The Phillies have made a pair of deals that bring three players to Philadelphia, including the current National League batting leader, Luis Arraez. The other two players – RHP Caleb Kilian and LHP Brooks Raley – are relievers who will be counted on to help the ailing Phillies bullpen.
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The deal that brought Arraez from the San Francisco Giants also included Kilian. It cost the Phillies a pair of quality minor league arms in Ramon Marquez and Marty Gair. Marquez is the Phillies number-four prospect according to MLB Pipeline. Gair is a reliever who can hit triple digits at times on the radar, while Marquez is a highly thought of starter.
Phillies President of Baseball Operations, Dave Dombrowski then turned to division rival New York to acquire left-handed reliever Brooks Raley. In that deal, Philadelphia shipped RHP Luke Gabrysh and outfielder John Spikerman to the Mets.
Luis Arraez
Arraez signed a one-year, $5.25-million deal with San Francisco during the offseason and leads the NL with a .324 average. He also has a .360 OBP and a .440 SLG this season. For his career, the 29-year-old has a slash line of .318/.363/.416 with Minnesota, Miami, San Diego, and San Francisco. Arraez led the majors in batting with a .354 average in 2023 and has also led the NL and AL in hitting in two other seasons. Last season he led the NL with 181 hits and also led the league with 12 sacrifice bunts.
Defensively, Arraez has a .988 fielding percentage at second base, which is his position of choice. After playing primarily at first base last season – an unusual position for a 5′ 10″ player – he was adamant about signing with a team that would play him at second base and maintained through all of the trade rumors that he did not want to return to first base.
Arraez being placed at second base will start a domino effect for the Phillies lineup. It is believed that current second baseman Bryson Stott will move to third, a position he has played eight times in the minors and twice as a major leaguer. That pushes Alec Bohm across the diamond to first base and moves Bryce Harper to right field.
Caleb Kilian
Desperate to reshape their bullpen, the Phillies are also getting right-hander Caleb Kilian from the Giants. Kilian, 29, is 3-6, 4.26 in 45 relief outings this season. Originally with the Cubs, Kilian pitched in just eight games over three seasons in Chicago before signing with the Giants as a free agent during the offseason.
The 6′ 4″ Kilian has transformed himself in 2026. Once known for below-average velocity, he now works in the upper-90s to touch 100 mph with his four-seam fastball and sinker, giving him one of the more notable velocity jumps in baseball. His current mix leans primarily on his four-seamer (98 mph) and slider (90 mph), mixing in a sinker (96 mph) and curveball (81 mph).
That added velocity has come with real results: he’s striking out 27.5% of opposing batters with a mildly high walk rate of 10.4%, the classic power-arm tradeoff of missing bats but also missing the zone. He was initially a starting pitching prospect in the Cubs system, and the scouting community is still sorting out how effective he can be out of the bullpen long-term. At the end of April, he had a 0.64 ERA, but has had an ERA of 5.00 or higher in each month since then.
Brooks Raley
The Phillies have gotten a good look at Raley since he was with a division rival. He has pitched in 12 games against the Phillies in his career and has held their hitters to a .222 average with a 3.00 SO/W ratio. The 38-year-old is in his ninth MLB season and has a mark of 14-16 with a career 3.60 ERA.
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Contrary to Kilian, Raley succeeds without power stuff. His fastball averages just under 90 mph, putting him in the bottom few percent of MLB velocity, and it’s never really been higher than that at any point in his career. What makes him effective instead is a deceptive, funky mix built around a sweeper that averages 81 mph with heavy spin, a high-spin cutter that plays up even at a modest 86 mph and generates a strong whiff rate, plus a sinker and changeup he uses to induce ground balls. He simply doesn’t try to blow anything by hitters — when he misses location, he gets punished more than a hard-thrower would.
Despite the lack of velocity, Raley has quietly been one of the more effective lefty relievers in baseball in 2026, limiting hard contact and posting strong exit-velocity numbers against. He carved out a role as a trusted leverage arm out of the Mets’ bullpen, and his track record of swing-and-miss ability that is driven by deception and spin rather than raw stuff made him a trade target of a few contending teams looking for bullpen help.
What the Phillies gave up
Marquez, 20, was a low-cost 2025 international signing out of Mexico, and the young righty climbed through the Phillies system quickly on the strength of a plus changeup that features exceptional sink and arm-side fade, generating one of the highest miss rates in the minors. He pairs that with a fastball that already sits in the mid-90s and a developing breaking ball. His delivery includes some notable head movement, but he repeats it well enough to consistently fill up the zone. Evaluators see the frame and feel for pitching that give him a chance to develop into more than a back-end starter if the breaking ball comes along. Marquez was named the Phillies Minor League Pitcher of the Month for the month of July recently and was also the Co-Pitcher of the Month in May.
The 23-year-old Gair is a 6′ 6″, 230-pound over-the-top righty reliever whose carrying tool is an explosive fastball that sits in the high 90s and has touched as high as 102 with heavy cut and ride. He’s flashed a hard slider that can pair with the fastball to miss an enormous number of bats, but results have been streaky — dominant stretches mixed with control problems that have plagued him throughout his minor league career. The profile points toward a high-leverage relief role if he can throw enough quality strikes, though the violent effort in his delivery and shaky command leave real risk that he ends up as more of a up-and-down bullpen arm.
Luke Gabrysh is a 6′ 3″, 23-year-old right-hander out of St. Joe’s in Philadelphia. Gabrysh, who was born in Wilmington, DE, has seen his stuff tick up notably since signing as a 15th-round pick, with his fastball climbing into the mid-90s and touching as high as 98-99 mph. He pairs the fastball with a slider, cutter, and changeup, and while he hasn’t always missed as many bats as his stuff might suggest, he does a good job limiting hard contact. His platoon splits have been a notable weakness, and his overall profile points more toward a relief role than a future as a starter.
The long position player dealt by the Phillies in these two moves is John Spikerman, 23, a switch-hitting outfielder whose standout tool is elite top-of-the-scale speed, graded as high as 70 on the 20-80 scale, which pairs with a strong arm to give him a shot to stick in center field even though he’s spent significant time in right. Drafted in the third round of the 2024 Draft out of the University of Oklahoma, his calling cards on both sides of the ball are speed and defensive range rather than offensive impact, as he profiles as a low-power, contact-over-pop hitter who has had some strikeout issues and has posted stronger results against left-handed pitching than against righties. Injuries have limited his playing time across parts of three pro seasons, and durability is now as much of a factor in his outlook as the modest power that has always been considered the weakest part of his game.
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