By Matt Rappa, Sports Talk Philly editor 
While the Philadelphia Phillies look to acquire outfielder Jose Bautista from the New York Mets, the club made another trade early Monday evening. According to MLB.com's Todd Zolecki, the Phillies have acquired international slot money from the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for minor league first baseman Jack Zoellner. The slot money could very well be flipped to the Mets in the potential Bautista trade.
Zoellner, 23, slashed .236/.364/.422 with five doubles, two triples, seven home runs, 26 RBI, 32 walks and 42 strikeouts spanning 47 games and 195 plate appearances in 2018 with the GCL Phillies East, his second season in the Gulf Coast League. Zoellner committed just three errors and turned 21 double plays spanning 332 2/3 innings and 317 chances in the field.
"This summer, we've been active in adding some major league pieces. We've had to trade some minor league talent to do that. One of the things that we've talked about for years is making sure we continue to feed our pipeline of young players into our system," Phillies Vice President and General Manager Matt Klentak said.
"We have a great international scouting group, and the fact that we are in a position to do things like this and give them the ability to continue signing players and populating our system with talented players is really important for the future of this franchise. We have a lot of players on our major league that are products of the international system. We have a lot of good players in our player development that came out of that, so this is something that has been a priority for us the last few years, and will continue to be."
The Phillies drafted the Mesa, Arizona, native in the ninth round of last year's amateur draft out of the University of New Mexico, the alma mater of the late 1993 National League champion Phillies manager, Jim Fregosi.
Zoellner has been assigned to the GCL Orioles. The 2018 Phillies made a trade with the Orioles after all, after losing out on SS/3B Manny Machado and closer Zach Britton.
