4 trade targets Yankees must avoid at 2022 deadline

2. Jose Quintana

I know, I know, I just said the Yankees shouldn’t swing for the fences on a starting pitcher at the deadline, and should instead target a reliable innings-eater. The problem with Jose Quintana is twofold, though:

1. He’s been red hot in 2022, and will command a premium even though everyone knows a regression is coming.
2. Like our friend Andrew Heaney, Quintana hasn’t even met that low baseline of “reliability” in the past. There’s a good chance he can’t eat innings because he can’t get anyone out.

Through 12 starts, Quintana holds a 3.53 ERA for the surprisingly frisky Pirates (just ask the Dodgers), but possesses a far less impressive 1.33 WHIP. Perhaps some of those pesky hits and walks would just disappear if he was missing bats, but he … isn’t; Quintana’s racked up just 50 strikeouts in 58.2 innings.

Anyone who trades for Quintana isn’t allowed to pretend to be dismayed when his ERA and other impressive numbers start to regress, considering it’s right there in the publicly available data. You don’t even have to dive into the secret data front offices hoard to see it!

Quintana’s peripherals are across-the-board lacking. His curve and fastball don’t spin (18th and 11th percentile, respectively). Batters hit the ball hard off him (44th percentile hard-hit rate, 14th percentile expected batting average, 22nd percentile expected slugging percentage). He induces chases (84th percentile), but also walks a good degree of batters (51st percentile), a number that’ll only go up if they ever stop chasing! Dang.

Don’t buy into the Quintana hype. Even if you find yourself thinking, “What’s the worst that could happen?” you only have to think back one year to when Heaney arrived, wrecked the second half, and departed. It only takes one weak link if the link is that weak.