{"id":557419,"date":"2026-02-06T07:31:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/557419\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T07:31:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:31:31","slug":"blaze-alexander-traded-to-orioles-for-kade-stroud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/557419\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaze Alexander traded to Orioles for Kade Stroud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Steve Gilbert was first <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SteveGilbertMLB\/status\/2019506275068047369\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">with the news<\/a> that Blaze Alexander is being traded to the Baltimore Orioles for relief pitcher Kade Strowd, and a pair of minor-league prospects. Strowd is a 28-year-old right-hander, who reached the majors for Baltimore last year, and impressed with a 1.71 ERA across 27 appearances. He struck out 26 across 24.1 innings, though his FIP of 3.40 was considerably higher. He doesn\u2019t even have a year of service time, so Strowd comes with a lot of team control &#8211; he won\u2019t even be arbitration eligible until 2029. It seems he could be the \u2018bridge closer\u2019 Mike Hazen spoke about getting, until A.J. Puk and Justin Martinez are ready to come back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The prospects are right-handed pitcher Wellington Aracena and infielder Jose Mejia. Aracena turned 21 in December and spent last year in A- and High A-ball, after being traded to the Orioles from the Mets last July, in the Gregory Soto deal. All told, he had a 2.25 ERA across 92 innings, with a 114:51 K:BB ratio. Mejia is younger still, being just 20, and played almost all of 2025 in the Florida Complex League. He did hit quite well there, with a particularly impressed 16:26 K:BB ratio. That helped him to a triple-slash line of .274\/.418\/.411 for an OPS of .829 across 47 games. A long way to go for both men.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Alexander, of course, should be well-known &#8211; not least for having won the SnakePit\u2019s 2025 award for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azsnakepit.com\/arizona-diamondbacks-history\/87153\/2025-arizona-diamondbacks-play-of-the-year-blaze-alexanders-home-run-robbery\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Play of the Year<\/a>. He played a total of 135 games since making his debut at the start of 2024. There had been consideration to him perhaps playing left-field this year, especially after the trade for Nolan Arenado gave the D-backs an everyday starter at third-base. But that option is no longer on the table. Alexander was definitely a fan favorite here though, and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors with the Orioles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Gilbert was first with the news that Blaze Alexander is being traded to the Baltimore Orioles for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14273,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-557419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks-news","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116022521739989444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}