How a Boyd-to-Angels trade could work

DETROIT -- The Angels badly need starting pitching after missing out on top free agents Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, Zack Wheeler and Madison Bumgarner. The Tigers badly need impact offensive prospects to accelerate their rebuilding effort. Could there be a match for a Matthew Boyd trade?

Usually in these cases, the answer is no. But between two teams with clear needs, sometimes deals can happen.

MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reports that the Angels have interest in trading for Boyd, though there’s no indication of any progress.

This is the scenario Tigers general manager Al Avila envisioned when he talked at last week’s Winter Meetings about expecting the Boyd market to pick up.

• Tigers won't sell low on Boyd

“If a team is interested in Matt Boyd, and obviously there's teams that will [be], is it going to make the Detroit Tigers better?” Avila said at the time. “And when I say better, not like you're getting a prospect that's in low-A ball or Rookie ball. It's going to have to really make sense.”

The Angels have the prospects to make a Boyd trade make sense. Their top seven prospects in MLB Pipeline’s rankings are position players. Three of them have played at Double-A or higher with a chance to make their Major League debut in 2020. Whether the Halos have the willingness to trade any of them is another matter.

Their top prospect, five-tool outfielder Jo Adell, isn’t going anywhere other than the Angel Stadium outfield to play alongside Mike Trout. Their second-ranked prospect, outfielder Brandon Marsh, reached Double-A as a 21-year-old last season after being drafted as a two-sport star out of high school. As a hulking 6-foot-4 left-handed hitter, he too seems set for SoCal, unless the Angels gets desperate for pitching. But he’s also the kind of hitter that the Tigers need.

Second baseman Jahmai Jones, the Angels’ No. 5 prospect, is more of a projection play. The 22-year-old has had strong stints in the Arizona Fall League each of the past two years, but he struggled to a .631 OPS in 130 games at Double-A Mobile in 2019. Jones' athleticism is abundant, but his ability to draw walks has been his strength offensively.

After that trio, the Angels’ position players are largely in Class A and a few years away from the Majors. The Halos and Tigers have matched up on mid- and lower-level prospects in recent years, from the Justin Upton trade to the Cameron Maybin trade to the Jefry Marte deal. The only prospect from those transactions to reach Detroit was reliever Victor Alcantara.

The Tigers don’t want to make a similar deal with Boyd.

“The only incentive to trade anybody right now is because we're going to be better through that trade,” Avila said last week. “And when I say better, I mean more immediate.”

But the young players who can make the Tigers better immediately can do the same for the Angels, who need youngsters to fill spot after investing heavy payroll space in Trout’s contract extension and Anthony Rendon’s free-agent signing. Like Detroit's trade talks with other teams on Boyd last summer, these could be headed for an impasse.