{"id":64954,"date":"2025-05-30T00:11:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T00:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/64954\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T00:11:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T00:11:14","slug":"reds-trade-alexis-diaz-to-dodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/64954\/","title":{"rendered":"Reds Trade Alexis D\u00edaz To Dodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"

4:22pm: The Dodgers have acquired Diaz from the Reds, per an official announcement from the team. Righty Evan Phillips<\/a> is headed to the 60-day IL to open a spot on the 40-man roster. Per Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times<\/a>, D\u00edaz will report to the club\u2019s Arizona facilities at first to work with the club\u2019s pitching team.<\/p>\n

3:50pm: The Dodgers are reportedly close to acquiring right-hander Alexis D\u00edaz<\/a> from the Reds, according to Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman of The New York Post<\/a>. The Reds optioned D\u00edaz to Triple-A earlier this year and he won\u2019t immediately join the Dodgers at the big league level.\u00a0Per Robert Murray of FanSided<\/a>, the Reds will receive minor league right-hander Mike Villani<\/a> in return.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Diaz, 28, has seen his stock drop precipitously since finishing fifth in 2022 Rookie of the Year voting and making the All-Star team in 2023. He\u2019s lost nearly three miles per hour off his once-96 mph fastball and seen his already problematic walk rate climb to untenable levels. He appeared in six games with Cincinnati this season, surrendered four homers, walked 15.6% of his opponents against just a 9.8% strikeout rate, and plunked two other batters \u2014 all en route to a catastrophic 12.00 ERA.<\/p>\n

Things haven\u2019t gone much better since he was sent down to Louisville. Diaz\u2019s 4.61 ERA is a far sight better than his small-sample mark of 12.00 in the majors, but he\u2019s walked 17.1% of his Triple-A opponents, hit two more batters and also unleashed a pair of wild pitches. His 93.1 mph average fastball is right in line with the career-worst 93.0 mark he flashed in this year\u2019s six major league innings.<\/p>\n

Were Diaz\u2019s struggles confined to just the 2025 season, it\u2019d be easier to view him through a more optimistic lens. That\u2019s not the case. While last year\u2019s 3.99 ERA looks serviceable on the surface, that number belies many of the same worrying trends that have plagued Diaz in 2025. Last year\u2019s average 93.9 mph fastball marked a drop of nearly two miles per hour from Diaz\u2019s rookie rate. His 22.7% strikeout rate and 11% swinging-strike rate were both miles worse than his rates in 2022-23. Diaz\u2019s contact rate jumped from about 67% in 2022-23 to 76.3% last year (and a dismal 87.1% in 2025). All of those worrying trends made Diaz stand out as a viable non-tender candidate, but the Reds kept him around and agreed to a $4.5MM contract to avoid an arbitration hearing. They\u2019re surely regretting that decision at this stage.<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say, while Diaz has plenty of name value \u2014 both as a former All-Star and as the younger brother of Mets closer Edwin Diaz<\/a> \u2014 he\u2019s a pure project at this point. The Dodgers made no mention of cash considerations in their swap, so it seems they\u2019ll take on the entirety of Diaz\u2019s remaining salary. As of this writing, that\u2019s a total of $2.95MM in salary. Los Angeles will pay a 110% luxury tax on that figure, tacking another $3.25MM onto the bill and bringing the total financial outlay to $6.2MM.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a steep price to pay \u2014 before even getting into any prospects changing hands \u2014 but if L.A. can successfully get Diaz back on track, he\u2019ll be under club control for three additional seasons via arbitration. Entering the year, that was scheduled to be another two seasons, but his demotion to Triple-A has already cost him enough service time to push that timeframe back by a year. The Dodgers passed on a similar buy-low opportunity with Brewers righty Joel Payamps<\/a>, who was designated for assignment and passed through waivers<\/a>, presumably on account of Payamps\u2019 lack of minor league options. Diaz entered 2025 with a full slate of minor league options and will have two remaining beyond the current season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be interesting to see if the Dodgers keep Diaz on the 40-man roster. There\u2019d be some risk in running him through waivers, but most clubs would probably balk at the idea of taking on nearly $3MM in guaranteed money for a reclamation project who\u2019s struggled this much both in the majors and in Triple-A. If the Dodgers were to pass Diaz through waivers, they could assign him outright to Triple-A and free the 40-man spot back up, knowing that Diaz would never reject the assignment in favor of free agency (because doing so would require forfeiting the remainder of this year\u2019s guaranteed money).<\/p>\n

As for the 22-year-old Villani, he\u2019s a long-term play for the Reds. The Dodgers selected him out of Long Beach State in the 13th round of last year\u2019s draft. Baseball America ranked him 453rd on their top-500 list of draft prospects last year, praising a fastball that runs up to 98 mph but questioning his lack of spin and feel for secondary pitches. Villani commands that heater well, per BA, but he\u2019s barely gotten a chance to show it in pro ball, as injuries have limited him to just two innings with the Dodgers\u2019 Rookie-level affiliate.<\/p>\n

Villani is effectively a lottery ticket relief prospect who\u2019s probably two or three years away from even emerging as a realistic option for the Reds \u2014 all of which speaks to the extent to which Diaz\u2019s stock has tumbled since he stopped missing bats and lost two to three miles per hour on his fastball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4:22pm: The Dodgers have acquired Diaz from the Reds, per an official announcement from the team. Righty Evan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2406],"tags":[1096,5,39,2271,1165,4332,4333,774,57,3224,4331,17469,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-64954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-dodgers","8":"tag-alexis-diaz","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-dodgers","11":"tag-evan-phillips","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-dodgers","14":"tag-ladodgers","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-losangelesdodgers","19":"tag-mike-villani","20":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114593889303354248","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64954","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=64954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}