In the yearly tradition of buy low trades the A’s acquired first baseman Yonder Alonso and lefty reliever Marc Rzepczynski for Drew Pomeranz and minor-leaguer Jose Torres. When I first saw the trade I thought it was misprint because the trade didn’t make sense for the A’s. My perception of the A’s was they struggled scoring runs, but that wasn’t the case. They ranked 20^th in home runs and were tied for 13^th in runs scored and they achieved that with Billy Butler clogging their DH spot.

Alonso is an oft-injured glove first player at a premium offensive position. He has only played more than 140 games once in his career (in 2012). Last May he went on the DL with a shoulder strain after making a diving stop. In September he landed on the 60-day DL with a lower back strain. In 2014 he was only limited to 84 games due to a sore right wrist and a right forearm strain.

From a fantasy perspective he’s going to have more real life value than fantasy. For the past three seasons he played in San Diego and it is possible the ballpark suppressed his numbers, but that’s not the case. The table below shows his home-road splits since joining the Padres in 2012.

If Alonso is able to play 140 games he’s primary fantasy asset will be the batting average. His hard hit rate suggests he should hit about 15 home runs, but his extremely high ground ball rate will limit his home run potential to 12-13 home runs. Based on how the lineup is constructed he is going to hit in the bottom third of the order limiting his run scoring and RBI potential.

The addition of Alonso makes a Mark Canha a platoon player entering Spring Training, but I bet he plays in just as many games as last year (124). First of all he’s going to play against lefties and both Alonso and the incumbent left fielder Coco Crisp are very good bets to hit the DL (I don’t see Crisp playing more than 60 games). If Canha gets consistent playing time he hit atop the order. During the last two months of the season Canha was hitting second against both righties and lefties. If Canha played every day he could hit 20 home runs with a .260 batting average so he will have sneaky fantasy value in deeper mixed formats even if he doesn’t have a starting job at the start of the year.

In regards to Pomeranz, he’s going to be a dynamite lefty out of the bullpen. I’ve said for over a year he’s a reliever because he’s a two-pitch pitcher and doesn’t have the fastball command to go through a lineup three times consistently. He’s currently the only lefty in the bullpen so he’s not likely to earn saves, but the Padres bullpen doesn’t have a “proven closer” and he did close briefly for the A’s last year. I wouldn’t be shocked if he had a couple of spot starts, which will be valuable if he’s pitching at home.