It usually costs less than you think. Reason being that team control for relievers is heavily discounted due to the crazy level of attrition.
The Jason Adam trade at last year's deadline is probably a good comp, though Bautista probably nets a bit more. That trade was Dylan Lesko, a back of the 100 pitching prospect, plus two interesting lesser pieces.
I'd expect something like this:
- Pick 1 from our pre-arb SPs, excluding Brown/Horton
- Pick 1 from the Iowa relievers
- A teenage lottery ticket
So something like Assad, Neely, Lumpuy as an example. This also presupposes that as he continues to knock off rust he starts pitching like an elite closer again. Because to this point he's been more good than great. Understandable coming off surgery but to return a premium like I laid out above he does need to get back to that level.