On August 31, Tim wrote that the Astros traded Ben Francisco for the all too familiar PTBNL and now we know that man is. Theron Geith will be the last of the new market inefficiency that Jeff Luhnow has established for this season as there won't be any more trades until the off-season.
Geith is a 23 year old (age 22 season) left-handed reliever who spent the whole season at High-A Charlotte in the Florida State League. He was drafted in the 39th round of the 2011 draft out of Scottsdale Community College and split time between the Gulf Coast League and the New York-Penn League after being drafted. Unfortunately, there isn't anything that I can find that speaks about his repertoire or the quality of his stuff.
This season, he posted a 2.98 ERA in 54 1/3 innings. He struck out 49 and walked just 11, but the stat that jumps out is that he had a 1.68 GO/AO ratio. His WHIP was 1.16 and his GB% was 48% and his LD% was 10.8%. Overall, his FIP was a nice shiny 2.68. All of those numbers are much better than league average. What to draw is that he his stuff is hard to square up on and not many hits go for extra bases (.078 Iso). Although, as an aside, the FSL is a very pitcher friendly league, but he did perform better than average.
Since the trade, Ben Francisco has hit .250/.286/.425 for the Tampa Bay Rays with a wOBA of .290. So, he hasn't done much for the Rays and has actually yielded negative value (-0.2 fWAR), really anything is a good thing. Given that Francisco was not going to be brought back next season, this is just added potential value. Bringing in another lefty into a system that lacks them has been a goal for Luhnow, and he accomplished it. In the words of Tim in an email, "I'll take it."