As teams gather around the hot stove at the MLB Winter Meetings in Nashville, the 100 Miles Giles era is over in Philadelphia.
According to multiple reports on Wednesday night, the Phillies traded established 25-year-old closer Ken Giles to the Houston Astros for four players: Right-handed pitcher Vincent Velasquez, left-handed pitcher Brett Oberholtzer, outfielder Derek Fisher, and a fourth player that hasn’t been named yet.
This deal likely boils down to two teams at much different stages. The contending Astros can use a proven reliever/flame-thrower like Giles, who owns a minuscule 1.56 ERA and 151 strikeouts in 115.2 innings pitched since getting called up in 2014. The Phillies, owners of the worst record in baseball in 2015, will gladly take back a couple of top-ten prospects in the Astros system for a closer who wouldn't have many games to close the next few seasons if he stayed in Philly.
The 23-year-old Velasquez, who ESPN’s Keith Law ranked third in the Astros’ third-ranked system before the 2015 season, is the headliner coming back to Philadelphia. He’s a hard-throwing righty who has a fastball that reportedly sits in between 93-96 mph.
Fisher, who shares a name with the former Los Angeles Lakers point guard and current New York Knicks head coach, was the eighth-ranked prospect in Houston’s organization by Law before last season. He possesses plus emoji usage:
In 55.2 innings working out of both the starting rotation and bullpen for the Astros last season, Velasquez had a 4.37 ERA.
Earlier in the day, the Phillies announced a move that might have been made with a Giles trade in mind. They signed free-agent reliever David Hernandez, an accomplished setup man in Arizona that posted a 4.28 ERA last year after missing the entire 2014 season due to Tommy John surgery.
Over the last few weeks, the Phils have added bullpen help by claiming Dan Otero, Michael Mariot and A.J. Achter off waivers. Here is new general manager Matt Klentak on Hernandez and the state of the bullpen in general:
“It was a priority for us as an organization to add someone to the back end of our bullpen who had pitched in high-leverage situations in the past. The last couple of months we’ve been adding quite a bit of depth to our bullpen, but many of those players don’t come with a lot of experience and we wanted to make sure we added at least one player who had experience that could help pitch in late part of the game. David, throughout his time in Arizona, was one of the better setup men in baseball.”
More to come as more info is made available…
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