Yankees Trade Caleb Ferguson To Astros
The Astros have acquired lefty reliever Caleb Ferguson from the Yankees in exchange for minor league pitcher Kelly Austin and international signing bonus space, according to an announcement by New York. Houston is reportedly sending $750K in bonus room.
New York acquired Ferguson from the Dodgers over the offseason. He has had a difficult season, pitching to a 5.13 ERA over 42 appearances. That’s in part because of poor sequencing, as he has only stranded 62.2% of baserunners. Yet Ferguson has also been somewhat homer prone and is issuing walks at an elevated 10.3% clip.
Ferguson is still missing a decent number of bats. He’s striking out 26.5% of opponents behind an 11.5% swinging strike rate. Those are each in line with his career marks, although his 93.7 MPH average fastball speed is a bit below the 95-96 MPH range he’d posted over the previous two seasons.
Over parts of five seasons with the Dodgers before last winter’s trade, Ferguson turned in a 3.43 earned run average. He had an identical mark across 60 1/3 frames last season. Ferguson doesn’t have much in the way of a platoon split for his career, so he’s not an ideal fit as a situational specialist, but he’s only a year removed from being a solid overall middle reliever.
The Astros have been light on left-handed relief for the past few seasons. They signed Josh Hader to a five-year contract last winter, but he’s obviously holding down the ninth inning. Houston hasn’t had much in the way of a middle innings option for manager Joe Espada, though that generally hasn’t been a priority for their front office. Aside from Hader, only rookie Bryan King and Parker Mushinski have logged any action out of the bullpen as southpaws.
New York is similarly light on left-handed bullpen options, though they might take a bigger swing on the trade market in the next three hours. Tim Hill stands as the only southpaw in their current relief mix. The Yanks could be involved on top rental lefty Tanner Scott or a less exciting target like Tanner Banks or old friend Justin Wilson.
Ferguson is making $2.4MM in his final year of arbitration. There’s a little less than $800K in salary for the stretch run. The Yankees are paying a 110% tax on salary, so offloading Ferguson saves them around $2MM. Houston is in the second luxury tax bracket, so they’re paying a 32% tax — around $250K — to pick him up. He’ll be a free agent next offseason.
Austin, 23, is a former undrafted free agent out of UCLA. He has worked out of the bullpen in the low minors this season, turning in a 2.21 ERA across 36 2/3 innings. The 6’0″ righty has dominated low minors competition, striking out 31% of opponents while issuing walks at a meager 4.7% clip.
Jack Curry of the YES Network first reported the Astros were acquiring Ferguson for a minor leaguer and international bonus pool space. Chandler Rome of the Athletic identified the player as Austin and reported the $750K figure.
Yankees Scratch Gerrit Cole With Body Fatigue, To Select Will Warren
The Yankees scratched Gerrit Cole from tonight’s scheduled start against the Phillies due to general body fatigue. Well-regarded pitching prospect Will Warren is getting the call for a spot start in what’ll be his major league debut. The Yankees will need to select him onto the 40-man roster, which has two vacancies pending their deadline activity.
There’s no indication this is anything more than a day-to-day issue. Yet it’s at least worth monitoring after Cole missed the first half of the season with elbow inflammation. Cole has made seven starts since being reinstated in the middle of June. He owns an uncharacteristic 5.40 ERA thanks largely to nine home runs allowed.
If the Yankees are at all concerned about Cole’s health, it could impact their approach to the deadline over the next two hours. They’ve already been tied to starting pitchers, including to Jack Flaherty at the top of the market. There are rumblings the Yanks could even add an impact starter like Flaherty and look to flip Nestor Cortes.
Warren, 25, is a former eighth-round pick who has developed into one of New York’s top prospects. He ranks seventh among Yankees farmhands at Baseball America. Warren’s arsenal is headlined by his mid-90s fastball and potential plus slider. He has a shot to be a mid-rotation starter. The Southeastern Louisiana product has started 20 times in Scranton. His 6.11 earned run average is disappointing, but Warren has an impressive 27.1% strikeout rate against a manageable 8.2% walk percentage.
Alex Verdugo Receiving Trade Interest
An unknown number of teams have been in touch with the Yankees about Alex Verdugo‘s availability, according to reporter Francys Romero (X link). There doesn’t appear to be any sense that a trade is particularly close, though another source tells Romero that it isn’t out of the question that Verdugo could be moved. Verdugo would be a pure rental for any acquiring team, and he is owed roughly $2.9MM for the remainder of the season (from his $8.7MM salary).
New York just picked up Verdugo this past offseason, as a rare trade between the Yankees and Red Sox resulted in the outfielder coming to the Bronx for his final arbitration-eligible season. Verdugo got off to a nice start with his new team by hitting well over the first five weeks of play, but his production has since gone south, with a .222/.264/.346 slash line in his last 297 plate appearances. He is providing strong glovework as the regular left fielder, but Verdugo’s 90 wRC+ for the season has added to the Yankees’ overall difficulty in finding consistent offense beyond Aaron Judge and Juan Soto.
Giancarlo Stanton‘s return from the injured list fills one hole in the lineup, and with Stanton getting the bulk of DH duty, Judge will resume the everyday center field role. Trent Grisham and utilityman Oswaldo Cabrera could get some left field work in the event of a Verdugo trade, but the likelier scenario would be that the Yankees would again call up star prospect Jasson Dominguez, who was recently activated from the Triple-A injured list.
Dominguez didn’t make his 2024 debut until mid-May due to his recovery from Tommy John surgery, and he got only about a month’s worth of action before an oblique strain shelved him for roughly six weeks. With only 25 games under his belt this season, the Yankees might want to give him a bit more Triple-A time to make sure Dominguez is fully healthy and ramped up, though his big numbers at the plate indicate that he doesn’t have much less to prove against minor league pitching. Dominguez wowed baseball with a .980 OPS in his first 33 PAs as a big leaguer last season before the TJ surgery brought his debut year to an abrupt end.
Yankees Acquire Mark Leiter Jr.
The Yankees announced that they have acquired right-hander Mark Leiter Jr. from the Cubs. In return, the Cubs will receive infielder Ben Cowles and right-hander Jack Neely. The Yankees had two open 40-man spots and jump to 39, while the Cubs drop down to 38.
Leiter, now 33, has been great for the Cubs over the past few years after a late-bloomer trajectory. The son of Mark Leiter and nephew of Al Leiter, the younger Mark made it to the big leagues by 2017 but didn’t impress in his first tastes of the show. By the end of 2018, he had a 5.53 earned run average in 114 big league innings. He then required Tommy John surgery early in 2019 and was on the shelf for an extended period of time. He signed a minor league deal with the Tigers in 2021 but didn’t get a call to the show.
A minor league deal with the Cubs going into 2022 turned into the opportunity he needed. He was selected to the big league roster by mid-April that year and eventually tossed 65 2/3 innings for the Cubs with a 3.99 ERA. He struck out 25.9% of batters faced while giving out walks at an 8.9% clip and kept the ball on the ground at a 48.9% rate.
Despite that generally strong work, he was nudged off the club’s roster in January of 2023. He had exhausted his final option year and so the Cubs designated him for assignment, with all 29 clubs passing on the chance to grab him off waivers. He elected free agency but re-signed with the Cubs on a minor league deal prior to the next season.
He was added back to the roster for Opening Day and has been a key part of the Chicago bullpen since then. Going back to the start of 2023, he has a 3.75 ERA in 100 2/3 innings. His strikeout rate is up to 30.9% in that time while he still has decent walk and ground ball rates of 8.8% and 47.1% respectively.
This year’s 4.21 ERA doesn’t look pretty but that’s mostly due to a tiny strand rate of 55%, well below the 71.9% league average. Since he’s striking out 34.9% of batters faced and also getting grounders at a 50.6% clip, his 2.11 FIP and 2.42 SIERA suggest he’s been about two runs better than his ERA would have you believe.
The Cubs have been balancing present and future needs at this deadline. Just over a week ago, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said that the club would be prioritizing “2025 and beyond” in their transactions. That didn’t necessarily point to a deadline selloff, as the club then went out and acquired Isaac Paredes from the Rays and Nate Pearson from the Blue Jays, with both of those players having multiple years of control.
But there were also some rumors that they might make some pitching available and there’s a logic to Leiter being moved out. Due to his unusual trajectory, Leiter still has a couple of years of club control remaining after this one. But given his age, the Cubs probably didn’t consider him a core piece of their future-focused agenda and made him available.
Those circumstances are likely also why the win-now Yankees wanted to get him. He only just qualified for arbitration for the first time coming into this season and is making $1.5MM, not much above this year’s $740K league minimum. The Yankees are slated to pay the competitive balance tax for a third straight year and finish well above the top tier. That means they face a 110% tax rate for any new spending, so Leiter’s minimal salary fits in nicely for them, and they can keep him around for two more years beyond this one.
While Leiter is cheap in terms of dollars, the Yankees have paid the price of two prospects to get him. Neely, 24, was an 11th-round pick in the 2021 draft. He’s been exclusively a reliever in his professional career, racking up significant strikeout totals. In 160 1/3 minor league innings overall, he has a 2.75 ERA, 38.8% strikeout rate and 9.4% walk rate. That includes 41 2/3 innings this year between Double-A and Triple-A with a 2.81 ERA, 36% strikeout rate and 9.1% walk rate. Baseball America currently lists him as the #20 prospect in the Yankees’ system.
Cowles, 24, was a 10th-round pick in 2021 and has played in 88 Double-A games this year. His .294/.376/.472 batting line leads to a strong 141 wRC+, indicating he’s been 41% better than league average. His .340 batting average on balls in play is high but he’s also got strong walk and strikeout rates of 10.3% and 17.7%, respectively. He also has 14 steals and has lined up at the three infield spots to the left of first base.
Both Neely and Cowles are Rule 5 eligible this winter, so the Yankees would have been facing a decision about whether or not to add them to their 40-man roster. Instead, they have cashed them in for an immediate bullpen upgrade, meaning those decisions will now transfer to Chicago.
Rob Zamparelli first reported on X that Leiter was headed to the Yankees. Jeff Passan and Kiley McDaniel of ESPN relayed the full trade on X.
Yankees Interested In Luis Rengifo, Kyle Finnegan, Lucas Erceg
11:53am: Jorge Castillo of ESPN reports that the Yanks are more focused on pitching and acquiring Díaz is unlikely, which could perhaps apply to Rengifo as well.
11:49am: The trade deadline is just a few hours away now but teams are still scouring the market for upgrades. Per Jon Heyman of The New York Post on X, the Yankees have infielders Yandy Díaz and Luis Rengifo on their radar, as well as relievers Tanner Scott, Pete Fairbanks, Kyle Finnegan and Lucas Erceg. He adds that they could also look to add a starting pitching but might not meet the asking prices.
Some of those guys have already been connected to the Yankees in rumors. The connections with Rengifo, Finnegan and Erceg are new but also in line with their previously-reported pursuits. Even after adding Jazz Chisholm Jr. to the roster, they have seemingly still been looking for more infield help, which Rengifo could certainly help with.
The 27-year-old is in his third straight above-average offensive season. Since the start of the 2022 campaign, he’s hit .272/.323/.433 for a wRC+ of 110. He’s also stolen 35 bases in that time while bouncing to all three outfield spots and three infield positions to the left of first base. He’s not considered a strong defender at any one position but the ability to move all around is certainly attractive.
The Yanks are still trying to figure out their best alignment at the moment. Chisholm’s first game as a Yankee was in center field, where he has been spending most of his time in recent years. But then the Yanks moved him to third base last night, a position he had never played before. Now that Giancarlo Stanton is back and in the designated hitter slot, Aaron Judge moved to center field, flanked by Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo. Acquiring another infielder could result in Chisholm moving to second and bumping out Gleyber Torres, or perhaps Verdugo will get nudged out of the outfield mix.
Rengifo is making a modest $4.4MM this year, with roughly $1.5MM left to be paid out. That’s likely attractive to the Yankees as they are slated to be a third-time payor of the competitive balance tax and well above the top tier, meaning they will pay a 110% tax on anything they add to the ledger. He can also be retained via arbitration for 2025 and could perhaps slide into next year’s second base job with Torres slated for free agency after the current season. Verdugo is also an impending free agent, so perhaps Chisholm could be in the outfield with Rengifo on the infield. There’s also the looming Soto free agency to consider, though the Yanks are expected to be aggressive in trying to re-sign him. Rengifo has also been connected to clubs such as the Red Sox, Dodgers and Royals in recent weeks.
The extra year of control means that the Angels don’t have to move on from Rengifo but there would be logic in doing so as they haven’t been meaningfully competitive for quite some time. Now that Shohei Ohtani is gone and Mike Trout is having annual trouble staying on the field, the odds of them turning things around between now and the end of 2025 seem long.
Bullpen adds are generally on the radar of all contending teams and the Yanks are surely exploring all options there. Finnegan has been the Nationals’ closer for quite some time but is nearing the end of his window of club control, with one year remaining after this one. The Nats have already traded Hunter Harvey and Lane Thomas, two players that were also controllable through 2025, and Finnegan seems likely to move today as well.
He has a career 3.52 earned run average in 272 appearances. He has struck out 23.9% of batters faced, given out walks at a 9.4% rate and kept the ball on the ground at a 46.8% clip. That includes racking up 28 saves this year with a 3.48 ERA, 24.6% strikeout rate, 7.8% walk rate and 40.5% ground ball rate. He’s making $5.1MM this year.
Erceg can still be retained by the Athletics for five seasons beyond this one, but he’s a late bloomer who is now 29 years old despite his limited experience, which could tempt them to sell high. He has a 3.68 ERA this year, 26.3% strikeout rate, 8.3% walk rate and 50.5% ground ball rate. The fact that he’s pre-arbitration and therefore making a modest salary is surely appealing to the Yankees but the cost might be high. Even rental relievers are netting big returns at this year’s deadline so getting Erceg might take an uncomfortable haul.
Garrett Crochet Rumors: Deadline Day
White Sox ace Garrett Crochet has been the hottest name on the trade market this month, both because of the Sox’ own failed attempt to extend him and because his camp has since indicated that the left-hander wants an extension before pitching in October for a new club. Crochet’s 114 1/3 innings this season have already eclipsed his prior career total. He’s said to be against a move to the bullpen, believing that staying on a starter’s routine is best for his health, and aiming for financial security before pushing his workload even deeper into postseason waters.
It’s rubbed many fans the wrong way to see such a business-like approach, and it’s taken many in the industry aback — White Sox GM Chris Getz included, apparently. Via Sox Machine’s James Fegan, Getz spoke with reporters yesterday and acknowledged that he was “surprised and taken back” by how Crochet’s camp handled the situation, particularly as he’d had a conversation with the left-hander’s agent at CAA just the night before.
“I think most fans and even players without knowing everything, it makes sense,” said Getz. “We understand why a stance would be taken. Now how you go about expressing that is what was a bit hurtful, quite honestly, considering I felt like we could have handled it a little bit differently and still I think everyone accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. … But Garrett and I are fine, we are good. I’ll continue to be one of his top supporters. In regard to how it affects the coming days, tough to tell.”
We’ll round up today’s Crochet chatter here and break out any major developments into their own posts…
- USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports that the White Sox have become increasingly optimistic that they’ll find someone to meet their asking price on Crochet even in the wake of his extension revelation. Per Nightengale, the Sox believe that they’ll trade Crochet between now and the 5:00pm CT deadline but expect to hang onto center fielder Luis Robert Jr. — as was reported to be the case regarding Robert just last night.
- Both Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and Bruce Levine of 670 The Score suggest that Crochet’s market remains strong. Rosenthal lists the Padres, Dodgers, Braves, Phillies, Red Sox and Orioles as teams with varying levels of interest. Levine echoes much of that same list and quotes an executive from a rival AL club stating the relative obvious: “You don’t get a chance to find a top pitcher like that often. You must get creative.”
- The Yankees inquired on Crochet at some point but were told in those initial talks that the two parties “didn’t match up” in a trade, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. The Yankees could always revisit talks, particularly with so many alternative rotation options off the board. New York has been tied to Tigers righty Jack Flaherty as well, and the Yankees are seeking a rotation upgrade as they simultaneously explore the possibility of moving Nestor Cortes in a separate deal.
Yankees, Pirates, Astros In The Mix For Yandy Diaz
9:38pm: In addition to the Yankees, both the Pirates and Astros are engaged with the Rays on Diaz, reports Cuban journalist Francys Romero.
Both teams make some sense for Diaz, though the Astros’ fit is clearer and more straightforward. Houston released Jose Abreu earlier this summer and has received a middling .232/.316/.354 output from Jon Singleton in his stead. The ‘Stros already depleted the top end of a thin farm to acquire Yusei Kikuchi earlier tonight, however, making it tougher for them to win any kind of bidding war for a player of note.
The Pirates’ need at first base has quieted as they’ve enjoyed a resurgence from Rowdy Tellez since the calendar flipped to June. The lefty slugger touts a .331/.370/.595 line over his past 135 plate appearances. That said, Tellez has notable platoon splits in his career, and Diaz could also log time at both third base and designated hitter — particularly if the Bucs are comfortable playing Andrew McCutchen in the outfield more frequently. (Notably, outfielders Joshua Palacios and Ji Hwan Bae both exited tonight’s game with injuries.) More than anything, Pittsburgh simply needs more offense, so acquiring a quality hitter like Diaz and sorting out the playing time later has its own merits, even if the positional fit is less clean with Tellez’s recent hot streak and a franchise icon (McCutchen) serving as a near-everyday designated hitter.
8:35pm: The Yankees have been active in just about every facet of the trade market over the past week. They’ve landed Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the Marlins, looked into big-name starters like Giants lefty Blake Snell and Tigers righty Jack Flaherty, and simultaneously been gauging interest in lefty Nestor Cortes. Among the team’s other targets is Rays infielder Yandy Diaz, per The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty. The Yankees were also involved in the bidding for Isaac Paredes before he was traded to the Cubs, Kuty adds.
Adding some infield help makes good sense for the Yankees, who have Anthony Rizzo on the injured list while veterans Gleyber Torres and DJ LeMahieu have struggled throughout the season. Utilityman Jon Berti, acquired just prior to Opening Day, is on the injured list. Versatile Oswaldo Cabrera has faded after a hot start. Rookie Ben Rice has shown some power but entered play Monday hitting .196 with a .291 OBP (he’s since homered and bumped up those rate stats a bit). A brief look at veteran J.D. Davis didn’t work out.
Bringing Diaz aboard would give the Yankees an affordable veteran who can handle both infield corners, though he’s primarily played first base in recent seasons. The 32-year-old Diaz got out to a dreadful start in 2024 but turned things around emphatically after a slow first month. His season-long .270/.326/.397 line is more solid than it is eye-catching, but setting aside an uncharacteristic slump to begin the season, Diaz has turned in a robust .296/.348/.452 slash over a sample of just under 300 plate appearances. His superlative bat-to-ball skills have been on full display, as Diaz has fanned in a mere 13.7% of his plate appearances during that stretch and walked at a 7.5% clip. That walk rate is slightly below average, but Diaz has an 11.5% career mark in that regard.
Diaz’s approach is a particularly good fit with Yankee Stadium. Although he’s a right-handed hitter, he hits the ball to the opposite field at a hearty 30.3% rate — more than all but 16 hitters in baseball (min. 300 plate appearances). Diaz is batting .333 and slugging .505 when he goes the other way with the ball — numbers that would presumably tick up when playing half his games with that ever-alluring short right-field porch in the Bronx.
Diaz is in the second season of a three-year, $24MM contract. He’s earning $8MM on the year and is owed $10MM in 2025. There’s a $12MM club option for the 2026 campaign on the contract as well, which does not have a buyout. That backloaded contract is relatively steep for the Rays but far more palatable for the Yankees, even with their luxury-tax status. The Yankees are a third-time offender in the top tier of penalization, meaning they’d pay a 110% tax on the AAV of any contracts they add to the books. That creates some short-term pain, perhaps, but Diaz’s deal is more affordable than many free-agent options would be and the fact that he’s locked up through ’26 makes him an appealing multi-year option.
Yankees Discussing Jack Flaherty Trade, Planning To Deal Nestor Cortes If Completed
The Yankees are in “extensive trade talks” for Tigers righty Jack Flaherty, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today. The Yankees plan to trade starter Nestor Cortes if they land Flaherty, adds Nightengale. Earlier today, we learned that Flaherty has been scratched from tonight’s start against the Guardians, with a trade expected soon.
Flaherty, who will be a free agent after the season, has experienced a resurgence this season and is sporting a career-best 27.5 K-BB% through 18 starts. The Tigers are 5.5 games out in the wild card and are a long shot to reach the playoffs, so Flaherty seems very likely to be dealt before tomorrow’s 5pm central time trade deadline.
The Yankees, meanwhile, are one game back of the Orioles in the AL East and currently hold a wild card spot. The Yanks have limped to an 8-13 record in July, though they won their last two at Boston. Senior vice president and GM Brian Cashman added Jazz Chisholm Jr. via trade yesterday, and is known to be seeking reinforcements for the pitching staff.
The New York Post’s Joel Sherman connected the Yankees to Flaherty on Saturday, and Sherman’s colleague Jon Heyman reported Cortes’ availability earlier today. Flaherty would form a dynamic 1-2 punch with ace Gerrit Cole. Even sans Cortes, the club could be adequately covered for the rest of the regular season with Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman, and Luis Gil, with Clarke Schmidt on the mend from a lat strain. It’s also worth noting that Gil will surpass his professional career-high in innings (108 2/3) if he records five or more outs tonight in Philadelphia, so the Yankees may need to back off to keep him fresh for October.
Cortes, who leads the Yankees with 124 1/3 innings this year, owns a 4.13 ERA at present. With a 17.4 K-BB%, he’s an entirely capable big league pitcher, though he lacks the strikeout stuff Flaherty has shown this year. Cortes is under team control through 2025 as an arbitration eligible player, and will earn a raise on this year’s $3.95MM salary.
According to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the Yankees’ competitive balance tax payroll currently sits around $315MM. The club pays a 110% tax on anything above $297MM. A Cortes-Flaherty contract swap-out would increase the team’s CBT hit by around $3.3MM for the remainder of the season, which would carry a tax of about $3.6MM. But given that the Yankees are considering all sorts of different scenarios, we won’t know where the dust settles until about 24 hours from now.
Yankees Designate Jahmai Jones For Assignment
The Yankees announced that have designated infielder/outfielder Jahmai Jones for assignment and reinstated designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton from the injured list. Joel Sherman of The New York Post reported the moves on X prior to the official announcement.
Jones, 26, was claimed by the Yankees in February. Out of options, he has lasted on the roster through roughly two thirds of the season but didn’t get much playing time in his bench role. To this point, he has been sent to the plate 47 times while appearing in 33 contests. He hit .238/.304/.381 while striking out in 34% of his trips to the plate, lining up defensively at second base, third base and the outfield corners.
Throughout the year, the Yanks have welcomed DJ LeMahieu back from the IL and acquired Jazz Chisholm Jr., bolstering their position player mix and nudging Jones off the roster. They will now have just over 24 hours to explore trade talks but might end up putting Jones on waivers.
Jones may receive interest due to his previous prospect pedigree. He was a second-round pick of the Angels back in 2015 and subsequently got some top 100 love but he hasn’t really had much of a chance to prove himself at the major league level. The Angels added him to their 40-man roster in November of 2019 but Jones has only appeared in 69 MLB games over the past five seasons, bouncing to the Orioles, Brewers and Yankees.
But his work in the minors has continued to be impressive. Over the 2021 to 2023 seasons, he drew walks in 15.2% of his plate appearances, only striking out 21.8% of the time. He slashed a combined .254/.378/.441 in those seasons for a 114 wRC+. He also stole 25 bases in that time in 34 tries. He exhausted his final option year in 2023, which is why the Yankees haven’t been able to send him down this year.
Between his solid Triple-A offense, his past prospect pedigree and his defensive versatility, it’s possible that some club may give him a chance for the final few months of the season, likely a rebuilding club that has playing time to offer. He came into 2024 with less than a year of service time, meaning he can be retained for five seasons beyond this one if things click for him.
Yankees Discussing Nestor Cortes In Trade Talks
The Yankees are firm deadline buyers, but they’ve also been discussing left-hander Nestor Cortes with other teams, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. He adds an unexpected name to the starting pitching market — presumably one for whom the Yankees would prefer to add big league talent. (Heyman adds that the Yankees have some interest in Cardinals utilityman Tommy Edman but does not go so far as to suggest the two sides have discussed a Cortes-for-Edman swap.)
On the one hand, it’s always a bit surprising to see a win-now club of this nature discuss an active member of its rotation in trades. On the other, the Yankees went down a similar path just two years ago with another left-hander, Jordan Montgomery, when they traded him to the Cardinals in exchange for center fielder Harrison Bader.
At the time, Montgomery was a quality fourth option in a deep Yankees rotation but not one who was going to make the team’s postseason rotation. There’s similar context here. The Yankees could go with a postseason rotation including a combination of Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman, Luis Gil and/or a returning Clarke Schmidt. There’s also the possibility that GM Brian Cashman adds a more impactful arm to the group before tomorrow’s deadline.
Cortes, 29, is in the midst of a generally solid season but has floundered of late. He’s pitched to a 4.13 ERA in 124 1/3 innings, striking out 22.5% of his opponents (right on par with league average) and issuing walks at a tiny 5% clip along the way. However, he’s run into a rough patch of late, failing to complete five innings in each of his past three starts and serving up a total of 15 runs over the course of 13 2/3 innings during that mini-slump.
Like Montgomery in 2022, Cortes is affordable ($3.95MM salary) and controlled for one additional year. A new team would be able to retain him for the 2025 season via arbitration. He’ll be owed a raise of some note but should still see his salary fall well shy of $10MM.
This hasn’t been Cortes’ best season, but he’s solidified himself as a quality big league starter — and taken a unique path to getting there. The Orioles selected Cortes out of the Yankees’ system in the 2017 Rule 5 Draft but designated him for assignment that April and returned him to the Yankees. Just 18 months later, Cortes was designated for assignment by the Yankees, this time getting traded to the Mariners for international bonus allotments. Things didn’t pan out in Seattle, and Cortes returned to the Yanks as a minor league free agent in the 2020-21 offseason.
Since returning to the Bronx, Cortes touts a 3.38 ERA in 439 innings. He’s entrenched himself into the New York rotation, but with their control over the lefty dwindling and a solid collection of alternative options on the big league roster, flipping Cortes for some big league help in the infield — be it Edman or any number of other infield options presently on the market — or an outfielder who could push Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base more regularly could work to the Yankees’ benefit.
All that said, it’d be somewhat surprising if the Yankees moved Cortes and didn’t backfill the rotation with a different addition. Cole has only made seven starts after spending the first two months of the season on the injured list with an elbow issue. Gil looks to have recovered from a rough patch he hit in June, but he’s up to 107 1/3 innings after pitching only four innings last year while mending from Tommy John surgery. Schmidt has been on the injured list since late May due to a lat strain. Rodon, like Gil, hit a rough spot in June and has righted the ship of late — but his track record in New York is spotty, to put things lightly. Stroman’s results have been solid (3.64 ERA) but he’s sporting career-worst strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates (leading to a 5.22 FIP and 4.85 SIERA).
There’s some sense to moving Cortes to address needs in another area — but only if they’re also adding a starting pitcher who’d more concretely slot into a playoff rotation and make up the remainder of Cortes’ innings for the balance of the regular season. That’s a tricky tightrope to walk, but it’s one the Yankees have navigated in the very recent past.