The Philadelphia Phillies and the Minnesota Twins agreed to the biggest deal (so far) of Major League Baseball’s 2025 trade deadline on Wednesday night, agreeing to a three-player swap that sends closer Jhoan Duran to the east coast in exchange for right-hander Mick Abel and catching prospect Eduardo Tait.
As is the tradition each July, CBS Sports will provide instant analysis on the most notable deals. That means, among other things, issuing a letter grade for how each team fared. You’ll find that information for both the Phillies and Twins below.
First, let’s reprint the trade in whole:
- Phillies receive: RHP Jhoan Duran
- Twins receive: RHP Mick Abel and C Eduardo Tait
Now, onward.
Phillies grade: A
Dave Dombrowski trading for bullpen help at the deadline. It’s a tale as old as time. Here, Dombrowski may have landed the best reliever traded this summer to boost a relief corps that ranks 24th in the majors in ERA and 23rd in Win Probability Added. (The latter is a contextual stat that attempts to gauge how much a player contributes to their team’s chances of winning a game.)
Duran, 27, is no rental addition. He’s under team control through the 2027 season, creating the possibility that he’s around for three playoff trips with the Phillies. Emphasis on possibility, because you can never be too sure about pitchers — especially when it comes to relievers.
Of course, Duran isn’t your standard issue bullpen arm. He has the kind of superhuman arsenal that would’ve led to a trial had he started tossing around the cowhide at the wrong point in American history. He chucks 97 mph splinkers as his primary pitch, complimenting it with 100 mph four-seamers at the top of the zone and 87 mph spike curveballs underneath. He misses bats, he misses barrels, and he generates an absurd 65.9% ground-ball rate. (He’s also notched a 170 ERA+ to date.)
Duran will ostensibly step into the ninth-inning role, giving the Phillies the kind of end-game cheat code they thought they had in suspended closer José Alvarado and hoped they were getting in free-agent signing Jordan Romano. Pair him with Orion Kerkering and Matt Strahm and you start to have the makings of a reliable high-leverage situation.
This may seem, at first blush, like a hefty price for any reliever. But think about it this way. Abel spent last season in Triple-A, compiling a 6.46 ERA and a 1.50 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Tait, for as good as he looks, is a teenage catcher: an awfully volatile quantity, from a probabilistic analysis perspective. Trading ample prospect currency for any reliever may seem like a risk, but it should be easier to stomach given Duran’s track record and the larger circumstances at play here.
Perhaps chief among them: the Phillies’ championship hopes won’t be any better in the near future than they are this season. That’s why Dombrowski and crew should continue to be aggressive until the clock strikes 6 p.m. ET on Thursday. If so, Duran might be pitching some very, very important frames come this October.
Twins grade: B
If this is the start of a larger Twins sell-off, it ends one of the most frustrating eras in recent baseball history. Here was a club that should’ve won more games than it did but for a snakebitten core and an ownership that refused to spend a dollar more than it felt was warranted.
Abel, 24 come mid-August, is a former first-round and well-regarded prospect who, as mentioned above, fell upon hard times last season. He’s since debuted in the majors, sporting a 5.04 ERA and 2.33 strikeout-to-walk ratio in six starts. It’s theoretically possible that he slots right into Minnesota’s rotation; at minimum, he ought to see time at Target Field before the year is out. He made his MLB debut in May and compiled a 5.04 ERA and 1.36 WHIP in six major-league starts for the Phillies.
Abel, a supinator who works around the ball, has thrown five pitches with some regularity this season, including a 96 mph fastball and two breaking balls, as well as a sinker and a changeup. It’ll be interesting to see what, if any tweaks the Twins make to his arsenal. Beware: he’s struggled with his command in the past. In theory, there’s a mid-rotation starter here — maybe a touch more — and it’s now on the Twins to get the most from him.
Tait, 19 in late August, has split this season between Low- and High-A, hitting .255/.319/.434 with 11 home runs and 35 more strikeouts than walks in 82 games. Despite his youth and listed height (6-foot-even), he has some real thump; back in April, he clobbered a home run that had a 113.8 mph exit velocity, putting him in company with the likes of Gunnar Henderson and Nick Kurtz.
There are some obvious downsides to Tait’s game, too. He’s scuffled against left-handed pitchers, and he’s both extremely swing- and chase-happy, which helps explain that ugly strikeout-to-walk ratio. His defensive profile projects as below-average, too, though he’s young enough to improve before his arrival. Unfortunately, teenage backstops have a brutal attrition rate, meaning that if you bet against any individual one working out you’ll win far more often than you lose. The Twins will do what they can with Tait so that he’s able to emerge as an exception over the coming years.
The inherent risk profiles with both players prevents this from being an “A.” Don’t get too discouraged though: there’s a fair chance this one goes down as a win in due time.
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