{"id":64374,"date":"2025-05-29T18:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T18:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/64374\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T18:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T18:48:09","slug":"brewers-outright-joel-payamps-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/64374\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewers Outright Joel Payamps – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right-hander Joel Payamps<\/a> passed through outright waivers unclaimed and has been assigned to Triple-A Nashville after his recent DFA<\/a>, the Brewers announced Thursday. Payamps has enough service time to reject the outright assignment in favor of free agency, but doing so would require surrendering the rest of this year\u2019s $2.995MM guarantee. As such, he\u2019s overwhelmingly likely to accept the assignment and hope to pitch his way back to Milwaukee in short order.<\/p>\n

Prior to the season, few would\u2019ve predicted Payamps would be in a situation like this. The 31-year-old had a solid 2022 season and broke out as a quality, high-leverage reliever with the Brewers in 2023-24. Milwaukee acquired Payamps alongside William Contreras<\/a> in the heist of a three-team trade sending Esteury Ruiz<\/a> to the A\u2019s and Sean Murphy<\/a> to the Braves.<\/p>\n

Contreras was the clear headliner there, but Payamps\u2019 contributions in Milwaukee ought not to be overlooked. In his first two full seasons as a Brewer, he pitched 129 2\/3 innings with a crisp 2.78 ERA, a 26.1% strikeout rate and a 6.7% walk rate. The right-hander picked up 48 holds and saved nine games along the way as well.<\/p>\n

The 2025 season has been a struggle for Payamps. There\u2019s no getting around that issue. He\u2019s pitched 18 1\/3 innings and been hammered for 17 runs (8.35 ERA) on 25 hits (three homers) and six walks against just 16 strikeouts. There\u2019s been no velocity dip or radical change to his pitch selection, but Payamps is generating far fewer chases off the plate, far fewer whiffs and allowing a good bit more contact.<\/p>\n

Any team could\u2019ve claimed Payamps, who\u2019s controllable through the 2026 season via arbitration, but doing so would\u2019ve meant taking on the remaining $1.98MM in guaranteed money on his contract. Most clubs are pretty stingy about adding guaranteed money via waivers during the season, as they tend to only have a small amount of financial flexibility with regard to the trade deadline (relative to their typical slate of offseason resources, anyhow).<\/p>\n

Were Payamps to reject his outright and be available on a minor league deal with a minimal base, he\u2019d surely have a long line of interested teams vying for the right to take a flier on that track record. Instead, his salary pushed him through waivers. He\u2019ll now head to Nashville and look to get back on track. Passing Payamps through waivers like this was the only way Milwaukee could send him to Nashville, since he\u2019s out of minor league options. If he can start missing bats more in line with his past levels, he could return at any point this season.<\/p>\n

Payamps is still under club control through 2026, at least. If he spends fewer than 82 more days on the big league roster but is selected back to the majors prior to season\u2019s end, he\u2019d fall shy of five years of service and see his path to free agency pushed back another year. That\u2019s a moot point if he doesn\u2019t pitch well enough to garner another big league look, though, and that\u2019s where his focus will rest for the time being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-hander Joel Payamps passed through outright waivers unclaimed and has been assigned to Triple-A Nashville after his recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,9098,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-64374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-joel-payamps","10":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114592619289287566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64374","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=64374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}