The fire sale continues, and the latest move involves yet another pitcher.
According to Jeff Passan, the White Sox have traded right-handed reliever Keynan Middleton to the Yankees. In return, the White Sox will receive 21-year-old righty Juan Carela.
Middleton, 29, struggled in previous seasons before signing a minor league deal with the White Sox in late January. After receiving a major-league promotion in early April with names like Liam Hendriks and Joe Kelly on the injured list, the righty certainly made the most of his stint on the South Side.
Despite some more recent rough patches, Middleton has managed to put together a 3.96 ERA and 4.59 FIP over 36.1 innings pitched this season. He also owns a solid 30.1% strikeout rate and 51.6% groundball rate that pairs nicely with high swinging-strike and chase rates, thus making this one of the best stretches of his career.
Carela, 21, doesn’t appear on many prospect lists, but that doesn’t mean his stuff isn’t intriguing. A former international signing at the age of 17, Carela has taken a huge step forward over the past two seasons. He has 109 strikeouts over 83.1 innings at High-A this year and was New York’s No. 29 prospect per MLB Pipeline coming into the season. His 3.67 ERA, 31.3 K%, and 9.1 BB% are carried by a two-seam fastball that sits anywhere from 91-95 mph, and two strong offspeed pitches in his slider and changeup generate a ton of whiffs.
For a reliever on an expiring contract, this is about as interesting of a return as the White Sox could have gotten. After trading six pitchers and Jake Burger at this deadline, though, the White Sox are firmly looking into the future.
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