Before the Orioles added Pete Alonso to their roster they already had more right handed first basemen than they needed. Now that they have Pete Alonso they have WAY more right handed first basemen than they need
Out of all the positions to have a surplus of, first base is a problematic one. An extra middle infielder can come off the bench and fill in for an injury anywhere on the infield. An extra outfielder could come off the bench and play at least two outfield positions if not three. An extra first baseman can play first base.
If you had two first basemen who hit from the opposite side and an opening at DH you could make it work the way the Orioles have made it work the last few seasons with Mountcastle and O’Hearn but all the Orioles first basemen are right handed and Samuel Basallo and Adley Rutschman are going to combine to eat up most of the DH at bats.
So what are the Orioles going to do with Ryan Mountcastle and Coby Mayo?
It seems inevitable that at least one if not both of them have to be traded but that’s easier said than done. I wish it were as simple as I pick a pitcher that I’d like to add to the Orioles rotation and that pitcher’s team willingly hands them over in exchange for Coby Mayo and some 17 year old that I’ve never heard of.
But it’s not that simple and if the 2-3 teams who have pitchers that I want aren’t interested in Coby Mayo then they’re not going to trade those pitchers for Coby Mayo and yet the Orioles still need to trade Coby Mayo.
Anyway for today’s blog I want to look around the league and find some teams who might benefit from the services of Coby Mayo and Ryan Mountcastle and see what kind of trades might actually be possible.
Who wants a Mounty?
Ryan Mountcastle is coming off the worst season of his career. A lot of people thought he’d be non-tendered by the Orioles but that wasn’t the case and as of right now he’s still very much on the roster.
It’s hard to look at any part of his statline last year and find something that a team would want to trade for but fortunately for Mountcastle and the Orioles now more than ever teams are not basing their roster building decisions around a players triple slash in the season prior. They care much more about projecting for the future than they do about what happened last year.
Most teams have their own projections so it’s hard to say exactly how each team might project Mountcastle but Steamer projects Mountcastle to bounce back to a 101 wRC+ and The BAT X has him at 97 wRC+. Those aren’t numbers that will have teams knocking down the door to trade for Mountcastle but when it comes to trying to sell a team on a trade it’s much easier to pitch:
“Here’s a guy who projects to be a league average bat and plays good defense”
vs
“Here is the worst offensive first baseman to get at least 350 plate appearances last season but he plays good defense”
Yowch
Plus those projections all have Mountcastle coming off the bench and getting minimal at bats. I believe if Mountcastle got a fresh start and got regular playing time with a new team he would pretty easily surpass those projections.
Before last season Mountcastle had been a consistently above average hitter for his entire career. I don’t think 1 season where he suffered an injury just wipes all of that away.
You look at his year over year wRC+ and last year’s 81 is a remarkable outlier. I’d honestly be more concerned if he had put up a 99 wRC+ because that would seem like he was just declining. 81 feels like “Hey it just all fell apart”.
If you mosey on over to his Savant page you’ll see that even last year he was still good at what he’s always been good at. He’s got elite bat speed and his hard hit% and barrel% were both on par with where he’s been for his entire career.
On that same Savant page you can see where it all went wrong. He suffered a major regression in his whiff%, K%, and BB%. These have always been problem areas for Mountcastle and he’s never even been league average in any of those categories but over the last few seasons he had steadily improved.
I couldn’t tell you the exact reason for the regression but whatever it was I don’t think it’s permanent. The point is that Ryan Mountcastle has some value.
I don’t want to seem like a used car salesman laying it on too thick so I’ll address the real concern that makes finding a trade partner a little tricky.
Even before his disastrous 2025 season Mountcastle’s power production had been a reason for concern. His homer total has steadily declined since his rookie season. That’s not entirely his fault as he more than anyone else was negatively impacted by the Orioles absurd park dimensions from 2022 to 2024.
They have stats to track how many homers a player would have hit in other ball parks and Mountcastle’s had fewer than you might think but that is in part because he made swing adjustments to not get robbed by his home ballpark so often. Going from one of the most pull-happy hitters in baseball his rookie year to someone who went the opposite way as much as anyone else in 2023 and 2024.
So it’s not all his fault, but it is some his fault. The 18 homer number that he hit in 2023 makes a lot of sense to me but in 2024 he only hit 13 homers and only hit 2 from July 1st to the end of the season. That’s a serious power drought that I don’t think you can put on the park dimensions. Something got out of whack.
Then this year they moved the wall back in and a lot of people including myself thought that would result in the return of 30 homer Mountcastle. That was not the case and he had his worst power season ever.
So if I was a team and the Orioles were offering me Ryan Mountcastle in a trade I’d be concerned. First base is a position where if you’re going to get 1 thing that thing should be power and Mountcastle has hit 9 total homers since July 1st 2024.
So who is in the market for a First Baseman coming off the worst year of his career BUT with a track record of above average production at the plate BUT also has a concerning home run trend BUT also plays good defense?
When I look around the league the teams I think the teams who would be most interested in adding Ryan Mountcastle are teams who are trying to win now, could use a right handed platoon bat at 1B/DH and don’t have a ton of money to spend. Here is who stood out.
The San Diego Padres
Padres Get Ryan Mountcastle – Orioles Get Wandy Peralta
The Padres have spent a lot of money on their roster and right now their depth chart has Jake Cronenworth listed as their starting first baseman and Gavin Sheets listed as their starting DH.
For a team as expensive as the Padres who view themselves as contenders you’d like to have better offensive options at those two positions and that’s where Ryan Mountcastle can help. I’m not saying that Mountcastle walks in and gets to be the everyday starting first baseman but he would be a great fit as a cheap platoon bat for this team with the upside that if he gets back to his typical ~110 wRC+ then he could end up being their everyday first baseman.
Here’s Mountcastle’s splits against lefties over the past 5 seasons compared to Cronenworth and Sheets.
Here is that same crew against righties
I think this has the makings of a pretty solid platoon especially between Mountcastle and Sheets which is good because they are the less versatile of the trio and Padres are trying to move Cronenworth anyway. So from a Padres need perspective I think a deal makes sense.
Another reason that this could make sense is that because the Padres are currently strapped for cash the Orioles could make the deal more enticing and increase the return by paying down some of Mountcastle’s contract so instead of a 6 million dollar addition to the payroll it would just be a 2-3 million dollar payroll depending on what the teams work out. I think the option that the Orioles added to Mountcastle’s last year of arbitration helps some too because if he bounces back then the Padres would get a really good deal by picking up the option and if he scuffles again then they can decline the option and get off scott free. It’s a low-risk-some-reward proposition.
So what would the Orioles want from the Padres? The Padres don’t have a spare starter to trade and I’d be surprised if there is anyone left in that farm system that the Orioles like who they didn’t already get in the Ryan O’Hearn/Ramon Laureano trade.
The name that jumps out to me is Wandy Peralta. The Orioles need a left handed pitcher to round out their bullpen and the Padres bullpen is their super strength so they can afford to trade away their second best left handed reliever.
Peralta is a veteran lefty who has been a good pitcher for a long time now. Over the last 4 seasons he has a 3.10 ERA over 220 innings. Besides an injury impacted 2024 where his ERA was 3.99 every other season in that range has featured an ERA between 2.72 and 3.14. He’s been very consistent.
He’s not a perfect player. Stats like FIP and WHIP would tell you he’s been fortunate to post such nice ERA numbers and maybe 2026 is the year it all catches up to him but I believe that if you outperform the peripherals for such an extended period of time it might be worth considering that the peripherals are wrong about you.
He also isn’t exactly the lefty specialist the Orioles really need and was actually better against righties than lefties last season but every other year of his career he’s had normal splits so helps balance out a bullpen where right now the only 2 left handed arms are reverse splits guys.
Mountcastle isn’t perfect either though so this can be bucketed as a swap of two imperfect players both under team control for the next 2 seasons. As I mentioned if the Orioles offer to pay down Mountcastle’s salaray maybe the Padres would throw in another member of their 2024 draft class.
The Pittsburgh Pirates
Pirates Get Ryan Mountcastle and Griff O’Ferrall – Orioles get Thomas Harrington
I originally had the Pirates on my list of potential Mountcastle teams as a joke because they signed his long time platoon partner Ryan O’Hearn but as I looked at their roster it just kept making sense to me.
The Pirates’ best hitters are almost exclusively left handed and all of those left handed hitters really struggle against left handed pitching. They have some fun right handed prospects in Konnor Griffin and Jhostnixon Garcia who will both get playing time but they could really use a veteran right handed bat to balance out this lineup.
Career platoon splits for Brandon Lowe, Ryan O’Hearn, Spencer Horwitz and Oneil Cruz (Left: Top – Right: Bottom)
That’s where Ryan Mountcastle would be a good fit. We have multiple years of proof that a Ryan O’Hearn/Ryan Mountcastle 1B/DH platoon is really effective. You might be thinking that the Pirates are paying O’Hearn too much for him to be a part time player and that is correct which is why O’Hearn wouldn’t actually be Mounty’s platoon partner.
The way I see it playing out is that O’Hearn would be in the lineup almost everyday either at 1B or DH or RF and it would be Lowe, Horwitz and Mountcastle that would rotate because those are the guys with the most intense splits.
As much as the Pirates like to pretend their on the verge of bankruptcy they would afford to take on Mountcastles entire 2026 salary if they wanted or like I said with the Padres the Orioles could pay down the first year of this deal so that it’s as cheap of an experiment as the Pirates need to to be and if it doesn’t work they can option him and decline the option and if it does work then you’ve got a good hitter on a cheap deal in 2027.
As far as who the Pirates have that the Orioles would want I couldn’t find a clean 1-1 swap of major league players but I’ve long been intrigued by the Pirates depth of starting pitching prospects and even though the Pirates have traded 2 pitchers already this offseason it seems like Thomas Harrington could still be available.
Harrington had a terrible 2025 season both in his taste of major league action and back in the minors after he was optioned. He is 24 and it doesn’t seem like the Pirates are interested in giving him a role in the major league rotation in 2026 and their entire rotation is under team control for at least 4 more seasons so it’s not like a spot is opening up anytime soon. He’s also been surpassed by several other pitching prospects in the org so if a spot or two opened up it likely wouldn’t go to him.
Similar to Mountcastle though, I don’t think a bad 2025 just eliminates everything Harrington showed in his previous seasons. He doesn’t profile as an ace but he has good command and throws a lot of different pitches he should be able to exist in the majors as a back of the rotation starter.
The 2 of the Orioles 5 starters currently in the rotation will be free agents after this season, if Harrington were moved to Baltimore a good showing in the minors could get him a rotation spot in the near future and he’d also be further up on the depth chart for the 2026 season.
If you’re a Pirates fan you might have steam coming out of your ears thinking “we are not trading you a major league ready pitching prospect for a first baseman you don’t want on your team anymore” and I get that. I don’t think that Mountcastle by himself can get the Orioles Harrington but Mountcastle plus a prospect could be enough to get the deal done. I think most of the Orioles recent early round picks are available so maybe it’s Mountcastle plus Griff O’Ferral or Mountcastle plus Vance Honeycutt. Something like that.
The Cleveland Guardians
Guardian Get: Ryan Mountcastle and Creed Willems – Orioles get Daniel Schneemann
The Guardians are another team whose offense is mostly made up of left handed hitters. They have Jose Ramirez who switch hits and is awesome but besides him their best right handed hitter is… Jonathan Rodriguez?
Their primary first baseman for next season is set to be Kyle Manzardo who is coming off a nice season but he’s a lefty with pretty intense platoon splits and there’s not currently a right handed bat who could play first on the roster. I suppose you could argue David Fry but he doesn’t have the track record that Mountcastle has and he’s coming off an even worse season.
Kyle Manzardo splits vs lefties (top) and righties (bottom)
I think Mountcastle slides nicely into the backup first base role for Cleveland and I believe he’d quickly establish himself as the Guardians second best right handed bat behind Ramirez which would open a path to extended playing time very easily.
As far as who the Orioles would want from the Guardians this one was a little bit trickier but the name I landed on was Daniel Schneemann.
Schneemann was a 33rd round pick in 2018 and toiled for many years in the minors before debuting in 2024 so he’s old for someone with such little big league experience. He’s a super utility player who last season played 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF and DH.
The Orioles are currently lacking in the positional versatility department. Right now their utility bench player is set to be Jeremiah Jackson and although I am excited to see more of Jackson next season I don’t think he is a defensive upgrade over any of the Orioles regular starters. If the O’s acquired Schneemann he would immediately be the Orioles best defender at a host of positions which is something that new Orioles manager (former Guardians associate manager) Craig Albernaz would value very highly.
Current Guardians manager Steven Vogt likely values him pretty highly too so why would he be available? Well Schneemann can’t really hit, which is fine if you’re providing Gold Glove level defense at multiple positions but the Guardians have a lot of guys who are defense first guys who can’t really hit and they have multiple top prospects including the first overall pick in the 2024 draft likely to start the 2026 season with the big league club who play Schneemann’s primary positions.
Schneemann’s triple slash, wOBA, xwOBA and wRC+ in his first 2 seasons
Similar to how Mountcastle is less valuable to the O’s because they have so many right handed first basemen Schneeman is less valuable to the Guardians because they have so many light hitting infeilders/outfeilders. They’d both be more valuable on the other team.
5 years of Schneemann for 2 years of Mountcastle probably isn’t an exactly even trade so the O’s might have to throw in a prospect to get the deal across the finish line. Maybe Creed Willems does the trick?
The Arizona Diamondbacks
Diamondbacks get Ryan Mountcastle – Orioles get Mitch Bratt
The Diamondbacks are not as hopeless from the right hand side of the plate as some of the other teams we’ve touched on in this blog but with Tyler Locklear out to start the season they don’t have a right handed option at first base or DH.
The players currently projected to get the majority of the playing time at those spots are Pavin Smith and Adrian Del Castillo who are both interesting hitters that the D-Backs would be fine with getting the bulk of the playing time at those spots but they are both somewhere between dreadful to pretty bad against left handed pitching.
Arizona wants to stay competitive but they have a lot of money tied up in big contracts already so it makes sense that they would be interested in a cheaper platoon option like Mountcastle.
As far as who the Orioles would want from the Diamondbacks I have my eye on the two pitching prospects that they got from dealing Merrill Kelly at the deadline last year: Kohl Drake and Mitch Bratt. They are both left handed and are both really close to making their MLB debut and the Diamondbacks rotation although it’s not especially impressive is mostly spoken for.
Just by the fact of how much they are paying Kelly, Pfaadt, Rodriguez and Soroka that’s 4 spots that aren’t up for grabs and it would appear Ryne Nelson has a good grip on the 5th spot. Not to mention that Corbin Burnes will be back at some point later in the season.
I’m not saying that Mountcastle would cost both of those pitchers, the Diamondbacks can pick whichever one they like more, keep him and exchange the other one for Mountcastle. Trading Merrill Kelly for 2 pitching prospects, getting him back in the offseason and then trading one of those pitchers for depth at a position of need is pretty good business to my eye.
Colbert Mayonaise
I found the task of finding trade partners for Coby Mayo a bit more difficult than finding lading spots for Ryan Mountcastle becuase it’s just harder to gauge how teams around the league view Coby Mayo.
I imagine that across the league the opinions on Ryan Mountcastle range from teams thinking he’s a slightly above average first baseman to slightly below average first baseman
Coby Mayo is much more polarizing.
In front offices around the league you could find people who had a high grade on Mayo as a prospect and still think that he still has star potential and you could find people who wouldn’t trade for him if the Orioles offered him up for free.
I’m sure in a trade the Orioles would like to get a return that reflects that Mayo is not far removed from being one of the top prospects in baseball and that once they gave him regular playing time for a month straight he got into a rhythm and played well.
There might very well be teams that also view Mayo that way but any team that is considering trading for Coby Mayo is likely thinking here’s a guy who we can get a discount on because he hasn’t performed well in the majors and is completely blocked in Baltimore.
The Orioles don’t want to trade Mayo for nothing but they do want to trade him and any team they try to trade him to is going to know that and is going to try to take advantage of that and drive a hard bargain.
I am really curious to know what the Orioles will do if nobody is offering them what they think Coby Mayo is worth. He’s cheap, has options and is under team control for a long time so they could just keep him but if you hold onto him and have him playing the minors again or have him backing up Pete Alonso at first and starting twice a week at DH how is he supposed to build up his value?
I don’t see a way that if the Orioles don’t get what they want for Mayo before the season starts that they’re going to get more for him later. What would have to happen for teams to think more highly of him a year from now than they do currently?
Pete Alonso get hurt for the first time in his career and Mayo play really well for 2 weeks while he’s on IR?
Mayo slashing .450/.550/.650 in the minors?
I just don’t think either of those things are especially likely so even though they could technically keep him I view trading Mayo as something that virtually has to happen.
As I mentioned earlier in the blog I want to believe that Coby Mayo has enough value to headline a trade for a starting pitcher but the whole purpose of this blog is to talk about trades that aren’t in the “I receive your best starting pitcher and you receive someone who I have no interest in having on my team anymore” vein.
So for these mock trades I banned myself from trading Mayo for Freddy Peralta, Joe Ryan or Mackenzie Gore even though I think all three of those teams could make good use of Coby Mayo.
Instead I looked around the league to find teams who are rebuilding who could afford to give Mayo 600 PA at first for the next few years and let him actually develop since I think that is the kind of team to whom he’d be the most valuable.
For the return I tried to find players/prospects who are in a similar situation to Mayo where at one point they were considered a top prospect but for one reason or another the shine has come off them a little bit. Kind of a not-so-distressed asset swap where both teams come away with a young player who fits their team that they’ll have under control for several years.
The Miami Marlins
Marlins get Coby Mayo – Orioles get Max Meyer
The Marlins are in an interesting place where they are still in the selling part of their rebuild but in these sell trades they’ve acquired a lot of young major league talent. They got Jakob Marsee for Luis Arraez, Augustin Ramirez for Jazz Chisholm, Kyle Stowers for Trevor Rogers, Robbie Snelling for Tanner Scott and now most recently Owen Cassie for Edward Cabrera. Those were just the big names from those deals, each of those trades included 1-3 additional prospects that are either in the Marlins system or hanging around the fringes of the major league roster.
The point is that they’ve got a lot of young interesting talent on the roster BUT what they don’t have is a right handed first baseman and Coby Mayo would fit right in.
But who would the Orioles want from the Marlins? Normally I’d say Sandy Alcantara but he falls into the same category of Peralta and Ryan where it’s a tad too convenient for the purposes of this blog and also it seems like the Marlins are determined to not trade him specifically. With that in mind I pivoted to another pitcher, Max Meyer.
Meyer is a former top draft pick and prospect but he’s burned through his pre-arb years without being able to put together anything close to a fully healthy season. Since debuting in 2022 he’s only managed to make 25 total starts.
If you look at his numbers in those 25 starts there’s not a ton to love but it’s hard to put up good numbers when you are constantly either injured or rehabbing from an injury. The healthiest he ever was in the last several years was the beginning of last season.
In his first five starts of 2025 he went 6+ innings in four of the five games, pitched to a 2.10 ERA with a 2.50 FIP and 12.3 K/9. He was pretty much exactly what the Marlins hoped he would be when they drafted him 3rd overall in 2020 and what they thought they could expect from him when they called him up in 2022. Then he got hurt again.
Admittedly one 5 game stretch of starts in four seasons is not much to go on. It’s basically nothing to go on. Absurdly small and mostly poor sample size of MLB experience aside Meyer has been a long time coming for the Marlins and if they were to trade him now they’d be selling very low on him and I don’t think they’re looking to do that.
However the Rays weren’t looking to trade Shane Baz either but the Orioles made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The Marlins like Coby Mayo, according to their beat writers that’s who they wanted from the Orioles in an Edward Cabrera trade.
Meyer is more injured and has less of a track record than Cabrera so you might wonder why the Orioles would trade Mayo for Meyer but not Cabrera and my reasoning for thinking this could work is that based on what the Marlins got for Cabrera they were likely asking for Mayo and additional prospects whereas I am proposing a 1 for 1 Meyer/Mayo swap.
The Marlins fill a hole in their roster at first base and free up room for their upper minors pitching prospects. The Orioles get additional pitching depth with some upside.
The St. Louis Cardinals
Cardinals get Coby Mayo – Orioles get Jojo Romero and Joshua Baez
The Cardinals are in the early stages of a rebuild and they’ve already sent several of their established major leaguers packing this offseason. What’s been interesting to me is that there does seem to be some focus on getting back players that are close to major league ready in these trades they’ve done so far.
If they are in the talent acquisition phase of a rebuild and they want some major league talent to keep the pro team afloat then I think Coby Mayo would be a good fit there. With the trade of Willson Contreras done they don’t have a right handed first baseman on the roster and they don’t have a top prospect that fits that mold.
If things go the way that the Cardinals hope in 2-3 years Mayo will be a staple of the middle of their order when they’re ready to compete for the NL Central again.
As far as who the O’s would want from the Cardinals the piece I am most interested in is Jojo Romero who would be a perfect fit in the O’s bullpen as their high leverage lefty specialist which is one of the few gaping holes left on this roster.
Jojo Romero’s FIP and xFIP against lefties (top) and righties (bottom)
Using Mayo to fix such a glaring weakness would be smart but giving up 6 years of Mayo for 1 year of Romero is not fair value for Baltimore so the Cardinals would have to add something to the deal to make it worth the Orioles while.
There’s not really anyone else on the Cardinals major league roster I’d want so the answer to balancing out this deal will have to come from the minor leagues.
The prospect I circled as a fit was Joshua Baez. A right handed corner outfield prospect who put up impressive numbers last season and saw his stock increase dramatically to the point where the Cardinals protected him in the rule 5 draft despite him never having played in triple A. The Orioles have 2 right handed corner outfielders on the roster, one will be a free agent after 2026 and the other after 2027 so Baez would become the Taylor Ward/Tyler O’Neill replacement plan.
The Colorado Rockies
Rockies get Coby Mayo, Juaron Watts-Brown, and Wellington Aracena – Orioles get Chase Dollander
It’s the dawn of a new day in Colorado with new GM Paul Depodesta basically starting from square 1 in every possible sense. I don’t know exactly how Depodesta is approaching his job but if I were him I would be looking at the current roster and thinking I don’t know if anyone on this team is going to be on the next Rockies team that makes the playoffs.
Mayo is not going to hit free agency until 2032. That’s a long runway. He could go to Colorado, play every single day in an advantageous offensive environment, and he’d be there long enough that by the time he’s in his last couple seasons of arbitration they might actually have built a decent team around him.
Because they are so far away from contending and the new front office is not emotionally attached to any of the previous regime’s decisions it allows me to be a little creative with this mock trade which is Coby Mayo for Chase Dollander.
Dollander was the Rockies first round draft pick in 2023 and their top prospect before his debut last season. He’s a very impressive young pitcher who is also under team control for a long time. The Rockies always need pitching so why would they ship off a top pitching prospect who just made it to the majors?
The reason I think that a Dollander trade is on the board is that he is the exact kind of pitcher least optimized for Coors field. Dollander’s best weapon is his fastball, he wants to throw it 50% of the time and fill up the zone. Under normal circumstances that’s a great strategy and it works but at altitude that fastball doesn’t get the same induced vertical break and becomes a lot more hittable.
Just look at the difference between his home and road splits last season
It’s pretty drastic and the Coors effect is not going away.
This is always going to be a thing and obviously the Rockies can’t just give up on ever having good pitchers but there are kinds of pitchers whose arsenals aren’t going to be so drastically impacted the way that Dollander’s will be.
If the Rockies don’t end up trading Dollander and he pitches the next 6 years in Colorado I’m sure he’ll make adjustments and find a way to be more successful in his home ballpark but he’d be much more valuable on a team where he can spam his fastball and get the results he’s used to getting.
Depodesta didn’t draft Dollander and I’m sure one of the first projects that the new front office is working on is figuring out what kind of pitchers can survive at Coors and if I can see that Dollander isn’t built for altitude then the Rockies new front office definitely already knows that.
Mayo and Dollander are similar in the sense that they both rose to the top of prospect rankings, didn’t perform how their teams would have hoped in their first season in the big leagues but have flashed enough talent that there’s reason to believe they could still fulfill their promise. If the Rockies ID a pitching prospect or 2 in the O’s organization that they think would be better suited to Coors then I’d be fine adding the O’s side of the deal to help motivate the Rockies to say yes.
The Tampa Bay Rays
Rays get Coby Mayo – Orioles get Griffin Jax
or
Rays get Coby Mayo – Orioles get Edwin Uceta
or
Rays get Coby Mayo – Orioles get Jonny DeLuca and Jose Urbina
You don’t see a ton of inter division trades in baseball but these two teams seem to be quite compatible when it comes to negotiating a deal. Over the past 2 years they’ve traded with each other 3 times swapping 10 players and 2 draft picks.
The Rays are currently working through a mini rebuild of sorts and their long time right handed 1B/DH option Yandy Diaz is 34. He provides very consistent production at the plate and he’s on a steal of contract. The Rays love him but he’d be far more valuable to a team trying to contend for a World Series in the next 2 years. Lots of teams were interested in him at the deadline last year and those same teams would be blowing up the Rays phone in a second if they made him available.
If the Rays were to trade Diaz that would open up playing time at first base and Coby Mayo would be a great fit to slide in and platoon with Jonathan Aranda and be a part of the Rays new young core alongside Junior Caminero, Carson Williams and Jacob Melton.
As far as what the Orioles would want from the Rays I actually have a few different options for this trade.
The player I’m most interested in getting from the Rays is a relatively new Ray Griffin Jax, who the Rays acquired from the Twins in exchange for Taj Bradley.
So far this offseason the Orioles big bullpen acquisition has been Ryan Helsley. Helsley is a good addition and I’m optimistic that he’ll be able to bounce back and close games for the Orioles all year. That’s not a sure thing though and if the troubles Helsley had in New York follow him to Baltimore then the Orioles bullpen will very suddenly be in bad shape.
Jax would be a great fit because he can play the role of elite setup man and if Helsley melts down or gets hurt he could slide into the closer role. Jax has been one of the most durable and dependable relievers since he entered the league. The results as far as ERA haven’t been stellar every single season but he’s shown elite strikeout stuff the last few years and that plays well at the back of the bullpen.
Jax is under team control for the next 2 seasons which means he’ll most likely be a free agent before the Rays are contenders again so even though they just got him I think they’d be fine flipping him for a player with more years of control. On the Orioles side trading Mayo as a 1 for 1 swap for a reliever hurts but Jax is good enough I think you live with it.
Hell yeah
If the Rays aren’t interested in moving Jax, I’d also be interested in Edwin Uceta who I don’t think is quite as good as Jax but would role wise would play a very similar role as what I described Jax doing for the Orioles as far as immediately coming in as the set up man with the potential to close games if things go south for Helsley and he’s under team control for 4 more seasons. The amount of control the Rays have over Uceta might make him harder to pry away.
Also Hell yeah
The last option I’ll mention would be Jonny DeLuca, a centerfielder who the Rays got for Tyler Glasnow a couple of years ago. Things haven’t really worked out for DeLuca, he was not good in 2024 and he was hurt for most of 2025. The Rays signed Cedric Mullins to play his position and traded for Jacob Melton who also plays his position. It seems like they’re ready to move on.
The Orioles are thin at Centerfield and they’ve been aggressively acquiring right handed outfielder all offseason so roster wise he makes more sense in Baltimore than Coby Mayo at this point. DeLuca plays a position of need, would be cheap for the next 4 seasons and provides a little bit of upside if his bat clicks. DeLuca would be a tad underwhelming as a 1 for 1 return so I’d like the Rays to throw a little sweetner in there if they can, ya know if it’s not too much trouble.
The Dishwasher 
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