Trade Profiles: Huston Street

Picture Credit: zimbio.com

It's that time of year again where I will go through the possible players the Pirates will target in a trade.  And the first player I will profile is the only player to actually connected to the Pirates.  That would be Padres closer Huston Street.

When you look at what the Pirates biggest weaknesses are, the first thing you'll point to is the bullpen and the ability, or lack thereof, to close out baseball games.  Bringing in a guy like Huston Street would definitely fix that problem pretty fast.  But is it realistic to bring in Huston Street?

Well let's start by looking at the positives of bringing in Huston Street.  The first thing would be his closing ability.  Since he became a professional he has a whopping 258 saves and he has only blown 42 of those opportunities.  So he is a proven closer.  He's got a 9.27 K/9 and a 1.91 BB/9.  His ERA is an absolutely stellar 1.09.  But a new stat I like to use is FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) which shows if a guy is due to regress.  Simply if the player has been lucky or unlucky because of his fielding.  And Street's FIP is 2.90 so he is due for some regression but that is still very good.  His WHIP is 0.76.  So this guy is a big time late inning guy.  He's also only 30 and has a team option for next year, making him more than just a rental. 

The most impressive stat to me are his splits.  Many people like to bring up that Street is playing at Petco Park, the most pitcher friendly park in baseball.  Well has anyone looked at his splits?  He has actually performed even better away from Petco!  The dude has given up zero ones and only one extra base hit outside of Petco Park.  So this is no fluke.  With all that said there are some drawbacks about adding Street.

The biggest issue for me when talking about trading for Street is not his performance.  I would LOVE to have this guy in our back pocket.  Watson, Melancon, Street would be even more dominant than it was with Grilli and Hanrahan in previous years.  But with this established closer is going to come a huge cost.  There will likely be a bidding war for his services and the likely cost for Street will probably jump to Josh Bell.  And I would never give up Bell for Street.  Street's WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is 0.5.  Let's say he repeats that next season too.  So he would have a total WAR of 1.0 as a Pirate.  He would account for one win.  Josh Bell's WAR as a pro has a chance to eclipse 20 as a Pirate.  Would you trade 20 wins over 6-7 seasons for 1.0 win over two years?  It doesn't make sense.  Plus Street is making $7 million this year and has an option for the same next year.  That is cheap for a closer of his caliber but as a small market team, the Pirates can't pay that much for a guy who may pitch like 80.0 innings a year.  Finally, Mark Melancon is a very capable closer.  It might be better just to add a back end bullpen piece like a seventh inning guy or a set up man for a much cheaper cost.

Overall, I don't think we should trade for Street unless the price is lower than thought.  And you never know.  Two years ago I thought there would be the same type of bidding war over the Padres Ryan Ludwick and we got him for a PTBNL or cash.  So you never know.  Just knowing Neal Huntington's track record of taking relief pitchers off of the scrap heap for nothing, see Grilli, Jason, Resop, Chris and Gomez, Jeanmar, I just don't see him giving up a valuable piece of the farm system for a relief pitcher.

All stats are via Huston Street's Fangraphs page