The Orioles traded for 9 new players, but are they good?

With the Orioles maintaining a slim lead over the Yankees for the lead in the AL East despite having a rotation decimated by injuries and a faltering bullpen, fans and media were anticipating a very active deadline in Baltimore. 

There were plenty of mock trades created where the Orioles got ace pitchers like Tarik Skubal and Garrett Crochet and there was excitement at the prospect of replacing Craig Kimbrel with a better closer like Tanner Scott or Carlos Estevez 

But the Orioles didn’t make the big splash that many people hoped they would and instead opted to make several smaller moves to bolster the rotation and the bullpen and bring in a few right handed bats. In total 9 new players came into the organization and 10 players left. 

Here is a recap on all the Orioles trades this deadline

Orioles Get: Seranthony Dominguez and Christian Pache 

Phillies Get: Austin Hays 

This was the first trade the Orioles made a few days ago. This deal was unconventional for a few different reasons. One, you don’t usually see two contending teams trade with each other at the deadline and two we don’t see a ton of trades where no prospects are exchanged. However, with the trade market leaning heavily in favor of the sellers this year, it did make some sense for 2 contending teams in separate conferences to try to work out a win-win deal that strengthens their weaknesses without having to gouge their farm system. 

What we gave up

It was both surprising and unsurprising to see Austin Hays moved at this deadline. Unsurprising in the sense that the Orioles have a log jam of prospects coming up that are being blocked by veteran players who are still in their 20s and not ready to take a backseat and after Hays struggled to start the year he lost his everyday starting job. The guy started the all star game last year so it feels like a waste to just a year later turn him into a 4th outfielder who only gets to play against lefties so trading him does make sense. 

It was surprising mostly because we had never seen Mike Elias make a trade like this before and even though Hays had struggled to start the year and fans were much more excited to see guys like Cowser and Kjerstad play Hays was one of our few right handed bats and with how much Brandon Hyde loves matching up I would have thought Hays was safe. 

It was also surprising because Hays is the first actual good player from the rebuilding years that the O’s are moving on from. In the past they traded some good players because they were sellers now they are trading good players because better players are coming up from the minors and they need to make room for them. 

Personally I am very onboard with trading Hays and I think most fans are as well. As good as he had been being one of the only bright spots on the team during the dark times he just has a much lower ceiling than guys like Cowser and Kjerstad and I think with him on the roster splitting time with those 2 guys was causing some frustration for everyone involved where nobody felt like they were playing as much as they should so it is good to free up some playing time and improve the bullpen while doing it. 

In Philadelphia Hays should have a more consistent role platooning with Brandon Marsh in left or allowing Marsh to play center in place of Rojas on days that the Phillies need more offense from the outfield. He does get to continue playing for a contender which is good for him. He took a what could be interpreted as a small shot at Baltimore when he said in his first media appearance that he felt like he had upgraded teams but that’s pretty tame and by record and team success over the past few years objectively true so I can’t spend any energy being upset with that comment. I think most O’s fans are rooting for him to succeed with Phillies. 

What we got in return

The main prize for the Orioles in this trade is reliever Seranthony Dominguez. Besides having a cool name what Dominguez brings to the bullpen is a high velocity arm from the right side. Domiguez’s best season was in 2022 when he pitched 51 innings with a 3.00 ERA a 3.09 FIP and a K/9 of 10.8, but where he has really shined in the past has been in the postseason where in 16 innings across 2 different deep playoff runs he has a 1.13 ERA and 14.1 K/9. 

Now obviously that is a small sample size and relief pitching is volatile so there is no guarantee he will continue to be a great postseason reliever but I think it is a good move to get someone who has been in those big moments and has been successful in those big moments. 

You might ask if the fact that the Phillies, who are also hoping to win the world series this year, were so eager to trade away Seranthony that they did it several days before the deadline means we should be concerned that he isn’t very good. To that I would say that even if the Phillies evaluated him to not be good enough for their postseason bullpen that doesn’t mean he isn’t a big upgrade for the O’s current bullpen, the Orioles have multiple guys in their pen whose only chance of playing for the Phillies would be as a bullpen catcher. Also when you look at the variety of moves the Phillies made at this deadline it seems like their main objective was to go from good bullpen to elite bullpen which made good arms like Dominguez and Soto, who we’ll talk about later, expendable to them. The Orioles were clearly trying to go from bad bullpen to good bullpen which made those same arms valuable. 

Anyway as far as Dominguez’s fit this year he comes in with an elevated ERA but the peripheral numbers suggest that he has been pretty unlucky so far and that he has been better than that number suggests. We saw him at his best be a high leverage reliever for the Phillies and I think that the O’s are hopeful he could do something like that again. Right now Craig Kimbrel is our closer and I don’t think Brandon Hyde has a ton of confidence bringing him in to close games, our other top reliever Yennier Cano is good as a setup man but has struggled anytime he’s been tasked with closing games and I don’t think there is really anyone else on the staff you love in that spot and while Dominguez’s numbers this year don’t scream closer he has the stuff and we’ve seen him do it before so I think we could see Hyde to sneak him into closing spots when he can. 

Another important part of trading for Dominguez is his club option for next year. In his media spot he did on the MASN broadcast Elias mentioned that club control through next year was important for the Orioles when looking for trade targets so that tells me that anyone they picked up that has control they plan to keep through next year as well so get used to Seranthony Dominguez. 

The other part of this deal was Christian Pache, I think Pache was more of a throw-in to have on the roster for a few weeks while they tried to identify a right handed bat but while he is on the team he provides speed and elite defense in the outfield. With Jorge Mateo moving to the 60 day IL I do think it’s possible the O’s keep Pache for pinch running in the playoffs but I also wouldn’t be surprised if he was DFA’d a few days after I post this. 

Orioles Get: Zach Eflin and Cash

Rays Get: Mac Horvath, Jackson Baumeister and Matthew Etzel

This was by far my favorite move from the deadline. Eflin is an immediate upgrade for the O’s rotation and will now slot in as a playoff starter, plus he is under contract for next year so the O’s 2025 rotation, which was sneaky just Grayson Rodriguez and Dean Kremer, is bolstered as well. It is always interesting when 2 teams in the same division make a trade but with the new schedules there’s not quite as much fear if you trade a guy within the division he will come back and pummel you 20 times a year. 

Also worthy of note is that there is a little bit of fear involved with trading for the Rays as they have such a good history of winning trades. I’ve heard people say things like “If the Rays call you asking about a prospect that you have low on your board it’s time to re-evaluate that prospect” but I think this reputation comes from the massive volume of trades that they do similar to this one where they get several prospects back for one player which gives them better odds of a guy popping and they are better at developing players than most orgs so even if you held on to the guy that the Rays are asking for he might not become anything with you and then Rays sign him as a free agent after your DFA them and then suddenly he’s got an OPS in the .900s as a platoon hitter against righties. 

All this to say that I am not too worried about this one aging poorly like the Chris Archer trade, our need for a starter like Eflin was so glaring and those guys we gave up were not likely to ever make the majors with the O’s so it’s a good deal. On Mike Elias’ MASN spot he said that they felt like out of all the starters dealt they felt that Eflin was the best guy and that they were happy to get him and while I’m not sure if he’s the very best guy just based on the years that Fedde and Flaherty are having I think he has an argument for the top spot based on last year and is without question in the top 3. 

What we gave up

Starting with Mac Horvath who at the beginning of the year was a fringe top 10 prospect for the O’s but is now listed as 19th in the Rays organization based on the year he was having in the minors. Horvath was an under slot second round pick in last year’s draft out of North Carolina. He was drafted as a third baseman but had struggled to the point where he was being used as more of a utility man at high A Aberdeen. His best tools are his arm and his speed and at the plate his best trait is his power. 

As a 23 year old, positionless and struggling at the plate in A+ ball I think it is fair to say it was going to be a long shot for Horvath to make it to the majors for the Orioles in the next few years but in the Rays development system it is possible they find a good fit in the field for him and then they can harness his power and really turn him into something. 

It was really interesting to see Jackson Baumeister in this trade because he was the first pitcher the Orioles had drafted with a high pick since Elias took over so you got the feeling that the reason that they broke their model of drafting only hitters for Baumeister is that they must be really high on him. But just a year after being drafted 63rd over all out of Florida State (over slot too probably paid for by the discount they got with Mac) Baumeister has been traded. 

The Rays must have been pretty high on him too because I imagine this is the part of the deal that most pained Elias as Baumeister had performed pretty well 18 starts in Aberdeen. That being said he was pitching in Aberdeen which means that he was a ways away from contributing to the major league team and I don’t think it is too difficult to replace a decent high A pitcher. I do think that when Elias says that some of the players traded at this deadline will haunt him I think he is thinking of Baumeister who was climbing the prospect rankings and now slots in as the Rays #14 prospect.

Lastly Matthew Etzel, who was drafted in the 10th round of the 2023 draft is a defense first contact hitting centerfielder who had already made it to AA Bowie after playing very well at high A Aberdeen. Most likely just a throw in but a name to watch as he has a good hit tool but is held back by the lack of slugging which is the kind of thing that you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Rays had tweaked something in his swing and had gotten enough power to turn him into a major leaguer. 

I think it was interesting to see the Rays go for 2 of our top 3 draft picks from last years draft, I believe the idea is that they wanted guys who hadn’t been in the system for very long so that they could shape them with their own developmental staff. Of the 3 only Baumeister had a chance of playing for our big league team so I don’t feel like we gave up too much for a guy as good as Eflin. 

What we got

Last year Eflin was one of the very best pitchers in the American league finishing 6th in the Cy Young voting with a 3.50 ERA a 1.02 WHIP and a 3.01 FIP across 177 innings. This year he hasn’t been quite as good with an elevated ERA at 4.11 although the WHIP and FIP indicate that he has gotten a little unlucky and we can probably expect that for the rest of the year we will get something in between 6th in Cy Young Zach Eflin and over 4 ERA Zach Eflin. 

Eflin’s best trait in my opinion is that he just says no to walks, in his first start with the Orioles we saw him get a little unlucky with some bad defense (even if they weren’t call errors) that made it so he gave up 10 hits which sounds bad but when you don’t walk anyone 10 hits can be manageable. 

Eflin will be our number 3 starter in the playoffs this year which is a big upgrade from Dean Kremer and he will also be a big help to the struggling rotation the rest of the season as we were getting to the point where it felt like you could rely on Burnes every time, Grayson most of the time and the rest was a big question when it came to starting pitching. 

Orioles Get: Trevor Rogers 

Marlins Get: Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers 

I think everyone was surprised that it cost the Orioles Connor Norby AND Kyle Stowers to get Trevor Rogers. I feel like if you asked most people who would cost more in a trade Zach Eflin or Trevor Rogers I think most people would guess Eflin and maybe those prospects we traded for Eflin will end up being better than the combination of Norby and Stowers but as far value to the current major league team losing Norby and Stowers hurts a lot more. 

I think what we learn from this trade is that the cost of acquiring controllable starting pitching was high and that Norby and Stowers didn’t have quite as much market value as we maybe thought that they did. I am sure that the front office’s goal was to get the best possible pitcher they could using those 2 guys and they probably made a bunch of offers and dangled those 2 around the league and this was the best that they could do. This front office does not trade prospects lightly which has been a complaint of mine and many other fans so I think we can assume that in a case where they did trade some guys that it wasn’t done haphazardly.

I do think it is possible that they could have been used to bring in a better rental piece but the focus was on bringing in pitchers with control so that eliminated going after a guy like Jack Flaherty (who I didn’t really want anyway), I’d be interested to be a fly on the wall when they were discussing someone like Erick Fedde who was traded in a perplexing deal that didn’t appear to net the White Sox much. 

What we gave up 

Connor Norby was the best prospect in the deal and possibly the best prospect traded during the entire deadline which saw a lot of trades but zero blue chip big name prospects moved. Norby was always a prospect on the fringe of the top 100 and certain lists may have included him from time to time but he was never on the level of a Coby Mayo or a Samuel Basallo so I thought it was interesting to see so many people say that the Orioles traded 2 top prospects when one of the guys wasn’t even a prospect and Norby is probably the cutoff line where our top prospects end and our good prospects begin although with several recent graduations he had risen to our top 5 prospect which I guess would that could count as a “top prospect” anyway I’m talking in circles now.

Norby is a well rounded hitting prospect who isn’t an elite contact or power hitter but grades out pretty well in both aspects, his weakness is in the field and he was mostly a second base/corner outfielder while in the Orioles’ system although the early reports from the Marlins is that they want to convert him to a 3rd baseman which is interesting considering that is a more difficult position but they’ve been rolling our Jake Burger at 3rd for a year now so weakness or not Norby would probably be an upgrade at the corner. 

I had said many times that Norby was the O’s most blocked prospect and I was always including him in mock trades to get starting pitchers and relievers and alas that was exactly his fate like I said earlier I thought that he would be more valuable and honestly if you had told me it was a straight Norby for Rogers swap I would have grimaced but the price was the price. 

I don’t know what he will become with the Marlins but at least he will have an opportunity to get regular playing time and really prove himself. 

If Connor Norby was our most blocked prospect then Kyle Stowers was our second most blocked prospect as he couldn’t get a clean entry into the majors in 2022 because he was blocked by Hays and Santander having career years and then in 2023 he got a shot but was hurt and performed poorly and then in 2024 Cowser and Kjerstad reached the majors and blocked him out. 

I liked having Stowers as an option for if one of Cowser of Kjerstad got hurt or went in the pain cave at the plate but it was unfair to think he would play 8 years in AAA waiting in the wings. If he was right handed he might still be in the lineup but as our 3rd lefty corner outfield prospect there just wasn’t room for all of those guys. 

I was aware going into the trade deadline that a return for Stowers might be disappointing since he is 26 and no longer a prospect and even if it isn’t reflective of his talent he does have a negative WAR in his career. I thought that on his own he might net us an interesting reliever but instead he had to be combined with another prospect to get a bad starting pitcher. 

Similar to with Norby I am happy for Kyle that he will get a chance to be an everyday player, he had played well for us this year and he had one of the most memorable homers ever against the White Sox in 2022 hopefully he can take advantage of the opportunity and become a mainstay in Miami. 

What we got 

So I have already alluded to the fact that I do not think that Trevor Rogers is very good and that is true he was never one of the Marlins pitchers I coveted trading for although most of those guys are injured so it’s not like they were on the market, BUT he has been good before. In 2021 his rookie season he pitched 133 innings with a 2.64 ERA and a 2.55 FIP. During that season he had a good K rate and a good hard hit rate which is a winning combo for any pitcher but since then he has battled injuries and has been much less effective, fewer strikeouts, fewer ground balls and more hard contact which is very much a losing combination. 

After missing most of last season he got off to a poor start this year, he had a 5 inning 4 run first outing then a month later had a 2.1 inning 8 run outing followed immediately by a 3 inning 4 run showing at which point his ERA had ballooned up to 6.57. Since then he’s been more consistent, in the month of June he went 6+ innings in 4 of his 5 starts and then in July even though the outings were shorter he limited the damage to 2 runs or less in all 5 of his outings. 

So there has been some recent “success” but the numbers on the season are still not great and the peripheral numbers don’t point to someone who is just a few good bounces away from having really good numbers. 

The big reason that the Orioles targeted Rogers is because he has team control through 2026 so they have a longer runway to try to turn him back into the guy he was in 2021 but I don’t think there is much hope for that happening this year. 

For 2024 Roger’s role is to be an upgrade over Albert Suarez and the Povich Mcdermott combo that has really been struggling these last few months which I think he will be able to accomplish. On the high end of outcomes he comes in our pitching coaches make some tweaks with his arsenal and he out performs Kremer and become the 4th best pitcher in the rotation and he could maybe make a playoff start on the low end of outcomes he might not make the playoff roster after being a high 4 ERA pitcher the rest of the way. 

In the long run I think there is real belief that they make Rogers a viable part of the rotation for 2025 and 2026, ideally he returns to his 2021 form and we have a top flight left handed arm but with the injuries he’s had and the way he’s performed over the last few years I don’t know if that is possible but I do have some confidence that they can get him to be better than he’s been especially with an injury free offseason to just focus on getting better. 

Orioles Get: Eloy Jimenez and cash

White Sox Get: Trey McGough 

Another deal that was surprising and unsurprising. Surprising in the sense that I don’t think anyone thought that Eloy and his bloated contract would have any suitors and that the Orioles have not been a team that takes on big money in deals like this. Unsurprising because we had been telegraphing our intentions to add a right handed bat from the moment that we had moved Auttin Hays and then surprising again because Eloy has not been a particularly good right handed bat this year. 

One interesting part of these deal is that most people were calling it a salary dump by the White Sox but usually in a salary dump the team taking on the money gets a prospect reward for taking in the bad contract so the fact that O’s got nothing but cash (maybe it’s a lot of cash?) makes me think that they viewed this trade less like a salary dump and more as them buying low on a guy that has a lot of potential and using the fact that they had a low payroll coming into the deadline to their advantage. 

Another interesting part was that it signaled that this ownership group is going to be different. They had kind of already done that with adding Eflins contract but this Eloy trade is a deal where we are taking on a lot of money and it is likely we will get little to no benefit and still the ownership group was willing to pay up on the off chance Eloy pops and really provides us something. So today I feel much more confident about potentially signing Burnes and more optimistic in general. 

What we gave up

I’d be lying if I told you I was aware of Trey McGough before yesterday. McGough was a 24th round pick in 2019 by the Pirates he was in a few different organizations as he progressed through the minors until the Orioles claimed him in 2022. He had been pretty effective across Bowie and Norfolk this season but I don’t think he was particularly close to a call up. 

He might see some action later this year with the White Sox though as they are pretty thin on talent and traded away some pitching at this deadline. I think it’s am easy come easy go situation for the Orioles and when Elias says that some of the people traded may come back to haunt him I would bet that McGough is towards the bottom of that list of potential haunters. 

What we got 

The White Sox pregame show that was covering the deadline went semi viral for openly celebrating the departure of Eloy JImenez. Jimenez was once a top prospect whose career got off to a hot start finishing 4th in rookie of the year voting in 2019 and winning a silver slugger in the shortened 2020 season. Since then he has struggled with injuries missing most of the 2021 and 2022 seasons and then in the last season and half he has steadily played worse and worse to the point where Sox fans were dying to have him off the team. 

With Eloy the word you hear a lot is potential. He has flashed the potential over short spurts in his career. As a hitter his best trait is that he hits the ball very hard, this year even in a bad season he is above the 90th percentile in average exit velocity and hard hit rate. 

The negative with Eloy is the effort. Which is a funny thing because besides keeping a keen eye on how hard a guy runs to first this isn’t something that fans can really know unless coaches and executives are intentionally leaking it out to the media to be reported. The White Sox have not been afraid to allude to the fact that some of Eloy’s injuries come from not being in the best shape. 

With a highly talented but recently under achieving player you hope that a change of scenery where he enters a winning environment will spark him into caring more and performing better but I think the nice thing about this trade is that it was a buy low and I don’t think the Orioles will hesitate to cut bait with Eloy if he continues to scuffle in an Orioles uniform. 

It is interesting to think about how he will fit on the active roster which he still has not been added to. He is primarily a DH so we will lose some flexibility. He has played corner outfield in the past but never very well and this season he has played 8 total innings in the outfield. I’ve seen a lot of people theorizing that the corresponding move for adding Jimenez to the roster will be a demotion for Heston Kjerstad who hasn’t been in the lineup a lot lately and has struggled at the plate ever since he got drilled in the head by Clay Holmes (although it was good to see that he is still aware the money can be exchanged for good and services) I think that is definitely possible but besides a possible Kjerstad demotion this addition will impact how often we see Adley at DH for the rest of the season which maybe with how much he struggling will be a good thing but considering the fact that his right side has been his better side all year this may not be a good thing. 

I would rate this move a solid buy low, if we suddenly get .850 OPS Eloy that would be huge for our lineup against lefties and if he stinks then he won’t be on the playoff roster. 

The Orioles Get: Gregory Soto

The Phillies Get: Seth Johnson and Moises Chace 

The second trade between the Orioles and the Phillies. With this trade the Orioles now have 3 relievers from last year’s Phillies bullpen. The Phillies bullpen this year has been excellent with Jeff Hoffman, Matt Strahm and Orion Kerkering all performing at an elite level with the new additions of Carlos Estevez and Tanner Banks plus the fact that they are confident that they will get Jose Alverado pitching at an elite level again once he is back from his injury there just wasn’t room for Gregory Soto who was pitching to a 4+ ERA this year so they worked out another win win deal with the Orioles. 

What we gave up 

Seth Johnson was the 40th overall pick in the 2019 draft by the Tampa Bay Rays and the Orioles acquired him in the Trey Mancini trade in 2022. When they got him he was coming off a recent Tommy John Surgery that had set him back after he had pitched very well to start his career. He came back and pitched at the very end of 2023 and only threw about 10 innings and then this year had pitched well in AA Bowie. 

There are people that are pretty high on Johnson as a potential Major league starter still it wasn’t going to happen until late next season at the earliest and with the Orioles needing bullpen help now and experiencing something of a 40 man crunch I think it made sense to move him for a potentially impactful bullpen arm. 

Johnson now slots in as the number 10 prospect in the Phillies org which is similar to where he was in the Orioles system.

Chace is a young right hander that has been in the Orioles org since he was a teenager. He has a fair amount of potential but is still a ways away from being a major league pitcher. It is possible he eventually becomes an interesting pitcher but this is the kind of talent that the Orioles hope to be bringing in more often now that they are more established in the Dominican Republic 

Chace is now the 25th ranked prospect in the Phillies system. 

What we got 

Soto is a 2 time all star who by some metrics might have had his best season ever last year even if the ERA somehow ended up in the high 4s. Soto is the somewhat typical when he’s on he’s on reliever. He has nasty stuff and a blazing fastball but he sometimes struggles with his command. I will admit that reliever who struggles with his command is one of my least favorite genres of pitcher but you can rarely have it all. 

Last year Soto struggled in the postseason and this may have contributed to the Phillies feeling like they needed to move on from him. It was his first time in an environment like that and it was a small sample size so I am not too worried that he is some career choke artist. 

I think the most important thing that Soto brings to Baltimore is his left arm. Ever since Danny Coulombe went down the Orioles have really struggled to get consistent performance from their left handed relievers. Hyde loves to match up left on left and Keegan Akin especially is not good against lefties. Soto is left-handed and has great numbers against lefties so it seems the front office has targeted an appropriate weapon for Brandon Hyde out of the bullpen. 

Soto was the last addition to the bullpen so as of right now our relief staff is 

Craig Kimbrel 

Yennier Cano 

Seranthony Dominguez 

Gregory Soto

Jacob Webb

Cionel Perez 

Keegan Akin 

Burch Smith

I’ll be interested to see who of these guys gets either optioned or DFA’d when Suarez moves to the pen and Danny Coulombe comes back off the IL I imagine that it’ll be Burch Smith and Keegan Akin but Burch Smith has been pretty good for us and Akin has managed to stick around for years despite me feeling like enough is enough and I just saw that by some numbers he’s been our best reliever for the last month so IDK.

The Orioles get: Austin Slater, Livian Soto and Cash

The Reds get: Cash

This was a very puzzling trade and is one we still don’t have a lot of answers to. At this point of the deadline the Orioles had already acquired Eloy JImenez to backfill the right handed bat production lost from Austin Hays so I didn’t see the acquisition of Austin Slater coming. He has to added to the active roster and it wouldn’t make sense for the O’s to trade for him and then just DFA him but what will the corresponding move be? If we assume Kjerstad will go down to make room for Eloy then that leaves Christian Pache as the most expandable outfielder, I don’t think they would get rid of an infielder to make room for him. Slater might be better than Pache at the plate but he doesn’t provide the elite defense or speed around the bases that will actually be valuable to have from a backup outfielder.

It is possible that Livian Soto was the real target in the deal, Elias had claimed Soto twice in the offseason and tried to sneak him through waivers failing both times and now with Westburg going on the IL it has already been announced that Soto will be the immediate replacement. So maybe they are super high on him. I’m not sure what that confidence would be founded on as he has been at best a decent player in his career in the minors. 

At some point Slater will have to be added to the active roster and I guess we’ll see then what the plan is. 

Expectations vs Reality

I came into this deadline wanting 2 starting pitcher and 2 relievers and the Orioles got 2 starting pitchers and 2 relievers and then a few right handed outfielders on top of that. 

Now admittedly I was hoping that we would get a top tier starter like a Crochet and then a good 3-4 like Eflin but from what everyone is saying a lot of those top end starters that were getting thrown into those mock trades were not available so the O’s had to do the best they could with what was on the market. 

Similarly with the relievers I was hopeful we would get a true replacement for Craig Kimbrel who I do not want to have closing for us in the playoffs but instead the O’s appear to be putting their eggs in the Craig Kimbrel basket. They did get 2 guys that I think will both pitch high leverage innings in the playoffs and I do think should Hyde lose confidence in Kimbrel that Dominguez could get a look at closer. 

The biggest trade targets Eflin, Rogers, Dominguez and Soto will all be under team control through next season so that was clearly an emphasis for the front office and they stuck to it. 

At the end of the day the team is much better now than they were last week and we managed to keep all of our truly high end talent. I am optimistic about all the pitching moves and I am hope that all these buy low right handed outfielders get as few at bats as possible because I really don’t want to see Eloy Jimenez in the lineup over Heston Kjerstad and I don’t want to see Austin Slater in the lineup over anyone. 

Also I didn’t cover the Billy Cook trade on this because I don’t think it impacts our major league team at all and that is what I really care about. It seems like they sold high on an older utility guy for a pitcher to replace Seth Johnson in the minors. 

Patrick Reilly is now our 15th ranked prospect and he is 4 years younger than Johnson so it seems like a good deal to me but who knows maybe Billy Cook is the next Brock Holt. He might get some playing time this year so we’ll keep an eye out.