You Get a Reliever and You Get a Reliever and…

We’re barreling toward the trade deadline, which means it’s time for teams to decide if they’re in, out, or Tampa Bay. After picking which of those categories they fit into, the next move is obvious. In? Trade for a reliever. Out? Trade away your relievers. Tampa Bay? Make 10 moves, with more moving parts than you can possibly imagine. All of those types were on display this weekend, so let’s round up some reliever trades.

The Brewers and Rockies got the party started with a simple swap: Nick Mears to the Brewers, Bradley Blalock and Yujanyer Herrera to the Rockies. This one is basically what you’d expect from a deadline deal. The Brewers need relief help; they have nine pitchers on the IL, and while they just got Devin Williams back, they lost Bryan Hudson to injury earlier this week. It’s been an uphill battle to fill innings in Milwaukee this year. Mears slots right into the middle of the bullpen, helping to lengthen the number of innings the Brewers can cover with high octane arms. The Brewers have the fewest innings pitched by starters this year, so that depth really matters.

By ERA, Mears isn’t having a good year. His 5.56 mark is the worst of his career, and he’s been the fourth or fifth arm out of a pretty bad unit. He doesn’t seem like an impact get. But pretty much everything other than his ERA suggests that better days are ahead.

Compiling a 2.60 FIP as a Rockie is a spectacular feat. Mears has done it with a great big raftload of strikeouts; his 28.1% strikeout rate is the highest of his career. His 10.3% walk rate isn’t good, but it’s good for him; he came into the year with a career 15.4% mark across parts of four major league seasons. That FIP probably flatters him too much – imagine the kind of luck you have to allow only a 4.2% HR/FB rate while playing home games at Coors Field – but the strikeouts are undoubtedly real.

His fastball is the kind of pitch you can lean on – its velocity sits 95-96 mph, tops out at 99, and he throws it with almost pure backspin. He likes to work the glove side corner with the pitch, and this year he’s had good command of it. It might be the best fastball on the Brewers’ whole team right away, depending on how you feel about Trevor Megill’s similar offering. He complements that heater with a gyro slider and a 12-6 curveball, which means that all of his offerings work vertically off of each other. He uses his slider as an out pitch, saving it for advantageous counts and tunneling it off of his fastball, and the whole package works well together.

I think that Mears is one of Milwaukee’s better relievers today. It could get better than that, too, because the Brewers have historically been excellent at unlocking extra performance in relievers they target. Mears hasn’t even reached arbitration yet; if he’s as good as I think he is, he might be part of Milwaukee’s late-inning crew for three more years after this one.

To get Mears, the Brewers gave up two pitchers of their own. Blalock has spent most of the year starting in Double-A, where he lives off of his good-shape fastball. That’s his best pitch by far; a vertical release point and good arm action mean that it has plus vertical movement. It’s also pretty much all he has; he works a splitter off of it, but when the chips are on the table, he’s pretty much fastball only. Eric Longenhagen thinks that his profile would work best in a long relief role, where that fastball reliance would be less of a liability, but given that the Rockies aren’t competing right now, they’ll probably give him more time to develop a good secondary pitch while starting in the minors.

Yujanyer Herrera, a new entrant to The Board, is an interesting addition from Colorado’s side. I’ll just give you Eric’s notes directly here:

Herrera is going to be a starter, and even though he’s just about to turn 21 he’s a pretty good bet to be put on the 40-man this offseason. He’s up to 98 but sitting 93-95 with both a two- and four-seam fastball that help one another play due to their distinct movement. His best pitch is a two-plane slider in the 83-87 mph range, and he also has a cutter. Herrera is listed at 175 pounds but is closer to 240. He’s graceful for his size and has lovely touch and feel command of his fastballs and slider. While he’s definitely less projectable than the typical 20-year-old pitcher, Herrera is very advanced and is a high-probability no. 4/5 starter.

I like this return for Mears quite a bit. I think either pitcher on his own wouldn’t quite be enough, but getting two borderline starters increases the chances of seeing one of them stick. Whether he was miscast in Colorado or not, Mears simply wasn’t moving the needle for this team. The Rockies got a return that’s commensurate with his underlying statistics, not his ERA, and for that I say good job.

Oh, you want more reliever trades? I’ve got more reliever trades. The Phillies didn’t rest on their bullpen laurels after sending away Seranthony Domínguez to the Orioles on Friday. They went out and added a replacement arm, acquiring Carlos Estévez from the Angels in exchange for George Klassen and Samuel Aldegheri.

Estévez is in the middle of his best season as a pro. He showed bat-missing upside in his previous year with the Angels, but the extra strikeouts came with some serious command issues. This year, he’s eliminated the walks almost completely, and he’s given up shockingly few home runs to boot. The result is a shiny ERA (2.38) and excellent FIP (2.85), neither of which feels like a true representation of his talent. I think he’s more of a 3.50-4.00 ERA guy when the homers even out, but the Phillies are treating him like he’s better than that. We’ve penciled him in as a co-closer for the moment.

The Angels got two intriguing prospects. Klassen is particularly interesting, and again, here’s Eric Longenhagen’s unabridged description:

Klassen has developed from a hard-throwing sideshow into a high-upside mid-minors starter in about a year under Philly tutelage. He walked nearly a batter per inning in his draft year at Minnesota but coasted through A-ball with fewer walks in his first pro season. He had a sub-1.00 WHIP at the moment he was traded to Anaheim and has improved his control while also adding a cutter and improving his curveball. Klassen is probably still going to be a reliever in the end; his delivery requires a ton of effort and violence to produce upper-90s heat, and he throws a ton of non-competitive pitches. But improving his breaking stuff (his power curveball is now comfortably plus) and adding a third pitch (his 90-92 mph cutter probably will be eventually, too) is a huge one-year leap for Klassen to have made when there were times in his draft spring when Klassen looked awful. Currently in that tier of talent just behind the Top 100 overall prospects because he’s still a little too wild, Klassen has mid-rotation upside if he can hone his command and late-inning relief probability if he can’t.

Aldegheri isn’t far behind Klassen in terms of likely outcome. He’s a three-pitch lefty who works off of a good-movement, bad-velo fastball, 91-94 with plenty of induced vertical break. He spots a good slider and an interesting changeup off of it, throws everything from a deceptive delivery, and commands everything well. He annihilated High-A hitters this year and had just earned a promotion to Double-A when he got traded. Lack of velocity likely means he’s a low-ceiling option, but he’s a likely major league contributor either way.

That’s a huge return for Estévez, at least in my estimation. He’s headed to free agency after this year, and he’s hardly been dominant, even in his best year. He does have power stuff, and you can certainly dream on his slider in particular, but I think that both prospects the Angels got back are better than either guy the Rockies did, and I have Mears and Estévez about equal in expected performance this year, never mind the three extra years of team control afterward.

But wait, there’s one more reliever trade to talk about in this article. The Rays are Rays’ing it up all over the place this deadline, and they got in on the act by dealing Jason Adam to the Padres in exchange for Dylan Lesko, Homer Bush Jr., and J.D. Gonzalez. Jay Jaffe covered some of Tampa Bay’s other shenanigans, so I’ll focus on this trade in particular here.

Adam is a great high-leverage reliever, definitely the best of the trio of relievers involved in these trades. He throws three excellent pitches: His four-seamer boasts both good shape and good velocity, he spins a sweeper against righties, and his changeup helps him befuddle lefties. He’s actually posted small reverse splits in his career. That versatility means he isn’t stuck facing same-handed batters in big spots. He’s going to be San Diego’s chief setup man, and he’s perfectly capable of filling in as a closer if Robert Suarez needs a day off or gets hurt.

Adam is 32, but he debuted old and just hit arbitration for the first time this year. That means the Padres will get him for 2025 and ’26 as well. It’s always difficult to work out how age-related decline works for relievers, and late debuts are also tough to figure out, so I’m not giving a ton of weight to those extra years, but they’re certainly not worthless. Meanwhile, the San Diego bullpen looks downright excellent now: Suarez in big spots, Adam and Jeremiah Estrada behind him, and plenty of depth after that. I love the move for the Padres given the construction of their team; it feels like a reasonable place to add given the cost and the fact that the value of relievers gets magnified in the playoffs. Maybe the Padres could use starting pitching more in the regular season, but they’re planning on getting some veterans back by October, which might put a squeeze on playing time for any starters acquired at the deadline. A top-tier reliever is the way to go here, in my mind.

The Rays got quite a bit in return for Adam. Lesko is the big name here, and rightfully so. He was the fourth-ranked prospect in the San Diego organization and landed at no. 76 on our preseason Top 100 list. He’s as high-variance as they come; he was a first round pick in 2022, but didn’t debut until late in ’23 because he blew out his elbow before the draft and missed a year getting Tommy John surgery. He would have been an even higher pick if he’d been healthy, and his late-’23 professional debut looked plenty intriguing.

This year has, to put it mildly, been a disappointment. His ERA and FIP both start with a 6, and he’s had huge control problems. His placement on our preseason list reflected hope that he’d dial in his command with a few more starts under his belt, and that hasn’t happened. Eric is also concerned about the shape of his plus curveball; it doesn’t fit well with the rest of his arsenal, reminding Eric of Lucas Giolito’s curveball and me of Matthew Liberatore’s. You can read the rest of Eric and Travis Ice’s writeup here.

Bush and Gonzalez are just throw-ins on this one. Bush is a speed-and-defense center fielder with essentially zero power. He projects as a fourth outfielder and defensive replacement who will wreak havoc on the basepaths when he gets on. The Rays have tried their fair share of speed-first prospects in recent years without much luck, and I think he fits right into that category.

Gonzalez is kind of a reverse Bush in that he’s incredibly raw but has some nice tools. He was a third round pick in last year’s draft and the overall profile is one I love: a catcher with a strong arm and a pretty swing. Those two traits have only come out intermittently, though, and he’s struggled mightily at Single-A Lake Elsinore this year. He’s only 18, and catcher development is notoriously unpredictable, so he’s more of a flier than anything else, but he might be a pretty good one. Both he and Bush received 35+ grades in our Padres writeup; they’re interesting players with clear risks, the kinds of players the Rays love to add as throw-ins in deals where they’re targeting someone else. From San Diego’s side, I completely understand adding them in to finish the deal; Lesko’s value is down right now because he’s having a bad year, so the Padres threw in some extras because they really wanted to add a reliever. I think Tampa Bay just did a good job finding a few extra pieces they could extract in a deal that mostly gave both sides what they wanted.

If these three trades are indicative of how the market for relievers will develop, I have one thing to say: Sell your relievers. I like a lot of the prospects who got traded here. This year’s crop of tradeable relievers is thin, which helps to explain the surprising returns, but that’s just explaining the why, and if I were a team, I’d be focusing on the what: What will you give me for my solid bullpen arm? The answer appears to be “intriguing starting pitcher prospects,” a class of player that no one can get enough of. The Marlins are no doubt salivating at these trades; they have four or five relievers they could trade even after dealing A.J. Puk, and Tanner Scott is the best arm available. It’s going to be a fun deadline for sellers.