Why did the Phillies trade for Clay Buchholz?

Clay Buchholz and the Red Sox sure had some times, didn’t they? The former 2005 supplemental first-rounder never gave his team 200 innings, but he did give them two MLB All-Star seasons and a championship push in 2013. He would have made a fine fifth starter for most teams, just not the Red Sox. This was how it had to end.

With just a year left (for a healthy $13 million) on his contract, Buchholz wasn’t a perfect fit with any other team, though. A rebuilding team had no use for him as a short-term patch, not at that price. A contending team needed to have a much worse option in their rotation to absorb that kind of contract/risk/reward combo. Even if the Red Sox wanted to deal him, it looked like he was likely to stay.

Not sure if any of us saw the Phillies coming.

But it was the Phillies who swooped down and snatched Buchholz away from the jaws of swingmanitude, trading a 24-year-old second baseman named Josh Tobias for him. If you’re wondering about the cost, note that Tobias has never played above Class A, was just promoted above Low-A for the first time last summer, and struggled at High-A. I’m no Keith Law, but there are about a half-dozen red flags in those last two sentences. The odds of him making the Phillies regret this are low.

Still, why the Phillies? What do they want with a pricey, enigmatic, veteran starter with a year left on his contract?

That’s not a snarky comment. We opened the offseason wondering what the Phillies were going to do with their unspent millions. Turns out they weren’t interested in committing themselves to anything beyond 2017, which makes a lot of sense. They’re still figuring out which pieces are going to be around for the next contending Phillies team, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to commit to, say, Jose Bautista for the next three years. They don’t know if they’ll need him when they’re good again.

But they still had money to burn. Without another move, they were going to have the lowest payroll in the National League East, behind the Marlins and Braves. That’s not a good look for a team that has the seventh-largest metropolitan area in the country all to themselves, even if they are rebuilding. There had to be a way to thread that needle, to make an effort without hosing their ability to improve the team in future seasons.

A one-year pitcher whose cost and erratic performances made him unpopular on the trade market, then. Scoop him up for a C-prospect and see if he makes the team better. It’s better than not making another move, at least from a wins and losses perspective.

Stranger pitchers have dominated the July trade market. Like, oh, Rich Hill last year. The A’s traded him and got Jharel Cotton in return, and he threw five brilliant starts for them in September. And that’s before you get to Frankie Montas and former first-rounder Grant Holmes. That was in a combo deal with Josh Reddick, so Hill wasn’t the only one responsible for that haul, but it was a substantial deal that could set the A’s up for years.

In other words, the A’s invested $5 million in a pitcher made out of magic beans, and then they climbed the beanstalk to a cloud that was filled with prospects.

This is a little more expensive than the Hill investment, but the idea is the same for the Phillies. Make the team better just in case J.P. Crawford is suddenly an NL Rookie of the Year and MVP candidate, or Maikel Franco hits 50 home runs, or something just as pleasantly random, while also preparing for the likelihood that they’ll be sellers again at the deadline. The odds of Buchholz being worth a top-tier prospect are low, but he’s a streaky sucker who just might tempt another team if he’s having one of his patented stretches of unhittable pitching.

It used to be that a team like the Phillies could take $13 million, blow the doors off the international market, get most of the best prospects in June, and sit the next international signing period out. The new CBA prevents this because there’s a hard cap. Take those millions you would have given to an amateur from another country, and funnel them to an established veteran.

The teams wanted to limit international spending, and a scenario like this is what the MLB Players Association wanted in return. Everyone wins. Except for the 16-year-old who isn’t going to get millions of dollars from the Phillies. But I’m sure he’ll land on his feet.

I guess the Phillies could have put the money in municipal bonds, where they would be safe and ready for the next time they need to lock up a young player to a long-term deal, but teams don’t operate like that. They needed to spend, and the new CBA means they can spend on players or not spend at all. They chose to spend on a player.

A weird, erratic player who might be good, bad, awful, great, or completely middling. No pitcher has a spectrum quite like Buchholz. No pitcher has had that spectrum since he’s been in the league, really.

So, the Phillies are taking a shot, and if it fails, they’re out $13 million they weren’t going to use anyway and a prospect who was unlikely to reach the majors. If it hits, they’ll either ride Buchholz’s coattails to one of the most improbable postseason runs of the last few years, or trade him for a bevy of prospects.

This is how you acquire a risky pitcher and somehow make it a low-risk move. The Phillies might not have made sense for Clay Buchholz before the trade was made, but now that the deal is done, we can go back and fill in the gaps.

Yeah, this all checks out.