Dodgers Trade Prospects You Barely Know For Prospects You Don’t Know, Do Well

The Dodgers made a trade today that at first seemed very interesting when it was first reported as just having “top prospect Frankie Montas going to Los Angeles,” because, whoa! Was that how Yasiel Puig would leave! Could the Dodgers be getting Jose Quintana? Dare you dream of Chris Sale? Of course, not, but, man! The possibilities.

Then it turned out to be a lot less interesting than that. And then you animals broke the server. Literally:

The disk on this server has faulted. We are working on restoring your server from the last available backup performed.

So when that was restored, all the good smart words that Dustin wrote about the trade were gone. (I mean, probably good and smart. I hadn’t seen them.) So, ah, yeah, you’re left with some very quick and less good and smart thoughts to me.

Boils down to this: The Dodgers traded three prospects (Jose Peraza, Scott Schebler, and Brandon Dixon) for three others (Montas, Micah Johnson, and Trayce Thompson). The simple fact that the Dodgers were involved in a Todd Frazier trade without actually getting him is annoying to some, I get, though Justin Turner has A) been a better hitter than Frazier in 2014-15 and B) can’t really play second due to his knee.

For me, I was the low man on Peraza (don’t trust his on-base skills) and Schebler, and had no opinion whatsoever on Dixon. I’m not sure Johnson can handle second defensively, and Thompson might not be much different than Schebler, but I really, really like Montas, who reached the bigs last year, touches 100mph, and could be in the bullpen immediately if he’s not used as a starter, which he might be.

From all indications, this was a Reds/White Sox deal that the Dodgers inserted themselves into when those teams couldn’t agree on a straight-up deal. For their trouble, they made a minor swap that landed them the best player of the six they were involved with. (Jeff Sullivan compared Montas’ fastball to Ken Giles‘, which, wow.)

It’s not exciting, but it’s not intended to be exciting. On the other hand…

Friedman, asked if he is any more comfortable trading elite pitching prospects today than he was yesterday: "Yeah."

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) December 16, 2015

…well, then.