4:15pm: The Phillies will receive $500K in pool space, per Francys Romero of BeisbolFR. That’s the same amount the Dodgers got from the Twins in the Anthony Banda trade, so they have effectively traded Banda for McGarry.
2:52pm: The Dodgers have acquired minor league right-hander Griff McGarry from the Phillies in exchange for international bonus pool space, the teams announced Tuesday. (The Phillies’ announcement adds that they’ll also receive a player to be named later or cash.) He wasn’t on Philadelphia’s 40-man roster and thus won’t require Los Angeles to make a corresponding 40-man roster move.
McGarry once ranked as one of the more promising prospects in Philadelphia’s system, sitting third among Baseball America’s rankings ahead of the 2023 season. His standing slipped after a a pair of down showings in 2023-24, but the Nats scooped him up in December’s Rule 5 Draft following a rebound campaign in 2025. Washington wound up returning McGarry to the Phillies at the end of spring training, and he’ll now head to the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City.
Back in 2022, McGarry’s age-23 season, he pitched 87 1/3 innings across three levels and notched a 3.71 ERA with a huge 35.7% strikeout rate but a concerning 14.6% walk rate. He was rocked for a 6.00 ERA in 17 minor league starts the following season, then turned in a 4.55 ERA in 30 minor league relief appearances in 2024. McGarry had fallen almost entirely off the Phillies’ prospect map, but he bounced back with 83 2/3 innings of 3.44 ERA ball in a return to a rotation role in Triple-A last year.
McGarry walked more than 18% of his opponents in 2023 and saw that number spike all the way to 24% in 2024. Last year’s 13.9% walk rate is still far too high, but it’s a big step in the right direction relative to 2023-24, and he paired it with a huge 35.1% strikeout rate. The 6’2″ righty isn’t an especially hard thrower, sitting 93.9 mph with his four-seamer in ’25 and a hair better in this year’s small sample (94.3 mph). McGarry is a two-pitch right-hander, coupling that four-seamer with a slider that rests at 82-83 mph each year. He’s worked out of the bullpen again in 2026, allowing four runs in four Triple-A frames and walking more batters (seven) than he’s struck out (four).
Suffice it to say, McGarry is a pure change of scenery candidate and development project for the Dodgers. He’s long intrigued scouts with a fastball and slider that both grade as plus pitches and generate whiffs in droves, but McGarry’s command is nowhere close to average. The most recent scouting reports on him at FanGraphs, Baseball America, MLB.com and other outlets peg him with 30-grade command (on the 20-80 scale). There’s potential for a big relief arm in the plausible range of outcomes, even if it’s on the low-probability end of the spectrum, and it didn’t cost the Dodgers much to roll the dice on the soon-to-be 27-year-old righty.
It’s not yet clear how much international pool space is going back to the Phillies, but bonus pool allotments have to be traded in increments of $250K (unless it’s the remainder of a pool that’s currently at less than $250K total). In all likelihood, the Phils are adding one or two slots, giving them a bit of extra spending capacity to bring in some teenage talent on the international amateur market.
To be clear, no actual money is changing hands in the swap. The league places a hard cap on the amount each club can spend on international amateurs, but any team can acquire up to 60% of its original pool space in trades with other teams.
The Dodgers and Phillies both opened the 2026 international free agent period (which began in January) with a $6.679MM pool. Los Angeles spent about $3.265MM of that sum on day one of the period, per MLB.com. The Phillies spent about $4.85MM, with a hefty $4MM of that sum going to Venezuelan outfielder Francisco Renteria.
Thank goodness
Cafe 80s. Guy named Griff. Just say no!
He’s tough on crime
And tougher yet on managers.
Not the opposing ones.
His entrance song coming out of the bullpen is “walk this way”.
Looks unfixable, but what the heck, it’s only the minors.
more likely to pan out that what you are getting this late into the signing period. It looks like the phils had a few international guys play hardball and needed a few bucks in that pool to get it all done.
International guys tend to have a similar distribution and pay day as draft talent- so 500k permits the phils (if they have a guy they can get to sign for their likely value) to sign basically a 4th/5th rounder. At that point in the draft, if you find a guy with a 25% chance of becoming a high K set up guy- you take it. No one is expecting much more from McGarry at this time. 25% chance he is a solid set up guy or flutters around 5th starter for a few years (like the org 5-8th guy); 25% chance he floats a few more years in AAA until everyone is done with his lack of control, and 50% chance he starts getting option call ups to be the 27th man in a double header until he is out of options and is not good enough to stick in the bigs….. the reality is that he is already close enough to the bigs that he is going to do something.
Ah.., my long lost uncle, Griff Mc-“Garry.” He’d gone missing the last few years after that ill advised jaunt with “Mr. Smith to Washington” but fortunately found his way back to Phi-wee.
It’s nice to see that uncle “Mc”-Garry’s roots will be financially supported by the Dodgers “international” pool space $$ making a donation to Ireland.
Here’s hoping the SoCal 71 degree weather will take the criminal frostbite out of uncle Crimedog “Mc-Griff’s Guinness stained fingers, and that perhaps his 93 mph heater’s success will justify a similar 10 paragraph writeup very soon.
Partially evaporated extra stout Guinness dregs can be sticky, or so I’ve been told.
Any relation to Fred McGriff?
Maybe he can start tonight against the Mets. Might as well save Yamamoto for when he’s needed
Dodgers will turn this kid around and make him a valuable bullpen piece.
He will eventually pitch around 2 innings for the Dodgers, then get DFAed
Somebody is paying attention. Most likely scenario.
@phillls
This will absolutely happen.
Damn the Phils really didn’t want him around?
That is actually a solid return in pool money for where he currently stands as a prospect.
Always hard to give up on a live arm, but sometimes it is just better to see if someone else can figure him out.
At 1 point it was McGarry , Abel and Painter. Not as planned.
DODGERS HOARDING PLAYERS IS RUINING BASEBALL !!!!!
The Dodgers being able to spend like the Yankees is ruining baseball
Dodgers are acquiring him instead of signing a couple teenagers with equally low chances of making the majors.
Given their upper minors development team it makes sense.
If the Dodgers can make him at least a good mlb situational reliever by getting his command straightened out then the entire Phillies develpmental program needs to be torn down. Too many of our prospects flame out, and I swear if the Dodgers get him right….