NEW YORK (AP) — Staying on the hunt for pitching, the New York Mets acquired starter Paul Blackburn from the last-place Oakland Athletics on Tuesday for minor league right-hander Kade Morris.
New York also added reliever Huascar Brazobán in a deal with the struggling Miami Marlins for minor league infielder Wilfredo Lara just before baseball's 6 p.m. EDT trade deadline.
Blackburn was an All-Star in 2022 but has had trouble staying healthy at times. He missed more than two months this season with a stress reaction in his right foot before coming off the 60-day injured list last Friday and earning a win over the Los Angeles Angels by allowing four runs over five innings.
“I think this is an incredibly consistent pitcher who fills the strike zone and has kind of a kitchen-sink approach to what he does, and we think he’s going to fit into our rotation quite nicely,” Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said.
Blackburn is 4-2 with a 4.41 ERA in nine starts this year and figures to slot into a rotation missing injured ace Kodai Senga and rookie Christian Scott. The 30-year-old right-hander remains under team control next season and can become a free agent following the 2025 World Series.
“I think you’re never going to replace a pitcher like Senga at the deadline,” Stearns said. “And so we just tried to figure out how best to fortify our team around it. And it meant both in the rotation and the bullpen to ensure that we had enough arms and some flexibility in various roles to put us in the best position for the next two months and hopefully beyond.”
Following a poor start, the Mets have surged back into the playoff chase on the strength of the major leagues’ highest-scoring lineup over the last two months. New York began the day holding one of three National League wild cards in a crowded race.
Within the past few weeks, the Mets started finding help for a shaky and injury-ravaged bullpen by trading for veteran relievers Phil Maton and Ryne Stanek. Stearns also acquired lefty Matt Gage, who was called up from the minors Monday, and landed outfielder Jesse Winker in a deal with Washington.
“We tried to be responsive to the needs of our 'pen,” Stearns said. “We believe we’re a playoff-caliber team and we did what we thought was the right thing to do in adding to certain components of the team.”
Brazobán was 1-2 with a 2.93 ERA in 20 appearances for the Marlins this season, striking out 34 and walking 11 in 30 2/3 innings. The 34-year-old right-hander is 7-5 with a 3.56 ERA and 139 strikeouts in 121 1/3 innings over 97 major league games in three seasons with Miami.
“I think that benefit is that he can go multiple innings,” Stearns said. “He’s got a pretty unique pitch mix and so I think he can fit a variety of roles in our ‘pen and that can evolve as we get healthy in our ’pen as well. The fact that he has some roster flexibility as well is helpful.”
Morris, 22, was 4-6 with a 3.51 ERA in 16 starts and two relief appearances with Class A St. Lucie and High-A Brooklyn this year. He was a third-round draft pick by the Mets in 2023 out of the University of Nevada and was rated the team's 25th-best prospect by MLB.com.
New York also obtained reliever Tyler Zuber from the Tampa Bay Rays for minor league right-hander Paul Gervase.
To make room on the 40-man roster for the new additions, two players at Triple-A were designated for assignment: right-hander Ty Adcock and catcher Logan Porter.
Zuber, 29, pitched in two games for Tampa Bay this season, allowing one run and striking out four in 3 1/3 innings. He was 3-0 with a 2.49 ERA and 29 strikeouts over 21 2/3 innings in 18 games at Triple-A Durham.
Zuber also appeared in 54 big league games with Kansas City from 2020-21 and is 1-5 with a 5.13 ERA in the majors.
“It was desired to have some control over certain players — Blackburn, Brazoban, Tyler Zuber as well who we acquired — who can help us not only this year but into the future,” Stearns said.
Earlier in the day, New York traded Triple-A lefty Josh Walker to Pittsburgh for minor league left-hander Nicolas Carreno. Walker made 24 appearances for the Mets over the past two seasons.
Lara, 20, has hit .247 with 21 home runs in 250 minor league games across three levels in the Mets organization over four seasons.
AP freelance writer Jerry Beach contributed to this report.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Oakland Athletics starting pitcher Paul Blackburn throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim, Calif., Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump was thwarted Monday in his bid to indefinitely postpone this week’s sentencing in his hush money case while he appeals a ruling that upheld the verdict and put him on course to be the first president to take office convicted of crimes.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan ordered Friday's sentencing to proceed as scheduled, rejecting arguments from Trump’s lawyers who said it should be halted while they ask a state appeals court to reverse his decision to let the conviction stand.
Trump can still ask the appeals court to intervene and order a stay, or pause. Otherwise, he'll be sentenced a little more than a week before he is inaugurated to a second term.
Trump's lawyers have told Merchan that if his sentencing happens, he will appear by video rather than in person. The judge had given him the option in light of the demands of the presidential transition process.
Merchan last Friday denied Trump’s bid to throw out the verdict because of his impending return to the White House but signaled that he is not likely to sentence the Republican to any punishment for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after Merchan ruled that it “would be the end of the Presidency as we know it” if it is allowed to stand.
Trump’s lawyers, who are also challenging Merchan’s prior refusal to dismiss the case on presidential immunity grounds, filed appeal paperwork Monday afternoon in the appellate division of the state’s trial court. No arguments have been scheduled.
They did not ask the court to halt Trump's sentencing. Separately, they argued to Merchan that the appeal should should trigger an automatic stay of proceedings and, if it doesn't, that he should step in and do it himself — an idea he rejected.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office had urged Merchan to proceed as scheduled, “given the strong public interest in prompt prosecution and the finality of criminal proceedings.”
Prosecutors blamed Trump for pushing his sentencing to the brink of his second term by repeatedly seeking to postpone his sentencing, originally scheduled for July.
“He should not now be heard to complain of harm from delays he caused,” they wrote in a court filing Monday afternoon.
“Today, President Trump’s legal team moved to stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said. “The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the state constitution of New York, and other established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed.”
Any delay in sentencing could run out the clock on closing the case before Trump’s second term begins Jan. 20.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice and guidance to federal agencies, has maintained that a sitting president is immune from criminal proceedings. If sentencing doesn't happen before Trump is sworn in, waiting until he leaves office in 2029 “may become the only viable option,” Merchan said in his ruling.
If sentencing proceeds on Friday as scheduled, Trump’s lawyers argued, he will be appealing the verdict while in office and will be “forced to deal with criminal proceedings for years to come.” They raised an improbable scenario in which, if Trump wins his appeal, he could be then subjected to another criminal trial while in office.
In upholding the verdict and rejecting Trump's bids for dismissal, Merchan wrote that the interests of justice would only be served by “bringing finality to this matter” through sentencing. He said sentencing Trump what’s known as an unconditional discharge — closing the case without jail time, a fine or probation — “appears to be the most viable solution.”
Trump's lawyers were unmoved, arguing that the “meritless case” was fostered by "numerous legal errors," including rulings by Merchan they say flew in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last July that granted presidents broad immunity from prosecution.
“The Court’s non-binding preview of its current thinking regarding a hypothetical sentencing does not mitigate these bedrock federal constitutional violations,” defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote.
Trump has selected both of them for high-ranking Justice Department positions.
Whenever he is sentenced, Trump will have an opportunity to speak, as will his lawyers and prosecutors. He can only appeal the verdict after he is sentenced.
The charges involved an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of Trump’s 2016 campaign to keep her from publicizing claims she’d had sex with him years earlier. He says that her story is false and that he did nothing wrong.
The case centered on how Trump accounted for reimbursing his then-personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who had made the payment to Daniels. The conviction carried the possibility of punishment ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.
Cohen, a key prosecution witness who had previously called for Trump to be put in prison, said that “based upon all of the intervening circumstances” Merchan’s decision to sentence Trump without punishment “is both judicious and appropriate.”
Trump’s sentencing initially was set for last July 11, then postponed twice at the defense’s request. After Trump’s Nov. 5 election, Merchan delayed the sentencing again so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case.
FILE - Former President Donald Trump waits for the start of proceedings in Manhattan criminal court, April 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool, File)
FILE - Judge Juan M. Merchan sits for a portrait in his chambers in New York, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
