Say hey, baseball: Maybe Jonathan Papelbon isn’t getting traded

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Think back to the long, long ago of last Friday for a moment. The Pro Bowl had yet to be played. The Royal Rumble winner was seemingly still up in the air. Jonathan Papelbon was probably getting traded to the Brewers, who were in serious talks with the Phillies. So much has changed since that fateful day, including the chances of Papelbon getting dealt: it turns out that the vesting option tacked on to the end of the deal is a problem for Milwaukee, and maybe everyone else in the league as well. Fun!

If Papelbon finishes 55 games in 2015, a $13 million option for 2016 vests. If he finishes 100 combined games between 2014 and 2015, the option vests -- he finished 52 games last summer for a losing team, so it’s basically a guarantee barring injury. Papelbon, by the way, has never missed significant time with an injury as a reliever. He was also fantastic in 2014, posting a 2.04 ERA with 4.2 times as many strikeouts as walks, but he’s continually lost velocity over the years and will be 35 in 2016. No one seems to want to want Papelbon on what is essentially a two-year deal, at least not at the price that the Phillies are asking for.

The Phillies also don’t need to move him now, which complicates matters. Someone desperate could come around on July 31, when some of the money has come off of Papelbon’s deal, when everyone has a better sense of what his 2016 might look like, and when it’s clear that all that is keeping them from contention is a strong bullpen piece like Paps.

If the Phillies do move Papelbon, they already have a new closer-in-waiting in Ken Giles. It might actually be to their benefit not to force Papelbon out of the role immediately, since the longer they can go without making Giles the closer, the cheaper he will be in the future. Saves tend to jack up arbitration prices. It’s a little thing, but in conjunction with not paying cash to offset the vesting option, it could buy the Phillies a useful player or money to use for another deal.