dp1:11pm: Minor league righty Nick Frasso and minor league outfielder Landyn Vidourek are going to the Dodgers in the trade, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post.
1:04pm: The Dodgers and Rockies have agreed to an intra-division trade that’ll send righty Seth Halvorsen from Colorado to Los Angeles, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post. The Dodgers are sending two yet-unknown prospects back to the Rox. Halvorsen is on the 15-day injured list due to shoulder inflammation at the moment, so he’ll head to Triple-A Oklahoma City to finish off a rehab assignment he recently started. The Dodgers can then decide whether to formally option him upon his activation or bring him right to the major league bullpen.
The 26-year-old Halvorsen brings mammoth fastball velocity, shaky command and more than five seasons of club control to the Dodgers. Colorado’s seventh-round pick back in 2023, he appeared in the majors barely a year after being drafted and has now amassed 71 innings across parts of three major league seasons. He’s posted a pedestrian 4.31 ERA in that time but done so with big velocity (99.6 mph average on the four-seamer), a sharp 12.4% swinging-strike rate and a strong 48.8% ground-ball rate. Halvorsen has walked a bloated 12.1% of his opponents and been far too homer-prone (1.52 HR/9), but there are a lot of interesting components in his profile.
Halvorsen sports an unappealing 4.74 ERA in 19 major league innings this season, but he’s posted a 2.04 ERA, 32.4% strikeout rate, 9.5% walk rate and 45.2% grounder rate while averaging an absurd 99.9 mph on his heater in 17 1/3 Triple-A innings. This is the first season in which he’s used a minor league option. He’ll have two more option years remaining after this one.
Halvorsen joins the Dodgers as something of a development project, but that’s an area in which L.A. has excelled. They’ve expended relatively humble acquisition costs to add players like Evan Phillips, Will Klein, Alex Vesia, Anthony Banda and others in recent years, going on to coax strong bullpen performances from all of them. That’s not an exhaustive list of every Dodgers bullpen success story, and there are plenty of misses along the way as well, but the organization has a clear competency when it comes to unlocking bigger performances from talented-but-unestablished bullpen arms of this nature.
Addressing the bullpen isn’t a dire need for the Dodgers, but that’s to be expected for a team with a Major League Baseball-best 63-37 record. Los Angeles doesn’t necessarily have many glaring deficiencies, but every contender is always on the hunt for bullpen help. Bringing in an arm with this type of power repertoire and remaining club control/minor league options is all the more appealing.
Halvorsen joins several important Dodgers relievers on the major league injured list. Edwin Díaz has been out since late April after having a bone spur removed from his elbow. Blake Treinen hit the injured list in mid-June due to elbow inflammation. Brusdar Graterol hasn’t pitched this season and underwent back surgery on June 1. Ben Casparius, a vital arm for the ’25 Dodgers, has been out since mid-April due to shoulder inflammation.
The current bullpen group remains strong. Tanner Scott is enjoying a rebound season and has more than capably filled the closer role for the injured Díaz. Klein, Vesia, Edgardo Henriquez and Jack Dreyer all have earned run averages under 3.00. Henriquez and Vesia are at 2.25 and 2.14, respectively. It’s a strong group that’ll only get even deeper if Díaz can make a full recovery. That said, Henriquez is the only member of this group who can match — or, in his case, exceed — Halvorsen’s velocity.
In exchange for a high-upside, highly volatile bullpen play in Halvorsen, the Rockies will acquire a former top-100 prospect (Frasso) and a player the Dodgers selected in the third round just last summer (Vidourek). Colorado general manager Josh Byrnes — second on the team’s baseball ops hierarchy behind president Paul DePodesta — is eminently familiar with both players. Byrnes, who was hired this past offseason, spent more than a decade in the Dodgers’ front office as their senior vice president of baseball operations.
More to come.
