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Twins Acquire Michael Fulmer From Tigers

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The Twins announced they’ve acquired reliever Michael Fulmer from the Tigers. Pitching prospect Sawyer Gipson-Long is headed back to Detroit.

Fulmer is one of the better rental relievers available on the summer market. The 29-year-old has worked to a 3.20 ERA across 39 1/3 innings, his second straight season with strong run prevention. Fulmer’s 23.1% strikeout rate and 11.5% swinging strike percentage are more solid than great, but he’s consistently done an excellent job keeping the ball in the yard.

Minnesota can’t count on Fulmer sustaining this season’s 2.2% HR/FB rate, but he also did well to avoid hard contact last year. He’s induced plenty of infield fly balls over the past couple seasons, and he’s held opposite-handed hitters to a woeful .190/.256/.298 line on the season. That’s no doubt appealing to a Minnesota club that only has Jovani Moran as a left-handed bullpen option with Caleb Thielbar on the injured list.

Fulmer is an impending free agent, so he’s a pure stretch run play with the Twins a game ahead of the Guardians in the AL Central. He’s not as impactful an addition as this morning’s pickup of All-Star closer Jorge López from Baltimore, but he becomes a much-needed extra boost to a relief corps that has been the club’s Achilles heel. Fulmer is making $4.95MM, around $1.8MM of which is still to be paid out.

Detroit picks up a 6’4″ right-hander in the deal. Gipson-Long was a sixth-round pick out of Mercer in 2019. He’s split the year between High-A Cedar Rapids and Double-A Wichita, thriving at the former destination while struggling at the latter. Overall, he owns a 4.23 ERA across 87 1/3 innings with a decent 24.2% strikeout rate and a minuscule 5.3% walk percentage.

Jon Heyman of the New York Post first reported the Twins were acquiring Fulmer. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported that Detroit would receive Gipson-Long in return.

Mariners Acquire Curt Casali, Matthew Boyd From Giants

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The Mariners added a backup catcher and strengthened their pitching depth just prior to Tuesday’s deadline, acquiring catcher Curt Casali and lefty Matthew Boyd from the Giants in exchange for minor league righty Michael Stryffeler and catcher Andy Thomas. The Casali and Boyd were initially reported separately but were announced by the teams as part of the same swap. Seattle announced that left-hander Tommy Milone has been released to make room on the 40-man roster for Casali. Boyd is on the 60-day injured list and does not yet require a roster spot.

Casali adds some depth behind Seattle starter Cal Raleigh. The 33-year-old backstop has had a nice showing in limited playing time with the Giants this season. Through 102 plate appearances, Casali is hitting .231/.325/.370, connecting on four homers and a trio of doubles. That’s a nice blend of power and patience from a depth catcher, even when paired with Casali’s typically lofty level of swing-and-miss. He’s also plenty familiar with newly acquired ace Luis Castillo from the pair’s days together in Cincinnati.

Seattle’s No. 2 backstop Luis Torrens has underwhelmed this year, hitting .208/.262/.225 in 42 games. Torrens can’t be optioned to the minor leagues, so Casali’s addition could conceivably squeeze him off the 40-man roster entirely. Raleigh will continue to play most days amidst a breakout season, and the M’s may not want to carry three backstops on the active roster. Casali is currently on the injured list after suffering an oblique strain last month, but he’s on a rehab assignment and should be reinstated to the majors shortly. Casali is making $2.6MM this season, around $928K of which has still to be paid. He’ll be a free agent at season’s end.

Boyd, 31, inked a one-year, $5.2MM deal with the Giants after a mostly solid four-year run with the Tigers. A brutal showing in 2020 skewed his numbers in his final few seasons with Detroit, but Boyd often flashed quality bat-missing ability and typically posted low walk rates throughout his time in the Detroit rotation. He twice looked as though he may be among the more appealing arms available at a trade deadline — first in 2019 when he was sitting on a 3.95 ERA and 152 strikeouts in 114 innings and again in 2021 when he’d posted a similar ERA and reduced home-run rate (albeit with a diminished strikeout rate).

The Tigers held onto Boyd both times, however, declining to move him in ’19 because they (justifiably) set a huge asking price given Boyd’s three-plus remaining seasons of club control. The 2020 season brought little opportunity to move Boyd, thanks to the aforementioned struggles (6.71 ERA in 12 starts), and by the time last year’s deadline rolled around, Boyd’s season was in jeopardy due to that forearm issue.

It’s unlikely that Boyd will be able to return and build up to a starter’s workload this season — but the Mariners, particularly after landing Castillo, don’t really need Boyd to step into the rotation anyhow. He could, however, provide them with an experienced left-hander to plug into the bullpen. Seattle hasn’t had much luck with its left-handed bullpen arms this season, so taking what’s surely a low-cost flier on Boyd is a sensible enough peripheral move at this stage of deadline season.

Stryffeler is a 26-year-old reliever who’s spent the 2022 campaign in Double-A. A right-hander, he owns an excellent 2.27 ERA through 35 2/3 frames. Stryffeler has fanned an elite 37.7% of batters faced but walked an elevated 12.6% of opponents. The Lake Erie college product will be eligible for the Rule 5 draft this winter if he’s not added to San Francisco’s 40-man roster.

Thomas, meanwhile, was the Mariners’ fifth-round draft pick just last summer. He’s had a nice start to the season in High-A, where he’s posted a strong .264/.400/.444 with nine homers, a dozen doubles and a huge 16.2% walk rate. Thomas was a senior sign out of Baylor University, it should be noted, so he’s already 23 and is playing against notably younger competition. Time will tell how he fares against more advanced opponents, but the early results are promising. From a defensive perspective, he’s caught a roughly average 27% of attempted base thieves, but Baseball America questioned his overall receiving skills at the time of the draft.

Milone, 35, had been in his second stint with the Mariners. The journeyman southpaw has carved out a 12-year big league career, at times enjoying solid runs as a starter (2012-15, in particular) and as a reliever. The past several seasons have been a struggle for the soft-tosser, however, as evidenced by a 6.33 ERA in 69 2/3 frames. Milone was on the 15-day injured list due to a cervical sprain, but if he’s healthy in the season’s final couple months, he could latch on as a depth arm with another club.

In 944 1/3 innings at the big league level, Milone has a 4.60 ERA with a below-average 17.5% strikeout rate but an excellent 5.6% walk rate.

Robert Murray of FanSided first reported that Casali was headed to Seattle in exchange for Stryffeler (Twitter link). Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that Boyd was going to Seattle as well.

Orioles Acquire Brett Phillips

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4:40pm: The Rays announced that Phillips was traded to the Orioles in exchange for cash.

4:28pm: The Orioles are acquiring outfielder Brett Phillips from the Rays, tweets Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com. Tampa Bay designated Phillips for assignment yesterday after acquiring Jose Siri from the Astros. He was reported to have interest from multiple clubs earlier this morning.

Phillips, 28, is an all-world defender with prolific strikeout issues that have weighed down an otherwise enviable blend of power and speed. He’s hitting just .147/.225/.250 this season and carries a tepid career .190/.276/.350 batting line in 883 plate appearances. That said, Phillips has a more passable .212/.296/.407 slash against right-handed pitching, has swatted 28 home runs and has gone 36-for-41 in the rough equivalent of one and a third full season’s worth of plate appearances at the MLB level. He can also be controlled for another two seasons via arbitration.

It’s unlikely the O’s have an everyday role in mind for Phillips — barring a more stunning trade of an established outfielder such as Cedric Mullins or Austin Hays. But there’s good value to Phillips’ blend of speed, defense and power coming off the bench.

Red Sox Listening On Nathan Eovaldi, Rich Hill

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4:35PM: The Cardinals, Phillies, and Twins are all interested in Hill, as per WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford.

1:24PM: Most of the talk regarding the Red Sox in recent days has centered on designated hitter J.D. Martinez and the since-traded Christian Vazquez, but Alex Speier of the Boston Globe reports that the Sox are open to dealing right-hander Nathan Eovaldi, though they’re not planning to simply take the best offer presented for him. Boston is, after all, still on the periphery of the Wild Card race — and Eovaldi represents a potential qualifying offer candidate. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic adds that lefty Rich Hill is “almost certainly in play” as well.

Eovaldi stands as one of the higher-profile names on the rental market. However, he’s a fairly pricey option, earning $17MM this season (with just over $6MM of that sum yet to be paid out), and has had some struggles since a June trip to the injured list. A back injury sidelined Eovaldi for a month, from June 12 through July 15, and the right-hander was torched for 16 earned runs in his first three starts upon returning — a total of just 13 innings.

Eovaldi held a potent Astros lineup scoreless through 6 1/3 frames last night, which may ease some concerns, but the right-hander’s fastball velocity has been down since sustaining that back injury. After averaging 96.9 mph on his heater from Opening Day through June 3, Eovaldi has an average of 94.5 mph on the pitch in his past five appearances — including a 94.3 mph average last night.

It bears emphasizing that even with the recent struggles, Eovaldi is sporting a respectable 4.11 ERA with a roughly average 23.1% strikeout rate, a brilliant 4.3% walk rate and an above-average 47.8% grounder rate. Interested parties will surely place a premium, to some extent, on the right-hander’s considerable postseason resume as well. Eovaldi was an absolute juggernaut in the 2018 playoffs, propelling the Red Sox to a World Series victory with 22 1/3 innings of 1.61 ERA ball. He stumbled in the 2021 ALCS against the Astros, but Eovaldi nonetheless has a career 3.14 ERA and 41-to-8 K/BB ratio in 43 postseason frames.

As for the veteran Hill, he’s playing on a one-year, $5MM deal with some incentives that could reasonably boost the contract by another $500K to $1MM. Hill’s incentives package kicks in at 110 innings pitched, and he’s currently at 70 2/3 frames on the year. In that time, he’s pitched to a 4.20 ERA with a 19.5% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate. He’s averaging under five innings per start, so it’s unlikely he reaches the 150- and 160-innings thresholds at which his most lucrative bonuses are slated to kick in, but he stands a decent chance of upping that salary a bit if he can remain healthy.

Mariners To Acquire Jake Lamb

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The Mariners are acquiring Jake Lamb from the Dodgers for cash considerations, tweets Robert Murray of FanSided.

Lamb, 31, signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers in March and had his contract selected in late June.  Much of his brief time with the Dodgers has been spent at designated hitter, but Lamb in left field and at first base for the club.  He’s primarily served as a third baseman in his nine-year career.  Lamb’s 2017 season was a highlight, as he hit 30 home runs and made the All-Star team as a member of the Diamondbacks.  A left-handed hitter, Lamb has struggled against southpaws in his career, though he’s shown a reverse platoon split in more recent years.  He’s hit well with a 121 wRC+ in his brief 77 big league plate appearances this year.

Lamb, a native of Seattle, may have become expendable for the Dodgers upon today’s acquisition of a more accomplished lefty bat, Joey Gallo.  Lamb can complement right-handed hitters for the Mariners, including Eugenio Suarez, Kyle Lewis, and Ty France.

Phillies, Blue Jays Reportedly Finalists In Noah Syndergaard Bidding

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4:22pm: MLB.com’s Jon Morosi tweets that the Syndergaard bidding is down to the Phillies and Blue Jays.

8:09am: The Phillies are believed to have Syndergaard “at the top of their list” as they seek rotation upgrades, tweets Jayson Stark of The Athletic.

12:43am: The Blue Jays are “making a play” for Angels starter Noah Syndergaard, tweets Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Blue Jays Nation’s Brendon Kuhn was first to report the club’s contact with the Halos. Jon Morosi of MLB.com tweets that the Jays, Braves and previously-reported Phillies were among the teams with recent interest in Syndergaard, although he notes that Atlanta’s acquisition of Jake Odorizzi could take them out of the market.

Morosi suggests a Syndergaard trade before the 6:00pm EST deadline is becoming “more likely.” That’s not particularly surprising, as the 29-year-old has looked like a strong trade candidate for weeks. The Halos have fallen well out of playoff contention, and Syndergaard is an impending free agent. Los Angeles also couldn’t tag him with a qualifying offer next offseason. Syndgeraard received and rejected a QO from the Mets last year, and the collective bargaining agreement prohibits players from receiving a QO multiple times in their careers. Should the Angels hang onto the righty past the trade deadline, they could lose him to free agency for no compensation.

It seems likelier that general manager Perry Minasian and his staff will find a contender willing to relinquish some future considerations to add Syndergaard for the stretch run. He’s made 15 starts and worked 80 innings of 3.83 ERA ball. He doesn’t throw as hard or miss as many bats as he did during his early-career days with the Mets, but he’s a quality strike-thrower who induces a decent number of grounders. Syndergaard still looks like a solid mid-rotation arm whom some clubs could view as a possible Game 3 or Game 4 playoff starter.

Syndergaard is among the costlier options on the market, however. He signed a $21MM deal with the Halos last winter, and approximately $7.5MM of that tab has yet to be paid out. Perhaps the Angels will be willing to kick in some money to facilitate a trade, but if they’re insistent on an acquiring club picking up the remainder of the money, the prospect return could be fairly minimal.

The Cardinals landed José Quintana from the Pirates tonight, subtracting one of the more appealing rental arms from the market. It’s a rather thin group of impending free agent starters, particularly if the Red Sox and Giants elect to hold onto Nathan Eovaldi and Carlos Rodón, respectively. Beyond Syndergaard, perhaps the top remaining rental starter likely to change hands is Drew Smyly. Controllable arms who could be available in the hours leading up to the deadline include Tyler Mahle, Pablo López and Zach Plesac.

Mariners To Acquire Matthew Boyd

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4:15pm: The Mariners and Giants announced this swap as part of a broader trade sending catcher Curt Casali and Boyd from San Francisco to Seattle in exchange for a pair of minor leaguers. You can read MLBTR’s full breakdown of the deal here.

3:56pm: The Mariners are set to acquire left-hander Matthew Boyd in a trade with the Giants, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post (Twitter link). He’s currently on the injured list and has spent the entire season to date rehabbing from September surgery to repair a torn flexor tendon, but Boyd makes for an interesting roll of the dice and could give the M’s a quality arm late in the season if he’s able to return from that surgery.

Boyd, 31, inked a one-year, $5.2MM deal with the Giants after a mostly solid four-year run with the Tigers. A brutal showing in 2020 skewed his numbers in his final few seasons with Detroit, but Boyd often flashed quality bat-missing ability and typically posted low walk rates throughout his time in the Detroit rotation. He twice looked as though he may be among the more appealing arms available at a trade deadline — first in 2019 when he was sitting on a 3.95 ERA and 152 strikeouts in 114 innings and again in 2021 when he’d posted a similar ERA and reduced home-run rate (albeit with a diminished strikeout rate).

The Tigers held onto Boyd both times, however, declining to move him in ’19 because they (justifiably) set a huge asking price given Boyd’s three-plus remaining seasons of club control. The 2020 season brought little opportunity to move Boyd, thanks to the aforementioned struggles (6.71 ERA in 12 starts), and by the time last year’s deadline rolled around, Boyd’s season was in jeopardy due to that forearm issue.

It’s unlikely that Boyd will be able to return and build up to a starter’s workload this season — but the Mariners, particularly after landing Reds ace Luis Castillo, don’t really need Boyd to step into the rotation anyhow. He could, however, provide them with an experienced left-hander to plug into the bullpen. Seattle hasn’t had much luck with its left-handed bullpen arms this season, so taking what’s surely a low-cost flier on Boyd is a sensible enough peripheral move at this stage of deadline season.

Willson Contreras Rumors: Deadline Day

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“I’m ready for this to be over with,” Willson Contreras told reporters in San Francisco on Sunday regarding the trade rumors that have swirled around him for months.  Contreras has very likely played his last game for the Cubs, who are widely expected to trade their longtime catcher before today’s 5pm deadline.  Contreras, 30, broke into the Majors during the Cubs’ 2016 championship season and made three All-Star teams, including this year.  The club chose not to extend him along the way, so now Contreras is on the eve of free agency and will be joining a pennant race before long.  Here’s the latest:

LATEST RUMORS:

EARLIER:

Padres To Acquire Brandon Drury

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The Padres are acquiring Brandon Drury from the Reds, according to Ken Rosenthal and C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic. Prospect Victor Acosta is going to Cincinnati, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

The Padres have seemingly been at the center of all the activity at this year’s deadline, extending Joe Musgrove, acquiring Josh Hader, sending Eric Hosmer to the Red Sox and making perhaps the most impactful baseball trade of all time, acquiring Juan Soto and Josh Bell for a pile of prospects.

The Reds, too, have been busy, sending Luis Castillo to the Mariners, Tyler Mahle to the Twins and Tommy Pham to the Red Sox. Now the two clubs have aligned on a deal that will send Drury to San Diego.

Drury, 29, showed enough promise in his early years with the Diamondbacks that he cracked Baseball America’s top 100 list in 2016 and then was traded to the Yankees after the 2017 season. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of a miserable three-year stretch wherein Drury struggled mightily with the Yanks and then the Blue Jays. He dealt with various injuries and struggled to produce when healthy, eventually getting designated for assignment at the end of the 2020 season.

The Mets took a flier on him last year, which worked out well, as Drury hit .274/.307/.476 in a bench role. That production was 14% above league average, by measure of wRC+. Despite that solid work, he was designated for assignment again at the end of the season.

The Reds brought Drury aboard on a minor league deal, which could hardly have gone any better. Drury is having a career year, already having hit 20 home runs and producing an overall batting line of .274/.335/.520 for a wRC+ of 132. He’s also done it while bouncing all around the diamond, playing mostly third base but also seeing time at the other three infield positions and right field this year.

It seems likely that the Padres want Drury to fill a super utility role on the team, bouncing around to various positions based on who needs a day off. The regular infield lineup would likely see Josh Bell at first, Jake Cronenworth at second, Ha-Seong Kim at shortstop and Manny Machado at third. When Fernando Tatis Jr. eventually returns from his injury, the picture will get a little more crowded, but the Padres also cleared out their usual designated hitter by including Luke Voit in the Soto deal.

In exchange, the Reds are getting Acosta, an 18-year-old switch-hitting shortstop. He had an excellent debut in affiliated ball last year, slashing .285/.431/.484 in the Dominican Summer League for a 153 wRC+ and adding 26 stolen bases. He has slumped a bit this year, hitting .243/.346/.360 in the Arizona Complex League for a 99 wRC+. He is still just 18, however, and was considered one of the better prospects in the San Diego system coming into today.

Twins Acquire Sandy Leon From Guardians

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The Twins and Guardians have swung an inter-division trade, with Minnesota picking up catcher Sandy Leon.  Right-hander Ian Hamilton is headed to Cleveland on the other end of the swap.  The two players have been respectively assigned to their new teams’ Triple-A affiliates.

Ryan Jeffers suffered a thumb fracture in mid-July that will keep him out of action for another 4-6 weeks, leaving the Twins short at catcher behind Gary Sanchez.  The veteran Leon will provide some defense-first depth behind Sanchez, with rookie Caleb Hamilton and the more experienced Chance Sisco (on the Triple-A roster) also in the mix.

Leon’s second stint in Cleveland didn’t last long, as the Guardians only acquired him from the Reds in cash deal in late June, and then outrighted him off the 40-man roster two weeks ago.  For the season, Leon has appeared in only eight MLB games and posted a .514 OPS over 21 plate appearances.  Other than an offensive outburst over 78 games with the Red Sox in 2016, Leon has been a defensive specialist for much of his career, well-regarded as a pitch-framer and for his ability to manage pitchers and call games.

Hamilton has amassed 14 2/3 innings over parts of three MLB seasons, including 2 2/3 frames with the Twins this year.  An 11th-round pick for the White Sox in 2016, Hamilton had some excellent numbers at Triple-A this year, with a 1.88 ERA, 32.1% strikeout rate, and 7.1% walk rate in 28 2/3 relief innings.

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