Time to reverse roles from 2023 to 2024
The Guardians and Rays are frequent trade partners - will they be again?
Entering today, the Guardians were 24 games over .500 and the Rays are 1 game under .500 but with a -61 run differential. It seems fairly realistic that the Rays will be a good distance out of a wildcard spot as the month of July continues and looking to move some pieces to get younger, cheaper players.
One of those players who may interest the Guardians is Rays right-handed pitcher, Zach Eflin. Eflin is 30 years and 2 months old, under team control through 2025 with approximately $19M owed. 3.77 FIP, 6.97/0.66 K/BB/9. Rest Of Season Projections from ZiPS: 3.36 FIP, 8.28/1.24 K/BB/9. He goes slightly under six innings a start.
I have been staring at Eflin’s stats to try to determine why he has experienced a decline in his performance from an FIP around 3 to one .77 runs higher and the answers aren’t immediately obvious. His stuff looks similar and his spin rates and break appear mostly consistent. He has used a curveball that was extremely effective about 8% less often in 2024. I talked to our friend Matt Dallas (@mattdallas27 on Twitter) and he suggested that since Eflin is throwing about 3% more strikes in 2024 than 2023, those strikes are getting hit harder than when he was throwing more pitches outside the zone and perhaps getting chases or weak contact more often.
Tampa Bay’s catching is middle-of-the-road defensively, so it doesn’t appear to be a catching issue. However, it’s fair to wonder if the combination of Carl Willis and Austin Hedges can help Eflin find something closer to the pitch mix that helped him strike out closer to one batter an inning. At worst, however, he appears to be an effective third starter who can reliably give his team six solid innings and who threw 177 innings last season. This move would leave the Guardians to figure out if Gavin Williams, Ben Lively or Triston McKenzie can find their way to being a good option as a number two starter in a playoff series, while Tanner Bibee is clearly the number one.
At Eflin’s age and with the remaining money on his contract, I don’t believe the Rays will be able to get a consensus top 100 prospect for him. I think Juan Brito is likely a Rays-type player and a guy I really like, and I think they’d be interested in a reliever like Tanner Burns. Maybe a bidding war happens and the Guardians have to throw in a decent prospect in addition to Brito, maybe a Tommy Mace. I think that’s about as high as I would go.
The big hesitation on this deal is that Tampa Bay maximizes every pitcher they get their hands on. If changes to pitch mix or delivery could help Eflin, one can be sure the Rays have tried to help him make those changes. So, acquiring him is a bet in the magic of Willis and Hedges doing what math can’t. Honestly, not a bad bet, but certainly a gamble given the expensive nature of any starting pitcher trade in the month ahead.
More names will emerge in the months ahead, but given how often the Rays and Guardians trade, I would not rule out the two revisiting the idea of the Civale trade but with the Guardians playing the part of acquiring a proven mid-rotation starter to help them in a playoff push.
