Rays trade veteran reliever Phil Maton to the Mets

The Tampa Bay Rays have elected to trade veteran reliever Phil Maton, who they’d signed to a relatively expensive, multi-year deal just before the season began, to the Mets.

In doing so, we are starting to see some trends in the Rays actions.

The first is that the Rays have been early movers in the trade market to clear a veteran off the books for a young pitcher who is showing a great deal of promise at Triple-A.

The first was moving Aaron Civale to the Brewers in order to clear room for Shane Baz in the rotation, and the second is Maton, whose departure clears the way for Manny Rodriguez to rejoin the bullpen after he put up a near 1.00 ERA over 23 appearances.

Maton is not who he was with the Astros, where he led baseball in hard hit percentage and leaned on his curveball as his primary pitch to a 3.00 ERA, 3.14 xERA (90th percentile). This season he’s throwing his cutter most, his hard hit rate is only 65th percentile, and his 4.58 ERA and 5.25 xERA are fairly abysmal.

It’s reasonable to think those poor stats are just small sample sizes gone wild. In April Maton had a 7.59 ERA over 10.2 innings. In May it was a 0.79 ERA over 11.1 innings. In June a 6.97 ERA over 10.1 innings. In July he’s allowed no runs with 10 batters faced. Cold, hot, cold, and hot again.

For whatever reason, joining the Rays wasn’t clicking for Maton, and the Rays have depth they are best served to promote to the challenges of major league pitching, so he and his $6.5 million contract (with a club option) are off to join the Mets. In return the Rays will receive a PTBNL.

Funny enough, that’s not much unlike a previous great Astros reliever who joined the Rays, pitched below expectations, and was shipped off to the Mets. That was Brooks Raley, who needed a Tommy John brace and is on the injured list this season, his final year of a 3/15 contract.