Acting Like Contenders, Angels Send Prospects to Nationals for Two Well-Traveled Relievers

Winners of three straight games to lift their record to 53-55, the Angels are suddenly acting like contenders. On Wednesday, a day before this year’s trade deadline, the team bolstered its bullpen — which has been one of the majors’ worst this season — by acquiring relievers Andrew Chafin and Luis García from the Nationals in exchange for reliever Jake Eder and first base prospect Sam Brown.

This is the third stop of the season for the well-traveled García, a 38-year-old righty who has pitched for eight different teams — and the third time he’s joined the Angels. Not only did he spend the 2019 season in Anaheim, but he also re-signed with them as a free agent in December 2023 and spent the first four months of ’24 with them. In fact, the Angels traded him to the Red Sox in exchange for four prospects exactly one year ago.

García’s odyssey has since continued. He signed with the Dodgers in mid-February and made 28 appearances totaling 27 1/3 innings before being designated for assignment on June 29 and released on July 4. He missed about a month from late May to late June with a right adductor strain, then returned for two appearances before getting DFA’d. That last outing was abysmal; he allowed three runs in one-third of an inning against the Royals on June 28, capping a stretch in which he gave up nine runs and 19 hits in his final 10 2/3 innings with the Dodgers and ballooning his ERA to 5.27. Four days after being released, he signed with the Nationals. Since then, he’s gone on a roll, allowing just one run and five hits in 10 innings. Despite the contrast in ERAs, García’s 3.57 FIP with the Dodgers and 3.59 FIP with the Nationals suggest he’s basically the same pitcher, a worm-killing machine (54.6% groundball rate overall) who doesn’t miss many bats (19.5% strikeout rate) but keeps the ball in the park (0.48 homers per nine).

That said, García has been throwing the ball notably better since joining the Nationals. The average velocity of his sinker increased from 96.4 mph with the Dodgers to 97.9 with the Nationals, with that of his splitter increasing from 87.8 to 90.1. He’s thrown the latter 47.9% of the time against lefties, compared to just 3.0% against righties. The velo of his sweeper, which he’s thrown 48.9% of the time to righties but just 15.7% of the time to lefties, has ticked up from 82.9 to 83.6 as well. According to our two pitch modeling systems, which are useful for capturing small-sample changes, his overall stuff score has improved, mainly driven by better command/location and slight improvements in both the sinker and sweeper.

The improvement of those two pitches is key, because García has been uncharacteristically lit up by righties (.307/.381/.547, .396 wOBA) while stifling lefties (.250/.342/.297, .272 wOBA). In each of the previous two seasons, he yielded a .304 to righties and .327 to lefties.

As for Chafin, a 35-year-old lefty, this is the second year in a row he’s been traded on July 30 (last year he went from the Tigers to the Rangers) and the fourth time in the past five years he’s been traded just before the deadline. After posting a combined 3.51 ERA and 3.54 FIP in 56 1/3 innings last year for Detroit and Texas, he went unsigned into late February and had to settle for a minor league deal with the Tigers, who sent him to their Triple-A Toledo affiliate to start the year. He opted out on April 30 after posting a 2.13 ERA and 31.5% strikeout rate in 12 2/3 innings. The Nationals signed him, and since then he’s pitched to a 2.70 ERA and 3.74 FIP in 20 innings.

While Chafin has allowed just one homer so far, his 20.5% strikeout rate and 13.6% walk rate — the former his lowest mark since 2015, the latter the highest of his 11-year career — suggest he’s on thinner ice. Both his four-seamer and sinker have lost at least 1.5 mph from last year, when the two pitches averaged 91.7 mph each; the four-seamer’s velocity has fallen to 90.0, while the velo of his sinker, which he throws about twice as often, has dropped to 90.2. The slider scores particularly well on both of our pitch modeling metrics (59 on PitchingBot’s 20–80 scouting scale and 125 on Stuff+ scale, where 100 equals average) but both of his fastballs, and his general command and location, generally score below average. Platoon-wise, he’s smothered lefties this year (.147/.293/.147. .226 wOBA) but has been pummeled by righties (.366/.435/.463, .397 wOBA), though for his career, he’s been about equally effective against both.

The Angels can use the relief. Their bullpen ranks last in the majors in both FIP (4.81) and homers per nine (1.5), 28th in walk rate (10.6%), and 27th in ERA (4.96). They haven’t spent a day above .500 since April 20, when they were 11-10, and the assumption in recent weeks was that they’d be sellers at the deadline and could trade players such as closer Kenley Jansen, starter Tyler Anderson, outfielder Taylor Ward, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. As it is, their Playoff Odds are only just 5.1% at this writing; they’re tied with the Royals at four games out of the third Wild Card spot, half a game behind the Guardians (53-54), a game behind the Rays (54-54), and three games behind the Rangers (56-52). This is a team that doesn’t have much business trading young talent from a farm system that ranks among the majors’ bottom 10, but maybe the temptation of going for it while Mike Trout is upright was too much to overcome.

As for whom they’re giving up, the 26-year-old Eder is a 6-foot-4 lefty whom they acquired from the White Sox for cash considerations on March 31. He entered the season as a 40 FV prospect, notable for an above-average slider. He was tattooed for a 6.11 ERA and 5.87 FIP in 63 1/3 innings as a starter at Triple-A Salt Lake City, but he pitched out of the bullpen for the Angels and posted a 4.91 ERA, 5.22 FIP, and 19.2% strikeout rate in 18 1/3 innings in that role. His last three outings have been longer ones, ranging from three to six innings, with 98 pitches against the Mets on July 23, so he’s stretched out to the point that he could join the Nationals rotation if there’s an opening. Here’s what Eric Longenhagen had to say about Eder in notes he provided:

Eder was drafted out of Vanderbilt in the fourth round of the truncated 2020 draft, and his stuff exploded in pro ball. Eder made 15 starts in 2021, racking up a mid-30s strikeout rate and a 0.98 WHIP while sitting 94-97 and bending in a plus-plus slider, but he blew out and needed Tommy John surgery. His rehab was interrupted by an ill-timed foot fracture, which kept him off the mound until midway through the 2023 season, after which old co-workers Kenny Williams and Kim Ng swapped Jake Burger for Eder at the trade deadline. When he returned, it was with a lower arm slot, and Eder struggled to recapture the arm strength from before his injury, as his fastball has sat in the 92-94 mph neighborhood since. Eder’s stuff has played closer to average across the board since then, and he’s been on the 40-man fringe, changed orgs multiple times and struggled to stay in the bigs long enough to graduate from rookie status as he approaches age 27. He’s throwing enough strikes with a four-pitch mix to be considered an inning-eating fifth starter or stable middle reliever, but the days of him looking like an impact arm are long gone.

The 23-year-old Brown was the Angels’ 12th-round pick out of Washington State in 2023, and now rates as a 35+ FV prospect, albeit one that doesn’t have a single tool that projects as average or better. After signing for a $150,000 bonus, he began his pro career by struggling mightily at Double-A Rocket City last year (.214/.298/.302 with four homers and a 85 wRC+). He’s been more successful repeating the level (.244/.350/.358 with five homers and a 117 wRC+). From Logenhagen:

Brown is a lefty-hitting first baseman (and occasional corner outfielder) who has posted above-average bat-to-ball metrics at Double-A this year, with a 78% contact rate. It’s Brown’s second go around at Double-A, as he was ultra-aggressively assigned there when he debuted in 2024. His hands work in such a way that he tends to be late on fastballs and drive them to left field, which might portend a dip in contact performance against big league velo. Brown’s raw power is a shade below the big league average, comfortably below what is typical of a good big league first baseman, but at least on paper he has enough of a contact/power combo to be considered a fringe prospect.

For the Nationals, these aren’t unreasonable flyers to take at this stage. For the Angels, this might well wind up looking like a repeat of their 2023 deadline, when they cleared out their already-weak system by trading for Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, Randal Grichuk, and more, then went 17-38 after July 31. That team was at least above .500 when the deadline dealing started. Those who forget history something something… ask Arte Moreno!