Pitchers and Catchers report this week but that won’t stop teams from trying to upgrade their rosters.\u00a0 The Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> and San Diego Padres<\/a> have made another deal. This certainly is not the MLB trade that the world was expecting to be made today.<\/p>\n The Rays are sending reliever Emilio Pagan<\/strong><\/a> to the San Diego Padres for outfielder Manuel Margot<\/strong><\/a> and C\/OF prospect Logan Driscoll<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n The Padres have made it very clear they are playing for the present. Acquiring\u00a0Pagan solidifies that case.\u00a0 Pagan’s 20 saves were tops for the Rays bullpen and he will now be paired with Kirby Yates to close out victories for the Padres.\u00a0 Trading away Margot also opens the door for previously acquired Trent Grisham<\/strong><\/a> to take over in center field.\u00a0 If he fails to takeover, Wil Myers<\/strong><\/a> has experience patrolling center field.<\/p>\n The Rays were looking for outfield depth and have found a fourth outfielder with the Margot acquisition.\u00a0 More importantly, the Rays needed someone who can man center field when Kevin Kiermaier<\/strong><\/a> needs a day off, slumps, or finds himself on the IL.\u00a0 A place he has had no problem finding most of his career.<\/p>\n Margot hit 12 home runs and stole 20 bases in 2019.\u00a0 The Rays will certainly look for the 25-year-old to continue displaying his power & speed combination.<\/p>\n The Rays have plenty of arms able to replace the hole Pagan now leaves.\u00a0 They will rely on the trio of Nick Anderson<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> Diego Castillo<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> and Jose Alvarado<\/strong><\/a> to hold down the back end of games.<\/p>\n The Rays also get C\/OF prospect, Logan Driscoll,\u00a0in the deal.<\/p>\n As previously stated, this isn’t the first trade the Padres and Rays have done this offseason.\u00a0 Just two months ago Tommy Pham<\/strong><\/a> and Hunter Renfroe<\/strong><\/a> were traded (along with prospects) for each other.\u00a0 A trade that showed the Padres urgency to win in 2020 and the Rays willingness to put themselves in great position on the business side of baseball.<\/p>\n While all of baseball is still waiting on the MLB trade that was agreed to this past week to be made official the Rays and Padres continue to make improvements to their teams.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rays Trade Emilio Pagan to Padres for Manuel Margot and a Prospect Pitchers and Catchers report this week but that won’t stop teams from trying to upgrade their rosters.\u00a0 The Tampa Bay Rays and San Diego Padres have made another deal. This certainly is not the MLB trade that the world was expecting to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3348,"featured_media":28791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,30,6],"tags":[2307,3357,1026,69,93,566],"class_list":["post-28787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-padres","category-rays","tag-emilio-pagan","tag-logan-driscoll","tag-manuel-margot","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"modified_by":"Jared Cantatore","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3348"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Padres<\/h2>\n
The Rays<\/h2>\n
Deal Wrapped Up<\/h2>\n