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According to multiple reports the Tampa Bay Rays have agreed to trade Logan Forsythe to the Los Angeles Dodgers for top pitching prospect Jose De Leon.
BREAKING: #Rays have agreed to trade Forsythe to #Dodgers for DeLeon. Will be announced soon.
— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) January 23, 2017
The 24 year old Jose De Leon tore up AAA making 16 starts and 86.1 innings of 2.61 ERA and 3.24 FIP. He struck out 11.57 K/9 (32.5%) while only issuing 2.08 BB/9 (5.9%). He made his MLB debut late on September 4, 2016. He made four starts totaling 17.0 innings of 6.35 ERA and 6.97 FIP baseball.
Jose De Leon was ranked #25 in the Baseball America midseason top 100, #38 in the Baseball Prospectus midseason top 50, and #5 in John Sickel’s end of 2016 top 100 (A-) at minorleagueball.com. Eric Longenhagen at Fangraphs.com ranked him fourth in the Dodgers organization and put a 55 FV on him.
Moving Logan Forsythe will hurt the 2017 team especially against left handed pitching. The Rays will have to pick up a right handed bat to make this move good for the 2017 team.
The Rays now have the ability to move Brad Miller to 2B and pick up one of the right handed 1B such as Mike Napoli or Chris Carter with the savings. In a similar manner the Rays signed Steve Pearce when they traded Jake McGee last January, and they moved Ben Zobrist while signing Asdrubal Cabrera in January 2014.
Update 7:47 PM
Rays announce the deal on Twitter.
OFFICIAL: The #Rays have traded 2B Logan Forsythe to the #Dodgers in exchange for RHP Jose De León.
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) January 24, 2017