Diamondbacks Trade Miley to Boston?

It figures, I write up a piece about the Red Sox acquiring Wade Miley and then the trade doesn't happen, so I pull the article from the queue. Then, two or three hours after I pull it down, the trade goes through. Wouldn't you know it - it seems that the article was never saved locally. So, here we go again.

Wade Miley was traded by the Diamondbacks to the Boston Red Sox for right handed pitchers Allen Webster Rubby De La Rosa (what is it with players unable to properly count the consonants in their name these days?) and a player yet to be determined.

Wade Miley had a down year in 2014, putting together his worst season as a big-leaguer. Still his peripherals were not horrible and he actually managed a career high strikeout rate of 8.2 K/9 IP. On the season he was 8-12 with a 4.34 ERA across 201.1 innings. For his career as a Diamondback, Miley holds a record of 38-35 with an ERA of 3.79 and a BB:SO ratio of 196:499. Projecting as a solid #3 left-handed starter with good groundball tendencies and the ability to eat up innings at a 200 inning per season pace, Miley enters his first year of arbitration eligibility this year. Projections have Miley in line to earn about $3.4 million through the arbitration process this year, with future significant raises if he continues to perform to his overall career levels.

Despite Dave Stewart's inferences less than a day ago that the team was done making major moves, obviously the team is still on the active front this winter. With Miley as the presumptive best pitcher slated for the Opening Day lineup now gone, it's not a stretch to imagine that there are still more moves on the horizon. With Archie Bradley slated to begin the season in AAA, the team looks to be running with a rotation made up in a manner something like Collmenter, Hellickson Nuño, Webster/Anderson, and Cahill. That, constant reader, is not going to get the job done.

In return for Miley, the Diamondbacks are getting young, controllable pitching. Allen Webster has so far struggled in his brief MLB career (a 6.25 ERA over 89 1/3 innings over the last two seasons) but has a higher prospect pedigree than De La Rosa, and probably project to something right about where Miley sits.  Webster entered the year ranked as a top-100 prospect in the game, though that ranking is also all over the place depending on how one projects him going forward. MLB.com ranks him at #46, while Baseball America has him ranked at #88. Webster remains under team control through 2021.

Rubby De La Rosa has also struggled at the MLB level, sporting a 4.54 ERA, 2.16 K/BB and 6.4 K/9 in 113 innings. He has split his time as both a starter and a reliever, though he projects much better as a reliever. Given the abundance of #4/5 starters already in the Diamondback organization, he likely projects to stay in the bullpen for Arizona, though perhaps some time with Dave Duncan could change that. De La Rosa is under team control through 2019.