T10YL - Brandon McCarthy for Vidal Nuño
Including long-awaited coverage of Gene Krug and Zip Zabel
The Names: New York Yankees receive: Brandon McCarthy. Arizona Diamondbacks receive: Vidal Nuño.
The Team Context: It’s been quite a while since we wrote about the Arizona Diamondbacks, and we haven’t missed out on anything fun. The Diamondbacks spent April 2 through June 28 in last place in the NL West, but were now in a dogfight for fourth place thanks to the swan dive of the Colorado Rockies. This team was terrible for the entirety of 2014 and spent their June “readying ‘for sale’ signs” in the buildup to the trade deadline. Unfortunately, the stink of the season was so noxious that most of the veterans that Arizona would want to trade away were unappetizing to contending teams. “Not a lot of pieces to move,” said one scout. “I think the pieces they will want to move will only get a marginal return because of the money involved,” said another. On the bright side, it was only 104 degrees in Phoenix on July 6, 2014.
The American League East became a 5-team division in 1994. The New York Yankees won the division that year and in most of the following seasons. On the rare occasions that they didn’t win, they came in 2nd. They dipped as low as 3rd place for the first time in 2008 (finishing 89-73), marking a relative calamity for a team associated with excellence. The calamity was immediately mitigated when they bounced back to win the 2009 World Series. The 2013 season brought the Yankees another 3rd place finish, with injury being added to insult when the Boston Red Sox won their third World Series of the 21st century. 2014 needed to be a season of reestablishing New York dominance. It had not been anything like that so far, with the Yankees in 3rd place once again on July 6th. They hadn’t spent any time in first place since May. On the bright side, at least the Red Sox were in last.
The Player Context: Brandon McCarthy was an obvious trade candidate for Arizona. McCarthy was drafted by the White Sox in 2002 out of Lamar Community College. McCarthy is one of only three Lamar Runnin’ Lopes to make it to the major leagues, along with Doug Brocail (who was drafted 12th overall in 1986 and stuck around until 2009) and Gene Krug (who went 2-for-5 with a walk in 1981, and only barely counts since he was drafted out of Lamar but signed with a team after transferring to Oklahoma and getting drafted again). McCarthy was only a 17th-round draft pick and entered organized baseball with low expectations, but ended up carving his way through the minor leagues. He led individual minor leagues in strikeouts on his way up the ladder and then led all minor leaguers in 2004 when he struck out 202 batters in 172.0 innings.
McCarthy spent 2005 as an occasional starter in Chicago as the team won the World Series without his help. He was a full-time reliever in 2006 and then traded to Texas after the season. McCarthy technically spent the next four seasons with the Rangers, but only pitched 221 innings as he missed parts of each season and all of 2010 with elbow and shoulder injuries. The Rangers released McCarthy after that season and he joined the Athletics on a $1 million contract. That signing paid off in spades – McCarthy threw 170.2 innings for Oakland and had his best season yet, posting a 3.32 ERA and an AL-best 2.86 FIP (we’ll talk more about FIP shortly). He returned to the team for his final year of team control in 2012, starting Opening Day and continuing his stellar performance until September.
On September 5, 2012, Brandon McCarthy was pitching against the Los Angeles Angels. In the 4th inning, Erick Aybar rocketed a line drive back to the pitcher’s mound. McCarthy managed to get his face out of the way, but was hit in the back of the head, causing him to collapse. McCarthy never lost consciousness, but “curled up in a ball and lay writhing in pain” before eventually asking trainers “where did it hit me?”. He walked off the field under his own power, and initial reports were that McCarthy was “conscious and doing well.” But while at the hospital overnight, his situation transitioned to “life-threatening” after he required two hours of surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. The eventual diagnosis was an epidural hemorrhage, skull fracture, and brain contusion. While there’s never a “good” time for a traumatic brain injury, the timing couldn’t have been worse for team or player, as the A’s were without McCarthy for their postseason run and McCarthy was months away from entering free agency. Fortunately, he was able to make a full recovery and spent the week following his injury writing some major league tweets.
When I was 12, I was standing in the batter’s box on a spring night for my first at-bat against the league’s resident fireballer. His biggest talent on the mound was velocity, with a rumored radar gun reading of 83 mph. His second-biggest talent was size (physically large). His biggest weakness was accuracy. I knew my optimal strategy would be to draw a walk and watched strike one sail by. I ended up taking a quicker but decidedly worse route to first base. The second pitch made a beeline to my left elbow as I collapsed, initially as an unsuccessful attempt to dodge and ultimately as a reaction to the pain that ensued when ball hit bone. I got on base and avoided major injury, but it sure didn’t feel worth it at the time. My elbow swelled to the size of an apple and I was out of baseball activities for a week or two.
For the (short) remainder of my baseball career, I was a much easier out. I developed a hitch in my swing where I’d “step into the bucket,” moving my front foot away from home plate instead of towards the pitcher to subconsciously avoid being hit. I’d flinch for a quarter-second on pitches inside and wouldn’t have the bat speed to catch up to strikes. I was never an offensive superstar, and now the risk associated with hitting seemed a lot more tangible than the reward.
I got hit in the elbow with an allegedly 83 mph pitch and suffered an injury (bruise) that led to the swift decline of my baseball career. Brandon McCarthy took a line drive to the skull, fractured it, got two hours of life-saving brain surgery, and signed a 2-year contract for $15.5 million with the Arizona Diamondbacks three months later.
On May 24, 2013, Brandon McCarthy got his ERA down to 4.36, which was the lowest it would be at any point in his season-and-a-half in Arizona. By ERA, he was consistently bad with the Diamondbacks. But according to FIP, which creates an ERA-like number that assumes a pitcher has league average results on balls in play, McCarthy was one of the better pitchers in baseball. According to xFIP, which creates a FIP-like number that assumes a pitcher has a league average ratio of fly balls to home runs, McCarthy was elite. Playing for a bad Arizona team also hurt his win/loss record, with McCarthy going 5-11 in 2013 and 3-10 in the first half of 2014. With a substantially losing record and an ERA of 5.01 at the time of his trade (but a FIP of 3.82 and an xFIP of 2.89), McCarthy was a prized deadline piece in the eyes of those who could look past the eye test.
On the other side was Vidal Nuño. Nuño was Cleveland’s 48th-round draft pick in 2009, selected out of Baker University. Nuño is the only Baker Wildcat to be drafted in baseball history and one of just two to play in MLB. The first was the excellently-named Zip Zabel, who pitched from 1913-1915 with the Chicago Cubs. Zabel is most-known (to the extent he is known at all) for his record-setting performance as a relief pitcher on June 17, 1915. Chicago’s starter Bert Humphries was pulled from the game with an injury after getting just two outs and allowing one run. Zabel came in, got the final out of the inning, then got the next 54 outs to finish with 18.1 innings pitched from the bullpen. He allowed nine hits and just two runs, outdueling Brooklyn starter Jeff Pfeffer (who did not get relieved at any point and endured five errors from his defense before losing in the 19th inning).
Cleveland cared about their 48th-round pick about as much as they cared about Zip Zabel. Nuño was released after two seasons in the minor leagues and ended up signing with the independent Washington Wild Things (take a guess where they’re located before clicking). While in Washington, Nuño started throwing a changeup. Evidently, somebody in Cleveland gave him the tip that he should start throwing one, but didn’t bother giving him the chance to throw it in their minor league system. It turned out to be a career-altering pitch. The Yankees signed Nuño to a minor league contract in June of 2011 and he posted a 1.38 ERA for the rest of the year, followed by a 2.54 ERA in 2012 and a 1.44 ERA in his AAA appearances in 2013. He made it up to MLB that season, but was shut down with an injury in June.
Nuño broke camp with the Yankees as a member of the bullpen in 2014, but only made three appearances before he was shifted into the rotation on April 20th. Nuño pitched acceptably in MLB by the standards of a young starter just three years removed from the Washington Wild Things, but probably not effectively enough to be in the rotation of a team with World Series intentions. The Yankees were certainly going to be in the conversation for upgrades at the trade deadline.
The Trade: As we discussed yesterday, starting pitchers were at a premium in the July 2014 trade market. Two of the best names had just gone off the board when Oakland simultaneously snagged Samardzija and Hammel. This would tend to increase potential for disappointment in the hearts of all fanbases involved in a Brandon McCarthy transaction. Diamondbacks fans had just seen a deadline seller obtain one of baseball’s best prospects, while Acquiring Team fans would compare McCarthy’s 5.01 ERA to the attractive sub-3 figures on Oakland’s newest rotation members.
At 8:07 AM Pacific, two reporters tweeted about this trade. Ken Rosenthal offered more complete information by providing both players involved in the swap, but could only report that the “deal appears close.” Chris Cotillo only knew that Brandon McCarthy would be going to New York, but was able to report that it was a “done deal.” Every single person responding to either of these tweets felt very negatively about this transaction except for @danieltkelley, who offered a comparatively rave review by saying “less interesting than Votto, but still interesting.”
Arizona fans were already out of patience with GM Kevin Towers and at this point, “[their] hatred for Towers reach[ed] a new height.” Selling veterans at the deadline is all about cultivating hope for the future, and Vidal Nuño’s present was substantially less appealing to consider. Quite a few Reddit users were able to look past McCarthy’s unsightly surface stats and see the potential for greater things with the Yankees, with one declaring that “New York just straight destroyed this deal.” It’s pretty impossible to argue with, considering they got Nuño out of the Frontier League without even wasting a 48th-round draft pick on him.
Brandon McCarthy spent his July 4th evening defending Dan Straily’s potential on Twitter as part of the discourse around the Oakland/Chicago blockbuster. He spent at least some of July 5th watching the World Cup. He spent his July 6th finding out about this trade, sucking up to his new fans in New York by saying “Yankee pinstripes, awesome. Very slimming but awesome,” and noting that he plucked each hair in his beard out individually to comply with the team’s archaic facial hair policy. July 7th was McCarthy’s 31st birthday, which must have been a funny icebreaker as he met a bunch of new teammates. He spent his July 8th trying to find a uniform number that the Yankees hadn’t retired yet after his current 32 (Elston Howard) and previous 20 (Jorge Posada) were unavailable. McCarthy went with #38, which 13 other Yankees have worn since then.
The Results: The analysis wasn’t that McCarthy was supposed to suddenly start pitching better in New York, it’s that he had been getting generally unlucky in Arizona. Observers who liked the McCarthy acquisition were looking at underlying statistics that he was already producing in games and using them to predict better things for his future. As a Diamondback, McCarthy was getting a lot of ground balls, striking out way more batters than he walked, and having an unfortunate number of his fly balls end up as home runs. The theory was that these outcomes would normalize and lead to results that were closer to McCarthy’s 3.82 FIP than his 5.01 ERA.
McCarthy ended up making 14 starts as a Yankee, with his 2.89 ERA outperforming an improved 3.22 FIP. The Yankees didn’t just reap the rewards of McCarthy’s improved luck, they altered his pitch mix to bring back a cutter that he had basically stopped throwing in Arizona. Highlights of the era included a complete-game shutout against the Astros (in which Dallas Keuchel took the loss while throwing all eight innings) and an immaculate inning against the Rays where he got Wil Myers, Nick Franklin, and Matt Joyce to strike out on nine total pitches in the 7th inning. This was a great acquisition by the Yankees, but not enough to get them to the postseason — they finished 84-78, 12 games back of the Orioles for the division and four games back of the Athletics for the wild card.
Vidal Nuño ended up benefiting from the change of scenery, too. In his 14 Diamondback starts to close the season, Nuño pitched to a 3.76 ERA that was substantially better than anything Brandon McCarthy had been able to do for them. Unfortunately for Nuño, he got to experience the sorrows of pitching for a bottom-tier baseball team, as he went 0-7 in these 14 starts. The Diamondbacks as a team went 1-13, with the only win coming on August 23. Nuño started that game with 7 shutout innings as the Diamondbacks took a 2-0 lead. He went back out for the 8th and only got one out before the bases were loaded. Oliver Perez came in and allowed a single, with both runs charged to Nuño, before the team came back to score three runs in the bottom of the inning. Nuño’s next start was his most galling loss; on August 30, he threw 8 innings and allowed one single and one solo home run. The Diamondbacks lost 2-0 after Matt Stites allowed another home run in his one inning of relief.
While McCarthy became a free agent after the season, the Diamondbacks had Vidal Nuño under team control for several more years. They didn’t even need an entire year of control — in June 2015, Nuño was traded to Seattle along with Mark Trumbo after spending most of the season in AAA.
The Aftermath: The last time Brandon McCarthy entered free agency he was recovering from a brain contusion. This time, he had improved his stock substantially. McCarthy was coming off the first 200-inning season of his career and could submit compelling evidence that he had figured things out in New York, leading to predictions that he “should exceed his previous contract with ease.” He roughly doubled it when he signed a four-year, $48 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
That contract started on a sour note when McCarthy blew out his elbow in his fourth start with the team. He didn’t return from injury until July 3rd of 2016 and was never totally healthy that season. It took until 2017 for him to make his 14th start in Los Angeles (thereby matching his total from half a season in New York). McCarthy missed time with multiple new injuries that year and ended his Dodgers tenure on a similarly sour note when he gave up a game-losing two-run home run in Game 2 of the 2017 World Series. After the season, he was traded to Atlanta as part of a megatrade/accounting scheme, spending 2018 with the Braves before retiring. To quote the final sentence of the “Major leagues” section of his Wikipedia page in entirety, “McCarthy finished his major-league career with 69 wins and an ERA of 4.20, drawing attention due to the prominence of the numbers 69 and 420 in meme culture.” He took a position in the Texas Rangers’ front office after retiring, but is no longer listed in the staff directory. He’s probably busy as Sporting Director for Phoenix Rising FC, the USL soccer team in which he’s a minority owner.
Vidal Nuño made a few starts for Seattle in 2015 before he became a full-time reliever at the MLB level in 2016. He was traded twice when he became arbitration-eligible after the season, spending the year in the Orioles organization and pitching poorly in his limited MLB opportunities. Nuño signed an MLB contract with Tampa Bay and seemingly had great results in his 33 MLB innings with the Rays. Nuño went 3-0 with a 1.64 ERA, which looks outlandish when compared to the 4.46 FIP and a 4.85 xFIP (his batting average on balls in play was .216 and he stranded 100% of the baserunners he allowed, neither of which are sustainable skills). He played in the minors in 2019 and 2021 but has spent his time since then in the Mexican League. In 2024, Nuño has been pitching out of the bullpen for Acereros de Monclova, where he is teammates with Addison Russell.
Miscellaneous: Russell Martin was drafted one pick after Brandon McCarthy. Lamar Community College only has 668 students (as of Fall 2022), making it the smallest member of the Colorado Community College System. 174 of the 668 students play a varsity sport (baseball, basketball, golf, softball, volleyball, or rodeo). Baker University only has one school color (cadmium orange). Jeff Pfeffer’s name is Edward Joseph Pfeffer. He has a brother (Big Jeff Pfeffer) whose name is Francis Xavier. Brandon McCarthy’s success as a Yankee made noted Red Sox fan Mike Schur miserable (this tweet is one of a dozen examples). Gene Krug’s first MLB plate appearance came in a game that ended in a tie.