For a moment, the baseball world sat in stunned wonder, staring at a tweet that made very little sense. In what could only be described as a bizarre bit of MLB trade deadline news, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported on X that the Tampa Bay Rays had acquired JD Davis.
The New York Yankees designated the struggling first baseman for assignment following their trade with the Miami Marlins for Jazz Chisholm Jr. Now, the Rays, one of the deadline’s biggest sellers, appeared to be buying the 31-year-old Davis.
As it turns out, the report was inaccurate. Moments after declaring the trade, Heyman corrected himself with a new tweet. “Sorry my phone blew up at the end and there was miscommunication. JD Davis wasn’t traded,” Heyman wrote on X. And suddenly, the world made sense again.
The Yankees brought Davis to New York to add depth and a right-handed bat at the corner infield spots. However, the eight-year veteran was dreadful in pinstripes. In seven games with the Yankees, Davis was slashing a brutal .105/.227/.158. He had one double, zero home runs and one RBI in 19 at bats in New York.
Davis was only slightly better in Oakland this season. He produced a .670 OPS for the A’s with four doubles, four homers and five RBI in 39 games.
JD Davis is not headed to the Rays in a bizarre trade after all
The Rays are 8.5 games behind the first-place Baltimore Orioles in the AL East. In the midst of a lost season, the team became one of baseball’s biggest sellers at the trade deadline.
In the last week, Tampa Bay sent the versatile Amed Rosario to the Los Angeles Dodgers, highly-coveted third baseman Isaac Paredes to the Chicago Cubs, relief pitcher Jason Adams to the San Diego Padres, starting pitcher Zach Eflin to the Baltimore Orioles and of course left fielder Randy Arozarena to the Seattle Mariners.
Most insiders expected the Rays to sell at this year’s trade deadline in an effort to shed salary and stockpile prospects for yet another rebuild. So adding Davis after he was DFA’d by the Yankees would have been a surprise.
Davis is making $2.5 million this season and will become a free agent in 2025. Even if the Rays were seeking a cost-effective player who could provide depth with the trade of Paredes and the personal absence of first baseman Yandy Diaz, Davis would not be a good fit.
Fortunately, we don’t actually have to wrap our brains around this conundrum because it never actually happened. Davis remains DFA’d by the Yankees. The team needed to remove Davis from the roster to make space for Chisholm Jr. New York now has a couple days to decide if they will send Davis to the minors or waive him. Davis has enough service time in MLB to reject a move to the minors. If that’s how the situation plays out, the struggling veteran would become a free agent.
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