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As Thursday’s 6 PM deadline approached, the New York Yankees finally made their big bullpen moves, first trading for closer David Bednar from the Pittsburgh Pirates and sending back catcher Rafael Flores, catcher Edgleen Perez, and outfielder Brian Sanchez. Bednar, with a year of arbitration remaining next season, has allowed a 2.37 ERA and a 1.96 FIP while striking out 51 batters and walking only 10 in 38 innings this year.
Also donning (non-purple) pinstripes is Jake Bird, whom the Yankees acquired from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for second baseman Roc Riggio and left-handed starter Ben Shields. Bird, in his fourth year with the Rockies, has a 4.73 ERA for the season, but a much sunnier 3.45 FIP, and he has struck out nearly 11 batters per nine innings, easily the best mark of his career.
You might’ve been worried that the Brewers had slept through the trade deadline. Maybe general manager Matt Arnold had overslept, or maybe the Twins were hogging all the cellphone bandwidth in the Midwest. But no, sure enough, Milwaukee got on the board right at the last minute, first by sendingNestor Cortes to San Diego, and then by making an unusual trade for Arizona teammates Shelby Miller and Jordan Montgomery.
Wow, that’s a reliever with a sub-2.00 ERA and a guy who pitched the Rangers to a championship two years ago. For just a player to be named later or cash? Sounds like a steal… wait, both of them are hurt, and both of them are free agents at the end of this year. That can’t be right. Read the rest of this entry »
In the flurry of action just minutes before the trade deadline, two postseason contenders made moves to reinforce their starting rotations with starters looking to regain their previous form before hitting free agency. The Red Sox traded prospects James Tibbs III and Zach Ehrhard to the Dodgers in return for Dustin May, while the Padres continued their deadline fusillade by acquiring Nestor Cortes, 18-year-old infield prospect Jorge Quintana and cash, sending Brandon Lockridge to the Brewers. The Brewers will cover roughly $2.4 million of the money still owed to Cortes, with the Padres covering the prorated minimum salary for the rest of the season.
Let’s start in Boston. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the deal was going down, while FanSided’s Robert Murray and MassLive.com’s Christopher Smith reported the prospect return. The Red Sox could certainly use rotation help. They rank in the middle of the pack in both ERA and FIP, but once you separate out ace Garrett Crochet, things look much less rosy; Brayan Bello is the only other starter with an ERA below 3.80. Offseason deals for Walker Buehler, Patrick Sandoval, and Justin Wilson made it clear that the Red Sox are eager to find upside in pitchers who are still finding their way after a recent injury, and May certainly fits the bill.
With palpable Walugi energy, upper-90s velocity, and pitch movement seemingly designed in a lab for maximum GIF-ability, May has been tantalizing Dodgers fans with ace potential ever since his debut in 2019. Injuries, most notably Tommy John surgery in 2021 and flexor tendon surgery in 2023, have kept him from turning into the ace it was so easy to envision him becoming. From 2019 to 2023, he got into just 46 games, an average of 9.2 per season, running a combined 3.10 ERA and 3.77 FIP. Unfortunately, flexor tendon surgery ended May’s season early in 2023, then in July 2024, right as he was getting ready for a rehab assignment, May tore his esophagus in a freak accident while eating dinner. It was a major injury that required a six-month recovery. Read the rest of this entry »
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Having already pulled off trades on Thursday to add reliever Mason Miller and starter JP Sears in a blockbuster with the Athletics and catcher Freddy Fermin in a deal with the Royals, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller stayed busy in the hours before the trade deadline, pulling off swaps with the Orioles, Blue Jays, and Brewers. San Diego has added lefty-swinging outfielder/first baseman Ryan O’Hearn and righty-swinging outfielder Ramón Laureano from Baltimore in exchange for a six-prospect package of 2024 draftees, and lefty-swinging infielder Will Wagner from Toronto in exchange for catching prospect Brandon Valenzuela. They also acquired lefty Nestor Cortes from Milwaukee in exchange for outfielder Brandon Lockridge, a move that Davy Andrews will cover separately.
The 32-year-old O’Hearn and 31-year-old Laureano have both rejuvenated their careers with the Orioles, albeit on different timelines. O’Hearn had totaled -1.4 WAR in parts of five seasons in Kansas City before being traded to Baltimore for cash considerations in January 2023. After back-to-back seasons with a 117 wRC+ and 1.5 WAR for the Orioles, he made his first All-Star team this month and is currently hitting .283/.374/.463 (134 wRC+) with 13 homers and a career-high 2.4 WAR. Laureano, who was released by the Guardians last May and then turned things around in part-time duty with the Braves, has hit .290/.355/.529 (144 wRC+) with 15 homers and 2.3 WAR — his highest total since 2019 — for the Orioles. Both players have been bright spots on a 50-59 team that’s been carved up in recent days, with infielder Ramón Urías heading to the Astros, center fielder Cedric Mullins going to the Mets, with starter Charlie Morton dealt to the Tigers, and relievers Seranthony Domínguez and Andrew Kittredge to the Blue Jays and Cubs, respectively.
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I was starting to get worried that Griffin Jax was going to be left behind in the Twins’ wholesale liquidation of their bullpen. Fear not; the hardest thrower in the Air Force Reserve is headed out after all. The Rays currently sit two games under .500 and 3 1/2 games out of a Wild Card spot, with a 9.9% chance of making the playoffs. That long-shot contender status did not dampen their enthusiasm for Jax in the slightest. Tampa Bay sent the talented but inconsistent starter Taj Bradley to Minnesota in exchange for Jax, who is under team control through 2027.
On June 30, the Rangers lost to fall to 41-44, 10th place in the American League. Then they turned it on. Since the calendar flipped to July, they’ve gone 16-8 and rocketed into the playoff picture. They’re tied with the Mariners for the last AL Wild Card spot. With their sights now set on thriving in October, they needed to reinforce a pitching staff that has been quite good up top but got shakier as you went down the depth chart, and the Diamondbacks were happy to oblige. As Ken Rosenthal first reported, the Rangers are getting Merrill Kelly in exchange for Kohl Drake, Mitch Bratt, and David Hagaman. They also acquired Danny Coulombe and Phil Maton in separate deals to shore up the middle of their bullpen.
Texas has a famous starting rotation. The two stars, Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi, need no introduction. Second on the team in innings, slightly ahead of Eovaldi? That’d be World Series winner Patrick Corbin, famous both for his high highs and low lows. The back of the rotation? Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker, famous college teammates before they were famous prospect teammates. But Leiter and Rocker have been flat this year, and Corbin was bad enough for long enough that I’d be a little scared of counting on him. Tyler Mahle, another celebrated Rangers starter, has been out since June. Jon Gray is headed for free agency and has perhaps been banished to the bullpen for the remainder of 2025. And it’s not like deGrom has been the paragon of health over the last few years.
Kelly lengthens the playoff-ready portion of Texas’s rotation immediately. His career 3.74 ERA and 3.97 FIP are accurate representations of his work, as are his 22% strikeout rate and 7.4% walk rate. In other words, he’s a perfect mid-rotation arm, better than average (he’s managed a 3.22 ERA and 3.53 FIP this season) but squarely short of an ace. He’s 36 and a free agent after this year, which limits his return somewhat, but he’s a dependable playoff starter and thus a very desirable deadline target. Read the rest of this entry »
I was a young baseball writer working in Houston when Carlos Correa came up with the Astros. At the time, I was convinced that this 6-foot-4 mountain of a man with a massive throwing arm but unimpressive foot speed would end up at third base before too long. A lot has happened since then. When fellow shortstop prospect Alex Bregman got promoted a year later, it was Bregman, not Correa, who slid over to third. From there, Correa developed into a Platinum Glove winner and a consistent plus-10 defender or better.
Then Correa left the Astros entirely and stayed away after a successful one-season audition with the Twins. Even after a reunion with Houston was mooted in the lead-up to the deadline, the scuttlebutt said it wasn’t happening and the Astros traded forRamón Urías to fill the Isaac Paredes-shaped hole in the infield.
But after all those bumps in the road, and after 10 years of waiting, I turned out to be right after all: Correa is headed back to Houston, along with $33 million in cash, for minor league left-hander Matt Mikulski, and in accordance with my prediction, Correa is going to play third base.
Never abandon your takes, kids, you have no idea when the universe will decide to prove you right. Read the rest of this entry »
This, my friends, is the A.J. Preller we were promised. Mere hours after swinging a massive deal for closer Mason Miller and even fewer hours before trading for Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano, Preller made what you could argue – in one specific, absurd way – represented San Diego’s biggest upgrade of the day. Earlier this afternoon, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the Padres have traded starters Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek to the Royals in exchange for catcher Freddy Fermin. How could Fermin, a 30-year-old catcher with roughly average framing numbers who’s underperforming his career 91 wRC+ this season, possibly be a bigger addition than Miller or O’Hearn, let alone worth the two major league pitchers the Padres gave up for him? Just you wait.
It would be hard to overstate both how ugly the catcher position has been for the Padres this season and how predictable that outcome was. Coming into the season, the Padres ranked dead last in our Positional Power Rankings at catcher. We expected them to get just 0.8 WAR from the catcher position, a hair behind the Rockies. And that was before our projections knew how bad things really were. Shortly after the those rankings came out, the Padres demoted Luis Campusano, who had the best projection on the team. Instead, they rolled with Elias Díaz and Martín Maldonado. (I’m sure the Padres have their reasons for being so out on Campusano, but I have no idea what they are. For what it’s worth, he has slashed .298/.410/.555 with 15 home runs in Triple-A El Paso this season, good for a 130 wRC+. In 27 PA as a designed hitter for the big club, he’s 0-for-21 with two walks, but even so, right now at this very moment, ZiPS sees him as the best catcher of the three.)
Díaz and Maldonado have caught every single inning for the Padres this season, and the results have been even worse than expected. (Following the initial publication of this piece, the Padres DFA’ed Maldonado.) Both players have put up negative WAR. Maldonado has a 62 wRC+, while Díaz is at 67. In all, the Padres have put up -0.6 WAR from the catcher spot, and the only reason that’s not the worst mark in baseball is that the Nationals spent the first half of the season challenging for the worst team catching season of the century. Things have been even worse lately, as Díaz has put up a 38 wRC+ in the month of July. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a big deadline for relief pitchers, even for teams that aren’t operating in the Mason Miller or Jhoan Duran tier. The Orioles bullpen continues to get picked over like a charcuterie board: Andrew Kittredge is Chicago-bound, with the Cubs sending Wilfri De La Cruz the other way.
The Tigers beefed up their bullpen by picking up Paul Sewald from the Guardians in exchange for a player to be named later or cash. A few hours later, Detroit sent minor league pitchers Josh Randall and R.J. Sales to Washington for Kyle Finnegan and added Codi Heuer from Texas for minor league depth. Finally, the Dodgers are bringing Brock Stewart back from Minnesota, with James Outman going in the other direction.
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Last night, after Zack Littell had started for the Rays in what would turn out to be a dramatic extra-inning loss at Yankee Stadium, he was traded to the Reds as part of a three-team deal with the Dodgers. The names of the players involved slowly trickled out into the ether, and after an hour or so, the entire transaction came into focus:
Littell, who turns 30 in October, is in his final arbitration season and will be a free agent this winter. After spending the first half decade of his big league career in the bullpen, he made a successful transition to the rotation starting in the middle of 2023. He has the third-lowest walk rate among all qualified pitchers since then, at a microscopic 4%. This season, Littell has a 3.58 ERA (his FIPs and xERA are in the 4.20 to 4.90 range) across 22 starts. He’s a quintessential soft-tossing pitchability guy whose fit in the Rays rotation the last few years was largely driven by his addition of a sinker and a shift away from using his fastballs so much. Littell’s splitter has been his most reliable bat-missing weapon and played like a plus pitch in 2023 and 2024 before losing some of its sink in 2025; it has backed up into more of an average area in terms of garnering whiffs. He’s posting the lowest full-season strikeout rate of his career and one of the lowest across qualified big league pitchers this year. He’s also surrendered 26 home runs, the most in the majors and a potential concern in the bandbox that is Great American Ballpark. Read the rest of this entry »
