ANOTHER Trade: Brock Stewart Goes to Los Angeles Dodgers

Brock Stewart was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers and made his big-league debut for them. Now, he returns whence he came, with plenty of team control for his new, old team to play with.

Stewart, 33, has a 2.38 ERA in 39 appearances and 34 innings pitched this season, his third with the Twins. Injuries have marred his professional career and long delayed his emergence as a successful reliever, but he’s tapped into some nasty stuff since coming to the Twins and dedicating himself to the bullpen. This year, enjoying the longest stretch of good health he's had in years, he's striking out 29.5% of opposing batters and walking just 7.9%. Opponents have a meager ,612 OPS against the man Twins fans came to know, affectionately, as Beef Stew.

Though out of options (and therefore always in some danger of hitting the waiver wire, should his performance wobble), Stewart is under team control through 2027 via arbitration. He's making just $870,000 in 2025, scarcely over the league-minimum salary. Between the control years and the low financial cost, the trade value on Stewart should be significant. He was one bellwether, coming into this week, of how far the Twins would go in reshaping and restocking their system.

Under Derek Falvey, the Minnesota front office has (correctly, for the most part) treated even highly effective relievers as essentially replaceable. Though Stewart has been great, the team suffers from a dearth of leads for him to help protect, rather than from an inability to protect the leads they do get. Trading him to a bullpen-needy team highly adept at creating leads, like the Dodgers, is the club's way of trying to find more durable and scarce assets.

For Los Angeles, though, a sturdy middle reliever is a godsend—and so much the better that he's a familiar and friendly face. Ravaged by their annual spate of injuries, the Dodgers have spent much of this week stalking the relief market. They were in on Jhoan Duran before the Twins found a match with the Philadelphia Phillies on him; Stewart figures to help stabilize a pen that will be without erstwhile relief ace Evan Phillips all year (elbow surgery) and that has had to make do without big-money offseason signing Tanner Scott for a chunk of this summer.

In return for Stewart, the Twins acquired outfielder James Outman, as first reported by ESPN's Alden Gonzalez. Outman, 28, still has (theoretically) four years of team control remaining after this one—but he's spent the majority of this season in Triple A, and has a .487 OPS in the majors. Outman is a lefty batter with a great glove, even in center field, and he had 23 home runs in a very impressive rookie season in 2023. He has plus speed and plus power. He's been such a wreck at the plate, though, that it's a bit odd to hear that this is a 1-for-1 deal.

Outman was a late bloomer, so the career setback he's gone through over the last year and a half has him rushing toward 30 without having proved he can consistently handle the best pitching in the world. His tools—especially the power, if he can get to it the way he did two seasons ago—sets him apart from DaShawn Keirsey Jr., but broadly, he offers a similar profile. The Twins are rolling the dice on their own player development and betting that they can turn around the struggling ex-slugger.