Since the Phillies are playing the Angels over the weekend, let’s go all the way back to the 2024 trade deadline. Remember those days? The offense was good but everyone hated it, Johan Rojas and Christian Pache were platooning in center field before Pache was dealt to Baltimore, and Jeff Hoffman didn’t think about Miguel Rojas in his sleep yet.
During the 2024 MLB trade deadline, the Phillies shipped prospects George Klassen and Sam Aldegheri for Carlos Estévez to give Rob Thomson one more leverage
guy for October. Despite giving up the grand slam to Francisco Lindor to end the Phillies season, he put together a very respectable two months as the Phillies closer.
In 20 games, Estévez pitched to a 2.57 ERA while recording six saves. His best performance came against the Braves on September 1, pitching two full innings of scoreless baseball, one of them being in extras with the ghost runner, to allow Nick Castellanos to walk it off on Sunday Night Baseball in the 10th.
He, like the entire Phillies bullpen against the New York Mets in the NLDS, choked in the biggest moments but for what it’s worth, he was the best option Rob Thomson had during that series.
George Klassen was the headline piece from this trade and was finally called up earlier this season and has made six starts with the Angels, pitching to a 3.67 ERA over six starts. He has promising talent with a 96 mph four-seam fastball, a tantalizing slider that hitters have struggled against, and full mix around it.
With that said, Klassen has struggled to find the zone and limit walks, a problem that has existed since his college days. Just in his big league sample size, he has 24 strikeouts to 21 walks in only 27 innings of work. There is plenty of reliever risk with the profile because of his control issues. Something to monitor moving forward.
Sam Aldegheri has not quite found solid footing with the Angels, pitching a handful of times in each of the last three seasons but never getting significant run either as a starter or reliever. Across 60.1 innings in the big leagues, Aldegheri has a 5.67 ERA with 44 strikeouts to 37 walks as a soft-tossing left hander.
There are arguments from opportunity cost, maybe Klassen would’ve helped land someone better in a different trade down the line, or just keeping them as starting pitching depth.
However, given the lack of success from either arm has had, would you make the Carlos Estévez trade again?
