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Mike Clevinger - Worst Trade of the 2010s

David Dermer-USA TODAY Sports

We are all tired of repeating the same trope: "the Angels desperately need pitching." The calls for Eppler to be fired for not acquiring the "ace we so desperately need" continue to ring out and grow louder with each free agent pitcher that signs elsewhere.


The Angels are projected for one of the worst staffs in the MLB by fWAR. Their best pitcher is currently projected to be Andrew "limitless potential, one good season away" Heaney, with Dylan Bundy and ShoTime trailing just behind him. Fangraphs sees Heaney as a 2.5 fWAR pitcher, around the same as Robbie Ray and Madison Bumgarner. An ace pitcher would serve as a significant upgrade over the current staff, which is comprised of Heaney, Bundy, Shohei, Griffin Canning, and Julio Teheran (and maybe Jose Suarez/Jaime Barria?). While the Angels were among the finalists for Gerrit Cole and didn’t land him, they would not have necessarily needed to line up to acquire him had they not made a critical error in 2014.


The worst ANGEL trade of the 2010s is not the Vernon Wells trade. Nor is it the trade that sent Patrick Corbin and Tyler Skaggs to the Diamondbacks for Dan Haren. It is also not the trade that gave us a half season of Zack Greinke. Rather, the worst trade of the 2010s, the one that has put us in quite the disadvantage coming into next season, was trading Mike Clevinger (yes, 4.3 fWAR Mike Clevinger) for Vinnie Pestano in 2014.


Why was this the worst trade? For one, Pestano pitched 21.1 innings over 31 games as an Angel. His whole Angel career was just 21.1 innings. His total fWAR as an Angel was -0.2, with 0.1 of that coming in the 2014 division championship run (he had -0.3 fWAR in the following season).


So, they acquired Pestano for their playoff run. Big deal, right? It would have been an easier trade to stomach had they used him more in the playoffs. But he pitched ONE TOTAL INNING in the 2014 postseason. This is the Angels’ version of the Josh Fields/Yordan Alvarez trade. The big difference is that the Dodgers don’t desperately need left-handed bats to make the postseason; the Angels badly need a pitcher to even sniff the AL wild card game.


After being traded, Clevinger has gone on to accumulate 11.0 fWAR in 3.5 seasons as a starting pitcher for the Indians. Last year, his FIP was a studly 2.49, definitely worthy of ace qualification. Heaney’s FIP last year? 4.63. Needless to say, having Clevinger to lead off the rotation is certainly a step up from any one of the Angels pitchers currently on the team or even in their minor league farm system. If Clevinger developed the same as he did within the Indians system (of course, no guarantees there with how the Angels have developed their draft picks recently), then keeping him would have made the last few seasons much more bearable, and I believe a large portion of the Angels fan base would ease off on calling for Billy Eppler’s head.


So why is this trade the worst of the 2010s? Because of how much the Angels gave up to receive such a modest return.


It’s hard to stomach the Wells trade because Napoli and Juan Rivera were fan favorites. Let’s look at the fWAR comparison. Following the trade, Mike Napoli accumulated 20.6 fWAR as a non-Angel (and an Angel killer) and Rivera accumulated -0.6 fWAR. As an Angel, Wells was worth 0.6 fWAR, making this a 19.4 fWAR difference between the Wells and the two players traded. Considering that Arte Moreno was the one who forced Tony Reagins to make a splash or he would be fired, I think this one can be given a pass. Tough to swallow, of course, but it’s not the absolute worst.


The other big trade of the 2010s was the Haren for Skaggs and Corbin trade. While Corbin is also indeed an ace in his own right, this trade gets a little bit better when you consider that Skaggs was eventually traded back to the Angels for a few years. Haren accumulated 9.5 fWAR over 2.5 seasons with the Angels, not an insignificant number. Definitely not the kind of return you hope for in general, but not the worst possible trade that could be made. Since Corbin was traded, he has accumulated 20.4 career fWAR, with the potential for plenty more in the back half of his career. If we are looking at this from the straight Corbin for Haren perspective (we could treat it as such, considering Skaggs threw a grand total of 67.2 major league innings for the Diamondbacks before being traded back to the Angels), this trade gets a heck of a lot worse. Angels legend Joe Saunders was also traded from the Angels to the Diamondbacks and he accumulated 1.5 fWAR after being traded. So, if we add up Corbin and Saunders, the fWAR total reaches 21.9 fWAR, whereas Haren contributed 9.5, for a difference of 12.4 fWAR. Again, not great, considering how good Corbin has been lately and for his potential to accumulate plenty more if he ages well.


But, the reason that the Clevinger trade is STILL the worst is because the Angels traded Clevinger for what amounted to peanuts. Pestano was traded just 21.1 innings into his Angel career, with the Angels receiving virtually nothing in return for that second trade. At least they received a solid two full seasons from Dan Haren, including a 5.9 fWAR season in 2011.


Clevinger is under team control through 2022, has already accumulated 11.0 fWAR and is 29 years old, meaning he still has a few more years of prime production to stack on to that already significant WAR differential. Corbin signed a significant contract last summer, counting for $23.3 million against the Nationals’ luxury tax and keeping him in our nation’s capital through 2024.


How sweet it would have been to have both Corbin and Clevinger (and of course, Skaggs. #WeNasty). But the egregious swap that sent Clevinger to Cleveland for Pestano will hurt the Angels through this season and beyond.


P.S. Jerry Dipoto is still terrible.

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