Giants Fire Sale Continues with Erik Miller and Heliot Ramos Heading to AL East Rivals

You might have thought it was the Presidents Day Blowout Sale in San Francisco, as all 2026 models MUST GO, with 0% APR financing and additional dealer cash. All kidding aside — or maybe not, since this is a Szymborski piece — the Giants were one of deadline’s the most aggressive sellers and they continued the trend yesterday by trading two more veterans to contending teams. Heading to the Yankees is outfielder Heliot Ramos, who has hit .264/.304/.424 with nine homers in 74 games this season, good for 0.7 WAR, down numbers compared to his 2025 and especially his All-Star 2024 season. Elsewhere in the AL East, the Red Sox acquired lefty reliever Erik Miller, who has a 2.76 ERA and a 3.34 FIP, with 12 strikeouts per nine alongside six walks; Boston also picked up minor league outfielder Carlos Gutierrez. Of course, the Giants didn’t help restock these division rivals out of the goodness of their hearts: they received infielder Marcelo Mayer from the Red Sox, and pitcher Henry Lalane and infielder Kaeden Kent from the Yankees.

Over the weekend, I wrote about the Yankees trading for Luis García Jr. to help bolster their lineup until they get Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton back healthy. Through the use of cry-laughing emojis in our company Slack, fellow FanGraphiér Jeff Zimmerman quite rightly noted my possible naïveté in having confidence that this particular result would actually come to pass. Whether or not the Yankees hacked my computer, received a telepathic message from Jeff, or (most likely) came to the same conclusion, they’ve hedged their bets on their veterans returning by picking up Ramos.

Early in his career, Ramos appeared to be a star in the making. That stardom seemed almost within reach in 2024, but his power didn’t continue to develop (just the opposite), and he turned out to be a rather middling defensive corner outfielder who couldn’t stick in center. Still, Ramos does do something well: He hits left-handed pitching. Indeed, even in a rather mediocre season, he’s gone after southpaws to the tune of a 127 wRC+. I think García was a necessary addition to the Yankees offense, but the team also needed someone who could tee off on lefties, which García doesn’t, and who has experience in the outfield. And while Ramos is certainly below average out there — his 2026 numbers have rebounded from his dreadful 2025, though they’re still slightly under water — he at least has experience playing in the outfield. In fact, if I’m being perfectly honest, he’s probably as valuable of a player overall as Stanton, albeit without the highlight reel, 120-mph home runs. Ramos isn’t a free agent until after the 2029 season, so unless he’s traded again, the Yankees will have him in the mix over the next few years, assuming they want to. Here’s his ZiPS projection:

If you told me six weeks ago that the Red Sox would be one of the hottest teams in baseball and would be buyers at the trade deadline, I would have been shocked beyond belief. After all, not only would you have had an actual time machine, but you would have been using it for the extremely unambitious task of telling me and my cats how teams played in July. The Red Sox went 21-4 last month, highlighted by a 15-game winning streak, the majors’ longest since the 2021 Cardinals rolled off 17 wins in a row. They entered Monday’s games with the second Wild Card spot in hand, a four-game cushion on the Guardians behind them, and a shopping list to improve the 2026 team. Their big move was acquiring Adley Rutschman from Baltimore, but that wasn’t all they did.

Boston’s bullpen certainly isn’t a weak spot; the relief corps currently leads baseball in both ERA and FIP. But as quesabirria should have shown you, great things can be made even greater. With Aroldis Chapman firmly reserved for the ninth inning, Jovani Morán was the only other lefty on the roster, and though I’m a fan of Tyler Samaniego as a relief option, there’s no question that a risk-averse playoff team would rather have Miller in October, even with the walks. Miller isn’t merely a rental, either; unless the free agency rules change this winter, the Red Sox have him cost-controlled for three more seasons after this one. Here’s the ZiPS:

Also going to Boston is Gutierrez, a smallish lefty outfielder who has the misfortune of being adequate in basically every way instead of having one standout tool to inspire scouts. He’ll draw a walk or two, and while his contact rate has dropped this year, he has generally displayed a pretty decent hit tool. He seems unlikely to really develop a whole lot of power, but he looks to me like a future fourth outfielder type. ZiPS throws out names like Jon Jay, Chris Duffy, Kerry Robinson, and Pookie Wilson (who is not related to Mookie Wilson, as far as I am aware) as comps. I kind of think of him as a poor man’s Steven Kwan. To the ZiPS!

As for the return, Marcelo Mayer sounds like a pretty big name to send to San Francisco in exchange for a solid-but-not-elite reliever. And it would have been… in 2024. However you choose to portion out the blame, Mayer has been hit with a number of injuries and, when healthy, has regressed from his 2024 form. While he’s still just 23 and could very well have a bright future, his phenom days are past, and if you suddenly gave him his prospect eligibility back by some weird authoritative fiat, he’d slot in far lower than the number-three ranking he earned on our updated 2024 Top 100. With Luis Arraez gone and Casey Schmitt almost certainly out until 2027, the path is clear for Mayer to take the second base job as soon as he’s recovered from the stress fracture in his forearm. His ZiPS:

In return for Ramos, the Giants picked up pitcher Henry Lalane and infielder Kaeden Kent.

Lalane is a big lefty with good offspeed stuff and a fastball with decent movement. The heater’s velocity has ticked up in recent months, going from the 93-95 mph range to 95-97 mph. He’s awfully old for a prospect in A-ball, but that’s due to shoulder problems that have kept him off the field. A lot of scouts see him as a future middle reliever, but I imagine that the Giants will wait to see if his breaking pitches develop further and how he fares at the upper levels. ZiPS broadly thinks Lalane has upside, though I don’t generally like publishing ZiPS seasonal lines for pitchers until they debut in Double-A since the error bars are so large.

Kent was a third-round pick for the Yankees in the 2025 draft who struggled in his professional debut, hitting .182/.217/.265 in 25 games last year. That wasn’t enough to keep him off our Yankees Top Prospects list, where he ranked 11th as a 40 FV. With the caveat that he’s a High-A repeater, he’s having a much better year in 2026, with a .302/.359/.433 slashline, good for a 107 wRC+. The Yankees have been playing him at shortstop, second, and third, so if he hits well after his high-stakes promotion to Double-A, he could at least enter the utility infield picture. A lefty hitter with a bit of power who can play anywhere on the infield is a useful role-player archetype to have. Kent’s ZiPS:

The Giants’ return for Ramos is less than what they got for Miller, but truth be told, there’s a good chance that Ramos was going to be a non-tender candidate before he hit free agency, barring a turnaround in his game.

Taken together, these trades form a tidy summary of the kind of move we typically see at the deadline. The days when you’d frequently see superstars with two months remaining on their deals fetch half a team’s farm system are now far off in the rearview mirror. Most deadline swaps make quiet-but-real incremental improvements, and that’s exactly what happened here. The Yankees get a useful outfielder who addresses a specific need. The Red Sox get a reliever who will be on their 2026 playoff roster in return for a player who was unlikely to be. And the Giants go about the yeoman’s work of converting a disappointing roster into younger players with plausible upside. None of the players acquired by the Giants are franchise-altering, but they didn’t have franchise-altering players on offer here. They accepted reality and acted accordingly, which is far better than sticking a giant inflatable gorilla on the roof and insisting that Ramos and Miller were only available at the dealership manager’s special price.