You didn’t really think teams were done swapping relievers after Friday and Saturday, did you? If you thought maybe they were tapped out for late relief help on Sunday and Monday, well, you thought wrong! If your bullpen doesn’t look like there are enough dudes to capture Helm’s Deep, you’re woefully short-armed.
The San Diego Padres acquired LHRP Tanner Scott and RHRP Bryan Hoeing from the Miami Marlins for LHSP Robby Snelling, RHSP Adam Mazur, 3B/2B Graham Pauley, and 3B/SS Jay Beshears
As one of baseball’s elite closers on an expiring contract, Tanner Scott was arguably the best short-term option available among relievers. His walk rate has peeked up a little to the numbers of the bad old days, but his first-strike percentage has stayed firmly in positive territory, which is an important indicator of where walk numbers will settle. Scott is likely to help the Padres in a very tight NL Wild Card race, but he’ll probably be even more important for them in the playoffs if they can get there. In San Diego, he teams up with Robert Suarez to asphyxiate opposing lineups late in the games. As far as elite closers who occasionally walk a few too many batters go, Scott is one of the less stressful of the genre, because he’s so hard to hit against with any authority, giving him a good shot at escaping jams following those free passes.
Bryan Hoeing is a sinker/slider reliever who has never quite clicked, as he’s never really been able to induce many swings-and-misses, nor has he mastered the art of inducing weak groundballs. He strikes me mostly as a depth guy who has plenty of years of club control left, and barring a breakout, he seems destined to be shuffled back and forth between San Diego and Triple-A El Paso a lot over the next few years. This trade is about Scott.
Robby Snelling is the big name prospect here, and there’s a good bit of divergence of opinion on him. He’s not featured on our Top 100 Prospects list and received a 40+ FV in the Padres prospect rundown a couple of weeks ago. One of Eric Longenhagen’s concerns about Snelling — that he lacks a killer secondary pitch to punch out batters — is one that ZiPS now agrees with after his rocky stint for Double-A San Antonio this season. (He was no. 58 on the ZiPS Top 100 in February, but he’s almost certainly fallen off that list since then). That said, Snelling is no. 44 on MLB Pipeline’s list, and was the third-best lefty pitching prospect there after Noah Schultz and Ricky Tiedemann. The Marlins do have a good track record for developing pitchers, even if they all seem to end up injured.
We had Adam Mazur as nearly equal to Snelling among the team’s top prospects, though Mazur clearly wasn’t ready for the eight starts he made for the parent team, mainly due to injury-related desperation. While he has a couple more ticks of velocity than does Snelling, he suffers a similar malady in not having secondary pitches that batters chase out of the strike zone. Graham Pauley can hardly be described as a high-upside prospect, and he hasn’t gotten a lot of love from prospect watchers, but he was certainly worth watching after he beat up pitchers across three levels in 2023. That hasn’t continued in 2024. He hit a wall at Triple-A, which was enough for ZiPS to take a pretty good chunk out of his 2025 wRC+ projection, dropping it from 97 all the way down to 83. He can sort of pretend to play second and third base, and the Marlins are always devoid of offensive talent, so he’s got plenty of time to turn it around and have a Dan Uggla-esque career. Jay Beshears has only five home runs in about a season’s worth of plate appearances in the low minors despite not being terribly young, and he doesn’t make up for that with any notable contact or defensive skills. He’s not likely to be on anyone’s radar anytime soon and will most likely fill out Double-A rosters for a while.
Even if you’re down on Snelling and/or Mazur, it’s still a good haul for two months of a relief pitcher. Both teams should be happy with how they did here.
The Kansas City Royals acquired RHRP Lucas Erceg from the Oakland A’s for RHSP Mason Barnett, RHRP Will Klein, and OF Jared Dickey
Lucas Erceg is probably not a finished product. He misses bats and is hard to hit, but he also gets off to a lot of 1-0 counts, which suggests that his walk rate improvement from 2023 to ’24 probably isn’t quite as sustainable as the raw numbers appear (14% to 8%). But throwing in the high-90s makes up for a lot of sins, and his slider is a worthy secondary pitch. You also have to take into consideration that he started pitching professionally only a couple years ago. (Though he did pitch some relief innings in college, he was mainly an infielder and was drafted as such.) The Royals get him for five full seasons, which is a pretty big deal, especially if he continues to improve.
Mason Barnett won’t make the ZiPS Top 100, but the computer does think he’s been competent enough at Double-A to sneak above replacement level for his major league translation. Barnett was actually our second-ranked pitcher on the Royals top prospect list, with a 40+ FV; Travis Ice called him a possible back-end workhorse starter, and that’s the kind of thing the A’s are looking for when you consider that ownership’s top priority is to run out the clock while it waits to get its hoped-for Las Vegas pot of honey. RHRP Will Klein is your prototypical hard-throwing reliever with a foggy idea of where the pitch is going, but he does at least keep the ball down. Every organization has several of these pitchers hanging around in the minors, and some of them will work out. Eric told me Tuesday afternoon that he sees Jared Dickey as an “upper-level depth type.” ZiPS gives Dickey a peak projection of an 85 wRC+, and because he does not project to play center field, the computer agrees with Eric’s assessment.
The Texas Rangers acquired LHRP Andrew Chafin from the Detroit Tigers for RHRP Chase Lee and RHSP Joseph Montalvo
I personally feel the Rangers would have been better off retooling at the deadline, but they’ve stayed close enough in the race – they’re only 3 1/2 games out in the AL West – that they’ve decided otherwise. Texas is a team that’s been rather devoid of lefty relievers this season, with rookie Jacob Latz shouldering most of the burden. Latz’s command is still a bit spotty, so Andrew Chafin, who was having a fine comeback season with the Tigers, instantly becomes the first lefty out of the Texas bullpen for a high-leverage situation. If he’s solid enough, the Rangers may even consider picking up his $7.25 million option for 2025, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Chafin will take Latz’s higher-leverage innings, and Texas will be better for it.
Suffice it so say, the Tigers were unlikely to get a haul for Chafin – and they didn’t. Chase Lee made the “weirdos” section in our prospect rankings, and while the article didn’t really go into much depth on him, he’s a fastball/sinker/slider pitcher who is missing the fastball part of that label. A sidearmer with a “heater” that’s averaged under 90 mph this year, Lee relies on deception and command to get his whiffs. His sinker doesn’t really induce the super-low launch angles that the good ones do, and when batters make contact with the slider, they tend to hit it fairly hard. Joseph Montalvo is also a command pitcher without an impressive repertoire. He’s succeeded in the low minors, but pitchers like that frequently splat when they get to Double- or Triple-A, so the Tigers will have to wait and see with him.
The Philadelphia Phillies acquired LHRP Tanner Banks from the Chicago White Sox for 2B/SS William Bergolla
I’m like 99% sure that the White Sox picked up William Bergolla, the 40 FV infield prospect and not William Bergolla, the 41-year-old dad and former Reds player who kicked around for a while as a utility infielder in Triple-A. After all, this is the organization that once accidentally acquired Jeff Barry instead of Jon Berry, and an infielder in his 40s has a lot of veteran leadership to offer to the White Sox. Assuming the White Sox got it right, Bergolla’s an interesting prospect, quick without being a true speedster, and a really advanced contact hitter for a minor leaguer. Whether he develops more than this, he’s more interesting than the grim parade of second basemen the Pale Hose have sent out there recently.
Tanner Banks never really figured out how to get out of innings as a starting pitcher prospect, but he’s found a second life in the bullpen the last few years. He’ll only hit 92-93 mph with his fastball, but he has good secondary offerings and a wider selection than most relievers. He’s a bit unusual in that he uses his curveball kind of like a slider, the reach pitch against lefties, while he’ll use his slider almost like it’s a cutter, throwing it fairly high and in against righties. That’s been enough to net him 10 strikeouts per nine innings, and he’s not a free agent until after the 2028 season, when he’ll be turning 37. Banks makes a terrific Phillies bullpen even better now, and they get to keep him for a long time. This is one of the more underrated pickups this July.
The Houston Astros acquired LHRP Caleb Ferguson from the New York Yankees for RHRP Kelly Austin and international bonus pool money
The Yankees were high enough on Caleb Ferguson to give him a lot of high-leverage situations early in the season, but after a few too many homers and walks, and a fastball missing a bit of its normal bite, his role has been minimized to the extent that he’s entered only a single game with a leverage index above one over the last month. The Yankees aren’t in a position to wait around on him, so they decided to get while the getting was good something. The something in this case is a low-level depth arm in Kelly Austin, a reliever with a low-90s fastball and some weird pitch data: A seemingly implausible 1,450 rpm average spin rate on one secondary pitch has left Eric wondering if Austin has been throwing some awkward splitters that are cutting and being mischaracterized as sliders. The Yankees also snagged some extra flexibility in their international signings, resulting in a fair haul for a pitcher they had little interest in using as of late. Ferguson is a free agent at the end of the season, so there’s no big potential payoff for the Astros, but one thing that hasn’t changed about them in the Bagwell era is that they are attracted to pitchers with upside but some kind of problem they think they can fix. If they saw something they can iron out quickly, Ferguson could return to being a dependable lefty down the stretch and in the playoffs, and for a very low cost.
The Minnesota Twins acquired RHRP Trevor Richards from the Toronto Blue Jays for 2B/SS Jay Harry
This trade would have been a significantly bigger deal three years ago. Trevor Richards typically has (barely) survived being occasionally crushable by putting up elite whiff numbers, but he’s had a huge drop-off this season. He lives and dies by his changeup more than ever, leaving him in the position of being sort of a LOOGY that the factory actually manufactured as right-handed. He’ll be the seventh or eighth best reliever in Minnesota’s bullpen, so he’ll likely just pick up some bulk innings. Jay Harry is basically a future organizational player who will likely peak as a utility guy for a weak Double-A team. Without a big draft pedigree, hitting .214/.306/.349 isn’t going to get him much attention, unless, I guess, he starts telling people he’s related to Debbie Harry.
The New York Mets acquired RHRP Huascar Brazoban from the Miami Marlins for 3B/OF Wilfredo Lara and RHRP Tyler Zuber from the Tampa Bay Rays for RHRP Paul Gervase
With these two small moves, the Mets continued to remake their bullpen on the fly for the stretch drive. I think Huascar Brazoban is better than several bigger name relievers who were traded this deadline, with some good high-90s heat, an equally hard sinker, a usable cutter, and a nasty changeup he’s finally got a handle on within the last year or so. Even better: He’s not a rental, so the Mets get to keep him for a while. Wilfredo Lara is a 35+ FV prospect who has been hanging just on the edge of the Mets prospect list, a speed-based utility player who doesn’t make good enough contact to really make that matter. He does have a great deal of versatility; he’s played everywhere but pitcher and catcher recently. Tyler Zuber was a Royals relief prospect years ago with a mid-90s fastball and command issues, but he’s made a comeback from a shoulder impingement issue, revamping his secondary offerings to throw a cutter and a sweeper. He was pretty solid in Triple-A for the Rays and serves as an interesting flyer, though the Mets may look at him more next spring rather than this August. Paul Gervase is a 6-foot-10 reliever with a low-90s fastball who gets a lot of whiffs, but he still has some significant command issues to iron out. The Rays are a good organization for that kind of thing, but he’s unlikely to contribute quickly.
The Seattle Mariners acquired RHRP JT Chargois from the Miami Marlins for RHSP Will Schomberg
The Mariners already got the reliever they wanted a few days ago when they picked up Yimi García from the Blue Jays, but JT Chargois is a decent depth piece, a sinkerballer who survives a very low strikeout rate by keeping batters crushing pitches straight into the grass. He’s missed time with a neck injury this season, but he’s been inconsistent in his limited innings when he’s pitched, allowing a lot more fly balls than usual. Since you’re a FanGraphs reader, I don’t think I have to quiz you on whether his 1.62 ERA or 5.32 FIP more accurately reflects his performance in 2024. Chargois likely won’t handle high-leverage innings, and I’m not sure he’s even a lock to be on a possible postseason roster. Will Schomberg is an older prospect, signed as an undrafted free agent, who has a couple decent breaking pitches, but he wasn’t enough of a prospect to land a FV estimate.
