Who Needs Sellers, Anyway? Orioles, Phillies Swap Hays for Domínguez and Pache

Count me among those who worried that, with about 12 teams in the National League playoff hunt in the week before the trade deadline, there might not be enough sellers to kickstart a trade market. Well, the Philadelphia Phillies — who have the best record in baseball — and the Baltimore Orioles — who are tied for the best record in the American League — have come together and said, “To heck with all that.”

The Orioles are sending outfielder Austin Hays north in exchange for reliever Seranthony Domínguez and outfielder Cristian Pache. This being a transaction between Baltimore and Philadelphia, I assume there’s a quantity of Old Bay changing hands in the deal, but how much is as yet unspecified.

An exchange of three major leaguers between two first-place teams? Hallelujah, a challenge trade!

Hays, 29, was an All-Star last year, and is hitting .255/.316/.395 in 63 games this season. It’s a bit of a step back for a guy who was about an average left fielder with high-teens home run power for the past three seasons. But with Anthony Santander having the best season of his career, and with the emergence of Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad, outfield playing time is pretty hard to come by in Baltimore anymore. (Possibly of interest only to me: Between this deal and the trade of Mike Baumann to Seattle two months ago, the Orioles have now entirely liquidated what was once the league’s greatest collection of third-round picks from Jacksonville University.)

The Phillies have long been in the market for an outfielder. The only real weak spot for Philadelphia is center field. Johan Rojas is a dynamite defender and can outrun his own shadow, but he’s hitting .231/.268/.295 and has never really shown much offensive promise. Brandon Marsh is a very good defensive left fielder but a little short of ideal in center, and at any rate, the Phillies don’t have another left fielder who can hit if they slide Marsh over. That was supposed to be Whit Merrifield, but we all know how that experiment went.

As deep as the Phillies are, and have been, on offense, they’ve long been in need of a right-handed bench bat who could spell either Marsh or Rojas when the team needed a run late in games. Jake Cave, it bears repeating, made the last out of the Phillies’ season last year. Hays fills that need. He’s not a star by any means, but he doesn’t need to be.

This trade might disappoint Phillies fans who have spent the past two months trying to come up with a punny Wolf Pack-style nickname for a Luis Robert Jr. fan club. The Phillies might make another move in the outfield, or they might not. But trading for Hays doesn’t impact their need for a player like Robert — or their ability to acquire one — in the slightest.

Hays might occasionally start in left alongside Marsh in center, but he’s actually a perfect complement for the Phillies’ soggiest and most hirsute starter:

So while Hays ought to do wonders for the Phillies as a fourth outfielder and platoon starter, the need in center field remains. Moreover, neither team really gave up anything they’re going to miss.

Domínguez is basically the Austin Hays of relief pitchers. Once the Phillies’ closer of the future, Domínguez had been in the organization since 2011, and this season he broke into the top 20 in career relief appearances in franchise history. But this Phillies lifer had fallen down the pecking order over the past two seasons. At the time of the trade, Domínguez was sixth among current Phillies relievers in average leverage index.

Not only has he trickled down the depth chart like Hays, the two players have similar contract statuses. Hays makes $6.3 million this year, with one season of arbitration remaining. Domínguez, who’s also 29, makes $4.25 million this year — $3.65 million against the CBT — with an $8 million club option for 2025.

In the best bullpen in the National League, Domínguez might be a low-leverage guy. Baltimore’s bullpen is also among the best in the game in the aggregate, but the Orioles don’t have anyone who’s been as dominant as Jeff Hoffman and Matt Strahm, or Orion Kerkering. Baltimore’s closer, Craig Kimbrel, was arguably Philadelphia’s least trustworthy reliever last season.

Part of the problem for Domínguez is that his sinker, one of the hardest in baseball, just hasn’t been working for him the past year or so. He’s compensated by throwing his slider more, and his results on that pitch have been good — a 37.6% whiff rate and a .249 opponent wOBA on 40% usage in 2024 — but a lot of little things have gone wrong for Domínguez this year. His strand rate is way down, he’s letting opponents put the ball in the air more, and when they do, he’s giving up more home runs.

But at the end of the day, this is a guy who throws two different fastballs that can hit 100 mph and has a plus slider. If he goes to Baltimore and changes absolutely nothing, he’ll probably do better than his current 4.75 ERA, and he’ll throw medium-leverage innings in the playoffs for the Orioles. But if the Orioles can get him back to where he was in 2022, when his sinker was his best pitch instead of a liability, there’s the potential for much, much more.

The third player in the trade, Pache, has been a name since he was a prospect in the Braves’ system. He’s always dazzled defensively, but the A’s (who acquired him in the Matt Olson deal) and then the Phillies (who traded for him last spring) have held out hope that he’d hit enough to justify having his glove out there, only to come away disappointed. For most of the past 12 months, the Phillies carried both Pache and Rojas — two all-glove right-handed center fielders — on a four-man bench, which never made sense to me for an instant. If the Phillies had made any move for a position player, Pache was probably first in line not only to lose his spot on the 26-man roster, but to get DFA’d. Adding him to the trade merely gives the Orioles right of first refusal for a player who probably would’ve ended up on waivers.

With that said, he could be useful. The Orioles have enough punch in their lineup that they won’t need Pache to hit, and with Cedric Mullins’ range on the decline, Baltimore doesn’t have a defensive outfielder of Pache’s caliber. (I just checked, Enrique Bradfield Jr. is still in A-ball.) Maybe he’ll stick as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement, but if not, it’s no big deal.

Both teams will probably want to make further additions in their pursuit of a World Series title, but for the Friday before the deadline, it makes sense to shuffle pieces around in pursuit of more modest gains. Hays, Domínguez, and Pache will have a few days to reach their new teams — and it might take that long, shore traffic in Delaware being what it is on Friday afternoons in the summer — while the Phillies and Orioles can recalibrate before making their next moves.