Major Moves: A Look at the Tampa Bays Rays Recent Trading Strategy

Over the past few years the Tampa Bay Rays have acquired talent via trades that has helped them be within striking distant if the 2017 AL East division. Some of the deals seemed small or unsuccessful at the time, but now many of the players the Rays acquired are helping them win this season. With these deals, which can almost all now be considered successful, there is a common theme: acquiring major league talent.
In the past few seasons the Rays have made a number of deals and almost all of the major deals have been made in order to acquire players who have already played in the MLB. Dealing high quality talent when a team is not in the postseason race usually means acquiring young minor league prospects with high ceilings. The general thinking here is obvious; acquire a young superstar player who would be controllable for at least six seasons.
The Chicago White Sox, for example, having been applying this strategy as they attempt their rebuilding process. Most people around baseball have been praising them for ability to acquire top tier minor league prospects with extremely high ceilings. While this clearly can be a successful way to trade established major leaguers it is not the way the Rays have operated over the past few seasons.
Below are 10 examples, since 2014, when the Rays have traded major league talent to acquire players from other organizations that have already played in the major leagues:


January 22, 2014
Traded Jesse Hahn and Alex Torres to the San Diego Padres. Received Matt Lollis (minors), Maxx Tissenbaum (minors), Matt Andriese, Brad Boxberger and Logan Forsythe.
February 13, 2014
Traded Drew Vettleson (minors), Jose Lobaton and Felipe Rivero to the Washington Nationals. Received Nate Karns.
July 31, 2014
As part of a 3-team trade, traded David Price to the Detroit Tigers. Received Willy Adames (minors) and Drew Smyly from the Detroit Tigers and Nick Franklin from the Seattle Mariners. In addition, the Detroit Tigers sent Austin Jackson to the Seattle Mariners.
December 16, 2014
Traded Matthew Joyce to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Received Kevin Jepsen.
December 19, 2014
As part of a 3-team trade, traded Jose Castillo (minors), Gerardo Reyes (minors), Ryan Hanigan and Wil Myers to the San Diego Padres. Received Jake Bauers (minors), Rene Rivera and Burch Smith from the San Diego Padres and Travis Ott (minors) and Steven Souza from the Washington Nationals. In addition, the San Diego Padres sent a player to be named later and Joe Ross to the Washington Nationals. The San Diego Padres sent Trea Turner (June 14, 2015) to the Washington Nationals to complete the trade..
November 5, 2015
Traded Nate Karns, Boog Powell (minors) and C.J. Riefenhauser to the Seattle Mariners. Received Danny Farquhar, Brad Miller and Logan Morrison.
January 28, 2016
Traded German Marquez (minors) and Jake McGee to the Colorado Rockies. Received Kevin Padlo (minors) and Corey Dickerson.
August 1, 2016
Traded Matt Moore to the San Francisco Giants. Received Lucius Fox (minors), Michael Santos (minors) and Matt Duffy.
January 11, 2017
Traded Drew Smyly to the Seattle Mariners. Received Carlos Vargas (minors), Ryan Yarbrough (minors) and Mallex Smith.
January 23, 2017
Traded Logan Forsythe to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Received Jose De Leon.

There have been other deals, mainly minor ones, made by the Rays were the only received minor league talent. This happened when they trade Kevin Jepsen at the trade deadline in 2015 for Alexis Tapia and Chih-Wei Hu, David DeJesus, again at the 2015 trade deadline, to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for Eduar Lopez, and Sean Rodriguez to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a PTBNL who became Buddy Borden on December 12, 2014. There are a few other such deals, but again, they are generally minor and are not the trend.
In the 10 deals the Rays have acquired the major league talent:, Brad Boxberger, Logan Forsythe, Nate Karns (12 innings with Nationals in 2013), Drew Smyly, Nick Franklin, Kevin Jepsen, Steven Souza, Danny Farquhar, Brad Miller, Logan Morrison, Corey Dickerson, Matt Duffy, Mallex Smith, and Jose De Leon (17 innings with Dodgers in 2016).
Of the 14 players acquired 9 of those players are currently under contract with 6 active on the 25 man roster (not including Danny Farquhar, Matt Duffy and Jose De Leon). Some of these deals were not considered wins at the time for the Rays, but almost all of the players currently on the 25 man roster have had big contributions to the success of the 2017 Rays.
Steven Souza, who was acquired for Trea Turner and Joe Ross after the Rays acquired these players from the San Diego Padres in return for Wil Myers, has a career high 20 home runs. Corey Dickerson, a 2017 all-star, has 112 hits and 17 home runs. Logan Morrison has a career high 26 home runs. All in middle of July. These three players have hit at the top or in the middle of the Rays’ lineup all season and have produced. Of the 140 home runs the Rays have hit this season 63 have been hit by these three players. The other pieces acquired, Brad Miller, Mallex Smith, and Brad Boxberger, have also had major roles with the 2017 Rays when active.
While there are many different strategies to building a winning baseball team, the Tampa Bay Rays seem to have gone against the grain in order to achieve this. The Chicago White Sox may end up building an explosive offense with a quality major league arms from the deals they have made over the past year, but is there something to be said for seeing a player play in the major leagues?
In some cases, the players the Rays acquired players had limited experience in the major leagues, but they had still had experience. The Rays, who had obviously been following the players before the debuts, now got the chance to see how these players handled major league action. Even if they were unsuccessfully initially, the Rays clearly valued being to evaluate how the players responded to the promotion and the environment in the majors.
Even the deals that have not seemed to work out as of July 2017, Matt Duffy comes to mind, mainly are due to injuries with the player they acquired. It also may have taken Souza, Morrison, Dickerson, and others a few seasons in a Rays’ uniform to produce at their current level, but they are now producing in an extremely impactful way in 2017. Would the Rays still be in playoff position so quickly after dealing players like Wil Myers, David Price, Jake McGee, and Logan Forsythe if they had instead acquired only minor league prospects? Doubtful.
The Rays though, have not only acquired major league talent, but have also brought in minor league talent like Willy Adames, Jake Bauer, and Lucius Fox; who are now considered top prospects. These three players were young with high ceilings when they were acquired and, it could be argued, that none were the major piece of their respective deal. Even with acquiring these top prospects the Rays have still developed a clear trend over the past three years of acquiring major league talent. In the future, one must now expect that when the Rays deal major league talent off their roster they will usually being getting a major league ready player in return.

They may target a few minor league prospects on the way, but, if the trend holds for this winning ball club, they will continue to swap major league talent with other clubs. This seems to do two important things for the Rays: allow them to trade players they have seen on their own major league roster and acquire players they have seen play in the major leagues. If the Rays continue to be able to evaluate talent at the major league level they should be able to add to impact players to their major league roster; without trading away their own top minor league prospects.