Rodney has suited up for eleven different clubs in the majors since he debuted with the Tigers back in 2002, compiling a career 3.80 ERA and 3.77 FIP in 951 big league appearances. During that time, he’s gone 48-71 with 327 saves, good for the 18th most in MLB history. He’s perhaps best known for his otherwordly 2012 campaign with the Rays where he pitched to a microscopic 0.60 ERA in 74 2/3 innings. That was good for an unbelievable 614 ERA+ as Rodney earned the first All Star appearance of his career, a fifth-place finish in AL Cy Young award voting, and a top-13 finish in AL MVP voting.

That strong performance kicked off a seven-year stretch where Rodney generally pitched to above average results out of the bullpen, with a 3.14 ERA and 3.34 FIP, though the flashes of his 2012 brilliance came littered with stretches of struggles such as his 39-game stint in Miami where he struggled to a 5.89 ERA in 36 2/3 innings of work. Despite those occasional struggles, Rodney’s stretches of dominance earned him roles in bullpens all across the league until the shortened 2020 season arrived.

While Rodney landed with the Astros on a minor league deal that season, he ultimately was cut from the club without ever suiting up for the team. While that was his last role in affiliated ball, the veteran righty has continued his career in independent leagues around North America in the years since, pitching to a 3.70 ERA in 155 2/3 innings of work over the past four seasons with a 25.5% strikeout rate during that time. Blum notes that even minor league offers from MLB organizations have dried up as Rodney has entered his mid-forties, though it remains at least conceivable that a club could look to bring the veteran hurler into camp on a minor league deal to serve as a mentor for young pitchers in camp while allowing the righty to try and prove himself capable of returning to the majors.

More free agent notes from around the league…

• Rodney isn’t the only former closer hoping to re-establish himself in the majors, as Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports that right-hander Ken Giles is scheduled to throw a bullpen for interested teams this coming Friday. Giles was among the better relievers in the game for a six-year stretch from 2014 to 2019 but has thrown just 44 total innings (8 in the majors) since the start of the 2020 season. While the 33-year-old’s lengthy layoff due to injuries in recent years leaves plenty of question marks in his profile, Heyman adds that Giles is “said to be healthy.” If he can prove he’s still able to pitch competitively at a high level, teams would surely have interest in adding a veteran with a career 2.71 ERA and 2.46 FIP to their bullpen mix this spring, though he’d almost assuredly be limited to minor league offers.
• Also coming off a lost season in hopes of re-establishing himself in the majors is right-hander Vladimir Gutierrez, as a report from Francys Romero indicates the righty hosted a private workout for interested teams in Miami yesterday. Earlier this offseason, reporting from Romero indicated that several clubs had expressed interest in Gutierrez after the Reds outrighted him to the minors back in October, allowing him to elect minor league free agency. The 28-year-old pitched just 43 innings over the past two seasons due to Tommy John surgery but pitched fairly well over 22 starts during the 2021 season with a 4.74 ERA in 114 innings of work. Gutierrez could be among the more interesting depth options available on the starting pitching market due to his relative youth and the fact that he has options remaining.

Rodney opened the year throwing with the indy ball Sugar Land Skeeters, giving the ’Stros a chance to determine he was worthy of a closer look. But the 43-year-old hurler evidently didn’t impress at the team’s alternate training site.

When last we saw Rodney in action, he had enough in the tank to be a significant contributor to the 2019 World Series-winning Nats. He worked to a 4.05 ERA in 33 1/3 regular-season innings and was handed the ball six times in the postseason.

It remains to be seen whether this is the end of the line for the ageless reliever. He was still averaging better than 94 ticks on his heater last year. In his 17 total MLB campaigns, Rodney carries a 3.80 ERA over 933 innings.

JULY 28: The Astros are nearing a deal with veteran right-hander Fernando Rodney, Adam Spolane of SportsRadio 610 in Houston reports. The Octagon client is currently playing for the independent Sugar Land Skeeters, and the Astros have been negotiating a buyout of that arrangement. The deal is till pending a physical for Rodney, MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart tweets.

Rodney, now 43 years of age, would join his 12th MLB club if he ultimately gets into a big league game with the Astros. The longtime late-inning reliever split the 2019 season between the A’s and Nationals, struggling with the former but serving as a steadying presence in what had been a tumultuous bullpen with the latter. Rodney has a reputation for making any given appearance a rather adventurous outing, but his overall body of work with the World Champion Nationals was solid. In 33 1/3 frames, he logged a 4.05 ERA with 9.5 K/9, 4.3 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9 and a 48.3 percent ground-ball rate. Rodney’s heater still averaged 94.2 mph with the Nats last year.

The Astros’ bullpen has some notable names at the back of the mix, including Roberto Osuna and Ryan Pressly, but the pitching staff on the whole lacks experience. That’s particularly true with Justin Verlander currently shelved. Other Astros arms on the sidelines include Brad Peacock (shoulder), Austin Pruitt (elbow), Rogelio Armenteros (elbow) and Jose Urquidy (no reason provided). Rodney would add some depth and experience to a pitching staff that right now is carrying an eye-opening seven rookies.

If we go back to June 30, 2016, shortly before the trade deadline, the Padres were well under .500 and on their way to a 68-win season. Meanwhile, the Marlins were 41-38. The long-suffering Fish were under the impression they were playoff contenders at that point. As a result, they traded young right-hander Chris Paddack to the Padres for grizzled reliever Fernando Rodney. Big mistake.

After signing for a guaranteed $2MM in the prior offseason, Fernando enjoyed an unbelievable few months in San Diego, where he recorded an almost perfect 0.31 ERA in 28 2/3 innings and converted 17 saves in as many chances. Unsurprisingly, those numbers proved to be impossible to sustain in Miami. As a member of the Marlins, Rodney logged a ghastly 5.89 ERA (thanks in part to 25 walks in just 36 2/3 innings) and blew three of 11 save opportunities. For their part, the Marlins floundered after the trade en route to a 79-82 finish and yet another non-playoff showing. They lost Rodney to the Diamondbacks via free agency in the ensuing offseason.

In hindsight, the Rodney gamble clearly wasn’t worth it for Miami. On the other side, selling high on him has already paid dividends for San Diego and looks as if it will go down as one of the franchise’s top trades in recent memory. In return for Rodney, the Padres received Paddack, then a low minors prospect who Keith Law of The Athletic (then with ESPN) noted when the swap occurred “hasn’t given up a hit in forever.” MLBTR’s Steve Adams observed that “it seems fair to say that his star is on the rise.”

Paddack’s production was indeed ridiculous that year, during which he managed a 0.85 ERA with 15.1 K/9 against 1.1 BB/9 in 42 1/3 innings between the Marlins’ and Padres’ Single-A teams. However, despite those numbers and the aforementioned praise, he wasn’t necessarily viewed as a can’t-miss prospect at the time of the trade. When the deal went down, MLB.com ranked Paddack 17th in a Marlins farm that was not particularly respected.

In August of the year that the trade occurred, Paddack underwent Tommy John surgery. The procedure wound up costing him all of 2017, but he returned the next season to dominate at the High-A and Double-A levels. That was enough to convince the Padres that Paddack was ready for major league action in 2019, and indeed he was. As a 23-year-old pitching in the bigs for the first time, the fiery Paddack tossed 140 2/3 innings of 3.33 ERA/3.96 FIP ball with 9.79 K/9 and 1.98 BB/9 to emerge as one of the brightest up-and-comers in baseball.

For Preller, another 2016 trade – one in which he gave up James Shields for Fernando Tatis Jr. – looks like his most successful move so far. But Paddack for Rodney comes off as a masterstroke in its own right. With Paddack atop their current rotation, and with excellent prospects MacKenzie Gore and Luis Patino closing in on the majors, the Padres’ long-term rotation picture appears to be in enviable shape.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Rodney, 43 in March, still delivers a mid-nineties fastball and devastating changeup — sufficient to support an 11.0% swinging-strike rate, 9.3 K/9 strikeout rate, and 49.6% groundball rate in the just-completed campaign. Of course, he also permitted more than five free passes per nine and surrendered a good bit of hard contact. It’d be a stretch to call Rodney a Statcast darling, but he did fare better in the eyes of the fancy cameras than he did on paper (.308 xwOBA vs. .332 wOBA).

There’s reason, then, to believe Rodney is better than the 5.66 ERA he logged in 47 2/3 total frames last year. Perhaps Rodney’s 4.05 mark with the Nationals, accrued over his final 33 1/3 innings of the regular season, is a more accurate read on his true talent at this advanced age.

While we wait to see which tilted cap Rodney will don this spring, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how remarkable he has been to this point. Once a forgettable pitcher who seemed destined to fade away, Rodney emerged as a late-inning monster in his mid-thirties, stole MLB’s heart with his arrow-launching celebrations, and then forgot that his body was supposed to break down. There’s no hope of a return to his silly-good 2012 form; even the 3.36 ERA performance of 2018 would be a stretch. But would anyone be all that surprised if Rodney throws 50+ mostly useful, always entertaining innings in 2020?

• The Rays have pretty consistently made themselves a good place for January free agents to take their career to the next level, per John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times. A list of short-term additions late in the free agent season have gone on to produce in Tampa Bay and earn themselves a raise the following winter. The partial list of players who went on to earn bigger paydays after leaving Tampa includes Avisail Garcia, Logan Morrison, C.J. Cron, and Corey Dickerson. The time is now for the Rays, who typically strike about this time of year, and they still have needs to fill. Expect Tampa to add another bat and another catcher before the winter is out.
• The Cubs have lingered in the shadows throughout the winter, and though a Kris Bryant trade has been clearly telegraphed, the star third baseman remains in Chicago due to asking price, per David Kaplan of NBC Sports Chicago. Speaking to people around the game, Kaplan found real skepticism that Bryant remains the foundational superstar he was in 2016. That hasn’t stopped the Cubs from asking for the moon, with the same being true of their asking price for Willson Contreras. Theo Epstein and the Cubs are in a tough place after seeing their championship window slam closed last season, and it’s understandable for the braintrust in Chicago to hold out hope for a franchise-altering return for one of their homegrown stars. But if the return they seek never materializes, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of alternative plan they can cook up to keep these Cubs viable.

Rodney’s addition will be Washington’s latest attempt to repair what has been a horrible bullpen in 2019. The Rosenthal signing didn’t work, leading the team to jettison him, nor has picking up Kyle Barraclough over the winter. Barraclough has been on the IL since June 16 with a forearm issue.

Including Rosenthal and Barraclough, the Nationals have shuffled threw 17 relievers this year. The group has combined for an unsightly 6.29 ERA, which helps explain the Nationals’ 37-40 record. It’s anyone’s guess whether Rodney will be able to help the team’s cause, though there’s little risk in trying from its perspective. Washington brought in the 42-year-old on a minor league contract three weeks ago. He then allowed five runs (four earned) with 11 strikeouts and nine walks in eight innings with the Nationals’ Triple-A affiliate in Fresno.

Rodney has been a solid major league reliever for most of his career, though the journeyman began so poorly this season that the low-budget Athletics paid him to go away. Oakland had to pay $3.53MM to part with Rodney, who logged a 9.42 ERA/5.55 FIP with 8.79 K/9 and 7.53 BB/9 in 14 1/3 innings. Rodney’s just a year removed from recording a 3.36 ERA/4.03 FIP with 9.79 K/9, 4.48 BB/9 and a 44.4 percent groundball rate in 64 1/3 frames, though. The Nationals, who haven’t found capable bridges to closer Sean Doolittle this year, would sign up for that type of production.

June 1: The Nationals have agreed to a minor league deal with reliever Fernando Rodney, according to Craig Mish of SiriusXM. Rodney will report to Triple-A Fresno.

The well-traveled Rodney was last with the Athletics, who designated him for assignment a week ago before releasing him on Tuesday. Even though Oakland had to eat the remaining $3.53MM on Rodney’s club option in moving on from him, the club decided the 42-year-old was no longer worth a roster spot. It was an understandable call on the part of the A’s, for whom Rodney turned in 14 1/3 innings of 9.42 ERA/5.52 FIP ball with 8.79 K/9 and 7.53 BB/9 this season.

While 2019 has been a nightmare for the arrow-slinging Rodney, he was a useful reliever between Oakland and Minnesota just a year ago. Since his career began with the Tigers back in 2002, the right-hander has notched a 3.79 ERA/3.77 FIP with 9.08 K/9, 4.48 BB/9, a 50.2 percent groundball rate, 325 saves and 96 holds in 899 2/3 innings.

Rodney’s typical production would be welcome in Washington, whose bullpen has been one of the majors’ worst this year. The Nationals haven’t been able to find solutions leading up to closer Sean Doolittle, and the Rodney signing is their latest low-risk attempt to repair their unenviable late-game situation. Rodney follows Jonny Venters and George Kontos as the third veteran reliever the Nats have brought in on a minors pact since last Saturday.

Rodney, 42, got out to an awful start with the A’s this season, pitching to a 9.42 ERA through 14 1/3 innings of work. In that series of 17 appearances, he’s allowed 20 hits (two homers) and a dozen walks while picking up 14 strikeouts. While he’s still throwing fairly hard, particularly given his age, the right-hander’ 93.1 mph average fastball is down noticeably from last season’s 94.2 mph average.

Rodney showed some cracks in 2018 after the A’s acquired him from the Twins in an August swap that sent minor league righty Dakota Chalmers to Minnesota — namely issuing 13 walks in his 20 2/3 frames following the trade. His overall season, however, was solid, and the A’s felt comfortable enough that they exercised a $5.25MM club option over the righty for the 2019 season.

There’s still about $3.53MM of that salary remaining to be paid out through season’s end, and the A’s will be on the hook for the entirety of that sum. Rodney will be free to sign with any club, and a new team would only need to pay him the prorated league minimum for any time he spends on the big league roster. That sum would be subtracted from the Athletics’ remaining obligation to Rodney.

This could spell the end of the road for 42-year-old Rodney, whose days of slinging arrows may be numbered after a 9.42 ERA in 17 appearances. Still, given the state of bullpens around the league, it would not be a shock to see Rodney hitch his cart to a different horse for another go-round. His 5.46 FIP isn’t all that far off the 4.52 mark he chalked up last season, and he’s striking out batters at just a slightly lower rate. On the flip side, his velocity is down a full mph, and his walk rate is up to 17.1 BB%, all of which and more has led to an ugly -0.6 rWAR mark on the year.

Rodney debuted as a 25-year-old way back in 2002 for the Tigers. He has twice led the league in games finished, while he took home the saves title with 48 for the Mariners as a 37-year-old. On the whole, he has appeared in 913 major league baseball games, thrown 899 2/3 innings, and struck out 908 professional baseball hitters at the game’s highest level. He sports a career 3.79 ERA and almost identical 3.77 FIP.

Wei-Chung Wang will make his first appearance in the majors since 2017 with the Brewers. This season in Triple-A he’s gone 1-1 with 16 appearances and a 3.75 ERA and 3.75 K/BB rate. The lefty spent last season with the NC Dinos of the KBO, going 7-10 with a 4.26 ERA across 25 starts.

• Khris Davis has been hampered by a left hip contusion, though manager Bob Melvin told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle and other reporters that the team hopes to have Davis back in the lineup for Friday’s game.  Davis suffered the injury crashing into the wall to make a catch in foul territory on Sunday, which necessitated an early removal from the game.  He attempted to return on Wednesday, though was removed in the fifth inning once his hip again caused discomfort.  While this abbreviated appearance means an IL stint couldn’t be backdated three more days, it doesn’t yet appear as though the problem is serious enough for Davis to miss much more time.
• Mark Canha is slated to begin a minor league rehab assignment on Friday and is expected to be activated from the injured list next week. (MLB.com’s Martin Gallegos was among those who reported the news.)  A sprained right wrist sidelined Canha on April 29, though he’ll likely end up missing only slightly beyond the minimum 10 days.  Canha was off to a solid start prior to the injury, hitting .200/.377/.375 over his first 53 plate appearances of the season.  As Gallegos notes, Canha’s return could mean the end for Kendrys Morales on the Oakland roster, as Davis’ health issues may have given Morales only a brief respite now that Matt Olson is back from the IL.
• Pitching is the main focus of Slusser’s latest fan mailbag piece in the Chronicle, as the A’s continue to deal with uncertainty in both their rotation and bullpen.  Slusser figures the A’s will look to add a reliever or two if the team is in contention at the trade deadline, though in terms of in-house names, Oakland isn’t likely to part ways with Fernando Rodney any time soon.  Four of Rodney’s 15 appearances this season have resulted in multiple runs allowed, including an ugly outing on Sunday that saw him allow four runs in just a third of an inning in a walkoff loss to the Pirates.  Rodney has an 8.78 ERA and a 6.1 BB/9 over 13 1/3 innings for the Athletics this season, though Slusser says the A’s will give Rodney time to get back on track in lower-leverage situations.
• Sonny Gray took the mound for the Reds against the A’s on Wednesday, leading The Athletic’s Julian McWilliams (subscription required) to look back on the trade that sent Gray from Oakland to the Yankees back in July 2017.  Specifically, the piece looks at Jorge Mateo, who is off to a .340/.378/.578 start in 156 Triple-A plate appearances after struggling at the Triple-A level in 2018.  That lost year knocked back from his previous status as a top-100 prospect in baseball, though it might have ended up being something of a needed “wake-up call” for Mateo, McWilliams writes, as scouts had questioned Mateo’s effort level and focus.  “At some point in time he’s going to be in the big leagues, whether it’s this year or next year. He’s a really talented kid,” Melvin said.  Mateo has played exclusively at shortstop and second base over the last two seasons, potentially tabbing him as a replacement for Marcus Semien (who is scheduled for free agency following the 2020 season).

5:09pm: The Athletics announced that they’ve exercised their club option on right-hander Fernando Rodney. Rodney, who will turn 42 during Spring Training, will earn a $4.25MM base salary next season under the contract.

The veteran Rodney joined the Athletics in an August waiver trade that sent right-handed pitching prospect Dakota Chalmers to the Twins. He’d opened the season as the closer in Minnesota but served as a setup man to breakout closer Blake Treinen in Oakland, enjoying relative success in both settings (though he did pitch better with the Twins than with the A’s). In all, Rodney turned in a 3.36 ERA with 9.8 K/9 against 4.5 BB/9 in 64 1/3 innings between the two clubs.

Despite his age, Rodney hasn’t shown much in the way of obvious signs of decline. His average fastball still checked in at a solid 94.2 mph in 2018, while his 11.1 percent swinging-strike rate and 29.2 percent chase rate on out-of-zone pitches were both within striking distance of league average (slightly above average in terms of swinging-strike rate and slightly below on his chase rate). Opponents did up their hard-contact rate against Rodney by a hefty five percent, thanks largely to a notable spike with the A’s.

Still, Rodney continued to generate results, and his modest price tag made the decision a fairly easy one — especially when considering the continually rising prices of bullpen help in free agency. He’ll return to the A’s alongside Treinen, Lou Trivino, Yusmeiro Petit and Ryan Buchter as part of a quality group of late-inning options for recently extended skipper Bob Melvin.

Here’s more from the AL West…

• Fernando Rodney doesn’t know what the Athletics’ plans for him are as pertains to the 2019 season, but the league’s leading arrow-shooter made clear to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle last week that he has every intention of playing. Whether the A’s exercise a $4.25MM club option on Rodney remains to be seen, but the 41-year-old right-hander has certainly given his new team plenty of reason to consider retaining him. Rodney has fired off eight scoreless innings with a 7-to-2 K/BB ratio since being acquired in exchange for young righty Dakota Chalmers earlier this month. As Slusser notes, he’s four saves shy of Francisco Cordero’s all-time record for a Dominican-born player. Rodney is keenly aware of that fact, acknowledging that he’d hoped to set the record with the Twins and still has his sights set on doing so in the future.
• Angels pitcher/DH Shohei Ohtani seems to be champing at the bit to make his next major-league start after a long layoff following the diagnosis of a UCL sprain. As Jeff Fletcher of the Southern California News Group reports on Twitter, the prized 24-year-old feels he’s ready to go after throwing fifty pitches today in a simulated game. While skipper Mike Scioscia indicated that Ohtani’s stuff is crisp, the club is surely prioritizing the long-term in deciding how to proceed. This campaign won’t end in a postseason appearance, after all, and Ohtani’s right arm is of critical importance to the Halos’ hopes in 2019 and beyond.
• Corey Brock of The Athletic takes a look at the rise of Edwin Diaz to one of the game’s elite closers (subscription required). Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto, manager Scott Servais, bullpen coach Brian DeLunas and first base coach Chris Prieto are among those to weigh in on Diaz’s ascension from a prospect who never appeared on a major Top 100 list to the second-fastest player ever to reach 100 big league saves. As Dipoto recalls, there was a fair bit of internal debate in his first offseason as GM with the team about whether to develop Diaz as a starter or a reliever. It was eventually decided to see how Diaz’s stuff would play in shorter stints and, if things didn’t go well, to then transition him back to the Majors. Diaz uncorked a 101 mph fastball on his first pitch out of the Double-A bullpen, per Dipoto, and the right-hander’s ensuing dominance made the organization’s decision fairly straightforward. Brock also chats with Astros manager A.J. Hinch and a few of Diaz’s teammates about his emergence as one of the game’s premier relievers.
• In other Seattle pitching news, the Mariners have placed southpaw Marco Gonzales on the 10-day DL with a cervical neck muscle strain, per a club announcement. He’ll be replaced on the active roster by outfielder Guillermo Heredia. As Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times writes, it’s still not clear how the M’s will address the newly opened rotation hole. While it’s possible southpaw James Paxton will be ready to go in time to take the ball on Wednesday, when Gonzales had been scheduled to start, that would mean moving up his schedule. It’s certainly not an optimal situation for a Seattle club that is trying to catch up to the division-leading Astros and Athletics. Gonzales entered the month of August with a strong 3.37 ERA, but has faded of late. He coughed up eight earned runs in just three innings in his most recent start and has seen his earned-run average climb all the way to 4.32. It has been a compelling season for the 26-year-old, regardless, but as Divish explains the southpaw may be wearing down now that he has reached 145 2/3 frames on the year — a significant workload for a pitcher who has been limited by injuries for most of the past three campaigns.

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the transaction came as the result of a waiver claim by the Athletics, meaning Rodney never cleared revocable trade waivers. The 42-year-old was certainly a logical August trade candidate, as MLBTR’s own Connor Byrne noted this past Saturday; more recently, the Twins’ closer appeared near the top of our Top 20 August Trade Candidates, checking in at number seven. He’s a reasonably affordable option for the surging yet cost-conscious A’s.

[RELATED: How August Trades Work]

Rodney has long been an effective MLB reliever, and has served mainly as a closer across the past decade. His 325 career saves rank 17th all-time among relievers, and although he’s certainly shown some fluctuation in performance over the course of his lifetime, his 3.09 ERA at present would be his best in a full season since 2014 with the Mariners. The veteran has managed to strike out more than ten batters per nine innings in five of the past six campaigns and owns a solid if unspectacular 3.70 ERA (3.73 FIP) over the course of his 16-year MLB career.

For the A’s, it’s the latest move to bolster an already-spectacular relief corps. Headed into the second half of July, the club already boasted three relievers with a Win Probability Added of 1.00 or higher (Blake Treinen, Lou Trivino and Yusmeiro Petit). Since then, they’ve added Jeurys Familia in a trade with the Mets, claimed Shawn Kelley off waivers from the Nationals, and plucked Mike Fiers from the paws of the Tigers. Rodney serves as the club’s fourth major bullpen addition over the course of the past month, fortifying an already-terrifying group.

That’s excellent work on the part of the club’s front office, as it’ll help mask the club’s uninspiring rotation. Sean Manaea’s currently the club’s only starter with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, in no small part due to the wreckage of torn UCLs suffered by rotation candidates this season. Daniel Gossett, Kendall Graveman, Jharel Cotton and top prospect A.J. Puk are all done for the season after requiring Tommy John surgery, leaving the club with a starting group of ragtag veterans that includes Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson and Edwin Jackson, each of whom has outperformed expectations. With an eye on October, it seems as though the Athletics are likely to use starters for short outings in the postseason and rely on a deep bullpen to handle the remainder of the workload.

Perhaps one of the more surprising elements of this deal is the fact that Rodney went unclaimed by the Indians, who had waiver priority over the Athletics and one of the worst bullpens in baseball. With three strong lefties in their pen and no viable right-handed options beyond Adam Cimber and struggling closer Cody Allen, Rodney would have provided a strong upgrade to the Cleveland bullpen. Likewise, the Mariners (who’re in close competition with them for a wild card spot) also passed on Rodney, allowing him to be claimed by a division rival rather than using him to patch their own relief corps.

The inclusion of Chalmers is a fascinating element of this deal, as the 21-year-old right hander has yet to accrue any significant professional resume following his selection by the A’s as the 97th overall pick in the 2015 draft. He didn’t rank among the club’s top 30 prospects in MLB Pipeline’s latest rankings, but Fangraphs considered him to within that group, ranking him 23rd in the A’s farm system. Chalmers had to step away from baseball late in 2017 for personal reasons, and Fangraphs’ Eric Longenhagen mentioned that he’s struggled with his control since returning. Though his velocity sits in the low-to-mid-90’s, there’s some skepticism that he’ll ever develop the command necessary to work multiple innings. He won’t pitch for the remainder of 2018 after undergoing Tommy John surgery earlier this season.

Rodney is due another $1.3MM this year, which is an affordable figure, as Neal notes. Contenders in the market for relief help (perhaps including the Red Sox, who showed interest in Rodney last month) may claim him if he ends up on trade waivers, then, though the Twins aren’t in a position where they have to jettison the veteran. Rather, the Twins could retain Rodney this year and exercise their $4.25MM option over the right-hander in the offseason, as opposed to buying him out for $250K, and either keep him for next season or shop him over the winter.

When the Twins signed Rodney to a $4.5MM guarantee last December, they were coming off a playoff-bound campaign and had designs on another postseason trip in 2018. Eight months later, Minnesota has stumbled to a 50-58 record and a nine-game deficit in the AL Central, though its struggles haven’t exactly been Rodney’s fault. For the most part, Rodney has made good on his deal by pitching to a 3.24 ERA/3.91 FIP with 10.15 K/9, 3.89 BB/9 and a 44 percent groundball rate in 41 2/3 innings. Never the most trustworthy game-ending option, Rodney has saved 23 of 29 opportunities this year, giving the journeyman a 79 percent success rate that slightly trails his career mark (82 percent, 323 saves on 395 tries).

Should the Twins bring the hard-throwing Rodney back in 2019, it would give them one fewer area to address in the offseason. The Twins’ bullpen may nonetheless be a focal point for chief baseball officer Derek Falvey and general manager Thad Levine, though, given that the unit has posted the majors’ seventh-worst ERA in 2018. Minnesota’s relief corps has fared much better in terms of K/BB ratio (fifth) and fWAR (18th), though Ryan Pressly and Zach Duke played a role in that, and the team traded both hurlers prior to the non-waiver deadline on Tuesday. Thanks in part to those moves, Rodney clearly ranks as one of the best relievers who’s on track to return for the Twins next season.