The Athletics and Rays have announced a multi-player trade that will see left-handers Jeffrey Springs and Jacob Lopez head to West Sacramento. In return, the Rays will receive right-hander Joe Boyle, the Athletics’ pick in Competitive Balance Round A of the 2025 draft, and two minor league players in righty Jacob Watters and first baseman/outfielder Will Simpson.
Considering how deep the Rays are in rotation options, Springs was viewed as a logical trade candidate this winter, as he was about to enter the more expensive portion of the backloaded four-year, $31MM extension he signed with Tampa in January 2023. Springs is owed $10.5MM in each of the next two seasons, and there is a $15MM club option on his services for 2027 that can be bought out for $750K.
For the first two years and $9.25MM on that extension, the Rays only 49 innings of work from Springs, albeit with a 2.39 ERA. A Tommy John surgery in April 2023 shelved Springs for the majority of the last two seasons, and he returned to the mound last July to post a 3.27 ERA over seven starts and 33 innings before he was shut down in early September due to fatigue in his throwing elbow. It’s hard to gain much data from a small sample size, but Springs still had above-average strikeout and walk rate, and if anything might’ve gotten better bottom-line results if it wasn’t for a .330 BABIP.
Prior to the injury, Springs seemed like yet another success story for Tampa Bay’s pitching development system. A 30th-round draft pick for the Rangers in the 2015 draft, Springs showed only a few flashes of quality over his first three MLB seasons while posting a 5.42 ERA in 84 2/3 innings with Texas and Boston. Dealt from the Red Sox to the Rays in a relatively under-the-radar trade in February 2021, Springs emerged to post a 3.43 ERA in 44 2/3 bullpen innings for Tampa during the 2021 season, and he then had even better results after transitioning into a starting role in 2022. The breakout year saw Springs deliver a 2.46 ERA in 135 1/3 innings (as well as a 26.2% strikeout rate and 5.6% walk rate) as Springs finally seemed to avoid the home run problems that plagued most of his career.
Springs was able to cash in on his big season with a life-changing contract extension, but his long injury layoff turned him into an odd man out of the Rays’ rotation. Shane McClanahan, Ryan Pepiot, Taj Bradley, Shane Baz, Zack Littell, and Drew Rasmussen are all lined up to get starts in 2025, not to mention whatever other young starters could emerge from Tampa’s ever-loaded farm system. With Springs’ price tag rising, many figured that the Rays would move his salary to a pitching-needy team with payroll space to spare.
If the idea of the Athletics being a “team with payroll space to spare” is still surprising to consider, the 32-year-old Springs is now the second splurge the A’s have made on their rotation this winter, after having already signed Luis Severino to a three-year, $67MM deal. Adding Springs’ contract brings the A’s a step closer to the minimum $105MM luxury tax figure required to continue qualifying as a revenue-sharing team, and to avoid a grievance from the players’ union. RosterResource estimates the Athletics’ current tax number at roughly $88.55MM, assuming the trade is completed.
Ulterior motive notwithstanding, trading for Springs is also a solid baseball move for an A’s team in need of rotation help. Severino and Springs are big upgrades to a rotation that struggled badly last season, and the newcomers now stand as the top two members of the starting five that includes JP Sears, Mitch Spence, and Joey Estes.
More pitching moves can’t be ruled out, since the Athletics still have a ways to go before hitting that $105MM figure. Severino notwithstanding, it can’t be an easy sell for the A’s to convince free agents to pitch in a minor league ballpark in West Sacramento, so trading for players (perhaps on unwanted contracts) has long seemed like a more logical move for the Athletics to both add payroll and bolster their roster at the same time.
Lopez shouldn’t be ruled out as part of the Athletics’ pitching situation in 2025, as the southpaw has already amassed 22 2/3 MLB innings with the Rays over the last two seasons. A 26th-round pick for the Giants in the 2018 draft, Lopez missed all of 2022 recovering from a Tommy John surgery, but he has a 2.99 ERA across 337 2/3 career minor league innings. That includes a 3.54 ERA, 27% strikeout rate, and 12.87% walk rate in 168 innings of Triple-A ball, with Lopez starting 37 of 39 games for the Rays’ top affiliate.
Despite a lack of velocity, Lopez has been able to miss quite a few bats, though this ability hasn’t manifested itself in his brief time in the majors. It could be that Lopez might’ve gotten more big league looks if he’d simply been on a team that didn’t have Tampa Bay’s pitching depth, and a fresh opportunity now presents itself for Lopez with this trade. Lopez (who turns 27 in March) figures to be part of the fifth starter competition in camp but will probably begin the year at Triple-A, acting as one of the first depth options in the event of an injury to a rotation member.
Turning to the Rays’ end of the trade, the inclusion of the Comp-A pick is particularly interesting, and it might speak to the league-wide interest in Springs’ services. The Competitive Balance Rounds are bonus rounds within the draft that award picks to 15 teams within the bottom 10 in market size and revenue, as determined by the league’s formula that factors in revenue, winning percentage and market score. The CBR picks are the only draft selections that are eligible to be traded, and while such trades tend to be rare, we’ve seen these picks involved in some prominent trades over the years. The Comp-A round takes place just before the start of the second round, and while the exact placement of the traded pick has yet to be determined, last year’s Comp-A picks were selections #34-39 in the 2024 draft order.
It is no small thing for a team to deal such a pick, especially when building through the draft is of particular importance to a low-spending team like the A’s. Still, getting at least two years of control over Springs was apparently worth the cost, as with the club option, the Athletics could have Springs for the entirety of their three-year stint in Sacramento before their planned new ballpark in Las Vegas is ready for Opening Day 2028.
As for the other parts of the trade package, Boyle brings a Major League-ready arm to the Rays’ pitching mix. Debuting with a 1.69 ERA in three starts and 16 innings in 2023, Boyle had a 6.42 ERA in 47 2/3 innings this past season, missing about a month of action with a back strain and spending the bulk of the year at Triple-A.
The 25-year-old is something of a classic case of a hard-throwing (97.7mph average fastball velocity in the majors) pitcher who can’t harness his stuff, as Boyle has posted elevated walk totals in the minors and during his 2024 stint in the Show. Fixing these control problems will determine whether or not Boyle can stick in the big leagues as a reliever or back-end starter, and given the Rays’ history of fixing pitchers, nobody would be surprised if Boyle ends up figuring it out in Tampa just as Springs and many other hurlers have done over the years. Boyle has two minor league options remaining, giving the Rays more flexibility in using him as a fresh arm to shuttle back and forth between Triple-A and the active roster.
Baseball America ranked Simpson 16th on their ranking of the Athletics’ top 30 prospects back in April, while MLB Pipeline has Simpson 28th in their evaluation of the team’s system. A 15th-round pick in the 2023 draft, Simpson has crushed minor league pitching in his two pro seasons and made it to the Double-A level for 18 games in 2024. Simpson has shown some good pop in his bat and he has a good approach at the plate — scouts like his “analytical aptitude,” as BA’s scouting report puts it, with the idea that Simpson can still unlock more as he explores more ways to upgrade his hitting. Defensively, Pipeline is more bullish on the idea of Simpson as a serviceable first baseman or corner outfielder, while Baseball America is more down on his glovework in general.
Watters was a fourth-round pick for the A’s in the 2022 draft, and he has a 5.86 ERA, 21.9% strikeout rate, and an inflated 13.73% walk rate in 152 pro innings. Almost all of this experience is at the high-A level, though Watters skipped Double-A to make one spot appearance in Triple-A ball last season. Working as both a starter and reliever, Watters’ numbers have been decidedly better out of the pen, so that might be the 23-year-old’s eventual career path.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan (multiple links) reported the trade and all of the players and picks involved except for Lopez, whose involvement wasn’t revealed until the deal was officially announced.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
