The Angels and Diamondbacks have agreed to a trade that will send right-hander Matt Andriese from Arizona to Anaheim, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. Minor league righty Jeremy Beasley is among the names headed to the D-backs in the swap, per Robert Murray (Twitter link). The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan tweets that it’ll be a one-for-one swap of the two right-handers.
Andriese, 30, pitched in 54 games for the D-backs in 2019, working to a 4.71 ERA with 10.1 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, 1.02 HR/9 and a 50.3 percent ground-ball rate in 70 2/3 frames. Andriese has experience as a starter with the Rays and even logged 127 1/3 innings for the Tampa Bay organization back in 2016, but he’s been more heavily used as a reliever in recent seasons. He settled on a $1.395M salary for the upcoming season this past Friday, so he’ll give the Angels a multi-inning option in the ’pen (or perhaps a back-of-the-rotation candidate) at a relatively low rate.
Andriese doesn’t throw especially hard, averaging 92.5 mph on his fastball this past season. He does generate above-average spin rates on both his heater and his curveball, and opponents generally struggled to barrel the ball against him this past season (6.5 percent), which helped to limit his home run rate at a time when the rest of the league was serving up long balls at a record rate. Andriese has four-plus years of major league service time, meaning the Angels can control him through the 2021 season via arbitration.
The 24-year-old Beasley had a big season split across three levels in 2018, when he topped out at Double-A, but his 2019 was more of a struggle. In a combined 122 1/3 innings, he logged a 4.49 ERA with 8.5 K/9, 3.5 BB/9, 1.0 HR/9 and a 45 percent grounder rate between Double-A (108 2/3 innings) and Triple-A (13 2/3 innings). He ranked 18th among Halos farmhands over at MLB.com, where he’s described as a likely reliever who has at least opened some eyes in recent years with his perhaps unexpected success in a starting role.
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