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Angels Designate Jordyn Adams, Eric Wagaman For Assignment

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The Angels made a couple changes to their 40-man roster on Tuesday. Los Angeles designated outfielder Jordyn Adams and infielder Eric Wagaman for assignment. That opens a pair of 40-man roster spots for infielder Matthew Lugo and left-hander Jack Dashwood, both of whom are now ineligible for next month’s Rule 5 Draft.

Adams, 25, is perhaps the most well-known of the group. He was the 17th overall pick in the 2018 draft. The Halos bet on his speed and power potential, but the bat hasn’t progressed as hoped. Adams has a middling .252/.333/.377 batting line over six minor league seasons. That includes a .261/.333/.386 showing across 549 Triple-A plate appearances this year. That’s well below-average production in the Pacific Coast League. Adams has appeared in 28 big league games over the last two seasons, hitting .176 with a near-36% strikeout rate in sporadic playing time.

Wagaman had a nice season in the upper minors. Selected out of the Yankees organization in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft, he hit .274/.339/.469 between Double-A and Triple-A. That earned Wagaman, an Orange County native, a cup of coffee with the Halos. He hit a pair of homers with a .250/.270/.403 slash in 18 games. As a 27-year-old rookie who has never had much prospect fanfare, he had an uphill battle to holding his 40-man roster spot all winter.

Lugo, 23, is a former second-round pick of the Red Sox. He went unselected in last year’s Rule 5 before a breakout showing in the minors. The Puerto Rico native hit .287/.376/.578 with 17 homers in 79 games between the top two minor league levels. He’s one of four players the Angels acquired in the deadline deal sending veteran reliever Luis García to the Sox. Two others, Niko Kavadas and Ryan Zeferjahn, already made their MLB debuts late last season. Lugo could join them in Anaheim next year.

Dashwood, who turned 27 this week, was a 12th-round pick out of UC Santa Barbara in 2019. The 6’6″ southpaw spent most of this season on the minor league injured list. He ran a 15:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 10 innings at the Double-A level and punched out 17 batters in 10 frames during the Arizona Fall League. The Halos were concerned that another team would skip him past Triple-A and jump him to the majors, so they’ll give him a roster spot. He’ll probably open next year in the Triple-A bullpen.

Red Sox To Select Hunter Dobbins, Jhostynxon Garcia

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The Red Sox are adding a pair of players to their 40-man roster ahead of tonight’s Rule 5 protection deadline. Right-hander Hunter Dobbins is having his contract selected, per Christopher Smith of MassLive.com. The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier adds that Boston will also select outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia. Those are the only two players the Sox are adding, per Speier. They’ll need to open a pair of 40-man spots in order to make them official.

Boston selected Dobbins, now 25, with their eighth-round pick in 2021. He started 21 Double-A games and another four in Triple-A this past season, logging a combined 3.08 ERA with a 22.9% strikeout rate and 9.2% walk rate. Dobbins was the organization’s minor league starting pitcher of the season and ended the year ranked 26th among the team’s farmhands, per Baseball America. He’s 93-94 mph with his heater on average and pairs the pitch with a slider, splitter and curveball.

The 21-year-old Garcia (first name pronounced yos-TIN-son) split this past season between Low-A, High-A and Double-A. He laid waste to pitchers at the former levels (.258/.365/.517, five homers in 104 plate appearances in Low-A; .311/.371/.627, 16 homers in 229 plate appearances in High-A) before posting more modest results at the most advanced of his three stops (.263/.320/.386, two homes in 126 plate appearances).

Garcia is a power-over-hit prospect who’s played center field but seems likelier to settle into a corner. He walked in just 7.2% of his plate appearances this season against a 21.7% strikeout rate. That marks an improvement over the 30.4% strikeout rate he logged in 2022 and the 25.5% mark he posted in 2023, but the increased contact has come at the expense of his formerly plus walk rates.

Reds Select Tyler Callihan, Luis Mey

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The Reds announced that they have selected infielder/outfielder Tyler Callihan and right-hander Luis Mey to their 40-man roster, protecting both players from being selected in next month’s Rule 5 draft. The 40-man roster count climbs to 39.

Callihan, 25 in June, was a third-round pick of the Reds in 2019. Due to the pandemic and Tommy John surgery in 2021, he didn’t play much in the years following his draft. He is coming off a season in which he posted some pretty strong numbers. He got into 73 games this year, 69 of those in Double-A and four in Triple-A. In that time, he slashed .276/.359/.429 for a wRC+ of 133.

Given his small amount of experience at the top minor league level, he will probably head back to that level next year. He has experience at the three non-shortstop infield positions and left field as well, so he can give the club some depth at a variety of spots around the diamond.

Mey, 23, has great stuff but hasn’t really been able to harness it yet. Over the past four years, he has thrown 123 2/3 innings with a 4.66 earned run average. He struck out 26.1% of batters faced in that time and got plenty of ground balls but also walked 17.5% of batters faced.

He has yet to reach Triple-A and has just 19 Double-A appearances. Given that and his lack of control, he seems to be a bit of a long-term project for the Reds. If they can develop him in the coming years, he could factor into their big league bullpen down the line.

Mets Acquire Jose Siri

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The Mets and Rays announced a one-for-one trade sending outfielder Jose Siri to New York for reliever Eric Orze. Both players were on their teams’ 40-man roster, so the trade doesn’t have any impact on tonight’s Rule 5 protection deadline.

Siri, 29, spent two and a half seasons in Tampa Bay. The Rays acquired him from the Astros in a three-team trade at the 2022 deadline. Siri has been Kevin Cash’s primary center fielder going back to the start of the ’23 season. He connected on 25 home runs in only 364 plate appearances that year. While the power was enough to make Siri a productive player, he hit .222 with a .267 on-base percentage.

Those already poor marks fell even further in 2024. Siri hit .187/.255/.366 in a career-high 448 plate appearances. He popped another 18 homers but ranked last in OBP among the 207 hitters with at least 400 trips to the plate. Only Mitch Garver had a lower batting average. Since the start of the ’23 season, Siri owns a .203/.260/.424 batting line.

An extreme free swinger, Siri has issues making contact against pitches both within and outside the zone. He went down on strikes at a massive 37.9% rate this year and has fanned in nearly 36% of his career plate appearances. Siri strikes out far too often to be a consistently effective hitter, but he has 20+ homer potential at the bottom of a lineup.

More importantly, Siri has elite athleticism that makes him one of the best defensive players in baseball. He’s a top-of-the-scale runner with elite arm strength. Siri has posted excellent numbers for his glovework in center field. Defensive Runs Saved credited him as 12 runs above average in a little over 1000 innings this past season. Statcast was even more bullish, rating him 15 runs above par. By measure of Statcast’s Outs Above Average, Siri was tied for second with Cardinals rookie Michael Siani among outfielders in defensive value. Only Washington’s Jacob Young narrowly surpassed him. Brenton Doyle and Daulton Varsho are the only outfielders with more Outs Above Average since the start of 2023.

Siri probably slots behind Tyrone Taylor on New York’s center field depth chart. Both players are right-handed hitters, so they don’t make for a natural platoon. Taylor has much better contact skills than Siri brings to the table. He’s coming off a solid .248/.299/.401 showing in his first year as a Met.

There are clear parallels between Siri and Harrison Bader, to whom the Mets gave 437 plate appearances this year. They’re each fantastic defensive outfielders with some power but subpar on-base skills. Bader is again a free agent after playing on a $10.5MM deal. Siri is much more affordable. He’s in his first of three arbitration seasons and is projected for a $2.3MM salary (courtesy of MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz). If the Mets again find themselves in the top tier of luxury tax penalization, they’ll pay roughly $2.53MM in taxes on top of that salary. They control him through the 2027 campaign.

While Siri remained affordable, the Rays were evidently prepared to move on because of his lackluster offense. Their only other player who got an extended look in center field this year was Jonny DeLuca. Acquired from the Dodgers in the Tyler Glasnow trade, DeLuca hit just .217/.278/.331 in his first extended MLB look. He’s nearly as fast as Siri and could be a plus defensive center fielder in his own right, but he doesn’t bring much offensive juice.

While Dylan Carlson once looked like a potential everyday center fielder in St. Louis, his bat has never developed as hoped. Josh Lowe is probably better suited in a corner, though he could theoretically move back to center if the Rays add another bat or want to play Christopher Morel and Richie Palacios in the corner outfield on a regular basis.

As they look to sort out center field, the Rays add to their bullpen depth. Orze, 27, was a fifth-round pick in the shortened 2020 draft. His only big league experience consists of two games for the Mets in July. He was blown up in that limited look, surrendering four runs in 1 2/3 innings.

The 6’4″ righty had a solid year at Triple-A Syracuse. He tossed 61 2/3 innings of 2.92 ERA ball, striking out nearly a third of opponents behind an excellent 15.4% swinging strike rate. Orze walked more than 12% of batters faced and has struggled with his command throughout his pro career. That could relegate him to a middle relief role. Orze uses his changeup as his primary pitch and sits in the 93-94 MPH range with his fastball. He barely has any major league service and can be optioned for another two seasons, so he’ll likely bounce between Tampa Bay and Triple-A Durham on multiple occasions over the next couple years.

Anthony DiComo of MLB.com first reported the terms of the trade. Images courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Cardinals Add Four Players To 40-Man Roster, Outright Drew Rom

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The Cardinals announced Tuesday that they’ve selected the contracts of outfielder Matt Koperniak and right-handers Tink Hence, Tekoah Roby and Matt Svanson. The team added that left-hander Drew Rom went unclaimed on waivers and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Memphis. The Cardinals now have 39 players on their 40-man roster.

Of today’s additions, Hence is the most highly regarded. The 22-year-old finished the season as a consensus top-100 prospect, placing as high as 30th on Baseball America’s rankings and also landing 46th at FanGraphs and 61st at MLB.com. He spent 2024, his age-21 season, pitching at the Double-A level, where he logged a 2.71 ERA in an abbreviated workload.

Hence started just 20 games on the season, tallying 79 2/3 innings while missing nearly all of June and July. The Cardinals didn’t specify the nature of his injury, but Hence departed his June 5 start after two innings, returned to pitch one inning on June 23, and then didn’t return to the mound until July 27. Hence’s season came to an end after he was lifted from a Sept. 11 start following just 1 1/3 innings.

Even with the truncated year, Hence remains one of the minor leagues’ most promising young arms. He set down a whopping 34.1% of hitters on strikes in 2024 and showed average or better command, with an 8.1% walk rate. Hence sits mid-90s with a heater that can climb to 98-99 mph, rounding out his repertoire with one of the best changeups in the minors and a solid slider. There are some durability concerns even beyond this past summer, as he’s yet to reach 100 frames in any season of his professional career. Still, he’s teeming with upside, and his Double-A success could open the door for a big league debut later in 2025 if he can stay healthy.

Roby, 23, has drawn his share of top-100 fanfare as well, though his stock dipped amid shaky results and injury troubles of his own in 2024. FanGraphs ranked him 91th in the game at season’s end, but he’d fallen off most other prominent rankings. The 2020 third-rounder, selected by the Rangers and traded to the Cards in the Jordan Montgomery swap, pitched just 38 1/3 innings with a 6.57 ERA between High-A and Double-A in ’24.

Roby has posted middling ERA numbers in his career but regularly logged impressive rate stats and garnered attention from scouts due to plus raw stuff across the board — headlined by his curveball. Roby needs to improve his command and prove he can handle a starter’s workload, as he’s a bit undersized at 6’1″ and has never reached 105 innings in a pro season.

The 26-year-old Koperniak signed with the Cards as an undrafted free agent in the summer of 2020, following that year’s five-round amateur draft. He spent the whole 2024 season in Triple-A, where he hit .309/.370/.512 with 20 homers, 28 doubles, three triples, five steals, an 8.4% walk rate and an 18.7% strikeout rate. He played all three outfield spots but spent the bulk of his time in left field.

Svanson, 26 in January, was acquired from the Blue Jays in the trade sending Paul DeJong to Toronto. He spent the 2024 season working out of the Double-A bullpen, where he logged 63 2/3 innings of 2.69 ERA ball with a 20.8% strikeout rate, 8.8% walk rate and 52.7% ground-ball rate. He’ll presumably head to Triple-A early in 2025 and is a candidate for a look in the big leagues as soon as this coming season.

Rom, who’ll turn 25 in a few weeks, was acquired from the Orioles in the ’23 trade sending Jack Flaherty to Baltimore. He struggled through eight starts with the Cardinals in 2023, yielding an 8.02 ERA, but missed the entire 2024 season following arthroscopic shoulder surgery. Since he’s already cleared waivers, Rom will stick with the club as a depth option for the upcoming season. He hasn’t had any big league success yet, but he had the look of a potential back-of-the-rotation starter in the Orioles’ system before the shoulder injury ruined his 2024 season.

12 Players Decline Qualifying Offers

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Twelve of the 13 qualified free agents have declined the QO, tweets Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. The exception was Nick Martinez, who accepted the $21.05MM offer from the Reds over the weekend.

The players who rejected the offer:

There wasn’t much intrigue by the time this afternoon’s deadline officially rolled around. Martinez, Pivetta and perhaps Severino were the only players who seemed like they’d consider the QO. All three made their decisions fairly early in the 15-day window that they had to weigh the offer.

All 12 players who declined the QO have a case for at least a three-year contract. Soto is looking at the biggest deal (in terms of net present value) in MLB history. Burnes, Fried, Adames, Bregman, Alonso and potentially Santander could land nine figures. Severino, Manaea, Hernández and Pivetta look like they’ll land three- or four-year deals. Walker could get to three years as well, though it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if his age limits him to a two-year pact at a high average annual value.

A team that signs these players will take a hit to its draft stock and potentially its bonus pool slot for international amateurs. The penalties vary depending on the team’s revenue sharing status and whether they exceeded the luxury tax threshold in 2024. MLBTR’s Mark Polishuk covered the forfeitures for every team last month. A team would not forfeit a pick to re-sign its own qualified free agent, though it would lose the right to collect any kind of compensation.

If these players walk, their former teams will receive an extra draft pick. The Brewers, Orioles and Diamondbacks are in line for the highest compensation as revenue sharing recipients. If their players sign elsewhere for at least $50MM (a virtual lock in the cases of Burnes, Santander and Adames), the compensation pick would fall after the first round of next year’s draft. If the player signs for less than $50MM — which could be the case if Walker is limited to two years — the compensation pick would land before the start of the third round (roughly 70th overall).

The Red Sox neither received revenue sharing nor paid the competitive balance tax. They’ll get a pick before the third round if Pivetta walks regardless of the value of his contract. The Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, Braves and Astros all paid the tax in 2024. They’ll get a pick after the fourth round if any of their players depart — potentially three picks, in the Mets’ case. The prospects selected by that point — usually around 130th overall — tend not to be highly touted, but each extra selection could carry a slot value north of $500K to devote to next year’s draft bonus pool.

Cubs Expected To Designate Adbert Alzolay For Assignment

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The Cubs are likely to designate former closer Adbert Alzolay for assignment, reports Jesse Rogers of ESPN (X link). That’ll open a spot on the 40-man roster as Chicago keeps prospects out of the Rule 5 draft. Alzolay underwent Tommy John surgery in August and is going to miss most or all of next season.

A DFA would’ve been tough to fathom just a few months ago. After an inconsistent run as a starter, the righty moved to the bullpen for good in 2023. He eventually pitched his way into the ninth inning, picking up 22 saves and six holds while only blowing three leads. Alzolay turned in 64 innings of 2.67 ERA ball with a 26.5% strikeout rate. A late-season forearm strain was the only red flag in an otherwise excellent year.

Unfortunately, the forearm issue proved a precursor to a disastrous ’24 season. Alzolay started the season horribly, allowing 13 runs (nine earned) over 17 1/3 innings. He blew five saves while locking down just four games and quickly lost the closing job. Alzolay’s walks jumped while his strikeout rate dropped by nearly 10 percentage points. The Cubs put him on the injured list with another forearm strain diagnosis in the middle of May.

It seems that’ll mark the end of his Chicago tenure, which began when he signed out of Venezuela at age 18. Alzolay tried to avoid surgery and went on a minor league rehab stint in July. He had a setback in Triple-A and went under the knife a month later. A typical 14-month recovery timeline would cost him the entire ’25 season. That wouldn’t be a roster issue for the Cubs during the season, as they could place him on the 60-day injured list between the opening of Spring Training and the end of the World Series. Without an IL during the winter, Alzolay would’ve counted against their offseason roster for each of the next two years even though he may not pitch until 2026.

That’s evidently not something they’re willing to do for what could amount to one more year of Alzolay. He has between four and five years of MLB service and would collect service time if he spent all of next season on the injured list. Alzolay is on track for free agency during the 2026-27 offseason.

MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects the 29-year-old for a modest $2.3MM salary if he’s tendered an arbitration contract. He’d be in line for a matching salary in ’26 if he misses all of next season. A combined sum in the $5MM range would be a bargain if Alzolay recaptures his best form in 2026. There’s no guarantee that’ll be the case, of course, and it seems the Cubs don’t want to carry him on the roster long enough to take that chance.

There are a few ways this situation could play out. Perhaps the Cubs can find a trade partner who is willing to send them a marginal prospect to buy low on a potential high-leverage arm. If they don’t line up a trade, Chicago could put Alzolay on waivers within the next few days. They wouldn’t get anything in return if he’s claimed, but it’d give other clubs an opportunity to retain him on that projected arbitration salary. As a player with at least three years of service time, he’d become a free agent if he went unclaimed.

The Cubs could also simply cut Alzolay loose by declining to tender him a contract at Friday’s non-tender deadline. That’d send him directly to free agency without putting him on waivers. It’s the only time of year in which teams can drop players from the 40-man roster without waiving them. Teams frequently try to re-sign players to minor league deals after a non-tender, but Alzolay and his representatives would be able to look for a major league opportunity elsewhere. In any case, it looks as if he’ll be headed to a new team after spending more than a decade in the Cubs organization.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Rays Designate Richard Lovelady For Assignment

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The Rays announced Tuesday that they’ve designated left-hander Richard Lovelady for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster will go to outfielder Jake Mangum, whose contract has been selected. Mangum’s selection to the roster protects him from next month’s Rule 5 Draft.

Lovelady, 29, split the 2024 season between the Cubs and Rays, struggling with the former but pitching pretty well for the latter. The southpaw gave Tampa Bay 28 2/3 innings of 3.77 ERA ball, albeit with a sub-par 16.8% strikeout rate. Lovelady’s 7.6% walk rate and 53.5% ground-ball rate were both strong marks, however, and the lefty has long shown an interesting blend of missed bats and grounders to go along with solid command. In 99 1/3 big league innings, Lovelady has a 21.1% strikeout rate, 8.4% walk rate and 50.9% grounder rate. He’s still been tagged for a 4.98 earned run average, thanks in large part to a 66% strand rate, but metrics like xFIP (4.27) and SIERA (4.02) have been more bullish than ERA.

The Rays will have a week to trade Lovelady or attempt to pass him through waivers. They can also non-tender him before Friday and cut him right from the roster without first exposing him to any form of waivers — the only time of year clubs are able to do so. He’s out of minor league options, so any club that acquires Lovelady would need to carry him on the 40-man roster to open the season. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected Lovelady for a $900K salary in 2025. He’s controllable through the 2027 season.

Mangum, 28, came to the Rays as the player to be named later in the deal that sent utilityman Vidal Brujan and righty Calvin Faucher to the Marlins. He spent the 2024 season in Triple-A, where he slashed .317/.357/.442 with six homers and 20 steals in 428 turns at the plate. Mangum is a switch-hitter with good speed, strong bat-to-ball skills and the ability to play all three outfield spots. He’ll likely get an opportunity to make his MLB debut in a fourth-outfielder role with the Rays in 2025.

Marlins To Add Three Players To 40-Man Roster

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The Marlins are going to be selecting three players to their 40-man roster ahead of today’s Rule 5 protection deadline, reports Christina De Nicola of MLB.com on X. They are infielders Deyvison De Los Santos and Jared Serna as well as left-hander Dax Fulton. The 40-man roster will be full when the moves are official.

De Los Santos, 22 in June, just arrived with the Marlins at the trade deadline. He was one of two young players that the Fish received when trading lefty A.J. Puk to the Snakes in July. He went on to hit .240/.284/.459 while striking out in 28.4% of his plate appearances after the deal, leading to an 85 wRC+.

The Marlins are undoubtedly hoping that he can get back to the form he showed prior to the trade. In 87 contests this year ahead to the deal, he produced a robust .325/.376/.635 slash line while launching 28 home runs, leading to a 159 wRC+.

De Los Santos is a divisive prospect because the power is exciting but most of his other tools are considered weak. He has played both infield corners but isn’t well regarded for his glovework. He doesn’t take walks or provide much on the basepaths.

Still, a rebuilding club like the Marlins could give him some at-bats and see if the homers make him valuable regardless. The Fish have guys like Jake Burger, Jonah Bride and Connor Norby in their corner infield rotation but De Los Santos will give them some depth there. He already had 99 games of Triple-A experience and could make his major league debut at any time.

Serna, 23 in June, is also a new Marlin. He was one of three players to come from the Yankees as part of the Jazz Chisholm Jr. trade from this summer. He has slashed .265/.358/.435 over his four minor league seasons, walking at a solid 10.8% clip while keeping his strikeouts down to a 16.6% level, production leads to a 123 wRC+.

He may be ticketed for a utility role down the line, as he has played shortstop, second base, third base and a bit of right field as well. His shortstop defense isn’t considered especially strong, so he may end up playing those other positions a bit more. Prior to the trade, he had never played above High-A, so a major league debut might not be imminent. The Marlins did put him into 39 Double-A games and 6 Triple-A games after the swap, but he’s probably ticketed for more time in the upper levels of the minors next year.

Fulton, 23, is unlike the other two in that he was actually drafted and developed by the Marlins. A second-round pick from 2020, he has posted some strong numbers but hasn’t pitched since undergoing surgery on his ulnar collateral ligament in June of 2023. Prior to that surgery, he posted a 4.27 ERA in 229 2/3 innings across multiple levels from 2021 to 2023. His 10% walk rate was a bit high but he punched out 27.6% of batters faced. He will presumably need some time to get back into game shape after missing all of 2024, but he will eventually provide the Marlins with some pitching depth when he is back to full strength.

Royals Have Shown Interest In Alec Bohm, Taylor Ward

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The Royals have reportedly spoken to the Reds about a trade involving Kansas City right-hander Brady Singer and Cincinnati infielder Jonathan India, but that’s just one of multiple pursuits for Royals general manager J.J. Picollo, it seems. Anne Rogers of MLB.com reports that while no deals are necessarily close as of this moment, the Royals have also spoken to the Phillies about third baseman Alec Bohm and to the Angels about outfielder Taylor Ward. Like India, both Bohm and Ward are right-handed bats with multiple seasons of club control remaining.

Bohm, 28, was the No. 3 overall pick back in 2018 and has settled in as a regular at third base in Philadelphia over the past four-plus seasons. He’s coming off an uneven 2024 season in which he was one of the game’s most productive hitters in April but followed it with five months of effectively league-average production. On the whole, he turned in a .280/.332/.448 batting line (115 wRC+). Over the past three seasons, Bohm has combined for a .278/.325/.427 slash, demolishing left-handed pitching along the way but producing at a roughly average clip against fellow righties.

Given his excellent bat-to-ball skills — 14.2% strikeout rate in 2024; 15.7% dating back to 2022 — Bohm is a sensible target for a Royals club that places a heavy emphasis on putting the ball in play. Kansas City had baseball’s third-lowest strikeout rate in 2024, and since 2021 only five teams have posted a lower collective strikeout rate than the Royals. Plugging Bohm in as a regular at third base would provide an offensive upgrade over slick-fielding Maikel Garcia, who’s arguably better suited as a utilityman, given his defensive chops.

Speaking of glovework, however, Bohm is something of a mixed bag on that front. The Royals have typically prioritized plus defenders in addition to their affinity for contact-oriented bats. Bohm has typically graded out as a poor defender at the hot corner, but he posted career-best marks in Defensive Runs Saved (0) and Outs Above Average (4) in 2024. If the Royals believe those gains can be sustained, he’d make all the more sense as a trade target.

Bohm is controlled for another two seasons. He’s projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $8.1MM in his penultimate year of arbitration eligibility in 2025. It’s a generally reasonable rate that shouldn’t be cumbersome, even for a mid-level payroll club like Kansas City. While the Royals have in-house options at third base (Garcia) and at second base (Michael Massey), their interest in India and Bohm suggests a desire to add at least one bat to that infield mix. First baseman Vinnie Pasquantino and, of course, shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. aren’t going to be displaced, leaving second base or third base as the likely positions to be upgraded.

For the Phillies, trading Bohm wouldn’t be so much about shedding salary or moving on from an unproductive player as it would reimagining an offense that hasn’t gotten them over the hump in recent postseason trips. Bohm has hit well with men on base in recent seasons (hence consecutive 97 RBI campaigns) but offers average power and stark platoon splits. The Phillies, meanwhile, don’t have ample pathways to pursuing upgrades in the lineup. First base (Bryce Harper), shortstop (Trea Turner), designated hitter (Kyle Schwarber), catcher (J.T. Realmuto) and right field (Nick Castellanos) are all manned by expensive veterans. Third base (Bohm), second base (Bryson Stott) and the other two outfield spots (combination of Brandon Marsh, Johan Rojas and Austin Hays) are the primary areas where president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski can look to bring about some form of change.

As for Ward, he’s an on-paper trade candidate for an Angels club that just finished dead last in the American League West. However, owner Arte Moreno and GM Perry Minasian have both expressed a desire to put forth a competitive club next winter. Ward, coming off a .246/.323/.426 (111 wRC+) showing in 2024 and a .259/.338/.440 line (118 wRC+) since 2021, is seemingly a part of that vision. Few outsiders see a path to contention for the ’25 Angels, but the team’s actions thus far — trading for Jorge Soler and signing Travis d’Arnaud, Kyle Hendricks and Kevin Newman — suggest that they’re more focused on adding than on subtracting.

As MLBTR’s Anthony Franco explored last month, there’s a scenario where the Angels move Ward and still make an effort to compete. Ward could be flipped for rotation help — a potential match with the Royals — or traded for younger talent, with the Angels reallocating his would-be salary to other areas of need. Swartz projects Ward for a $9.2MM salary in 2025, which isn’t unreasonable for a player of his ability but also isn’t a raucous bargain. The Royals could plug Ward into left field, providing a stark upgrade over MJ Melendez, and pair him with defensive standout Kyle Isbel in center and rebound hopeful Hunter Renfroe in right field.

There’s no telling just yet how it’ll all shake out, but it seems Kansas City is quite active on the trade front at the moment. In addition to the bats they’ve targeted, the Royals have received interest from other clubs in each of the aforementioned Garcia, Singer, right-hander Alec Marsh and left-hander Kris Bubic. Picollo and his staff seemingly have plenty of potential concepts to explore, with the end goal of bolstering a currently top-heavy lineup a fairly obvious priority.

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