The trade deadline saw the Washington Nationals trade four players in total, and the team netted seven players back in return. General Manager Mike Rizzo spoke to his strategy of receiving back “market value” for players, and thought they did very well in their trades.
“I would grade [the trade deadline] a little better than expected. … I think we did very well at the deadline.”
— Rizzo said on the Sports Junkies radio show today
No team this year netted a Top-100 player in a trade deadline deal — but the Nats, per Baseball America, got the fifth best player at the trade deadline in Alex Clemmey, the left-handed 19 year old starter, acquired as part of the Lane Thomas trade to Cleveland. He was seeded sixth into MLB Pipeline’s updated rankings of the Nats’ new Top-30, one ahead of Cayden Wallace who was acquired with Caleb Lomavita in the Hunter Harvey trade. Keep in mind, MLB Pipeline has not seeded the new draft picks into their rankings at this point in time.
The Guardians made Clemmey the 58th overall selection (2nd round) in the 2023 MLB draft, and had to pry him away from a Vanderbilt commitment with an over-slot $2.3 million signing bonus, which was well above his slot value of $1,402,600. Rizzo said on the radio today that, “We loved him in the draft last year — and just couldn’t get him.”
“I thought that was a lot to get for Lane Thomas. No disrespect to Thomas.”
— Jim Callis from MLB.com said in an interview
When the rankings are all compiled for the Nats’ farm system on MLB Pipeline, will Lomavita be ranked higher than Clemmey and Wallace? Since Lomavita was acquired as a tradeable competitive balance draft pick, he was not ranked in Baseball America‘s evaluation of trade acquisitions. By the way, Wallace was ranked by Baseball America as the 15th best player acquired at the trade deadline.
In all, the Nationals traded Hunter Harvey, Jesse Winker, Lane Thomas, and Dylan Floro. The amazing part of how each player was acquired shows the extra value created in taking chances on players that other teams passed on. Harvey was a waiver claim before the 2022 season. Winker was a minor league free agent who was signed as Spring Training camp opened this year. Floro was signed as a free agent to an MLB deal in the offseason. And Thomas was acquired at the trade deadline in 2021 in exchange for Jon Lester.
Here is the recap of each trade:
- Hunter Harvey– traded to Kansas City for: 3B Cayden Wallace (No. 7 prospect), No. 39 pick (C Caleb Lomavita)
- Jesse Winker– traded to the New York Mets for: RHP Tyler Stuart (No. 17)
- Lane Thomas– traded to Cleveland for: LHP Alex Clemmey (No. 6), INF Rafael Ramirez Jr. (No. 23), INF prospect Jose Tena
- Dylan Floro– traded to Arizona for: 3B/DH prospect Andres Chaparro
One of the interesting sidenotes is that Tena is the nephew of 16-year big league infielder Juan Uribe which tells you he has baseball in his bloodline. Tena has shown well in Triple-A with power and a batting average that has pushed in the .290s.
Of course most people want to talk about the player who wasn’t traded, Kyle Finnegan, and Rizzo explained that he did not get a trade proposal that met his requirement to meet his “market value.” Of course market value is a subjective moving target.
Much of what Rizzo had to say after the trade deadline was supported in that article of what we wrote about how he makes some trades and doesn’t make others. Here is what Rizzo had to say:
