Steve Adams
- Good afternoon! We’ll get going in a couple hours, at 2pm CT, but feel free to start sending in questions anytime.
- Hello! Let’s begin.
Natitude Dude
- Is there any chance that Miles Mikolas has pitched well enough that there would be a trade market for him? If so, would the return be similar to the Soroka deal last year?
Steve Adams
- Mikolas has been quietly serviceable since a catastrophic start to his season — 17 runs in his first 9 1/3 innings. Some of that might be pitching behind an opener more often than not (and thus facing the top of a team’s lineup less often), some of it may be greatly improved command.Regardless, it’s not going to make him a hot commodity on the trade market. A team simply needing some innings to weather the injury storm — Cubs, for instance — could feasibly look at him as a fifth starter, but it’s a low-upside proposition.
In his past 15 outings, Mikolas has a 3.97 ERA but a bottom-of-the-barrel 13% strikeout rate. He’s a contact-oriented fifth starter who’s too prone to home runs to command a big return. Soroka was a decade younger than Mikolas is now and missed bats more than twice as often.
- They might be able to get some sort of nominal return for MIkolas if a club just swings some kind of “we just need innings” deal, but it won’t match the Soroka return (Ronny Cruz, Christian Franklin) — or even come particularly close.
RoxTalks
- Would it be a mistake to hold on to Goodman? Profiles like this are really volatile, so it’s probably best for the new regime to now make the same mistakes as the previous and sell high before his value might crater, right?
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