Trade details: Athletics acquire LHP Jeffrey Springs and LHP Jacob Lopez from the Tampa Bay Rays for RHP Joe Boyle, RHP Jacob Watters, 1B/3B Will Simpson and a Compensation Round A pick in the 2025 MLB Draft.
The Athletics continued to upgrade their roster for 2025 by trading three players for left-hander Jeffrey Springs, as Tampa Bay moves the $21 million guaranteed to Springs over the next two years and picks up a pair of interesting prospects who need some development help.
The A’s add another starter to fit behind Luis Severino with Springs, who came back from Tommy John surgery in 2024 to look quite a bit like the No. 2 starter he was before the operation, with a plus changeup and at least a 55 slider (out of the 20-80 scouting scale), going offspeed for nearly 60 percent of his pitches because his fastball is just 90-92 mph and gets hit harder than anything else he throws.
Springs hasn’t had a full season as a starter, however, as the Rays moved him from the bullpen to the rotation in May 2022, and he blew out his elbow the following April, so his 135 1/3 innings in 2022 is his career high. If healthy and able to handle the workload, he could be a 3-WAR starter for the A’s, who certainly seem to be trying to field a more competitive team for their first season in Sacramento. Severino, Springs, and J.P. Sears are at least a credible front three, and they have a bunch of candidates for the last two spots — not a contending rotation, but a respectable one.
Jacob Lopez is a solid left-handed reliever with big extension and a 55 slider that gets a lot of chase out of the zone, with enough of a track record of getting left-handed batters out in the high minors to fit in towards the lower end of someone’s bullpen. I’m not sure how he fits with the A’s, who have Brady Basso and T.J. McFarland to fill that same role.
Will Simpson was a 2023 15th-round pick out of the University of Washington, signing for $150,000 after a fine if unremarkable junior year where he hit .335/.418/.643 but struck out twice as often (23 percent) as he walked (11.3 percent). In pro ball, he’s held that contact rate while walking more and showing much better feel to hit, with a .270/.373/.480 line in High A as a 22-year-old last year, followed by a .348/.408/.493 line in 18 games in Double A.
Simpson does expand the zone more than you’d like for his age and experience level, especially for sliders down and away and fastballs up, and is way too aggressive with two strikes. On the plus side, he makes a lot of hard contact and puts the ball in the air a ton, so even with a 25 percent strikeout rate he could be a productive regular thanks to his above-average power and walk rates. He’s mostly played first base for the A’s but got about 100 innings at third base this year and is a good enough athlete to at least go back there for a longer trial.
Right-hander Jacob Watters has mostly worked as a starter since the A’s took him in the fourth round in 2022, but he’s a dead reliever due to 30-35 command and maybe 35 control when he’s starting, along with no pitch for lefties. He threw consistently harder in college at West Virginia but averaged 94-95 this year, even when working in relief, topping out at 99. It’s a short arm action but nothing to explain the poor command or to make you say he can’t start, but he walks about 12 percent of batters in any role and when he’s starting he misses too many spots with his fastball. His curveball is a hammer, though, at least a 60 and capable of missing a lot of bats. I’d just put him in the bullpen full-time and let him roll.
Right-hander Joe Boyle averages 97-98 with control that makes Watters look like Carlos Silva, walking 17.7 percent of batters he faced in the majors last year and 18.9 percent of batters he’s faced in his minor-league career. His fastball is a high-spin four-seamer and his slider is at least a 55, so there is something for the Rays to work with, but Tampa will be his third organization and he hasn’t thrown strikes at even an adequate rate since at least high school. If he had any worse command than this, we’d say he had the yips.
The Rays also receive the A’s Compensation Round A pick, which gives the Rays three selections in the top 36 picks in this upcoming draft. Last year, that slot (No. 36) was worth $2.6 million. The Guardians used that pick on a high school right-hander, Braylon Doughty.
(Top photo of Springs: Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)
