Astros, Jays Swap Varsho for Arrighetti

Dan Hamilton and Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images It’s trade deadline season, which means that it’s time for an annual tradition: the Astros somehow scraping together enough interesting young talent to trade for some much-needed major league improvements. This time around, they’re acquiring Daulton Varsho from the Blue Jays in exchange for Spencer Arrighetti, as Mitch Bannon of The Athletic first reported. Varsho has a delightful positional history. He came up as a catcher, was one of the more fun multi-positional players in the league for a stretch, and then became one of the best defensive outfielders on the planet. He’s now a plus defender in center or an elite one in a corner; he’ll play center most of the time in Houston, stabilizing a position that’s been one of the worst in the majors this year. Jake Meyers was the presumptive starter, but he missed more than a month with an oblique strain and flirted with the Mendoza Line when healthy. The ‘Stros finally optioned him to the minors at the start of July, and in his place, they’ve run out a sampler platter of backup plans: Brice Matthews, who’s posted a 61 wRC+ and is currently on the IL, Taylor Trammell, a fourth outfielder type and not really a center fielder defensively, and even Lucas Spence, a fringe prospect who definitely does not look ready for the big leagues. In other words, acquiring Varsho is mostly about not having a sinkhole of a position in the middle of the outfield. From that perspective, just by showing up he’s going to fulfill his end of the bargain. He’s Houston’s best outfield defender right away, and unless Yordan Alvarez is getting a rare day in the field, he’s probably their best-hitting outfielder too. Cam Smith has scuffled offensively for his whole big league career at this point, and the LaMonte Wade Jr./Zach Dezenzo platoon in left field isn’t exactly fearsome. Of course, Varsho’s offense has some question marks too, at least this year. For most of his big league career, he’s succeeded by taking big swings, putting the ball in the air, and leaving the yard frequently enough to make up for a troubling strikeout rate. Occasionally, he mixes in some virtuosic bunt singles to juice his otherwise low on-base percentage. It’s a bombs-and-strikeouts starter kit that has mostly left him around league average offensively, a great deal for a premium defender with good speed on the basepaths. This season hasn’t been like that, though. Varsho is swinging much less forcefully this year than before, and his numbers reflect it across the board. He’s barreling the ball up less often, hitting for less power, and putting the ball on the ground more. He’s making more contact, particularly on pitches out of the strike zone, and chasing far more frequently than before. In essence, he’s turned in his homer-hunting card for a slap-hitting card. The results have been middling: a 91 wRC+, his lowest in four years, accompanied by the first sub-20% strikeout rate of his career. Our projection systems think he’ll be a roughly average offensive player the rest of the way; I’d shade slightly down from there, but “average hitter with a good glove” is definitely in the right ballpark. The Astros might have a secret plan for getting Varsho’s power back, but they also might just not care too much. They needed an outfielder badly enough that they couldn’t afford to be picky, and competent veteran outfielders are in short supply this August, never mind competent veteran center fielders. It wasn’t quite Varsho or the highway, but that’s not the worst approximation; after him, it’s a bunch of guys who either aren’t really center fielders, aren’t all that available, or aren’t all that likely to hit well. You Aren't a FanGraphs Member It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed. 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Don't be a victim of FOMO. 9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members. 10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features! We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it. Houston came into the deadline with one of the worst farm systems in baseball; only San Diego’s is thinner. That meant that the ‘Stros had to get a little creative in finding someone to trade to the Blue Jays. They opted to deal Arrighetti, a fringe starter who will qualify for arbitration for the first time next season (Varsho is a free agent after this season), rather than drain an already thin system even more. Arrighetti is a tricky evaluation for several reasons. First, he’s currently on the IL with a minor foot injury, though he’ll likely return sometime this month. Second, he’s been kind of bad in the bigs! His career line: 4.66 ERA, 4.65 FIP, 4.47 xFIP, 4.53 xERA, 4.77 SIERA. That’s a lot of different acronyms that all say he’s not all that far from replacement level. Our pitch models like him a little bit better than that – his curveball in particular jumps off the page – but even the most rosy evaluations have him as somewhere around league average, with durability concerns (he also dealt with a broken thumb and elbow inflammation last year, limiting him to seven starts). “League average with durability concerns” would probably suit Toronto just fine, though. Finding enough starters has been a struggle for them all year. They’re so focused on improving their rotation depth that they traded for José Soriano even while mostly selling; it only follows that they’d prioritize pitching depth when dealing Varsho as well. After all, they’re not tearing down at this deadline, merely retooling for another run at contention in 2027. If Arrighetti can hone his command enough to move his walk rate from double digits to league average, he becomes an intriguing option for the Jays for years to come. If not, though, he’s a snug fit in some kind of swingman or fifth starter role. He has options remaining and won’t be overly expensive in arbitration, just the kind of guy that teams who worry about their pitching depth would love to have available at Triple-A or in the bullpen. Here’s another way of thinking about it: The Jays are clearly in the market for bulk innings. They’ve acquired Max Scherzer, Patrick Corbin, and Jameson Taillon at various points in the past year. Those guys aren’t going to blow you away with elite run prevention numbers. They’re probably not even going to average you away with average run prevention numbers. (Is this a phrase? It should be.) As it turns out, Scherzer and Corbin have been injured, too (the same is true of Taillon, though his injury occurred while he was with the Cubs). In other words, the Jays have been desperately trying to get enough arms to make it through the year, and mostly failing. So think of Arrighetti as insurance against the same thing happening again in 2027. And think of Varsho as the Astros figuring out how they could improve their outfield in a year that’s very thin on good options in center. I don’t think that either of these teams is over the moon about this deal – it’s an everyday regular nearing free agency in exchange for a fringe starter, after all. But both teams badly need what the other is sending them, which makes it a good fit from where I stand. Not every trade’s a blockbuster, but this one shores up plenty of weaknesses at a reasonable price from both directions.