Although Dylan Cease rumors swirled as the 5 p.m. trade deadline approached, the White Sox's last trade merely involved Keynan Middleton. The Sox sent the impending free-agent reliever to the Yankees for A-ball righty Juan Carela.
Middleton's stock lost some team during an ugly July, as he gave up nine runs over 8⅓ innings. The league hit .324/.410/.735 against him, and while some of that could merely be regression to a medium-leverage life, it's also possible that the league adjusted to his changeup-heavy approach. There was a reason the White Sox signed him as a non-roster spring training invitee before the season, so a 3.96 ERA over 39 appearances was a positive development no matter which order it happened.
In return, the White Sox received Carela, who ranked 29th in MLB Pipeline's top 30 Yankees prospects list, but didn't register on Baseball America's.
As lottery tickets go, Carela's not bad. The 21-year-old has a 3.67 ERA over 83⅓ innings for High-A Hudson Valley, with 109 strikeouts against 32 walks and seven homers, so the peripherals support the respectable run prevention.
Pipeline's scouting report says he throws two kinds of fastballs and two kinds of sliders, which gives a new organization a chance to reorder his pitch mix. He might be able to be a sweeper-first reliever with a mid-90s fastball as a fallback, but there's no pressure to get him out of the rotation just yet.
The most pressing issue involves the 40-man roster. The Yankees signed Carela for $335,000 in July 2018, so he would be eligible for the Rule 5 draft after the season. It's hard to see him getting selected, but that's one reason why the Yankees might've been inclined to let him go.
In other news, the White Sox acquired Luis Patiño from the Tampa Bay Rays for cash.
Patiño was a real-deal prospect, a consensus top-30 guy across the major rankings as recently as 2021. The Rays acquired him as the headliner when they sent Blake Snell to the Padres, but after an encouraging Rays debut in 2021, it's been downhill since. He had major control problems around an oblique strain in 2022, and he's issued 29 walks against just 38 strikeouts while allowing 10 homers over 45⅓ innings at Triple-A Durham.
The limited Statcast data shows that Patiño's average fastball is down to 94 mph, and he's tried to shift to throwing the slider as his primary pitch after the Rays converted him to full-time relief work. There's probably nothing here, but after trading Middleton, Joe Kelly, Kendall Graveman and Reynaldo López over the last week, there are innings available for any pitcher who looks remotely interesting.
