It's no secret that 1B has been a black hole for the Rays this season after
Angelo DiSpigna has utterly failed to live up to the productivity of his rookie campaign. He's hitting 173/286/346 and is at -0.6 WAR,
Kody Hoese has been OK at 277/387/515 but most of that damage has been against lefties, and
Brett Baty was 203/319/339 in his 19-game trial.
Fortunately for us there were quite a few 1B on the market. Oakland's Matt Olson is a free agent at year's end, but looking at his ratings (other than defense) he's a slightly better version of DiSpigna as a three true outcomes guy. Ditto for Texas and Jose Abreu, but his contact tool has diminished (now 45) and he's more of a low-average slugger than the all-around hitter he was 2-3 years ago. So that brought us to this guy, another pending free agent:
Voit is rated 55 contact and 65 power and he was hitting 293/364/492 with 13 HR and 49 RBI for the Yankees. The cost was minimal - Birkholz and Montgomery are marginal starting pitching prospects (the best the scouts could offer up for them was "potential spot starter"), and that "portion of Voit's remaining contract" referenced above is 90% so it's costing us next to nothing in salary as well. Now we just have to hope he doesn't fizzle as recent rentals Alex Bregman and Matt Chapman did at the plate. One other 1B we looked at was old friend Austin Meadows, still another pending free agent. The cost was reasonable but I preferred Voit's righty bat.
We had a 40-man spot open so nobody had to be DFA'd, but DiSpigna will be sent back to Durham to make room on the active roster. I'm not giving up on him, he's got a good shot at the job again next year.