Todd Frazier, WTF?

It’s BeefLoaf here and the rebuild is going swimmingly, the team is watchable including some potential young players hitting their strides in Leury Garcia, Yolmer Sanchez, Tommy Kahnle and Avisail Garcia.  They are losing games at a reasonable clip, which should improve the more Dylan Covey and Mike Pelfrey get to start games.  AND most of the prospects are playing well in their minor league assignments, giving us hope for the future.  Everything is going right except for one thing………

Tha Blockfather (are there White Sox fans that he hasn’t blocked on twitter?) aka Todd Frazier just ain’t playing good enough to be traded.

  That’s right, one of the lynch pins of the last team that was “ALL IN” sucks so goddamn bad right now and it isn’t clear that he is going to be good again.  I was listening to a fantasy baseball podcast recently, in which one of the hosts, Rotowire’s Jeff Erickson, who is a Reds’ fan, was laughing at how much the Reds received in the Todd Frazier trade, even though Frazier had just finished an abysmal 2nd half of the 2015 season with the Reds.

Tha Blockfather’s defense is declining, his hard hit rate is declining, his infield flyball rate is increasing….blech!  He’s been awful to the naked and not so naked eye.   One of the key elements of a rebuild is being able to divest of your remaining expiring assets and get some future value for those assets.  The most expirEEE of those assets are Melky Cabrera and Todd Frazier.

 Melky has a low batting average right now, but he’s still doing all the things that Melky Cabrera does including hit the ball hard, so I don’t suspect we’ll have any worries about him being on another team come August 1st.  Frazier on the other hand has plunged his value too low to trade.  What team wants what he is providing, even if they could have it for FREE, let alone send Rick Hahn some talent in return.  I know what you are saying “BUT HE’S A GOOD CLUBHOUSE GUY”…….you know what good clubhouse guys who can’t hit or play defense do for a living?  They sell insurance.  

This is where Frazier is trending, I heard someone quote a stat that he is currently the WORST big league regular.  WORST!!!  You can’t trade the WORST big league regular.   In my mind, there are only 3 options………

NUMERO UNO – Frazier gets his head out of his rectum and starts playing better ball.  If that is the case, you still won’t get what Rick Hahn thought he would get for Frazier, but you might be able to put him on a middling wild card contender that needs help at the hot corner by August 1st.  This is the best case scenario and since I am a realist, it is the one that won’t happen.

PLAN B – Frazier continues to suck, Yolmer continues to rake and Moncada is ready……..this is where we haz some problems.  Those are the assumptions, but then again, we also have Tyler Saladino and Matt Davidson here who need playing time.

 You have to bench Frazier and/or only play him in spots that are optimal to make at least one team believe he can help them in August and September.  That means, he is no longer a regular…..Yolmer Sanchez is your new Third Baseman, congratulations Yolmer!!  

Moncada obviously will man the keystone and Frazier to the bench.  If this comes to fruition, it will be clear to Rick Hahn (hopefully) that Yolmer Sanchez is a better trade asset than Frazier and he should get the regular playing time.

III – I’ve been watching A LOT of Sopranos lately and if you have been reading up till now, you know that the last option ain’t gonna be a good one.  If I’m Rick Hahn, maybe I use Buddy Bell to go down there and take care of Todd Frazier,

seems like an unlikely choice.  You guessed it, option III is DFA Todd Frazier…….playing time is a valuable commodity in a rebuild and Frazier using ANY of that playing time after August 1st is a poor use of resources.  

– BeefLoaf