The Dodgers acquired reliever Alexis Díaz from the Reds for minor league right-hander Mike Villani on Thursday afternoon. Los Angeles transferred Evan Phillips to the 60-day injured list to create a spot on the 40-man roster. According to Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times, Díaz will report to the Dodgers’ Arizona facilities to work with the club’s pitching team.
Diaz, 28, has seen his stock drop precipitously since finishing fifth in 2022 Rookie of the Year voting and making the All-Star team in 2023. He’s lost nearly three miles per hour off his once-96 mph fastball and seen his already problematic walk rate climb to untenable levels. He appeared in six games with Cincinnati this season, surrendered four homers, walked 15.6% of his opponents against just a 9.8% strikeout rate, and plunked two other batters — all en route to a catastrophic 12.00 ERA.
Things haven’t gone much better since he was sent down to Louisville. Diaz’s 4.61 ERA is a far sight better than his small-sample mark of 12.00 in the majors, but he’s walked 17.1% of his Triple-A opponents, hit two more batters and also unleashed a pair of wild pitches. His 93.1 mph average fastball is right in line with the career-worst 93.0 mark he flashed in this year’s six major league innings.
Were Diaz’s struggles confined to just the 2025 season, it’d be easier to view him through a more optimistic lens. That’s not the case. While last year’s 3.99 ERA looks serviceable on the surface, that number belies many of the same worrying trends that have plagued Diaz in 2025. Last year’s average 93.9 mph fastball marked a drop of nearly two miles per hour from Diaz’s rookie rate. His 22.7% strikeout rate and 11% swinging-strike rate were both miles worse than his rates in 2022-23. Diaz’s contact rate jumped from about 67% in 2022-23 to 76.3% last year (and a dismal 87.1% in 2025). All of those worrying trends made Diaz stand out as a viable non-tender candidate, but the Reds kept him around and agreed to a $4.5MM contract to avoid an arbitration hearing. They’re surely regretting that decision at this stage.
Suffice it to say, while Diaz has plenty of name value — both as a former All-Star and as the younger brother of Mets closer Edwin Diaz — he’s a pure project at this point. The Dodgers made no mention of cash considerations in their swap, so it seems they’ll take on the entirety of Diaz’s remaining salary. As of this writing, that’s a total of $2.95MM in salary. Los Angeles will pay a 110% luxury tax on that figure, tacking another $3.25MM onto the bill and bringing the total financial outlay to $6.2MM.
That’s a steep price to pay — before even getting into any prospects changing hands — but if L.A. can successfully get Diaz back on track, he’ll be under club control for three additional seasons via arbitration. Entering the year, that was scheduled to be another two seasons, but his demotion to Triple-A has already cost him enough service time to push that timeframe back by a year. The Dodgers passed on a similar buy-low opportunity with Brewers righty Joel Payamps, who was designated for assignment and passed through waivers, presumably on account of Payamps’ lack of minor league options. Diaz entered 2025 with a full slate of minor league options and will have two remaining beyond the current season.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Dodgers keep Diaz on the 40-man roster. There’d be some risk in running him through waivers, but most clubs would probably balk at the idea of taking on nearly $3MM in guaranteed money for a reclamation project who’s struggled this much both in the majors and in Triple-A. If the Dodgers were to pass Diaz through waivers, they could assign him outright to Triple-A and free the 40-man spot back up, knowing that Diaz would never reject the assignment in favor of free agency (because doing so would require forfeiting the remainder of this year’s guaranteed money).
As for the 22-year-old Villani, he’s a long-term play for the Reds. The Dodgers selected him out of Long Beach State in the 13th round of last year’s draft. Baseball America ranked him 453rd on their top-500 list of draft prospects last year, praising a fastball that runs up to 98 mph but questioning his lack of spin and feel for secondary pitches. Villani commands that heater well, per BA, but he’s barely gotten a chance to show it in pro ball, as injuries have limited him to just two innings with the Dodgers’ Rookie-level affiliate.
Villani is effectively a lottery ticket relief prospect who’s probably two or three years away from even emerging as a realistic option for the Reds — all of which speaks to the extent to which Diaz’s stock has tumbled since he stopped missing bats and lost two to three miles per hour on his fastball.
Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman of The New York Post first reported the Dodgers were nearing a trade for Diaz. Robert Murray of FanSided reported that Villani was going back to Cincinnati.
