Thoughts following the 2024 trade deadline

The trade deadline came and went Tuesday and it was a quantity over quality deadline league-wide. Lots and lots of trades, but the biggest name to change teams was … Jazz Chisholm Jr.? Maybe Randy Arozarena? Not a single Baseball America top 100 prospect was traded. I can’t imagine that's happened often. Heck, this might be the first time it’s ever happened.

Here’s what I wrote about the Chisholm trade. Here’s everything else the Yankees did prior to Tuesday’s 6pm ET deadline:

Yankees get: RHRP Mark Leiter Jr.
Cubs get: IF Ben Cowles and RHRP Jack Neely

Yankees get: RHRP Kelly Austin and $750,000 in international bonus pool money
Astros get: LHRP Caleb Ferguson

Yankees get: RHRP Enyel De Los Santos and RHRP Thomas Balboni Jr.
Padres get: OF Brandon Lockridge

A bat and a reliever, specifically an infield bat and a swing-and-miss reliever, was the bare minimum at the deadline, and the Yankees got that in Chisholm and Leiter. From there, the Yankees installed Ferguson as a sleeper agent on the Astros, picked up De Los Santos, and that’s it. No platoon partner for Alex Verdugo, and no depth arm with Gerrit Cole beat up and Luis Gil approaching uncharted workload territory.

On one hand, I’m pleased with the deadline because Chisholm is really good and Leiter and De Los Santos bring some badly needed strikeouts to the bullpen. Also, not having to watch Ferguson anymore is a win in my book. On the other hand, a bunch of platoon outfielders were traded and yet Verdugo will continue to get starts against lefties, and the Yankees are pushing the limits of their pitching depth. I don’t love that.

The Yankees managed to thread the needle between doing a lot at the deadline while also doing less than I expected. They’re a better team than they were four days ago (before the Chisholm trade). It also feels like the Yankees are not as good as they could be, which is how I felt after the offseason. Let’s break down the deadline, shall we?

Needed bullpen help

Leiter is Al’s nephew and, obviously, Mark Sr.’s son. Both pitched for the Yankees back in the day. "He's gonna be good for that clubhouse. He's likable. Guys seem to gravitate to him. He will not be intimidated. And he's fearless,” Al told Jack Curry about Mark Jr. What a nice uncle. Also, Mark Jr. is from Toms River. Do you happen to know anyone else who is from there?

Anyway, Leiter is a “don’t look at the ERA, look at everything else” reliever. He’s not a hard-thrower – low-90s sinker, mid-80s splitter, mid-70s curveball – but that and the 4.21 ERA hide excellent strikeout (34.9%) and swinging strike (16.5%) rates, a strong ground ball rate (50.0%), and an acceptable walk rate (8.6%). The Yankees have built their bullpen around exit velocity suppression the last few years and, well:

Set the minimum to 30 innings and six relievers have a 30 K% and 50 GB% this season, and Leiter is the only one who was available at the deadline. Griffin Jax, Andrés Muñoz, the emergent Erik Miller and Dedniel Núñez, and old pal David Robertson are the others. Leiter’s splitter has an absurd 62.7% whiff rate and he can spin you up with the curveball too. He can’t be a comfortable at-bat. 

Thanks to the splitter, Leiter has been better against lefties (.249 wOBA and 22.5 K-BB%) than righties (.325 wOBA and 21.3 K-BB%) the last two years, so he doesn’t need to be sheltered. He’s a bona fide high leverage option you can run out there against the other team’s 2-3-4-5 hitters. The Yankees had to add swing-and-miss to their bullpen and they got that with Leiter. They got swings and misses and grounders. 

"We're excited to get him. We feel like getting him makes us better, and I know he's excited to get here and can't wait to get in the mix,” Aaron Boone told Bryan Hoch about Leiter. “... Not a lot of hits, doesn't walk a ton of guys, and a lot of swing-and-miss there. He's also thrown the ball really well here this last month, and that's intriguing, too."

The bad news: Leiter missed 15 days with a forearm strain a month ago. That’s always scary. The good news: Leiter has been lights out (Leits out?) since returning: 7.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 14 K. He’s under team control through 2026, but he’s also 33, and I don’t like to obsess over controllable relievers (how’s Scott Effross and his five years of control working out?). Leiter helps in 2024. If he helps in 2025 and 2026 too, great.

De Los Santos, 28, is a standard 95-and-a-slider reliever. He’s running a 28.2 K% and 15.9% swinging strike rate, plus a nice 7.6 BB%. De Los Santos is having no luck keeping the ball in the park though: 11 home runs in 40.1 innings! 2.45 HR/9 (20.0% HR/FB)! That’s led to a 4.46 ERA (5.36 FIP). Yuck. But, from 2022-23, he had a 3.18 ERA (3.10 FIP) with a 0.53 HR/9 (6.1% HR/FB). That’s who the Yankees hope to get. De Los Santos is under team control through 2026.

With De Los Santos and Leiter in, and Ferguson out, the bullpen currently looks like this:

• Closer: RHP Clay Holmes

• Setup: RHP Tommy Kahnle, RHP Mark Leiter Jr.

• Multi-inning: RHP Luke Weaver

• Middle: RHP Jake Cousins, RHP Enyel De Los Santos, LHP Tim Hill

• Long: RHP Michael Tonkin

• Depth: RHP Scott Effross, RHP Ron Marinaccio, LHP Anthony Misiewicz

Kahnle and Leiter are reverse split guys and effective against lefties, but no bat-missing lefty is not great. Hill is an extreme ground ball guy and the Yankees are gonna have to go through Yordan Alvarez, Rafael Devers, Gunnar Henderson, et al to get through the American League. Maybe Nestor Cortes is the answer here come October? He’s holding lefties to a .225/.268/.313 (.252 wOBA) line with 25.8 K%.

That’s a topic for another time. Adding strikeouts to the bullpen was an absolute must at the deadline, the Yankees allow too many balls in play in the late innings, and they got them in Leiter and De Los Santos. Leiter is a legitimate high leverage who will lighten the load on Kahnle and Weaver, and I guess we can’t rule out him taking save chances away from Holmes. He’s in line to get big outs one way or another.

Two new prospects

The De Los Santos trade was a salary dump for the Padres, who picked up Tanner Scott at a very high prospect cost. They needed to unload money somewhere, so the Yankees took on what's left of De Los Santos’ $1.16M salary. San Diego gave them Balboni – the Yankees added three Juniors at the deadline (Balboni, Chisholm, Leiter) – as a sweeter and he’s a legit bullpen prospect.

Balboni, 24, has a 4.46 ERA (3.07 FIP) with a 38.2 K% in 34.1 High-A innings this year. That’s 60 strikeouts in 34.1 innings. FanGraphs ranked him the No. 29 prospect in San Diego’s system earlier this month. Here is a chunk of their write-up:

A sly late round pickup by the Padres, Balboni is a sidearm reliever who has had a two-tick velo bump in 2024. He has big time arm speed for a low-slot guy and generates six and a half feet of extension with a big stride down the mound. This type of low-slot rise/run fastball and slider combo platter is becoming more common across baseball and Balboni is an older, developmental version of it. His slider spins at nearly 2,800 rpm, but he doesn’t command it well enough to garner many whiffs right now. Polishing his command and shaping his slider to have more two plane tilt will be key for Balboni to seize a big league bullpen job.

Seems to me the Yankees traded Neely for Leiter and then picked up the next Neely – a very high strikeout minor league reliever – along with De Los Santos. This isn’t anyone who will feature prominently in my next Top 30 Prospects List, but Balboni is a legit prospect. Did the Yankees get the two best players in the trade? Eh, maybe not, but the fact it’s even a question is a good sign.

As for Austin, he’s another reliever with a 2.70 ERA (4.54 FIP) and a 29.1 K% in 26.2 High-A innings. He’s a pitch data guy with a unique fastball. That’s all I got on him. The international bonus pool money is significant. The Yankees will put that to use. These trades are usually “we already know where it’s going,” not “let’s get the money and figure out where to spend it later.” Balboni is the main get among the non-MLBers.

The prospects surrendered

The price for pitching help was astronomical this deadline. I thought the Yankees did really well to get Leiter for two good but not great prospects who were going to be on the 40-man roster/Rule 5 Draft bubble after the season. Cowles is breaking out (140 wRC+ in Double-A) but still projects as a utility type or soft starter, and those guys are always tradeable. He was found money.

(Cowles went on the injured list after being hit by a pitch this past weekend. Glad that didn’t stand in the way of a trade.)

There’s a chance, and maybe it’s even likely, Neely would have outperformed Leiter the rest of the season had the Yankees called him up and put him in the bullpen. He’s just starting to settle in at Triple-A following a June 19th promotion and he has been one of the best bat-missers in the minors the last two years. Set the minimum to 100 minor league innings the last two years and:

Strikeout rate
1. Kyle Hurt, Dodgers: 38.4%
2. Jack Neely, Yankees: 37.6%
3. Lucas Wepf, Dodgers: 37.2%

Swinging strike rate
1. Alix Hernandez, Giants: 25.7%
2. Mike Kennedy, Pirates: 20.2%
3. Jack Neely, Yankees: 20.1%

So why trade Neely for Leiter rather than stick Neely in the bullpen? The answer is Leiter’s done it at the big league level and Neely hasn’t, and what are potentially your final two months with Juan Soto is not the time to find out about second tier bullpen prospects. Leiter has handled high leverage innings for a high profile team the last two years. He’s a late-inning weapon. You’re hoping Neely can be that, but you don’t know.

“They will miss neither of those guys,” a scout told Erik Boland about Cowles and Neely. That would follow the pattern of the last few deadlines. The Yankees have traded a lot – A LOT – of prospects lately, but the only guys they miss are Josh Smith and maybe JP Sears? The trades haven’t worked out because the guys the Yankees got stunk, not because the players they gave up became high-end performers.

Lockridge, 27, was a fifth round pick in 2018, and he is going to become a minor league free agent after this season. He’s a speed-and-defense guy who is hitting .295/.405/.382 (114 wRC+) in 72 Triple-A games. De Los Santos is not making huge money, but apparently the Padres were so desperate to unload him that they gave the Yankees Balboni and took back a fringe prospect in Lockridge.

The case can be made Agustin Ramirez, who went to the Marlins in the Chisholm trade, was the best prospect traded at the deadline. Otherwise the Yankees traded a reliever (Neely), second tier infielders (Cowles, Jared Serna), a rookie ball lottery ticket (Abrahan Ramirez), and a guy a few weeks away from minor league free agency (Lockridge) at the deadline. They didn’t put much of a dent in the system.

Royals get Erceg at a bargain price

Relievers were so expensive at the deadline! Scott fetched a massive haul. Carlos Estévez brought a pretty good return. The Red Sox gave up four (!) prospects for rental Luis García. And then there’s personal favorite Lucas Erceg, who went to the Royals for a song. This is the Yankees’ equivalent to the three-prospect trade package:

• RHP Mason Barnett: LHP Brock Selvidge (back-end starter type in Double-A)

• RHP Will Klein: RHP Jack Neely (MLB-ready reliever)

• OF Jared Dickey: OF Anthony Hall (non-top 30 Single-A outfielder)

The equivalencies are not perfect, and it’s not as simple as matching the other teams offer and getting the player, but man, the Athletics gave the Royals a sweetheart deal for a really good reliever. I would’ve loved to get Erceg instead of Leiter, and I like Leiter! I just love Erceg. Blah. Reliever prices were sky high at the deadline and the Royals got Erceg for that. I’m jealous.

* * *

The Yankees were connected to a whole bunch of players leading up to the deadline (Yandy Díaz, Pete Fairbanks, Kyle Finnegan, Jack Flaherty, etc.), not all of whom moved. They’ll lean on Will Warren as their next in line depth starter until Cody Poteet (triceps) and Clarke Schmidt (lat) return, and maybe Jasson Domínguez will get a look as Verdugo’s platoon partner in September (he’s weaker from the right side of the plate though). Jon Berti (calf) is on the way back and he’ll fit in … somewhere. 

Like I said in the intro, an infield bat and a bat-missing reliever was the bare minimum, and the Yankees got that plus a second reliever. I would have liked them to be a little more active – when is that not the case? – but they got what they needed. They just didn't separate themselves in the AL, which is wide open. The Yankees are still right there with the Orioles and Red Sox in the AL East, both of whom also added the deadline.

Really, it’s now on the players already here to be better. Cortes, Holmes, Marcus Stroman, etc. The trade deadline wasn’t gonna make those better. It's on them to do it. The front office plugged the most obvious roster holes at the deadline. Now it’s time for the guys here to hold up their end of the bargain.

“I’m looking forward to it being behind us,” Boone told Hoch about the trade deadline. “We know what we’ve got. Let’s go, boys. Let’s go. W we know what we’re playing for. It’s circle up and let’s go chase it.”