What is Anthony Bender's value on the trade market?

It’s trade deadline season, which means plenty of relievers will be on the move between now and July 31. Sellers will try to exploit the insecurities of other teams to flip their veteran arms for surprisingly strong returns—case and point, the 2024 Marlins, who extracted a Robby Snelling-led prospect package from the San Diego Padres on deadline day for Tanner Scott and Bryan Hoeing.

On Thursday, the Baltimore Orioles got a head start on the 2025 market by trading reliever Bryan Baker to the Tampa Bay Rays. The 30-year-old right-hander has a 3.52 ERA in 42 games this year, though it had been below 3.00 all season prior to a blow-up in his final O's appearance. Baker primarily worked the eighth inning following Baltimore's managerial change. Hitters are batting .205 with a .612 OPS in 48 high-leverage plate appearances against him and he has stranded 16 of 18 inherited runners.

In exchange for Baker’s services, the Rays sent over their competitive balance pick (No. 37 overall) for the 2025 draft along with the $2,631,400 slot value for that pick. Not a bad return for a non-closing reliever.

As it turns out, the Marlins also have one of those, and he might be an even better version of Baker.

Also a 30-year-old righty, Anthony Bender has experienced a resurgence this year. After missing 2023 recovering from Tommy John surgery, he struggled to miss bats in 2024, posting career-highs in ERA (4.08) and hits per nine innings (8.5). He also registered an unremarkable 1.24 WHIP.

This year, he’s putting up career-bests in those three aforementioned stats: 2.11 ERA, 5.6 H/9, and 1.04 WHIP. In 75 high-leverage plate appearances, hitters are batting .169 with a .557 OPS.

Bender looks mighty effective this year, but in different ways than his previous peak in 2021 that saw him post a 28.7% overall strikeout rate and 44.4% whiff rate on his slider. Instead, almost half his pitches are sweepers, with the other 26% being sinkers and 22% being sliders. While none of his pitches are generating nearly as much swing-and-miss as a few years ago, his sweeper is virtually unhittable with a .078 opponent batting average against. The pitch that hitters are having the “most” success with is the sinker, which has a .263 batting average against. Last year, when he was throwing his sweeper and sinker equally at 45% each, hitters were posting a .323 batting average against the sinker.

Keeping with the theme of “effective, but different,” Bender’s strikeout rate of 18.7% is the lowest of his career. But his line drive rate of 14.8% is the lowest and his fly ball rate of 28.7% is the highest.

Bender is currently making $1.42M and is still arbitration-eligible for the next two seasons. 

If the Orioles got a top-40 draft pick in exchange for a lesser version of Anthony Bender, what can the Marlins get?

The draft begins this weekend, so the window is rapidly closing on the possibility of getting an extra comp pick for themselves. Expect a more conventional return of prospects with pro experience.

The 37th overall pick in the 2024 draft was prep right-hander Levi Sterling. Currently developing as a starter in Low-A, he ranks 13th on Baseball America's Pittsburgh Pirates top prospects list. However, the Pirates are obvious sellers this year.

A more relevant name would be Padres lefty Boston Bateman, another tall prep arm selected 52nd overall in the same draft and signed for $2.5M. He's also in Low-A and actually performing much better than Sterling (3.41 ERA and 1.22 WHIP in 60.2 IP). Baseball America ranks Bateman fifth in San Diego's thin farm system. He would be a quality pick-up for the Fish if the Padres are willing to double down on their past efforts to assemble arguably MLB's deepest bullpen.