Well, the Mets really did it. On Tuesday, they finally went out and landed the electric Dominican outfielder with the big tools and the ebullient personality, the one they’d been dreaming of for so very long. Well, they landed one of the electric Dominican outfielders they’d been dreaming of, anyway.

In a one-for-one swap, the Mets received center fielder Jose Siri from the Rays in exchange for right-handed pitching prospect Eric Orze. Siri is a thrilling player with four jaw-dropping tools: power, defense, speed, and throwing. The complete absence of a hit tool leaves him kind of like a boat with the world’s greatest bilge pump and a gaping hole in the hull. He’s forever battling to mash enough moonshots and make enough improbable catches to stay afloat despite running a strikeout rate that falls somewhere between catastrophic and cataclysmic. In a move that will surprise no one who is even passingly familiar with the Rays, the team turned Siri into a pitching prospect the moment he could conceivably begin to cost them actual money. The Mets now control Siri for his three arbitration years, and MLB Trade Rumors projects him for a $2.3 million salary in 2025 (plus a luxury tax penalty). Given that the trade went down Tuesday, the Rays have probably already turned Orze into a bona fide ace.

The move could indicate something of a pattern for the Mets, who signed the glove-first Harrison Bader to a one-year contract before the 2024 season. Here’s how similar the two players are: At the time of his signing, Bader was 29 years old and had posted a career wRC+ of 90 while averaging 20 OAA per 150 games. Right now, Siri is 29 years old and has posted a career wRC+ of 89 while averaging 19.1 OAA per 150 games.

That move didn’t exactly pan out. Bader managed to avoid the injured list for the first time since 2020 and his 85 wRC+ wasn’t far below his career mark, but it wasn’t exactly the bounce-back season the Mets had hoped for. He started nearly every game against right-handed pitching, but against lefties, he went from ceding the occasional start to Tyrone Taylor at the beginning of the season to sitting more often than not by the end of it. This wasn’t ideal considering Bader has a career 109 wRC+ vs. lefties and an 84 wRC+ vs. righties. By the time the playoffs rolled around, he was the odd man out. He got into nearly all of the team’s postseason games, but started just twice and made just six plate appearances.

In all, the Mets got just 1.6 WAR in center field in 2024. That ranked 22nd in all of baseball, and it was the lowest ranking of any position on the field for the team. The only other spots on the diamond where the Mets were even in the bottom half of the league were starting pitcher, catcher, and right field. With Bader and Jesse Winker entering free agency and Taylor undergoing surgery to repair a hernia and remove a loose body from his throwing elbow, Siri is unlikely to be the last outfielder the Mets acquire this offseason.

The Athletic’s Will Sammon cited sources who reported that this wasn’t the first time the Mets had sought to get their hands Siri, and it’s not hard to see why. Siri is as tempting a project as any player in the game. He’s an incredibly gifted defensive center fielder with light tower power and absolutely no semblance of plate discipline or contact ability. The team that could get him to chase just a little bit less, to whiff just a little bit less, would have a monster on its hands. However, Siri is entering his age-29 season, and it’s hard to imagine that even the team that wanted him badly enough to risk the humiliation of trading a pitching prospect to the Rays really expects to finally unlock him. Unlike lower-back pain, plate discipline isn’t something you just happen to pick up once you hit your 30s. In 2024, Siri ran a 37.9% strikeout rate. Among players with 400 plate appearances in a season, that’s the third-highest mark in major league history. His 35.8% career strikeout rate ranks 14th on our career leaderboard, and five of the 13 players ahead of him were pitchers.

Just like Bader in Flushing, Siri started losing playing time as the 2024 season went on. Jonny DeLuca, who in 2024 featured – and stop me if you’ve heard this before – excellent speed and defense to go with some trouble getting on base, absorbed that playing time and will presumably be starting in center for the Rays next season. This time, the Mets got their solid, if flawed, center fielder on the trade market because there really aren’t any to be had in free agency. Understandably, they’re not keen to ride the Bader train again. Michael A. Taylor and Manuel Margot, the only other true center fielders on the free agent market, are both on the wrong side of 30 and coming off their own extremely down 2024 seasons. Siri’s production may look a lot like Bader’s, but he’s got a better track record when it comes to health, and because he cost a prospect rather than a free agent contract, he’ll come with a smaller luxury cap hit.

In Orze, the Rays landed a 27-year-old multi-inning reliever with a killer splitter and a modest track record of minor league success. The Mets selected him in the fifth round of the 2020 draft out of the University of New Orleans. If you’re familiar with him already, you’re either aware that he has survived two types of cancer or you’ve heard about his unfortunate major league debut. On July 8, Orze entered in the sixth inning against the Pirates and allowed a walk and two singles without recording an out. All three runners would score and he’d be tagged with the loss to go with his infinite ERA. Orze would make just one more appearance with the Mets.

Despite an unspectacular 29.7% chase rate in the minors in 2024, Orze has had excellent strikeout rates throughout his minor league career. However, those strikeouts have come hand-in-hand with dangerously high walk rates. In 2022, Eric Longenhagen ranked Orze seventh in Mets system, writing that he was a “near-ready multi-inning reliever… a super valuable piece for a contending team, and a huge draft and dev feather in the cap of the org.” Unfortunately, Orze stalled out, posting a 5.13 ERA at Triple-A Syracuse in 2022 and a 5.31 ERA there in 2023. After the ranked portion of the team’s 2024 prospect list, Eric wrote simply that Orze “has a plus-plus changeup and struggles to throw strikes.” He wasn’t wrong. Among minor leaguers with at least 75 plate appearances tracked by Statcast in 2024, Orze’s 44% zone rate put him in the just 13th percentile.

To be fair, Orze’s peripherals outpaced his ERA, especially in 2022. In 2024, he had a 2.92 ERA with a 3.65 xFIP. He looks like a classic pronator, able to make the ball run to his arm side at will. Both scouts and stuff models are in love with his splitter, and his slider should be serviceable. His four-seamer is the problem. The pitch averages a hair under 94 mph, and as you can see from Max Bay’s Dynamic Dead Zone app, its movement profile is unlikely to fool too many hitters.

See how the pink oval of the pitch’s actual shape matches up almost perfectly with the light blue ovals that indicate the shape that a batter would expect? That’s no good. If the Rays are going to turn Orze into their next star, they’ll need to help him with his command, and they’ll need to help him unlock a better fastball. Still, we’ve been doing this long enough to know that when the Rays post something like this on Bluesky, everyone should be afraid.

It was the perfect exemplar of a Friday news dump, a quiet transaction between frequent trading partners. The Phillies and Angels swap players so often it’s sometimes hard to remember whether Brandon Marsh got traded for Logan O’Hoppe or George Klassen or Ron Gant. And while the Angels also made a splashy swap with the Braves the day before to acquire Jorge Soler, Philadelphia slipped another move in while nobody was looking: minor league infielder Scott Kingery to Los Angeles for cash considerations.

With all the fanfare of your buddy paying you back for buying Taco Bell on the way home the other night, an era is over.

Kingery could be a useful player for the Angels. He hit .268/.316/.488 in Triple-A last season, with 25 home runs and 25 stolen bases, playing mostly at shortstop with appearances at second, third, and in center field. The Phillies are pretty well set on the infield, but Kingery hasn’t appeared in the majors since June 8, 2022, when he went out to second base for a single defensive inning in a 10-0 blowout in Milwaukee. He hasn’t taken a major league at-bat since May 16, 2021, which is the last time he had anything like a regular roster role. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you enjoy that thrilling World Series clincher Wednesday night? Still glowing from Walker Buehler stomping in from the bullpen like Ricky Vaughn? Still got your protractor and T-square on your desk as you try to figure out if Gerrit Cole could’ve beaten Mookie Betts to first base with two outs in the fifth? I know I need a moment to decompress from all the excitement.

You know who doesn’t? Alex Anthopoulos and Perry Minasian, who couldn’t wait 24 hours to execute the first trade of the offseason. And this wasn’t some bit of bookkeeping minutiae, a my-garbage-for-your-trash trade to clear a 40-man roster spot before the Rule 5 draft protection deadline. This was a trade of big leaguers, and fairly noteworthy ones at that: The Braves are sending outfielder Jorge Soler to the Angels in exchange for right-hander Griffin Canning. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies and Orioles consummated their second trade of the deadline period yesterday, as hard-throwing 29-year-old lefty Gregory Soto was sent to Baltimore in exchange for pitching prospects Seth Johnson and Moisés Chace. Soto has been having a pretty typical season, with a 4.08 ERA across 35.1 innings (43 appearances). He’s still throwing hard, and he’s accumulated a ton of walks and strikeouts having leaned more heavily on his incredible slider than in prior seasons. After a career-best year at avoiding free passes in 2023, Soto’s walk rate has ticked back up closer to his career norm of 12%; his fastball is also generating fewer swings and misses than ever before at a paltry 4.9% swinging strike rate, which is really low for a 98 mph heater.

Soto had mostly been squeezed out of high-leverage situations in Philly in deference to Matt Strahm and Jeff Hoffman, and was likely to see his opportunities further reduced by the recent acquisition of Carlos Estévez. While there’s nothing wrong with having a lefty who sits 98 as one of your lower-leverage guys, the way the market shaped up for multi-year relievers perhaps made it tempting for the Phillies to get more back in trade than is typical for a pitcher who is near the bottom of a bullpen depth chart. This one-for-two deal helps to build back a little of their farm system after the Estévez and Austin Hays trades.

In Baltimore, Soto joins Keegan Akin and Cionel Pérez as the lefties in the Orioles bullpen. He is under team control through next season. Any time an org like the Orioles acquires a pitcher whose results feel as though they’ve been far worse than his talent, you wonder if there’s something they might change about him that could help him be great. But Soto’s previous orgs, the Tigers and Phillies, have had recent success at improving pitchers, including late-bloomers like Hoffman. Perhaps there’s no low-hanging developmental fruit for the Orioles to reap here; Soto is 29 and might just be a semi-frustrating player who performs below what is typical for someone with his arm strength, let alone a lefty. That’s still constitutes a middle-inning upgrade for Baltimore. Will one of these teams be cursing themselves in a few months for having made the other more complete?

The Phillies got back two pitchers, one could help them as soon as next year, with the other being more of a developmental piece. Johnson, who is about to turn 26, had posted a 2.63 ERA (with a FIP and xFIP in the 4.13-4.26 range) as a starter at Double-A Bowie prior to the trade. The pandemic and an unfortunately timed Tommy John have prevented Johnson from posting a starter’s load of innings for consecutive seasons, and his 65 innings pitched as of the trade is already the most he’s thrown in a single season since 2021. Johnson sits 94-96 with riding life. An upper-80s cutter is his secondary weapon of choice, and he also has a mid-70s curveball with huge depth. There isn’t a platoon-neutralizing weapon here and the 2025 season will be Johnson’s last option year (unless the Phillies are given an extra option year because of his 2022 TJ), which together will probably squeeze Johnson into a bullpen role sometime next year.

Chace (pronounced CHA-say) is a medium-framed 21-year-old righty in his fourth pro season who has struck out more than a batter per inning each year of his career. Working in a piggyback role at Aberdeen prior to the trade, Chase has a good chance to develop a starter-quality pitch mix but probably not starter-quality command. He sits 93-96 with plus-plus vertical ride, he has a plus, 81-85 mph sweeper-style slider, and his changeup flashes bat-missing tail. Chace’s slider feel is advanced but that isn’t true of his other offerings. He’s Rule 5 eligible after this season and he’s going to be one of the more fascinating cases for protection. There are pretty clearly two viable big league pitches here right now, but Chace is quite far from the majors. Right now, I’d call him an unlikely add and bet that he doesn’t get Rule 5’d.

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The Boston Red Sox added 12-year veteran big league reliever Luis García to the back of their bullpen, which to this point was in the bottom third of the league in combined reliever ERA and strikeout rate. Headed to Anaheim are four prospects, three of whom are relatively close to the big leagues. Former shortstop and current 23-year-old left fielder Matthew Lugo, 25-year-old first baseman Niko Kavadas, and 26-year-old reliever Ryan Zeferjahn were all at Triple-A Worcester, while 19-year-old pitcher Yeferson Vargas was promoted to Low-A just before the deal.

García has been one of the 50 most productive relievers in baseball since the 2021 season. He’s top 60 in WAR, FIP, ERA, strikeouts, and WHIP among relievers who’ve thrown at least 150 innings during that time, essentially a viable second-best reliever on a good team even as he climbed into his late-30s. García has a 1.17 WHIP this season even as his fastball velocity has declined two ticks from peak and a little more than one tick compared from last season. His sinker, splitter, and slider (especially the two secondaries, which are plus or better offerings generating huge swing-and-miss against big leaguers) remain good enough for García to play a relatively high-leverage role on a contender.

García hits free agency again this winter. It might feel like giving up four players is a lot for two months of a reliever, but if any team had a 40-man crunch this offseason it was going to be the Red Sox because of how many potentially serviceable position players they had in their system. Several of those players are now gone, including Kavadas, Lugo, Zeferjahn, Eddinson Paulino, and Nick Yorke. It’s good to have depth in the event of injury, but it’s plausible the Red Sox would either have lost a couple of these guys in the Rule 5 draft this offseason or clogged their roster trying to keep them.

Kavadas is striking out a third of the time at Triple-A, but he has enormous power and had a .975 OPS at the time of the trade. He’s posted a 57% hard-hit rate in Worcester and his swing is geared for lift in the extreme, with 20 degrees of launch on average. There will probably be a narrow window in Kavadas’ prime when he can get to enough power to be a relevant big league first baseman. A career trajectory similar to what Jared Walsh had with the Angels is feasible, where he enjoys one or two peak years of big power but over time is hindered by strikeouts in a way that is a problem for the overall profile of a 1B/DH athlete. Think Mike Ford.

A swing change and a more patient approach have unlocked an extra gear of power for Lugo and may have salvaged the former second round pick’s career, especially as he’s slid all the way down the defensive spectrum from shortstop to left field. His mistake-crushing style has him on pace to hit 30 homers in the minors this year. Hellbent on pulling the baseball, Lugo struggles to cover the outer third of the zone and swings inside a ton of pitches out there. Given his hit tool limitations and the way his defensive versatility has trended down, he looks more like an above-replacement up/down outfielder than a consistent role player.

Zeferjahn is a hard-throwing reliever who has averaged 96-98 with his fastball this year. He was utterly dominant at Double-A early in the season and was promoted to Worcester, where his command has returned to problematic career norms; he’s walking six batters per nine there. Zeferjahn’s fastball plays down because of poor movement and his lack of command, but he essentially has three average pitches and would be an up/down reliever in most orgs. He might play a more significant role for the Angels in the next couple of years. I expect he’ll be added to their 40-man roster this offseason.

Finally, Vargas is a stout, six foot righty who has cut his walks substantially compared to 2023 while also enjoying a two- or three-tick velocity spike. Vargas’ fastball averaged 92-93 last year and a scout who saw him earlier this spring had him sitting 93-95, but when I saw Vargas in June, he held 95-96 and touched 98 across three innings of work. He also has a snappy curveball in the 81-84 mph range that flashed plus on my look. At Vargas’ size, he’s perhaps more likely to be a reliever, but he’s made a ton of progress in the last year, especially in the strike-throwing department. He’s a hard-throwing developmental prospect with a good two-pitch foundation.

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The Yankees acquired Enyel De Los Santos and Thomas Balboni Jr. from the Padres in exchange for 27-year-old Triple-A center fielder Brandon Lockridge. The 28-year-old De Los Santos was having a strange, homer-prone season in San Diego prior to the trade but has otherwise performed near his career norms. In 40.1 innings, De Los Santos has a 4.46 ERA, a 28% strikeout rate, and a career-best 7.6% walk rate. His stuff has also been consistent with career norms, but Enyel’s approach to pitching has changed. His slider usage is way up this year and his approach to locating his fastball has also shifted to the upper part of the zone. Here are De Los Santos’ fastball locations against lefties each of the last two years:

Seven of the 11 homers (in 40.1 innings!) De Los Santos has surrendered this year have been off his fastball, a pitch he’s throwing less than ever before. Especially in the Yankee Stadium bandbox, I’d expect some kind of fastball alteration to happen here, even if it’s just a return to more of an east/west style of pitching.

De Los Santos has been in the big leagues since he was 22 but because several of those have been partial seasons, he’s only just now in his arbitration years and will hit free agency after the 2026 season, at age 31. In addition to the other relief pitcher additions that crowded out De Los Santos on the roster, it’s possible the Padres’ more budget-beholden approach post-Peter Seidler made De Los Santos’ looming arb salary consequential. Perhaps the lack of leverage created by this is why the Padres had to attach a prospect to Enyel to get Lockridge. That prospect is the 24-year-old Balboni, a sidearm reliever who has had a two-tick velocity spike this season. Balboni now sits 93-96 and has a high-spin slider. He’s not a great strike-thrower, but he’s got good stuff and a pretty good shot to wear a big league uniform eventually.

Coming back to the Padres is Lockridge, a nice upper-level depth player who can really go get it in center field and who fortifies the Padres’ center field depth behind Jackson Merrill to a degree. Fernando Tatis Jr.’s injury has put pressure on the Padres’ outfield depth and forced David Peralta, who isn’t hitting, into action. Lockridge might be a better big league roster fit than Bryce Johnson, who isn’t as good a defender. Tim Locastro, Óscar Mercado, Cal Mitchell, Tirso Ornelas, and José Azocar are all in El Paso, too.

Another year, another frenetic trade deadline. This year’s bonanza was light on top talent relative to recent years, but it made up for that in volume. With tight races in both leagues and plenty of teams looking to shore up clear weaknesses, it was a seller’s market, particularly when it came to pitching. Now that the dust has settled, I’m here to hand out some judgment.

These are going to be inherently subjective, but that doesn’t mean I don’t put a little rigor into my system. I’m focusing on two things here when I look at individual teams. First, and more important: Did a team’s moves match up with its needs? This is easy to gauge, and since it’s the whole point of the deadline, it carries the most wait. Second: How’d teams do on the trades they made? I think this part is inherently more subjective – there’s no unified prospect ranking or database where we can see how traded players will do the rest of the season, and we’re working with less information than teams have. That doesn’t mean I’m not crediting teams for trades I like or docking them for moves I don’t, just that I’m weighting it slightly less than the first category. Let’s dive right in.
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A common refrain in baseball is that you can never have enough pitching, and that doesn’t apply solely to starters. A well-stocked bullpen can be just as important to a club, which is why a lot of contenders dealt for relievers as the trade deadline approached. Two such clubs were the Boston Red Sox, who acquired Lucas Sims from the Cincinnati Reds and Luis Garcia from the Los Angeles Angels, and the New York Yankees, who acquired Mark Leiter Jr. from the Chicago Cubs and Enyel De Los Santos from the San Diego Padres.

Let’s look at two of those deals — the trades for Garcia and De Los Santos will be covered in another post — beginning with Boston getting Sims in exchange for 19-year-old pitching prospect Ovis Portes.

With setup men Chris Martin and Justin Slaten both on the injured list — their return dates are uncertain — the Red Sox have been badly in need of proven bullpen arms. Late-inning implosions contributed heavily to the team’s losing seven of 10 games coming out of the All-Star break, with Chase Anderson, Bailey Horn, and Greg Weissert among the pitchers of record in the defeats. When you’re battling for a Wild Card berth, those aren’t ideal options for high-leverage situations. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pittsburgh Pirates spent part of deadline day sprucing up their offense by acquiring outfielder Bryan De La Cruz from the Miami Marlins and infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa from the Toronto Blue Jays. Neither hitter provides the superstar impact to fully rehabilitate Pittsburgh’s fixer-upper lineup. Instead, they yield an effect similar to tearing out the wood paneling, scraping the popcorn ceilings, and applying a couple coats of paint in a shade called something like Chantilly Cream to zhuzh up the place. Perhaps this offseason, Pirates’ GM Ben Cherington will put in a call to Chip and Joanna Gaines to facilitate a full renovation, but until then, this certainly makes the space the Pirates currently occupy nicer.

De La Cruz and Kiner-Falefa join the Pittsburgh clubhouse amidst a handful of other additions and subtractions over the last few days. The team acquired two lefty relievers in Jalen Beeks and Josh Walker alongside Nick Yorke, a post-hype hitting prospect who is ready to compete for big league playing time, according to Eric Longenhagen’s breakdown of all three acquisitions. Additionally, the Pirates dealt from their starting pitching depth by sending Martín Pérez to the Padres in exchange for Ronaldys Jimenez, an 18 year-old left-handed pitcher currently in the DSL.

On the whole, Pittsburgh’s deadline activity amounts to a series of one-for-one trades that marginally improve their current situation, without upsetting their long-term construction plans for building Barbie’s Dream Roster in the future. (Or because it’s the Pirates, whatever ownership deems is Kenough.) Read the rest of this entry »

In 2022, Martín Pérez was absolutely on fire. He put up a sterling four-win season, made the American League All-Star team, and established a new career-high strikeout rate. The Rangers gave him a qualifying offer to keep him in the fold, and he accepted it. All the while, I steadfastly refused to write about him, because c’mon, really, could this be real? Surely the other shoe was going to drop, right?

It largely did. Last season saw Pérez banished to the bullpen and then used sparingly as a lefty specialist in the playoffs, where he struck out two, walked three, and gave up five runs in three outings. He signed with the Pirates after the year, and his role seemed clear: soak up innings until their exciting young pitchers were ready, and potentially continue to work with those guys in a six-man rotation thereafter. The Pirates needed bulk pitching at a reasonable rate, and he gave it to them, delivering 16 starts, 83 innings, and 0.3 wins above replacement.

Now it’s time to write about Pérez, though. Why? The Pirates didn’t have a ton of space for him given the excellence they’re getting from the rest of their rotation, so they put him on the trade block, and the most natural thing in baseball happened: AJ Preller came calling. That’s right, the Pirates traded Pérez to San Diego in exchange for Ronaldys Jimenez. The Pirates are also covering some of his salary – a sentence I’ve never actually typed before, so they’ve got that going for them. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Well, that was fun! As trade season draws to a close — teams can only make straight-up waiver claims now — let’s take a step back and run down some of the most interesting roster implications of the deals made in the lead up to yesterday’s deadline.

We already know who was sent down as the corresponding move for some of these trades, but for others I’ll be walking through my best guess at what the cascading effects could be. It’s important to think about trades in that way. You’re not just getting Player A for Prospects X, Y, and Z. Player A is also replacing someone on your roster, shuffling playing time, bumping a hitter down or out of the lineup, sending a pitcher to the bullpen, etc. Making room on the 40-man roster also sends a player to the waiver wire who may be useful to other teams, with the worst teams getting first dibs.

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The trade deadline isn’t a coda to this White Sox season — this debacle, this farce, this insult to tire fires — because the song isn’t over yet. There’s still another third of the way to go, another verse on the road to 120 losses. No, in songwriting terms this is a bridge, a shift to a minor key followed by a saxophone solo, meant to put you in the mood for a modulation and the big finish.

The White Sox aren’t trading Garrett Crochet. They are trading one of the two big outfielders who were supposed to turn into a legendary Chicago sports double act, alongside Jordan and Pippen, Toews and Kane, Perry and Singletary. But they’re not trading Luis Robert Jr.

Remember, all the way back in 2019, when Eloy Jiménez was one of the top five prospects in baseball? When securing his future commitment to the franchise was so important that the White Sox only allowed him to make his major league debut after he signed a six-year contract extension with two team options? Yeah, well after years of injuries and disappointment and recriminations, Jiménez is headed to Baltimore in exchange for minor league left-hander Trey McGough. Read the rest of this entry »