Diamondbacks get: Orlando Hernandez (40 year old arm of dust), Luis Vizcaino (slider-hangin non-tender candidate), Chris Young (projectable AA OFer whose best comp is an underrated non-super star.)
White Sox get: Javier Vazquez (Gopherballin' pitcher with great stuff) and Cash ($5-8MM)
I'm not going to provide a ton of analysis here. I'll just say that it appears Kenny is not done yet. Garland and Contreras have apparently both been offered similar 3-year deals. Garland, rightfully so, rejected his outright, and negotiations broke off. Contreras is in a much different position and I suspect will sign soon. It appears that one of these two will be traded to solidify the bullpen and upgrade somewhere else.
Last week, Studes wrote an article on FIP and the longball. In it he pointed out that Vazquez was one of the unluckiest pitchers in baseball, closing with the quote,
As pointed out by Studes and Tybor in the comments, Vazquez is a good candidate to have rebound to his former greatness. Vazquez' ZiPS bear some of this out. I added the other 5 Sox starters just for context.
The real beauty of the move, however, comes from a financial perspective. El Duque's base salary in '06 is about $4.6M, and Vizcaino is due to make about $2M. With the D'backs cash subtracted from his contract, Vazquez looks to be due $7.5 in salary from the Sox in '06. In other words, this deal adds about $1M to the Sox '06 payroll. -- It also locks the Sox into 4 starting pitchers for '07, and Vazquez will not be a free agent until after the '08 season.
Kenny is all but saying he's never going to pay top dollar for free agent pitching. His modus operandi appears to be locking up starting pitching through the trade market. -- Who are we to argue with his results?