{"id":638237,"date":"2026-03-23T02:33:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/638237\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T02:33:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:33:20","slug":"yankees-trade-infielder-jorbit-vivas-to-nationals-for-pitching-prospect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/638237\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees trade infielder Jorbit Vivas to Nationals for pitching prospect"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Yankees are quickly<\/a> finalizing<\/a> the 26-man roster that they\u2019ll bring with them to San Francisco for Wednesday\u2019s season opener, and with several bubble roster spots recently solidified, all that\u2019s left is bookkeeping on the margins.<\/p>\n

One of those moves was to figure out what to do with infielder Jorbit Vivas, who was out of minor-league options and either had to be rostered, DFA\u2019d, or traded. A very deep Yankees bench made it so that the first option was off the table, so GM Brian Cashman worked the phones, and it appears he has found a partner. Per Andrew Golden of the Baltimore Banner, Vivas is heading to the Washington Nationals in exchange for right-handed pitching prospect Sean Paul Li\u00f1an.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting about this trade is that both of these players were originally signed out of South America by the Los Angeles Dodgers. For Vivas, who was signed back in July 2017, he showed enough promise to have his contract selected by the Dodgers in November 2021 while he was still in High-A. The 5-foot-9 infielder\u2019s bat slowed down after that, but he was still considered a decent prospect through the end of the 2023 campaign, when he and relief pitcher Victor Gonz\u00e1lez were traded to the Yankees for former first-round pick Trey Sweeney (now of the Tigers).<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez had a fairly forgettable stint with the 2024 Yankees, but Vivas would spend the majority of the year with Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre (aside from a cameo in the bigs that did not involve any in-game appearances), eventually making his MLB debut in 2025 due to injuries to DJ LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton, and Jazz Chisholm Jr., playing both second and third base while LeMahieu, Chisholm, and later Oswaldo Cabrera hit the shelf.<\/p>\n

For a guy who had just 66 plate appearances and a putrid .516 OPS in 29 games, he still had two memorable moments in pinstripes, one good and one bad. The good was his hitting his first major-league home run in a 1-0 win against the Texas Rangers back in May, which earned him the honor of being mentioned in a witty Pinstripe Alley headline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bad was, unfortunately, him being on the wrong side of one of the best throws you\u2019ll ever see from Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. in July, which saw the former MVP hose Vivas tagging for third and not sliding. This clip will be replayed long after Vivas is done playing professional baseball and I think he\u2019d rather never see it again.<\/p>\n

Vivas was at least serviceable minor league depth, but the Dodgers\u2019 decision to start his clock two years before he was traded to New York eventually reared its head, leading to him departing the organization just after his 25th birthday. He\u2019ll now join a Nationals organization that will offer him a roster spot as he slides into a competition for reps with Jos\u00e9 Tena, Brady House, and Nasim Nu\u00f1ez.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s reason to be intrigued by Li\u00f1an, who MLB Pipeline ranked<\/a> as the Nationals\u2019 No. 27 prospect. Acquired from LA for Alex Call at the deadline, he spent much of the last two months on the injured list after a very strong campaign with High-A Great Lakes, which saw him post a 2.65 ERA with 39 strikeouts to just 14 walks in 37.1 innings. A high point was on April 25th, when he fanned 11 in a single outing:<\/p>\n

Li\u00f1an\u2019s strikeout stuff flashed significantly more in Single-A and rookie ball, but with him entering his age-21 season, there\u2019s reason to believe he can get back to the strikeout machine he was.<\/p>\n

As for his offerings, he tosses a low-90s fastball and mid-80s slider that Pipeline believes limit his ceiling, but he offers \u201ca legitimate claim for the best changeup in Minor League Baseball.\u201d Pipeline describes it as a screwball-like pitch that registered a whiff rate of 60 percent and looked a lot like the deadly Airbender we got familiar with last year with Devin Williams. Lucas Apostoleris of Baseball Prospectus echoed the enthusiasm around the changeup:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen players with outlier pitches be optimized to the fullest extent under Matt Blake and Sam Briend\u2019s pitching development, so to get a player like Li\u00f1an with such a great offering who\u2019s young enough to mold into something for an infielder who was going to get DFA\u2019d is savvy business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yankees are quickly finalizing the 26-man roster that they\u2019ll bring with them to San Francisco for Wednesday\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,4675,34571,3881],"class_list":["post-638237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-yankees-roster","tag-yankees-trades","tag-yankees-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116276154490230279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638237","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=638237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}