The Yankees are quickly finalizing the 26-man roster that they’ll bring with them to San Francisco for Wednesday’s season opener, and with several bubble roster spots recently solidified, all that’s left is bookkeeping on the margins.
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’d, 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 Liñan.
What’s 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’s 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 González were traded to the Yankees for former first-round pick Trey Sweeney (now of the Tigers).
González 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.
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.
The bad was, unfortunately, him being on the wrong side of one of the best throws you’ll ever see from Ronald Acuña 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’d rather never see it again.
Vivas was at least serviceable minor league depth, but the Dodgers’ 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’ll now join a Nationals organization that will offer him a roster spot as he slides into a competition for reps with José Tena, Brady House, and Nasim Nuñez.
There’s reason to be intrigued by Liñan, who MLB Pipeline ranked as the Nationals’ 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:
Liñan’s strikeout stuff flashed significantly more in Single-A and rookie ball, but with him entering his age-21 season, there’s reason to believe he can get back to the strikeout machine he was.
As for his offerings, he tosses a low-90s fastball and mid-80s slider that Pipeline believes limit his ceiling, but he offers “a legitimate claim for the best changeup in Minor League Baseball.” 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:
We’ve seen players with outlier pitches be optimized to the fullest extent under Matt Blake and Sam Briend’s pitching development, so to get a player like Liñan with such a great offering who’s young enough to mold into something for an infielder who was going to get DFA’d is savvy business.
