Big Names but Modest Impact
Both Daulton Varsho and Spencer Arrighetti are Established Major Leaguers. Yet they were traded for each other not to make big impacts, but to raise the floors for both of their new teams.
It is always a big deal when a team adds a new lineup regular at the trade deadline. And it is an even bigger deal when the return for that new starter is a rotation regular who has started 17 games this season. If you are an Astros fan, you certainly know who Spencer Arrighetti is and have an opinion on him. And if you are decent baseball fan, you should know who Daulton Varsho is, who has been a major league regular over the last five seasons.
Yet, despite the name value of the two players involved in the Astros-Blue Jays trade yesterday, it is a trade that will have only a modest impact on both teams.
From the Astros standpoint, they targeted a player who is likely to be a major league average centerfielder, trying to hold off the decline in his skills. The front office targeted centerfield because the Astros have received substandard performances there this season. They are covering a weakness by raising the team’s floor.
To get Varsho, the Astros gave up a pitcher they evaluate as AAA level right now. The Blue Jays wanted Arrighetti to provide help in the back of their rotation over the next few seasons. The Jays 2026 season has collapsed but the team will go for it next season. Thus, they were willing to trade a player who will be a free agent this offseason for a back of the rotation option for next season. In short, they are also raising their floor
These are both well-known names in baseball circles, as both players have established themselves as major leaguers. Yet despite that, I think the effects of this trade will be modest. It is hard to be excited for floor raising, even if that has some value.
An Average Center Fielder?
Daulton Varsho meets a clear need for the Astros at present—a left-handed hitting outfielder. Varsho is a defense first center fielder and will essentially serve as a replacement for Jake Meyers in that role.
Varsho has been a league average hitter over the course of his career, with a 98 wRC+.1 He is low batting average (career .229) with a league average walk rate (8.3% career). His value fluctuates primarily with his power. In 2025, Varsho had a power spike and had a .548 slugging percentage. This year, his power stroke has slumped (7 homers, .374 slugging percentage). The hope is that he can lift that up with the Astros, both figuratively and literally—his average launch angle has declined from 23.6 in 2025 to 14.1 this season. Overall, we should expect league average offense from Varsho, which would be an improvement on his current totals this season but also on the 76 wRC+ the Astros have received so far this season from centerfielders like Meyers, Brice Matthews, and Lucas Spence.
Since moving to the outfield (he began his career at a catcher!), Varsho has been an outstanding defender, recording double digit Fielding Run Value in each of his three full seasons in the outfield. The question with Varsho is that he may not be able to defend at that level anymore.
As the charts below show, Varsho has traditionally had sprint speeds over 28 feet per second. That usually placed him in the 80th percentile of major leaguers. This season, his sprint speed has declined to 27.3 feel per second; that’s the 49th percentile.
Varsho’s decline in sprint speed has produced a decline in his “jump” in the outfield. Statcast uses Jump to measure how much ground an outfielder covers in the first three seconds after a ball is hit compared to the average player. Varsho would cover 2 to 3 feet more than the average outfielder throughout most of his career, top 10 percentile in the majors for every season from 2022 through 2025. This season, Varsho is only covering 0.6 feet per second more than the average outfielder.
It is a worrying trend and will be a larger deal for the team that signs Varsho this offseason as a free agent. But Varsho still grades out as a positive on defense in centerfield, even if he is no longer elite.
An Established Back of the Rotation Option
The cost for Varsho is Spencer Arrighetti. At one level, the cost of Arrighetti is high. Arrighetti has established himself as a major league starter in his first three seasons. He has proved durable in 2024 and mostly so this season. Arrighetti is not a free agent until after the 2029 season. For a Blue Jays team that has disappointed in 2026, but is certain to go for it in 2027, one can see the appeal of Arrighetti, who can serve as a back-end starter for the Jays next season.
Yet Arrighetti has proven consistent in establishing himself as a major league starter—consistently a fourth or fifth starter. Arrighetti has a 4.66 career ERA and a 4.60 ERA in 17 starts this season. For his career, Arrighetti has walked 11.5% of the batters he has faced, and a career high 13.0% this season. Arrighetti showed promise as a strikeout pitcher in his rookie season. But his strikeout rate declined from 27.1% in 2024 to 22.5% this season.
At the heart of this trade seems to be an evaluation by the front office that Arrighetti is not one of the five best starting pitchers on this team right now. With Javier, Wesneski, and Blanco back from the IL, the coaching staff and front office determined they were better options than Arrighetti. Arrighetti seemed ticketed for Sugar Land when he returned from the IL. As such, he was deemed expendable for 2026.
The question about Arrighetti is about his value for 2027, 2028, and 2029. Again, the front office seems to have evaluated some of their prospects above Arrighetti for the future. Bryce Meyer who was promoted to Sugar Land yesterday seems to be at the top of that list, followed by Ethan Pecko, who has been a Space Cowboy all season.
Modest Return, Modest Risk
Arrighetti has definitely established a floor of a back-end rotation option. Such players have value and again, he fits in particular with the situation in Toronto. And in a game where pitching injuries are common, rotation depth in particular has big value.
But what is clear is that Arrighetti is not a player with a big upside. The Astros can lose this trade, but not in the way they lost the Christian Vasquez for Wilyer Abreu deal or the Francisco Liriano deal. In those trades, young players established themselves at much higher levels than expected. Arrighetti won’t do that, but if he improves a little, he can be a solid back-end rotation option, providing 1 to 2 WAR for the Jays over the next three seasons.
My bigger worry about this trade is the lack of upside from Varsho. If he is an average major league centerfielder, he will be an upgrade on what the Astros have gotten so far this season from the position. That may be crucial in holding off the Mariners and Rangers in a close AL West. But there are few scenarios where Varsho is a star for this team over the last two months of the season.
The 2026 Astros are better off today than they were over the weekend, but modestly so. I do not think the 2027 Astros are much worse off without Arrighetti, but the are scenarios where I’m wrong about that.
It is a surprisingly small deal even though it features two established major leaguers.
A reminder, stats with a + at the end are scaled so that 100 is league average.