Reds Deepen Rotation With Zack Littell Three-Teamer, Dodgers Leave With Best Prospect

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:

• The Reds acquired Littell
• The Rays acquired right-handed pitcher Brian Van Belle from the Reds and catcher Hunter Feduccia from the Dodgers
• The Dodgers acquired left-handed pitcher Adam Serwinowski from the Reds, and catcher Ben Rortvedt and right-handed pitcher Paul Gervase from the Rays

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.

Littell’s addition is more about stability and depth than impact. When the Reds rotation is fully healthy (Hunter Greene has made two rehab starts in the last eight days, and threw 50 pitches in his most recent one), it’s likely Littell will be shifted back into the bullpen and would be relegated to long relief duty if the Reds make the playoffs. Still, this trade makes Cincinnati’s rotation much more stable for the rest of the season, as Littell is a much safer and more experienced option than some of the other candidates to start if one of the team’s best five guys were to deal with injury between now and the end of the season.

Giving up Serwinowski (especially) and Van Belle (who I’ll address later) is a steep price to pay for a rental of this sort, unless you think Serwinowski is going to be a reliever. Is money a factor here as well? Littel is on a $5.7 million deal, and despite my efforts to pry the specifics of who’s paying what part of whose contract out of my sources, it’s either above their pay grade or they’ve been too busy stoking the hot stove to respond to me. I ask the questions because while the Rays gave up the trade’s lone established big leaguer in Littell, I think it’s the Dodgers who walked away with the best prospect.

Serwinowski is a 6-foot-5, 21-year-old lefty in his third full season of pro ball. He had a 4.84 ERA, 27.7% strikeout rate, and 11.7% walk rate in 74.1 innings at High-A Dayton at the time of the trade. Though it only has average velocity, Serwinowski’s fastball plays like a plus pitch thanks to its riding life and his nearly seven feet of extension. He shares mechanical similarities with Yusei Kikuchi and Kyle Freeland, with perhaps an even more deliberately short arm action than either of those two. Serwinowski’s heaters will sit 92-95 mph throughout the entirety of his starts, and he can rip 94-97 in short bursts. He also features a plus 77-84 mph slider with big two-plane arc. He can land it in the zone for strikes but is less skilled at locating it for chase.

This is the foundation of a nasty lefty reliever with a mid-rotation starter’s right tail outcome. Things haven’t come together for him quite as quickly as I hoped when Serwinowski was a Pick to Click last year (the team source who thought he’d click worked for the Dodgers), but he’s still developing. The changeup/splitter projection here is tough. Serinowski’s ultra-short arm action is less fluid than that of pitchers who tend to have positive long-term changeup development, and he’s only throwing it roughly 5% of the time this season. Serwinowski’s slider plays as a bat-misser to the back foot of righties, and he doesn’t necessarily need a changeup to act as a platoon-neutralizing finisher as much as he just needs a distinct third pitch to give hitters something else to think about. Perhaps that’ll eventually be a cutter. He’s also been deployed with the workload training wheels on for the last two years and has only exceeded five innings in a single start once. If he eventually has to downshift into the bullpen, we’re talking about a good setup man. Serwinowski has two future plus pitches and is comfortably on pace to work a big league starter’s load of innings by the time he has to be put on the 40-man roster during the 2026-27 offseason.

The second rookie-eligible player the Dodgers scooped up here is Gervase, an enormous 6-foot-10 righty who was drafted by the Mets and traded to Tampa Bay at the 2024 deadline for Tyler Zuber. He’s struck out a little over 15 per 9 IP the last couple of years thanks mostly to deception rather than stuff, as despite his size, he has a 5-foot-4 release height and generates nearly seven-and-a-half feet of extension. It makes Gervase’s fastball a nightmare in on the hands of righties and means his heater plays like a comfortably plus pitch even though it has average velocity. Gervase’s slider and cutter lack consistency because of his poor control. His fastball works in such a way that he can just bully the strike zone and get away with it because of its secondary traits, but that’s not true of his other stuff. It wouldn’t be wild to suggest that a 6-foot-10 25-year-old hasn’t totally grown into his body, and that Gervase will be able to find another grade of command and root himself into a consistent role. For now, he looks like an up/down reliever; he has all three option years left.

Paul Gervase (@thestateliners '21) pitched 2?? perfect innings for the @DurhamBulls on Friday night and struck out 4??

In 12 appearances, @PaulGervase1 has 24 K's in 17 IP@RaysPlayerDev | @LSUbaseball pic.twitter.com/LYls7jP6dq

— Appalachian League (@AppyLeague) May 10, 2025

The Dodgers also acquired Rortvedt, a 27-year-old lefty-hitting catcher who was DFA’d at the end of May and outrighted to Triple-A Durham; he assumes Feduccia’s role as their third catcher without occupying a 40-man roster spot. Feduccia, who I’ll talk about shortly, began the year behind Will Smith and Austin Barnes and has since been passed by Dalton Rushing. He’s a better option than Rortvedt would be if something were to befall one of Rushing or Smith, but dealing Feduccia to access the immediate depth Gervase provides, plus Serwinowski’s upside, feels like a good trade for the Dodgers. I have to assume that picking up the tab on Rortvedt was part of this, and maybe some of Littel’s remaining salary as well (again, none of my sources know).

The Rays have played musical chairs with their catchers this month and now have four of them on their 40-man roster: incumbents Matt Thaiss and Logan Driscoll, and now Nick Fortes (acquired from Miami this week) and Feduccia. I’ve had a backup catcher grade on Feduccia for a while now. He’s a fairly well-rounded defensive backstop with above-average bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He made his big league debut last year but only played in five games, and he’s boxed out of reps in LA due to the Smith/Rushing combo.

On offense, Feduccia’s profile has shifted a bit this season based on my notes. I had him as a high-ball hitter during the offseason, but this year, he’s looked more like a classic low-ball lefty swinger. He’s in his physical prime and his best swings are pretty powerful. If we’re looking at the big league catcher population and trying to ballpark where Feduccia fits among this group, I think you can start making an argument for him in the 30-40 range.

On defense, Feduccia allowed over 100 stolen bases in each of 2023 and 2024 at an 80-85% success rate. His exchange takes a little too long to execute, and a lot of his throws are too high above the bag for a tag to be applied quickly. His is otherwise a very good defender, as his pitch framing and ball-blocking are both plus. He should form the lefty-hitting half of a catching tandem in Tampa during the next few years.

Finally, Van Belle is a 28-year-old strike-throwing backend starter who makes heavy use of his plus changeup. Van Belle really only played one full college season because he went to a JUCO as a freshman and his draft year was the pandemic season. He was an undrafted free agent of the Red Sox, who promoted him pretty conservatively during his first three pro seasons. His contract was selected in June but he didn’t get into a game, and he didn’t seem to be part of Boston’s long-term plans, as the team DFA’d him and jettisoned him for cash a few days later.

Van Belle can really pitch, and his changeup has enough action to fool hitters even when it’s in the zone. The rest of his repertoire is below average, but he throws everything for strikes at a roughly 70% clip, which is incredible. He’ll likely serve as one of Tampa Bay’s depth starters next year and should pitch on the fringe of big league rotations for the next several. Even though they didn’t get the best pure prospect in this deal, netting one oft-used role player (Feduccia) and adding stable pitching depth (Van Belle) isn’t a bad return for a few months of Littell.