Astros Dump Rafael Montero on Grateful Braves

This seems like an apt moment to reexamine the concept of value. What is a relief pitcher worth? What is anything worth? The context matters quite a bit. In boom times, when you can barely remember a past in which the arrow pointed any direction but up, the upside feels so real that it’s hard to resist. Sure, a premier setup man with a short track record is a luxury, but what’s the harm in splurging? In the darker times, when the eggs sitting in your refrigerator have suddenly gone from basic staples to commodities so precious that you can’t afford to waste them on something as trivial as breakfast, you need to hunt for value wherever you can find it.

For an Astros team determined to reset its luxury tax penalty, that means trading away reliever Rafael Montero and eating 72% of the money remaining on his contract in order to be free of the other 28%. For the Braves, reeling from a series of early-season setbacks, that means taking a chance on the discounted Montero and his untested splitter in exchange for a player to be named later.

The Braves are a juggernaut, but a mix of injuries and underperformance forced them to sneak into the playoffs last year instead of winning yet another division title. This year, they expected to bounce back to their dominant form and dispense with all the sneaking. Instead of swaggering, they’ve staggered to an ugly 2-8 start and their roster has taken a series of body blows. Jurickson Profar is out with a PED suspension. Reynaldo López just had shoulder surgery and won’t throw for 12 weeks, though the team hasn’t ruled out a possible return sometime this season. Ronald Acuña Jr. has not yet played in a minor league game as he recovers from his second ACL surgery. The good news is that Spencer Schwellenbach looks like the truth, and Spencer Strider has looked like Spencer Strider in two rehab starts; he is expected to return to the big club after his third one, which is scheduled for Thursday. Two Spencers in their 20s have an improbable amount of power over the emotional wellbeing of much of the Southeastern United States.

Atlanta now hopes to balance the scales some by tossing Montero onto the good news pile, but whether he stays there or finds his way onto that first, larger pile is anybody’s guess. Coming into the 2022 season, Montero had a 5.18 career ERA and 4.35 FIP over seven seasons. The previous year, he was traded from Seattle to Houston a few days before the deadline. Everything came together in 2022, when Montero put up 1.5 WAR with a 2.37 ERA and 2.64 FIP and pitched even better in the playoffs, contributing to the first combined no-hitter in World Series history. Days after the Astros won it all, owner Jim Crane effectively dumped GM James Click, took the reins himself, and signed Montero to a three-year, $34.5 million contract, betting that the 2022 version of Montero was the real one.

The 2022 version of Montero was not the real one, and that wasn’t Crane’s only misadventure during his short stint wearing all the hats. It turns out that listening to experts is a better plan than just having the guy in charge make enormous financial decisions with wide-ranging ramifications. Since 2023, Montero has a 4.92 ERA and a 5.05 FIP, accruing -0.7 WAR for the Astros. Houston DFA’d him at last year’s trade deadline, but after no team claimed him, he accepted the assignment rather than elect free agency and ran a 2.20 ERA and 4.14 FIP over 17 appearances in Triple-A. That was good enough to earn a non-roster invite to spring training, during which he pitched well enough to make the club again but not well enough to be worth what the Astros were paying him. Montero has struck out five and allowed two earned runs over three appearances and four innings of work this season, and now he pitches for Atlanta. Houston has called up left-hander Bennett Sousa to take his place in the bullpen.

Montero represents a different value proposition for the Braves. He is still owed just under $10.7 million of his $11.5 million salary, and according to an AP report, the Astros will be covering $7.7 million of it, allowing them to clear roughly $3 million off their books and put a bit of breathing room between them and the luxury tax threshold. Atlanta is less desperate to shed salary and more desperate to add pitching depth. Our playoff odds still give the Braves a 70.5% chance of making the playoffs and a 9.1% chance of winning the whole thing. That last number is higher than any team’s except the Dodgers. However, the numbers are taking certain things for granted. If either Strider or Acuña should face a setback or return in diminished form, this could be a different team.

As is so often the case this early in the season, the Atlanta bullpen looks very different depending on your lens. It’s been used less than that of nearly every other team in baseball, facing 137 batters over 33 innings, 27th and 26th in the league, respectively. The bullpen’s 4.09 ERA ranks 17th, 4.40 FIP ranks 22nd, and 3.89 xFIP ranks 13th. Whichever number you trust, the Braves are probably most concerned about their four relief losses; only the White Sox bullpen has lost more. This doesn’t look like the bullpen of a championship contender at the moment. Already, the Braves have demoted Jesse Chavez and DFA’d Héctor Neris. So aside from a discount and desperation, what makes them think the 34-year-old Montero might be able to help them?

Back in 2022, the size and duration of Montero’s contract triggered some self-reflection in Ben Clemens, who hadn’t even included the reliever on his Top 50 Free Agents. Ben saw a pitcher with a track record of one excellent season, “more serviceable reliever than late-inning ace,” and pegged him as the 60th in the class. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Montero’s signing, along with the ill-fated deals the Astros handed out to José Abreu and Michael Brantley, offered a pretty clear lesson: Organizations put decision-making processes into place for a reason. A roomful of experts might not make the right move every time, but they’re also less likely to land you in major trouble than having no process at all.

When Montero signed, Ben figured that maybe the lesson was to trust the stuff, rather than the track record. That lesson has certainly percolated through the league in the ensuing years, and it seems like a big reason to take a risk on Montero now. Like seemingly every pitcher these days, Montero has added a splitter this season. Unlike every pitcher, he’s throwing it nearly 30% of the time and earning whiffs a third of the time, albeit in an extremely small sample of innings. The stuff metrics are high on the splitter. In fact, due to some extra horizontal break on a few of his pitches, the stuff metrics are currently higher on his overall arsenal than they’ve ever been before, and by a considerable margin. The Braves are willing to bet on the stuff, but the Astros would prefer the surety of $3 million dollars. That’s how trades are made.

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