The Orioles trade deadline sell-off continues. Few names would be surprising after Adley Rutschman was dealt earlier in the day. This latest one certainly isn’t: ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that the Orioles are trading reliever Tyler Wells to the Rays.
Wells, who turns 32 later this month, has been a stalwart in the Orioles bullpen this season. Not only a stalwart, perhaps the only stalwart. After years of mucking around with Wells in the starting rotation, they finally put him in and let him rip as a reliever
and he responded with a 2.67 ERA and 0.963 WHIP in 54 innings across 43 appearances.
That’s not “best reliever in the game” territory, but it’s very good. Any team could make use of that player in its bullpen and it’s the Rays who are going to do it. They have a recent track record of taking an Orioles reliever (Bryan Baker) and turning him into an All-Star. It won’t even shock me if they do the same with Wells, who has 2027 team control remaining in addition to the rest of this year. The salary will be extremely modest while it happens; Wells is making $2.55 million this year and will get a final arbitration raise next year.
One might wonder who is even going to pitch the late innings for the remainder of the year. The answer is that it no longer matters. Despite the team being only 2.5 games out of a wild card spot, the Orioles are dumping players with a year-plus remaining for whatever they can get for them. Next year’s imagined roster looks weaker without Rutschman, Dean Kremer, and Wells. Other guys could yet go in the last hour before the deadline.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that the Orioles are getting back pitching prospect Michael Forret in exchange for Wells. This is a familiar name for those who have followed the O’s farm system because Forret was a 14th round pick by the Orioles in 2023. He was a modestly interesting prospect after last season and the O’s ended up trading him to the Rays in the Shane Baz deal.
Now, Forret is back in the system. He dominated Double-A earlier in the year. Tampa promoted him to Triple-A, where things have not gone as well. Forret has a 4.89 ERA in nine starts at the level, with a 1.474 WHIP. There are some adjustments to be made. No guarantees of them ever being made. Nonetheless, he was the #8 prospect in the Rays system on MLB Pipeline’s ranking at the time of the trade, and he’ll probably slot in right about there on the Orioles prospect list as well.
Forret is 22 years old. Because he signed out of junior college at age 19, he’ll have to be added to the 40-man roster this offseason to protect him from the Rule 5 draft. In that sense, it’s a mild surprise to get him back; the Orioles needed to be trading some of those guys away at this deadline. Here we are instead. I no longer believe in Mike Elias making it all work out.
