The Rockies acquired reliever Manny Delcarmen from the Boston Red Sox in exchange for Class A pitching prospect Chris Balcom-Miller.
Of course the first question after any trade is who won?
Hell if I know.
I'm sure you can find a number cruncher somewhere that will tell you they know, so if you need to know that bad, consult them. But I assure you they don't know either, because no one knows until the parties involved actually perform for their new team.
In the case of Balcom-Miller, he'd either have to make the big leagues, which is far from a guarantee despite all the positive reports on his development in recent weeks, or bring them back some proven talent in another deal.
Delcarmen is another one of those guys (Kip Wells, Tim Redding and Jason Marquis were others) that Dan O'Dowd has targeted for years, and once the price dropped, he pulled the trigger. If you recall Delcarmen's name was bandied about in the Todd Helton discussions back in 2007.
Manny has struggled quite a bit over the past two seasons. His walk totals (28,34,28 respectively) over the past three seasons make me a little uneasy. We've seen enough of relievers struggling with command this season to last a decade.
But there is a track record of effective pitching for Delcarmen. I hate to fall into the cliched "change of scenery" trap that always accompanies such a trade, but maybe Bob Apodaca will see something easily correctable that gets Delcarmen back to peak form.
It's worth a shot.
The potential downside -- You lose a prospect that seems to be on the path to the big leagues at some point. No guarantee.
The potential upside -- You add an affordable arm to your bullpen for the stretch run, and possibly 2-3 years beyond.
Why not?
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