seasons were much higher. He only gave up 94 hits in 118 IP which is way below his usual. So either he figured something out or just got lucky.
Wisdom strikes out a ton. Doesn’t walk a ton. So he looks like a low avg/obp power guy. And he has position flexibility at 1B,3B, LF. Seems like a great bench piece. I feel 3B is pretty shallow this year so I like the acquisition. Playing time would be my only concern, but as of now it looks like he may be in for regular at bats for the Cubbies.
It doesn’t take much to make this worth my while as we are currently in a deep freeze here in Edmonton where its been -25 or worse for the past couple weeks so a lot of hibernation going on here. But I am going to give a slight edge on this trade to H-town, but I also understand Beantown who needed pitching and gets a serviceable starter who maybe figured something out at a cheap price. And I am generally not much a believer in keeping RP , but a $0 closer has some merit.