NEW YORK — One player who undoubtedly will not be dealt at Major League Baseball’s annual trade deadline (6 p.m. ET Thursday) is New York Yankees closer Devin Williams.
Under different circumstances for the Yankees or another underperforming team, Williams would be prime trade bait. With 17 saves in 18 opportunities after a rough start in New York, he’d be a nice two-month rental for a team hoping to win the World Series, like the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
Plus, he’s a free agent at the end of the season—the reason the Yankees were able to acquire him from Milwaukee this past offseason in the first place.
But the Yanks are not sellers; they are buyers with a slight lead in the American League Wild Card race. They’ve already made two moves in the past few days, obtaining slick-fielding third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Colorado Rockies and utility man Amed Rosario from the Washington Nationals. The cost: a group of prospects.
And Williams isn’t going anywhere until the offseason.
“Sure, it wouldn’t make sense for a team to hold on to me if it didn’t have playoff aspirations,” Williams said Monday in an interview at Yankee Stadium. “But we’re still vying for a playoff spot. Ryan Helsley [the closer for the St. Louis Cardinals, who are within reach of an NL Wild Card spot] is probably going to get traded because they’re probably not going to make the playoffs, and he’s an upcoming free agent. That’s the way the game operates.”
There are sure to be more deals to come in the next 24 hours. The Yanks are seeking another front-line pitcher, bullpen help and perhaps an outfielder with Aaron Judge on the 10-day injured list because of a flexor strain in his right (throwing) elbow. Arizona starting pitchers Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly are high on their list.
Manager Aaron Boone said Monday he expects Judge to DH only for a while, displacing Giancarlo Stanton, who will get some outfield reps in the coming days before Judge returns.
“The hope is that [Judge] comes back and at least DHs initially,” Boone said. “But the hope is also that he starts throwing in the initial days when he starts DHing. And hopefully it’s not long until he’s back in the outfield. Time will tell and we’ll listen to his arm and his body on that.”
Boone feels baseball operations are still hard at work trying to improve a team that has been injury prone and mediocre at best since it opened 35-20 and on May 28 had a seven-game lead in the AL East. That lead has been long squandered, and the Yanks now trail the Toronto Blue Jays by four games, a negative 11-game turnaround in two months.
Whether general manager Brian Cashman can staunch the bleeding is a matter of conjecture at this point. But Boone feels the moves to acquire McMahon and Rosario at least have the team heading in the right direction.
“I love the two additions so far,” he said. “They’ve helped us big time.”
Being more explicit, he added:
“It’s very early in the process but it looks like McMahon is a really good player. He’s certainly been productive. He’s made three or four pretty big-time third base plays. Getting Rosario in here, his presence against left-handed pitching is what we needed.”
Nevertheless, it’s a time of great clubhouse stress as players such as Arizona’s Eugenio Suarez, Gallen and Kelly—all of whom are pending free agents—await their fate. The D-backs, way behind the Dodgers in the NL West and on the brink of extinction in the NL Wild Card race, are sellers.
In recent days, Arizona has already traded prospective free agents Josh Naylor and Randal Grichuk, causing a cascading emotional effect among the players remaining.
“It’s a real thing,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said last week at Chase Field in Phoenix about the trade deadline impact. “I don’t know how to get around it.”
Grichuk was told he was traded to the Kansas City Royals during a game in Pittsburgh on Saturday while he was in the lineup playing right field. Lovullo called him into the tunnel beneath the dugout and told him he was traded for a minor league pitcher, Andrew Hoffman. Moments later he was back in the dugout caught on camera hugging and saying goodbye to his teammates. The club had yet to even announce the move.
The Royals told Grichuk they wanted him to play for them on Sunday in Kansas City.
“And I wanted to play,” he told the media in K.C. on Sunday about the quick turnaround. “That’s kind of my MO. It was a crazy whirlwind of a trip.”
He was in the starting lineup, playing in right field and had a single in four at-bats. This after going 0-for-2 on Saturday for the D-backs prior to the trade.
On Monday at Yankee Stadium, Tampa Bay catcher Danny Jansen was a late scratch from the lineup when he was traded by the Rays to the Brewers. He was replaced by backup Matt Thaiss. The deal wasn’t announced until well after the game ended with the Rays winning, 4-2.
The Rays, playing at Tampa’s Steinbrenner Field this season because of storm damage to Tropicana Field, are caught between being buyers and sellers. They are long gone in the AL East and within striking distance of an AL Wild Card spot.
But like the D-backs, don’t think players coming and going isn’t detrimental to the chemistry of their club.
“It is difficult, especially late in the day when changes like that come,” long-time Rays manager Kevin Cash said Monday after game. “You feel for Jano, who was excited about playing in the game. And it was tough on Thaiss. You try not to ambush him, but that was probably a little bit of an ambush.”
Jansen’s going to a Milwaukee team that right now is leading the Chicago Cubs by two games in the NL Central. The Rays are juggling catchers, and made a concurrent deal with Miami for Nick Fortes. But that’s the price of doing business this time of year.
“I know it affects our players,” Cash said. “You care about the players. I don’t know if it’s the right message to say something or not say something.”
With guys like Miami starter Sandy Alcantara, San Francisco starter Justin Verlander, Cleveland starter Shane Bieber and outfielder Steven Kwan, Texas outfielder Adolis García, Pittsburgh outfielder Oneil Cruz and Chicago White Sox outfielder Luis Robert Jr. all possibly on the move, expect a lot more of this over the next day.