It’s the trade deadline. The Tigers are out of the race. They have a good reliever with one plus season of team control left. It’s pretty easy to figure out where this is going. Everyone needs relief pitching at the deadline and the Tigers had a darn good one to trade, so that’s exactly what they did today, sending Justin Wilson and Alex Avila to the Cubs for Jeimer Candelario, Isaac Paredes, and either a PTBNL or cash.

Wilson came to the Tigers prior to the 2016 season in a deal with the Yankees and he’s performed as well as anyone could have expected. His fielding independent numbers have been terrific, roughly 25 percent better than league average during his year and a half with the club. This year, he’s been a strikeout machine (35 K%) and has been fortunate enough to run a .210 BABIP to balance out his unseemly .340 mark from a year ago. Wilson is a good left-handed reliever and it’s July so that made Al Avila a very popular man.

Avila the younger has been slumping as of late, but still takes his 134 wRC+ with him to the North Side as insurance behind Willson Contreras. Avila has had a great year for the Tigers and given that he was signed to a one-year deal for $2 million this winter, getting anything of value back is a great outcome. We’ll have to watch Avila leave Detroit for a Chicago team for the second time in two years, but there was no reason to hang on to him for the remainder of this dreadful season.

With the club looking unlikely to compete again in the near future, dealing Wilson and Avila was an obvious move. The only question was which team, for whom, and whether to deal them separately or as a package. Plenty of teams were in on Wilson, but it was the Cubs who made the offer the Tigers liked best and they were also interested in a catcher. For Wilson and Avila, the Tigers received Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes. Candelario is a 23-year-old third baseman whose already had a cup of coffee in the majors and had success in the high minors as a switch hitter. The public scouting folks have complimented Candelario’s swing and approach, but there definitely appears to be some question as to whether he has the defensive ability to stay at third base or if his destiny is across the diamond. He’s received good marks for his arm, but the folks at BP and FanGraphs both raised questions about his glove.

Paredes is an 18-year-old infielder with a lower floor and higher ceiling than Candelario given how much further he is from the show. The word on him is that he’s a good hitter for his age, but probably isn’t a shortstop long-term. I saw a few Cubs watchers suggest he’s on his way up and might soon receive more national recognition. I spoke with a contact in a different organization who said while Paredes isn’t terribly toolsy, his skills make him a good player with a chance to stay up the middle at second.

Candelario is the kind of prospect you’d find at the back end of most Top-100 lists and Isaac Paredes, while much further from the majors, has the talent to be there in relatively short order. That’s a pretty nice return for a year and half of a pretty good reliever. Wilson isn’t Andrew Miller or Aroldis Chapman caliber, which is why he didn’t match their returns from a year ago, but he’s a solid arm with a below market salary. Candelario isn’t anyone’s idea of a top prospect, but he’s seasoned and on the cusp of the majors. Unlike the players the Tigers got back in the Martinez deal, Candelario could theoretically break camp with the team next April. Paredes is probably four or more years from the majors, but is definitely a real prospect rather than organizational filler to round out a deal.

It’s impossible to know what else was available, but for two months of Avila and a year and two months of Wilson, the Tigers got back two players who could get near a Top-100 list next spring. Rankings are a bit of a crapshoot, but the opinion of the industry is definitely that both players have a real chance to be MLB regulars. This is a deal that makes the Tigers farm system better and improves the team’s odds of a shorter rebuild. Candelario and Paredes might not pan out, but given that they picked them up with no harm to their 2019 roster, it’s hard to say anything bad about the move.