Mike Elias has made his first move ahead of the trade deadline. The Orioles are trading Dean Kremer to the Twins. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal broke the news of the trade. Another reporter at The Athletic, Dan Hayes, wrote that the return for the Orioles is 18-year-old outfield prospect Jhomnardo Reyes.
Selling off a player right after a dramatic win kind of sucks. The Orioles are one and a half games out of a dang wild card spot and this is how Elias responds. Not only is the first move a sell, it’s
selling to one of the teams that is ahead of the Orioles in the wild card standings. That’s the immediate reaction.
On the other hand, Kremer has a 6.50 ERA across his seven starts this year. He is giving up home runs like they are going out of style. He’s been consistent across the past three seasons before that, posting ERAs of 4.12, 4.10, and 4.19. If he finishes the season with that kind of ERA, the Orioles may end up regretting the immediate aftermath of this trade. If he doesn’t, then Elias has moved on from a pitcher at a good time and done well to get a player in the process.
This is a subtraction not just from the rotation for the rest of this season but for next season as well. Kremer has one season remaining before becoming a free agent. He’s making $5.75 million this year and figures to get at least a modest increase on that next year. That’s not even a third of what Chris Bassitt is making this season. Bassitt has started his rehab assignment; he’s probably the rest-of-season replacement for Kremer in the rotation, although that may take a start or two before he’s built back up and can take that spot. It won’t be good if Bassitt pitches like pre-back surgery Bassitt.
Reyes is an 18-year-old from the Dominican Republic who signed with the Twins for a bonus of $322,500 in January 2025. He made his US minor league debut this season with the Florida Complex League Twins affiliate and came away with a pretty darn good .296/.406/.541 batting line in 49 games, including seven home runs. He has since played in a small handful of games for Low-A Fort Myers. Presumably, the Orioles will assign him to their affiliate at that level, Delmarva.
At the time of the trade, Reyes checked in at #24 on the Twins prospect list on MLB Pipeline. That could be something of an out of date ranking. The FanGraphs Twins list, which only posted in mid-June, had Reyes as the #10 guy in the Twins system, in the same prospect tier as several Orioles guys including Enrique Bradfield Jr. and Joseph Dzierwa.
I know you’re going to have hard time believing this, but it appears that Reyes is a big lefty-batting guy with major power potential and questions about whether he’s going to strike out too much to ever reach that potential. For what it’s worth, he’s got a 22.9% strikeout rate across 216 plate appearances this season. If he keeps it there, he will probably be okay. Tougher pitchers await at every level.
FanGraphs likened Reyes to a late-first round high school pick. That’s a good get for the price of Kremer, though again, if Kremer turns the ship around and his replacement in the Orioles rotation stinks, that’s not going to be a good one for Elias. In the meantime, the Manny Machado trade tree has another branch. Kremer had been around in the Orioles organization ever since that deal eight years ago, putting up 6.1 bWAR across parts of seven seasons.
