The Complications of Trading Ryan Pressly

Pressly is a declining player who can veto a trade in a market flush with free agent closers. It will be difficult to find a trade partner for him, and he will not bring back much in value.

Yesterday, I wrote about the report from Chandler Rome that the Astros “have had internal discussions about trading Ryan Pressly.” My focus was on what such a trade might mean from a philosophical standpoint about building a bullpen and how it may signal a shift away from the long standing Astros practice of sinking big resources into building their bullpen.

Today, I’ll turn to the more practical side of potentially trading Ryan Pressly. And I’ll write my conclusion up front—it will be difficult for the Astros to actually trade Pressly and, if they do, I do not expect the Astros to get much in value in return.

It is worth starting with the reason that the Astros are considering trading Pressly. The answer to that is that they want to save money, possibly (probably) to spend it elsewhere than the bullpen. The Astros have a lot of money committed to the bullpen and they are close to the luxury tax threshold. Trading Pressly may allow them to dedicate money instead to signing a first or third baseman while avoiding the luxury tax, or reducing the luxury tax payments Jim Crane will have to make.

But there are complications that will make trading Pressly difficult, and thus reducing the return the Astros will get for him. I’ll describe three of them here.

Complication #1: Pressly is a Declining Asset

Ryan Pressly has pitched extremely well as an Astros, posting a 2.81 ERA over 342 relief appearances in Houston. But he had his worst season in the Orange and Blue in 2024, in large part because his ability to strike out batters is declining.

From 2018 when the Astros acquired him to 2022, Pressly struck out over 30% of the batters he faced. But as the chart below shows you, that declined to 27.6% of batters in 2023 and to 23.8% of batters in 2024. For context, the average MLB reliever struck out 23.4% of batters in 2024.

Why is Pressly striking out fewer batters? A big reason is that his fastball has less velocity. You can see that decline in the chart below. Pressly threw an average fastball at 95+ from 2018 to 2021, then sat at 94 MPH in 2022 and 2023. In 2024, he threw his average fastball at 93.8 MPH.

Velocity is a key component of “stuff,” the colloquial term used in baseball for throwing pitches that are hard to make contact with. Statcast has allowed us to quantify stuff, and the Stuff+ metric available at Fangraphs shows how Pressly’s stuff declined in 2024 across the board, but specifically with his fastball. The metrics are set so that 100 is league average. Pressly’s 99 Fastball Stuff+ in 2024 means his heater was 1% worse than league average.

So if I, just a guy with a Substack, can figure out that Pressly is not pitching as well as he did at his peak, so can a major league front office. He may not be that desired in a trade, despite his excellent track record.

Complication #2: Pressly Can Veto a Trade

Ryan Pressly is a 5-and-10 guy. That is, he has played for the Astros for more than 5 straight years and has more than 10 years of major league service time. Because of that, he can veto any trade.¹

Pressly has a young family and may not want to move them, especially just for one season. He may only be willing to do that if he gets to move back to a closer job. If he’s just going to be a set-up man, why bother uprooting one’s life?

This will limit the Astros options on where they can send Pressly. For example, in my offseason preview, I floated the idea of a Pressly for Brett Baty trade. But Pressly may not want to be Edwin Diaz’s set up man, so he might veto such a trade.

Bottom line. If Pressly doesn’t want to go somewhere, he’s earned the right to not have to go there.

It will be a difficult challenge for Dana Brown to trade Ryan Pressly this offseason, much less get any value for him.

Complication #3: Many Closers Are Available as Free Agents

Would your team like an upgrade at closer this offseason? You could sign Tanner Scott, coming off of an effective season for the Marlins and Padres. or Jeff Hoffman or Carlos Estevez out of the Phillies. Or Clay Holmes. Or Kirby Yates, who had an excellent season as the Rangers closer. Or future Hall of Famer Kenley Jansen. Or Blake Treinen. Or Paul Sewald.

One could argue about whether these pitchers are better or worse than Pressly. And some may take multi-year free agent deals to acquire. But none would require a team to give up anything other than money to acquire them, and some one could get for less than the $14 million owed to Pressly in 2025.

In short, it is not a good year to be trading a potential closer.

Put these together and it will be difficult for the Astros to find a trade partner willing to take on the contract of a declining player who have a closer job that Pressly would want and who prefer Pressly to a free agent arm.

Can the Astros find such a team? We will find out over the course of this offseason. But the task for Dana Brown and his assistants is not easy.

1. This is something I’m pedantic about. Pressly’s ability to veto a trade comes from the 5-and-10 rule, not from a “no trade” clause in his contract, which others have written. That clause is voided once he got to 5-and-10 status.