The Yankees and Guardians have agreed to a trade that includes sending an outfielder Estevan Florial to Cleveland in exchange for right-hander Cody Morrisaccording to an announcement from both clubs.
The trade ends Florial's tenure with the Yankees, where he left the Dominican Republic in 2015. After putting up solid numbers in the lower levels of the minor leagues during his teenage years and reaching the High-A level before his 20th birthday, Florial turned heads in all of sports before the 2018 season as one of the top 50 prospects. Unfortunately, things got a bit out of hand for Florial from there, as the outfielder struggled at the High-A level in both 2018 and 2019. He made his big league debut in the shortened 2020 season and has served as a depth outfielder for the big league Yankees ever since, totaling 48 appearances in the majors in his four-year big league career.
While the 26-year-old Florial only managed a .209/.313/.296 slash line in his 134 appearances in the majors, he has improved significantly in recent years in the minor leagues. Fl0rial has a career slash line of .265/.358/.490 at the Triple-A level, with an even more impressive .284/.380/.565 slash line in 101 games at the level on the year 2023. Given Florial's extremely limited production, even though he was already in the big leagues at this point in his career, it's easy to imagine him finding some measure of success in Cleveland, where he has a clear path to at least semi-regular play should have bats in front of him. In terms of wRC+, the Guardians fielded the third-worst outfield unit in the majors last year, as the club's outfielders combined hit just .250/.312/.342. Floralial could challenge those Ramon Laureano And Myles Straw for regular playing time alongside Steven Kwanwho appears to be trapped in left field as the 2024 campaign begins.
In exchange for Florial's services, the Guardians part ways with Morris. The 27-year-old right-hander was the club's seventh-round pick in the 2018 draft and made his big league debut in 2022, where he performed well in seven appearances (five starts). While Morris posted an elevated 12% walk rate that increased his FIP to 4.34, he struck out a respectable 23% of batters in his first season in the majors and managed an excellent ERA of 2 in 23 2/3 innings, 28. In the minor leagues, Morris was even more impressive than that, posting a career 1.68 ERA and a 37.8% strikeout rate in 80 1/3 innings between the Double-A and Triple-A levels The 2022 season came to an end. Morris began the 2023 season on the injured list due to a serious strain, but returned to action in June. While the right-hander put up respectable numbers in Triple-A, including a 3.23 ERA in 39 innings and 21 appearances, he struggled mightily in six appearances in the majors, posting a 6.75 ERA over eight innings.
Although Morris struggled with injuries and ineffectiveness in the big leagues last year, he provides the Yankees with an interesting option arm who has experience pitching both out of the rotation and in the bullpen and strong numbers at the minor league level and some small sample size success at the major league level. This type of arm would certainly be attractive to almost any club, but could be particularly attractive to the Yankees after the club has shipped cost-controlled pitchers like this one Michael King, Randy VasquezAnd Jhony Brito to San Diego as part of the package that landed the club Juan Soto earlier this month.