Alvarez for Fields

August 1, 2016. The Dodgers acquired Josh Fields from the Astros for Yordan Alvarez. Fields was 30. He had a 6.89 earned-run average in 15 appearances for Houston that year and a 1.65 earned-run average in 23 games at Triple-A Fresno. Alvarez was 19. The Dodgers had signed him out of Cuba on June 15. He had not yet played a professional game in their system. The Dodgers' announcement described him as a minor-league first baseman and Fields as the reliever they were adding.

Houston's general manager, Jeff Luhnow, spent that deadline saying the club would not trade Alex Bregman, Joe Musgrove, or A.J. Reed. Alvarez was not on that list. He was a teenager the Dodgers had owned for six weeks. Fields was a major-league arm in a pennant race. That was the exchange as it was written on the day.

Alvarez reached Houston in 2019 and became a middle-of-the-order hitter. Fields's time with the Dodgers did not change the way the deadline is remembered. The entry is the gap between a reliever a contender could use in August and a player who had not yet taken the field.