Bear with me Rays fans. I know you see Monty's $22.5MM salary for next year and say "No Way" but this trade is really just a 1/2 year commitment if everything goes as planned (ie: the Rays get Monty back on track and then trade him at the Deadline). I'm also assuming the Rays clear over $20MM in salary by trading Y.Diaz (or B.Lowe), C.Poche, Z.Littell, and D.Carlson and T.Alexander (both of whom could be non-tendered instead). So, from the D-Back's perspective, they swap Monty for Littell and save about $18MM in the process (and after the D-Back's owner public skewering of Monty today, they are definitely trading Monty). Littell is a solid #3 pitcher with 1 year of control remaining, which makes him a straight-forward replacement for Monty. They have to give up 3 far-off prospects to do so. From the Rays' perspective, they enter the offseason with 7 legit arms in the rotation, so they can afford to trade Littell. This trade doesn't change the number of available arms, which keeps the Rays in the driver's seat at the Deadline. The rest of the return consists of far off prospects, which continues the strategy they pursed at this year's deadline. It is that strategy in fact that has me convinced the Rays don't plan to compete in 2025. They will be upgrading nearly 1/2 the position players on their active roster in 2026 with top prospects and they won't want to block those guys, so they focus on far off prospects instead of MLB ready bats in this trade. After this trade, they could also opt to trade one of Baz, Bradley or Pepiot for a pretty big haul; Otherwise, one of them will be starting the year in AAA. @JohnBitzer - Baz is now Super 2 with 4 years of control remaining.