A’s Hope Springs Returns to Peak, Pay Rays Four-Piece Price

On Friday the Athletics and Rays completed a four-for-two trade centered around 32-year-old lefty starter Jeffrey Springs, who heads to Northern California. The A’s also got lefty swingman Jacob Lopez, while the Rays received wild, hard-throwing righty Joe Boyle, two minor leaguers (first baseman Will Simpson and right-handed pitcher Jacob Watters), and the 36th overall pick in the 2025 draft.

Springs, who is under contract through at least 2026, had a breakout 2022 season when the Rays moved him from the bullpen to their rotation, and he amassed 3.1 WAR across 135 1/3 innings. He got hurt a few starts into 2023 and needed Tommy John surgery, which cost him the rest of 2023 and most of 2024. After he returned from a prolonged, 12-start minor league rehab period, Springs had good surface-level stats in the big leagues – 7 GS, 33 IP, 37 K, 1.36 WHIP, 3.27 ERA – but showed reduced stuff compared to his pre-TJ form. Ken Rosenthal reported that Springs was shut down in September on the advice of his surgeon.

Springs joins an Athletics team flush with exciting young hitters but badly in need of pitching, which they’ve addressed with not only this trade but the recent signing of hard-throwing veteran Luis Severino (analysis here). The trade also adds payroll to the Athletics’ ledger, which they likely must continue to expand in order to avoid a grievance from the MLB Players Association.

Springs’ fastball averaged 90 mph in his 2024 big league starts, about a tick and a half below where he sat in 2022-2023. As you can imagine, some of Springs’ other data indicates how much more vulnerable he is at that velocity; he gave up a 45.2% hard-hit rate (36.5% career) and 9.7% barrel rate (7.7% career) overall in 2024, and against solely his fastball opposing hitters managed a superstar-level 140 wRC+. The rest of Springs’ repertoire is intact, especially his changeup, which remains an excellent, bat-missing weapon and generated its usual plus-plus swinging strike rate again in 2024. Springs will vary the shape of his slider from a standard bullet style into a more lateral-action sweeper on occasion, and he seemed to return from rehab with a brand new cutter.

The projection systems we feature here at the site think a healthy Springs will be the team’s most productive starter. The Athletics’ ZiPS Projections had just a few of their healthy, incumbent starters exceeding 1 WAR, while FGDC and Steamer have Springs as a 2-WAR starter, a hair better than their projections for Severino. But those projections have Springs in line for over 150 innings, which he has never come close to throwing. Springs has had one healthy season as a starter in his entire career, and worked 135 innings that year. He’ll make $10.5 million in each of the next two seasons (and the A’s have a $15 million team option for 2027), and if Springs can approach his 2022 output he’ll be a relative bargain at that figure.

The Athletics also received lefty 26-year-old lefty Jacob Lopez, who had been a seldom-used spot starter/swingman in each of the last two seasons. He has eight career big league appearances, two of them starts, and is down to his final option year. Lopez has spent a majority of the last two years as a starter at Triple-A Durham. He is a low-slot, cross-bodied lefty whose best feature is his slider command. Lopez mixes low-90s four-seamers and sinkers in with a lot of good upper-70s sliders. Fold in an occasional changeup and he has the tools to deal with hitters of both handedness, though none of his pitches is especially nasty. Lopez is a below-average athlete with a lower-effort delivery designed for consistency. This sort of pitcher tends to work as a spot starter until their options dry up, and then they sink or swim in a low-leverage relief role. With just one option left, Lopez has a pretty good shot to make the A’s Opening Day roster and pitch enough in the big leagues to lose rookie status in 2025.

The A’s rotation becomes more stable with the shift from Joe Boyle to Springs because the later throws strikes, and with this move they take another step toward the division rivals who finished ahead of them in last year’s standings. It comes at the cost of a high pick in a good draft and Boyle’s potential ceiling. The comp pick heading to Tampa Bay is 36th overall in the draft. My broad assessment of the 2025 draft is that it has good depth, the tier of players that ordinarily peeters out in the comp round extends deep into the second round. The Rays now have four of the first 51 picks in the draft and their accompanying bonus pool space. It’s not typical for a small market team like the Athletics to part with a draft asset like this unless they are more obviously contending. Aside from the occasional trade, the most common way teams like the A’s and Rays can acquire a franchise-altering player is via the draft.

The 6-foot-7 Boyle has been developed as a starter throughout his entire pro career and graduated from rookie status as a member of Oakland’s rotation last year, but he has had severe walk issues since high school and has projected as a reliever for his entire prospect lifetime. However, Boyle might be a big deal as a reliever. He sits 98 as a starter and does so with comical ease, but with zero feel for location. Boyle’s two breaking balls (an upper-80s slider an low-80s curveball) are both very nasty (his slider has absurd movement for its velocity) but, again, his utter lack of control dilutes the effectiveness of both.

It’s possible that the Rays will attempt to do with Boyle what they successfully accomplished with Tyler Glasnow: Simplify his delivery to make it more consistent and hope it’s enough for him to be a five-inning starter. Boyle has two option years left, which gives them a little more time to try something like that. If they want to put Boyle in the bullpen immediately — part of the reason the Rays considered Springs expendable is perhaps because of their starting pitcher depth, and they think Boyle can be converted to the pen — it’s possible Boyle will be their best reliever by midseason, but it’s also possible he’ll be too wild to trust. Boyle has posted walk rates north of 16% at basically every pro level and is now 25 years old; this might just be who he is.

The two new Rays minor leaguers are Will Simpson and Jacob Watters. Simpson, a late round selection out of Washington in 2023, spent the majority of 2024 at High-A Lansing but reached Double-A Midland by the end of the year. Plus bat speed and strength make Simpson a threat from foul pole to foul pole, and he posted an .860 OPS in 2024, but a grooved swing and fringe third base defense create risk that Simpson will be a first baseman with detrimental contact issues. A Patrick Wisdom-type of outcome would be great for Simpson.

Watters, a 2022 fourth rounder from West Virginia, repeated High-A in 2024 and had a bloated ERA for the second straight season. He sits 94, touches 96, and has a plus-flashing low-80s curveball. Below-average command funnels his evaluation toward the bullpen, but if Watters has a velo spike in such a role, then he could pretty easily have the two plus pitches typical of a solid middle reliever.

Both Simpson and Watters are in the mid-minors and probably two or three years away from the big leagues, if they get there at all. Whoever the Rays draft with their new pick is probably even further away. While four pieces feels like a lot to give up for two years of a recently injured Springs at $10.5 million per year, except for Boyle (who might simply be too wild to be good), all of these pieces are far from maturing into helpful major leaguers. The Rays shed a meaningful chunk of payroll for them, cleared a 40-man spot, opportunistically scooped up a high draft pick, and got a guy who might have immediate upside via something as simple as a shift into the bullpen. The trade was a great fit for the Rays. While we can understand the many valid reasons why the A’s made this move, it’s tough to swallow coughing up a late first round draft pick for a fairly well-compensated guy who sits 90.

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