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Bullpen Rumors: Soto, Givens, Moore

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While just about any team in need of bullpen help would love to get its hands on Tigers closer Gregory Soto, Detroit is setting a lofty asking price, tweets Jon Morosi of MLB.com. The Tigers are seeking multiple MLB-ready or nearly MLB-ready pieces and will surely be focused on players with several years of club control remaining, given that Soto himself has three years of team control beyond the current campaign. The 27-year-old is averaging a massive 98.6 mph on his heater and has pitched to a 2.36 ERA with a 25.5% strikeout rate, a 10.3% walk rate, a 46.5% ground-ball rate and 19 saves so far in 2022. Brian McTaggart of MLB.com reports that the Astros are among the clubs with interest. Houston hasn’t had a single left-handed reliever eclipse ten innings this season, so it’s no surprise they’d have their eyes on a high-end southpaw like Soto.

More rumblings on the bullpen market…

  • The White Sox picked up Jake Diekman in a deal with the Red Sox this evening, but they’re still on the hunt for relief help. Bruce Levine of 670 the Score reports that the Sox are among the clubs with interest in Cubs reliever Mychal Givens (Twitter link). The veteran righty is quite likely to move by tomorrow evening’s deadline, as he’s on track to hit free agency after the season. Givens’ deal contains a 2023 mutual option, but those are rarely exercised by both sides. The righty is due what remains on a $3.5MM salary for this season, plus a $1.5MM buyout on the option. Givens, who signed with the Cubs over the offseason, has a 2.66 ERA across 40 2/3 innings. He’s punched out an excellent 29.7% of opponents, although his 11% walk rate is a bit higher than ideal. Nevertheless, a relatively affordable middle reliever with a strong track record and Givens’ bat-missing abilities should attract interest from contenders.
  • As part of an overview on the Rangers deadline outlook, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News posits that reliever Matt Moore is the most likely player on the club to be traded. MLBTR’s Steve Adams explored Moore’s trade candidacy a few weeks ago, noting that the veteran southpaw has adapted well to a bullpen conversion after a career as a primary starter. Signed to a minor league deal over the winter, Moore made the big league roster two weeks into the season. He’s followed with 48 2/3 innings over 36 outings, posting a 1.66 ERA with an above-average 26.1% strikeout rate and a huge 52.5% grounder rate. An elevated walk percentage (12.1%) stands as a bit of a black mark on his record, but that combination of strikeouts and grounders will no doubt appeal to contending clubs. Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote last night that Moore — as well as Tigers reliever Michael Fulmer — was on the Yankees radar, but it’s not clear whether those hurlers are still on the wish list after New York brought in Scott Effross and Lou Trivino in separate deals this afternoon.

Yankees Transfer Luis Severino, Miguel Castro To 60-Day IL, Sign Carlos Espinal

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The Yankees announced a series of roster moves prior to tonight’s game, with righties Luis Severino and Miguel Castro being transferred to the 60-day injured list. Righty Clarke Schmidt was optioned to Triple-A, while another righty, Carlos Espinal, was signed to a major league contract and selected to the active roster.

Severino, 28, was placed on the injured list July 14 due to a low-grade strain of his right lat. Today’s transfer will rule him out until 60 days from that initial placement, which would be mid-September at the earliest.  That absence is longer than most expected, and the Yankees did not reveal Severino’s timeline until after making their acquisition of Frankie Montas official.  Severino could still be a factor for the Yankees in the postseason.  Severino played catch on the field today, reports MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch.

Severino, 29 in February, pitched only 18 regular season innings in the Majors from 2019-21 due to a lat strain and a drawn-out recovery from Tommy John surgery that included a shoulder injury of its own.  Until this current lat strain, 2022 had marked a return to health and form for Severino, who has a 3.45 ERA in 16 starts.  The Yankees will be weighing his $15MM club option after the season.  Castro, acquired from the Mets in an April trade, pitched acceptably in lower-leverage work out of the Yankees’ pen before straining his shoulder.

Espinal, listed at 5’11” and 175 pounds, has never gotten attention from prospect experts but has demonstrated the ability to miss bats at the Double-A level.  After only a trio of appearances at Triple-A, he’s now on the cusp of his Major League debut at age 25.  Schmidt was unscored-upon over his last seven innings, but after throwing 52 pitches on Tuesday perhaps the Yankees preferred a fresher arm in the short-term.  Espinal can help bridge the gap as the Yankees wait for a pair of new bullpen additions to make their way to New York: Scott Effross, acquired from the Cubs, and Lou Trivino, added from the A’s in the Montas deal.

Yankees Acquire Frankie Montas, Lou Trivino

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The Yankees have announced that they have acquired Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino from the Athletics. In exchange, the Athletics will receive pitchers JP Sears, Ken Waldichuk and Luis Medina, as well as second baseman Cooper Bowman.

Next to Luis Castillo and Tyler Mahle, Montas has been seen as one of the better starting pitchers available at the trade deadline. The Yankees had been connected to Castillo, but he was traded to the Mariners in recent days. The Yanks evidently turned their attentions to Montas in order to satisfy their desire for boosting their rotation.

Montas has been a solid member of Oakland’s rotation for years, first establishing himself in 2018. Despite a down year in 2020, Montas still owns a career 3.73 ERA with a 24.8% strikeout rate, 7.8% walk rate and 43.5% ground ball rate. Just looking at what he’s done since the start of the 2021 season, he’s been on an even better level, logging a 3.30 ERA, 26.3% strikeout rate, 7.1% walk rate and 44% grounder rate. He’s been worth 6.1 wins above replacement in that time, according to FanGraphs.

Despite being a solid performer, Montas has seemed like an inevitable trade candidate for quite some time now. As the 2021 season finished and the offseason began, the A’s were widely reported to be planning a massive sell-off of any player making a significant salary and/or approaching free agency. Montas was frequently cited among the trade candidates, next to Chris Bassitt, Sean Manaea, Matt Olson and Matt Chapman. Those four latter names were all moved between this winter’s lockout and the beginning of the season, but Montas stayed. He’s making just over $5MM this season, making him the cheapest of that group, but he only has one further season of club control remaining. Given that the A’s aren’t likely to return to competition in that time, it made sense to make him available to other clubs.

The Yankees have been incredibly healthy in terms of their rotation this year, with their front five of Gerrit Cole, Jameson Taillon, Nestor Cortes, Jordan Montgomery and Luis Severino all staying healthy for the first three-plus months of the season. As such, the rotation as a whole has logged 567 innings, the third-most in the majors, while also posting a 3.37 ERA that’s third in the league. However, Severino landed on the IL a couple of weeks ago with shoulder tightness. While he’s been out, Domingo German has made two starts but has an 8.22 ERA in those. When Montas reports to the team, he will likely bump German back to the minors or a long-relief role. If Severino can get back on the mound while everyone else is still healthy, the Yanks might have to make a tough decision about to fit everyone into the mix, but that would be a good problem to have in the future.

The Yankees weren’t content to merely upgrade their rotation, however, also adding Trivino into the bullpen, their second such addition of the day, following their earlier acquisition of Scott Effross. Yankee fans might see Trivino’s 6.47 ERA and scoff, but there’s actually more to like under the hood. Trivino’s been the victim of a .451 batting average on balls in play, despite that number being around .250 in the two previous seasons. His 28.7% strikeout rate and 52.3% ground ball rates on the year are both career highs while his 8.9% walk rate is a career low. As such, all of the advanced metrics feel that batted ball luck is masking his true talents, with Trivino currently sporting a 4.29 xERA, 3.84 FIP, 2.92 xFIP and 2.89 SIERA. He’s making a modest $3MM salary this year and can be retained via arbitration for another two seasons.

The Yankees’ bullpen seemed unstoppable for much of the season but has since hit some snags. Chad Green required Tommy John surgery and won’t be back this year. Michael King is also done for the year after suffering an elbow fracture. The once-untouchable Aroldis Chapman has struggled since coming off the IL. Clay Holmes, who seemed to replace Chapman as the unhittable monster in the bullpen, has also come back down to earth in recent weeks. With the additions of Effross and Trivino, the Yankees have given themselves some extra options for late-game duty.

The A’s have already completely remade their system this year with the aforementioned trades of Bassitt, Manaea, Olson and Chapman, and this deal will allow them to bring in four more fresh faces. The highlight of the bunch is probably Waldichuk, 24, who is enjoying a tremendous breakout season. Selected by the Yankees in the fifth round in 2019, he has split his time this year between Double-A and Triple-A. In 17 starts between the two levels, he’s thrown 76 1/3 innings with a 2.71 ERA and incredible 36.5% strikeout rate. The 10.4% walk rate is a little above-average, but there’s still plenty to be excited about in that performance. The southpaw was recently ranked the #5 prospect in the Yankees’ system by Baseball America.

Sears, 26, came in 20th on that same list at BA. He made his MLB debut this year and has looked good so far, notching a 2.05 ERA in his first 22 big league innings. He’s only gotten strikeouts at an 18.1% clip in that time, but is much better at getting punchouts in the minors. In 43 Triple-A innings this year, he has a 1.67 ERA with a 33.7% strikeout rate, along with a 4.3% walk rate.

Medina, 23, has also been considered one of the top Yankee prospects by BA, oscillating between the #7 and #11 spot from 2018 to the present. He’s made 17 starts in Double-A this year, throwing 72 innings with a 3.38 ERA, 50.9% ground ball rate, 26.4% strikeout rate, but a high 13% walk rate.

As for Bowman, he’s the most long-term play among the new Athletics, as he’s just 22 years old and was just drafted last year, being selected in the fourth round. He’s played 80 games in High-A this year, putting up a line of .217/.343/.355 while playing second base and shortstop.

While the A’s are ramping up for the future, the Yankees are loading up for right now. Their 69-34 record is the best in the American League and only percentage points behind the Dodgers for best in the majors. In recent days, they’ve bolstered their lineup by adding Andrew Benintendi, added Montas to their rotation and Effross and Trivino to their bullpen. Though there’s still about 24 hours until the trade deadline for them to make further moves, they’ve clearly cemented themselves as one of the strongest teams this year.

With Castillo and Montas now both off the market, teams looking for rotation upgrades will likely turn their attentions to Tyler Mahle. Teams like the Cardinals, Twins, Padres and Blue Jays have been connected to Montas in recent days, with those clubs now likely to pivot to Mahle or other arms.

Jack Curry of the YES Network reported the particulars of the deal before the official announcement (Twitter links).

Images courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Angels Planning To Keep Shohei Ohtani, No Longer Listening To Offers

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The Angels have listened to offers on reigning AL MVP Shohei Ohtani for the past several days, but Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports that they’re no longer doing so. The Yankees, Padres and White Sox were among the teams to submit trade offers for Ohtani, per the report, but Heyman writes that owner Arte Moreno ultimately proved “unwilling” to part with Ohtani.

The fact that Ohtani is staying put is hardly shocking. Even when reports emerged of that the Angels were listening to trade offers, it still seemed unlikely that a deal would come together. Given Ohtani’s unprecedented contributions to the team in recent years, it was always expected that a massive package would have to be put on the table in order for the Angels to pull the trigger on a deal. With the Angels mired in another miserable season that’s seen them fall well out of contention, it made sense to listen to offers on the superstar given that he’s now just over a year away from free agency. Despite those three clubs apparently putting together serious offers, it seems none of them were close to the understandably high asking price of the Angels.

The reigning AL MVP, Ohtani is putting together another historic season to add to his already impressive list of accolades. His power has fallen off slightly, as his 22 home runs on the year puts him on pace to fall short of last year’s 46. But apart from that, his .255/.352/.495 slash line this year isn’t too far from last year’s .257/.372/.592. His 135 wRC+ this year is seventeen points behind last year, but still 35% better than the league average hitter. On the pitching side of things, he’s actually improved relative to the previous season. He’s dropped his ERA from 3.18 to 2.81, increased his strikeout rate from 29.3% to 36.4% and lowered his walk rate from 8.3% to 5.8%.

Given that he’s producing excellent results on both sides of the ball and making a modest $5.5MM salary, it’s hard to fathom a team that wouldn’t be interested in making use of his services. The Yankees are known to be looking for rotation help, having checked in on some of the top available names like Frankie Montas and Luis Castillo, before the latter was traded to the Mariners. They’ve also checked in on offensive upgrades, recently acquiring Andrew Benintendi. Acquiring Ohtani would have crowded the DH mix a little, though the Yanks were surely willing to find a way to work with that situation for such a historic player.

The Padres already have a rotation surplus but have been considering trading away from it as a way to reduce their payroll commitments. It’s possible that they could have combined an Ohtani trade with a trade of Blake Snell or Mike Clevinger, in order to get Ohtani into the rotation and then also upgrade the lineup.

The White Sox have a solid five-man rotation right now but have been exploring the market for upgrades anyway, with Michael Kopech perhaps working his way towards some load management as the season goes on. He’s already thrown 88 1/3 innings this year after only throwing 69 1/3 frames over the three previous seasons combined.

Regardless of how much sense Ohtani would have made for those teams, it doesn’t appear as though the Angels came close to a deal that they gave serious consideration to. It’s perfectly logical for them to want to hang onto such an unprecedented talent, though this decision won’t provide any long-term clarity. The Angels are still 43-59 and destined to finish another season watching the postseason from home. That will leave 2023 as the club’s last chance to build a winning roster around Ohtani, unless they are able to work out an extension.

That latter course will surely be appealing to Angels’ fans but will come with complications for the front office. The latest reporting indicated that Ohtani and his camp were looking to surpass Max Scherzer’s record for annual average value of a contract, $43.3MM. That number would be added to a payroll that already includes Mike Trout getting over $37MM per year through 2028 while Anthony Rendon getting paid similarly through 2026. That could leave the Halos paying around $120MM per season to just three players. That wouldn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for a team that’s never run an Opening Day payroll above $190MM. If an extension can’t be worked out, then perhaps Ohtani’s name will show up in trade rumors in more serious fashion one year from now.

Athletics Getting Closer To Frankie Montas Trade

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12:20pm: The Twins believe the A’s are wrapping up a trade sending Montas to another club, tweets Dan Hayes of The Athletic. That would suggest they’re among the teams who’ve been informed they’re no longer in the running, as suggested by Heyman.

12:15pm: The Yankees are willing to include top shortstop prospect Oswald Peraza in a Montas deal, tweets SNY’s Andy Martino.

12:01pm: The Athletics have begun informing some teams that they’re no longer in the running for right-hander Frankie Montas, tweets Jon Heyman of the New York Post. The Yankees are among the clubs who are still in the bidding, he adds.

It’s not clear just yet which clubs have been ruled out, but Montas has drawn widespread interest, with the Cardinals, Padres, Blue Jays and Twins among those who have joined the Yankees in their pursuit of the righty.

Yankees Acquire Scott Effross From Cubs

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For the second trade deadline in a row, the Yankees have bolstered their bullpen with an under-the-radar arm from the NL Central. The Yankees announced Monday that they’ve acquired right-hander Scott Effross from the Cubs in exchange for minor league right-hander Hayden Wesneski.

Scott Effross | Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

Effross, 28, isn’t a household name but has been outstanding since the Cubs promoted him for his Major League debut in 2021. The sidearming righty has tallied 58 2/3 innings as a big leaguer to date and posted a 2.91 ERA with a 28.8% strikeout rate, a 5.1% walk rate and a 46% ground-ball rate.

While Effross throws right-handed, he’s been far more effective against lefties than right-handers to this point in his big league career, which surely held appeal to the Yankees (and to other teams). That’s not to say that he’s ineffective against fellow righties — far from it — but Effross has held lefties to a putrid .160/.250/.253 batting line through 85 plate appearances. Right-handed hitters have had struggles of their own, hitting Effross at a solid .262 clip but posting a meager .287 OBP and just a .369 slugging percentage.

Because Effross is only in his second big league season and entered the year with less than one full year of Major League service time, he’s controllable for another five years beyond the current campaign. He’ll be arbitration-eligible following the 2024 campaign and won’t reach free agency until the 2027-28 offseason.

The acquisition of Effross is pivotal for a Yankees team that has seen its previously rock-solid bullpen begin to show cracks of late. In recent weeks, the Yankees have lost Michael King to a fractured elbow, seen Chad Green go down with a torn ligament that required Tommy John surgery, and watched former closer Aroldis Chapman struggle badly in his return from the injured list. Even Clay Holmes, the team’s breakout closer and All-Star, has scuffled over the past two weeks after a superhuman start to the 2022 season that catapulted him into the Yankees’ closer role. Effoss will help solidify the group both in 2022 and well beyond — provided he can sustain his own impressive emergence as a viable late-inning arm.

Wesneski, 24, was the Yankees’ sixth-round pick in 2019 and has emerged as one of the organization’s top pitching prospects, ranking fourth among Yankee farmhands at Baseball America. The 6’3″, 210-pound righty reached Triple-A late in the 2021 season and has spent the entire 2022 campaign there. Through 19 starts and 89 2/3 innings so far this season, he’ notched a 3.51 ERA with a 22.4% strikeout rate, a 7.5% walk rate and a 41.6% ground-ball rate.

Scouting reports on Wesneski credit him for mid-90s velocity on a pair of heaters — two-seam and four-seam — with the latter able to climb as high as 99 mph. He also works with a slider, changeup and cutter. Baseball America touts him as a potential fourth starter, one who’s not too far off from big league readiness. It’s the type of upper-level arm with decent probability to become a big league starter that the Cubs generally struggled to develop in the prior Theo Epstein/Jed Hoyer regime. MLB.com has already updated its ranking of the Cubs’ top prospects with Wesneski slotting in No. 8, right behind fellow pitching prospects Caleb Kilian and Jordan Wicks.

Jack Curry of the YES Network first reported (via Twitter) that Effross had been traded to the Yankees. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweeted that Wesneski was going to Chicago in return.

Latest On Juan Soto’s Trade Market

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Juan Soto’s presence on the trade market has, in many ways, held up activity in other areas. Teams like the Cardinals and Padres, generally viewed as two of Soto’s top suitors, are also involved in the market for starting pitching. But, both are surely wary of dealing prospects to acquire a starter (e.g. Oakland’s Frankie Montas) if those same players might eventually be used to pry Soto loose from Washington.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan takes a lengthy look at the logjam Soto has created, writing within that the Yankees are a “long shot at best” to make a play for Soto before the deadline and suggesting that the Rangers, for now, are not a prominent bidder. That meshes with recent reporting from the New York Post’s Jon Heyman, who wrote last night that there was “no traction” between the Yankees and Nationals regarding Soto, even though the Yankees reached out as recently as yesterday evening. Heyman adds that the Nationals aren’t as high on top prospect Anthony Volpe as the Yankees and many other clubs are, which is a complicating factor in talks.

The Padres and Cardinals are the most oft-suggested fits for Soto, and with good reason, as both are win-now clubs with deep farm systems who could offer the blend of top prospects and controllable big leaguers the Nationals seek. Passan suggests that the Dodgers are “lurking,” however, and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic similarly wrote this morning that the Dodgers have maintained talks with the Nats and should not be ruled out as a potential landing spot. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale takes things a step further, tweeting that it’s actually the Dodgers — not the Cardinals or Padres — who have been making the most aggressive offers for Soto recently.

The Mariners, another regularly speculated fit for Soto, don’t appear likely to land him at this point. President of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto tells The Athletic’s Jim Bowden that while he checked in on Soto, he came away with the impression that there was not a realistic path to acquiring him (Twitter link). Presumably, that came prior to Seattle’s Friday acquisition of Luis Castillo — which cost the Mariners their top two prospects.

The Mets, too, have been speculatively listed as trade partners for the Nats. That’s due largely to the team’s huge payroll and aggressive past year under new owner Steve Cohen. However, Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes that the Mets believed “relatively quickly in the process” that there’d be such a large market for Soto that Washington wouldn’t have to consider trading him to a division rival. That certainly looks to be the case, although if the Nats do covet the Mets’ best prospects, there’s at least a slim chance of something coming together; both Sherman and SNY’s Andy Martino report that the Mets would only move their very best prospects if it were to acquire Soto or (an even longer shot) Shohei Ohtani. Both reports suggest catcher Francisco Alvarez is off limits unless it’s for one of Soto or Ohtani. Sherman adds third baseman Brett Baty to that list, and Martino suggests third baseman Mark Vientos is viewed similarly.

Regardless of whether Soto specifically changes hands, the market will erupt sometime between now and tomorrow’s 6pm ET deadline. The ticking clock is going to eventually drive teams into activity, and given the lack of movement thus far, we could be in for one of the most active and chaotic 24- to 30-hour spans of deadline dealing we’ve ever seen.

NL Central Notes: Cardinals, Mahle, Drury, Quintana, Blue Jays, Sosa

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The Cardinals’ search for starting pitching has taken them inside their division, as MLB Network’s Jon Morosi (Twitter link) reports that St. Louis is one of the many clubs interested in Reds righty Tyler Mahle.  With the Cards looking at all options for rotation help, it only makes sense that they’d be at least checking in on Mahle’s services.

The Phillies, Twins, and Mets are among the clubs linked to Mahle since the start of the season, while the Rangers also reportedly had interest during the offseason.  With Luis Castillo already off the board, it’s fair to guess that most pitching-needy teams have spoken to the Reds about Mahle, and on paper the Cardinals have the kind of young talent that the Reds would surely demand.  However, it is possible Cincinnati might want a higher price for moving Mahle to a division rival — as Morosi notes, the Reds and Cardinals haven’t completed a player-for-player trade since 1997, so it would count as a surprise on some level if Mahle ended up in St. Louis.

More notes from around the NL Central…

  • Just because Castillo has been traded doesn’t mean the Reds are necessarily likelier to hang onto Mahle, since CBS Sports’ R.J. Anderson hears that Mahle and Brandon Drury are expected to both be on new teams after the deadline.  Drury is a free agent after the season and thus an obvious trade chip, though Mahle is still under team control through 2023.  But, it now seems like Cincinnati is going to dive into something close to a full rebuild, a process that really started over the winter when they moved several other veteran talents.
  • The Blue Jays are in the mix for Pirates starter Jose Quintana, according to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, along with such previously-reported suitors as the Yankees and White Sox.  The veteran left-hander is having a bounce-back season after struggling in 2019-21, and Quintana could help bolster an inconsistent Toronto rotation.  Pirates GM Ben Cherington previously worked in the Jays’ front office, so this familiarity with the AL East side’s prospects could help the Blue Jays in the bidding, though the two sides haven’t completed a player-for-player trade in the two-plus years since Cherington went to Pittsburgh.
  • The Yankees were one of the other teams interested in Edmundo Sosa before the Cardinals dealt Sosa to the Phillies, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes.  Sosa would’ve been an interesting depth add to the Yankees’ infield, and it is even possible that Sosa could have worked his way into a timeshare with Isiah Kiner-Falefa at shortstop.

Latest On Frankie Montas

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TODAY: The Yankees, Cardinals, and Blue Jays seem to be the top suitors for Montas, as Jon Morosi of MLB Network writes that the right-hander’s “market is focused on” these three teams.

JULY 30: With Luis Castillo now on his way to Seattle following last night’s trade to the Mariners, Frankie Montas stands out as perhaps the best and likeliest arm left to be traded before Tuesday’s 5pm CT deadline. The majority of teams that held interest in Castillo are involved, to varying extents, in the Montas market, so it’s possible that last night’s deal begins to accelerate the pace of the pitching market overall.

The Yankees, for instance, were known to be Castillo suitors but have now made Montas their top target according to both Bob Nightengale of USA Today and Jon Heyman of the New York Post (Twitter links). The Cardinals, who never seemed likely to be able to land Castillo from a fellow NL Central club, are continuing their pursuit of Montas, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes. Their pursuit, however, is complicated a bit by simultaneous interest in Nationals superstar Juan Soto; Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic writes in his latest column that some of the Cardinals prospects the A’s are targeting in return for Montas are also coveted by the Nationals.

Several other clubs were linked to both Montas and Castillo in the past week, including the Twins, Padres and Blue Jays. There are also surely other clubs on the periphery of the market whose presence isn’t publicly known. Both Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News and Rosenthal have indicated, for instance, that the Rangers had engaged with the Reds in talks regarding Castillo. Whether the A’s would seriously entertain sending Montas to a division rival isn’t clear, but it’s telling that Texas is in the market for arms that can be controlled into 2023.

The Athletics’ asking price on Montas was reportedly quite high even before last night’s trade of Castillo potentially upped Oakland’s leverage in talks. In profiling the Cardinals’ current rotation needs, Katie Woo of The Athletic wrote (prior to the Castillo deal) that Oakland is believed to be seeking a pair of top prospects and “potentially a currently rostered player with substantial team control remaining.” It’s a steep ask, to be sure, though not an unrealistic one given Montas’ trade value.

Brewers, Padres, Rays Interested In Joey Gallo

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10:57AM: The Rays may not be too deep in the Gallo hunt, as Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News hears that the “Yankees wanted too much back” in return.

7:56AM: Joey Gallo’s time in the Bronx is widely expected to be up by Tuesday’s trade deadline, and the Yankees have been exploring trade possibilities for the struggling outfielder.  The Brewers, Padres, and Rays are among the clubs who have shown interest in the former All-Star, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale writes.

San Diego discussed a Gallo deal during Spring Training, and has been linked to the slugger’s market multiple times in the past, dating back to Gallo’s time with the Rangers.  The Rays and Brewers also had interest in Gallo at last year’s deadline, and seem to be again revisiting a trade 12 months later.

Of course, quite a lot has happened to Gallo’s trade value in the past year, none of it good.  After posting only a .707 OPS in 228 plate appearances as a Yankees in 2021, Gallo’s slump has only deepened this season.  Gallo has hit only .159/.282/.339 with 12 homers over 273 PA, with a wRC+ of 81 (the league average is 100) and strikeout and whiff rates that rank near the bottom of the league.

On the flip side, Gallo is still posting outstanding hard-contact numbers and his 14.7% walk rate is one of the best of any player in baseball.  A .217 BABIP only deepens the frustration, yet Gallo is so rarely making contact in the first place that his scuffles can’t be chalked up to just bad batted-ball luck.  This lack of production in the pinstripes is “something I’m gonna have to really live with for the rest of my life,” Gallo told The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler earlier this week.  “It’s going to be tough.  I didn’t play well, I didn’t live up to expectations.  And that’s a tough pill to swallow.”

The Yankees’ acquisition of Andrew Benintendi has all but confirmed that Gallo will be dealt, though what New York can expect back in return is an open question.  The 28-year-old outfielder is a free agent after the season and is owed roughly $3.4MM for the remainder of the year, making it quite possible that the Yankees will have to eat most or all of that money unless another unwanted contract is swapped in return.  While interested teams surely view Gallo as a change-of-scenery candidate, the Yankees don’t have much leverage in trying to market him as such, since it is so widely known that the club wishes to part ways with the outfielder.

In Tampa Bay’s case, the Yankees are surely wary of the idea of Gallo reviving himself on an AL East rival, and it is fair to wonder if New York would want more in order to move Gallo within the division.  The Rays may have the more glaring need for outfield help given that Manuel Margot, Harold Ramirez, and Kevin Kiermaier are all injured, with Kiermaier being out for the season in the wake of hip surgery.

However, the Rays already made a left-handed hitting outfield upgrade yesterday, landing David Peralta in a trade with the Diamondbacks.  It is possible this move could take the Rays out of the Gallo market, though the club is still looking for more outfield depth, as Nightengale also reports that Tampa is interested in former Ray and current Red Tommy Pham.

Christian Yelich, Andrew McCutchen, Hunter Renfroe, and Tyrone Taylor have comprised Milwaukee’s outfield mix for much of the season, with McCutchen also getting the majority of DH time.  Yelich is the only left-handed bat of the quartet, and Gallo could become a platoon partner with Taylor in center field.  2019 was the only season Gallo played a sizeable amount of center field, but he acquitted himself quite well defensively up the middle, even if right field is his ideal position — Gallo has won the last two American League right field Gold Gloves.

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