Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

This past week was one of the most action-packed trade deadlines in recent history. A perfect storm of motivated sellers with strong cores and contenders looking to avoid a one-game play-in led to a pile of big names changing teams, with marquee prospects coming back. With the caveat that instant reaction pieces like this one are educated guesses at best — we don’t know how any of the players traded will turn out, or what other offers teams made — let’s assign some winners, losers, and overall head-scratchers.

Winners

Los Angeles Dodgers
The Dodgers got the best pitcher and the best hitter traded at the deadline, and they did it in one trade. The NL West will be the hardest-fought division in baseball, regardless of who wins; all three contenders are in the top eight in baseball by actual record, Pythagorean record, and BaseRuns record. This is a Glengarry Glen Ross situation; first place is hugely important, and the prize for second place is a single-elimination game against your fellow divisional loser, with one of the best teams in baseball heading home with only one playoff game in the books.

By adding Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, the Dodgers accomplished two things. First, they managed to upgrade a roster that already had very few holes. The more talent you start with, the harder it is to find an upgrade, and many of the available players would have been marginal upgrades at best in Los Angeles. With Scherzer in the fold, no other starter who moved could have cracked their playoff rotation, and Turner lets them put All-Stars at every position on the field when the team is fully healthy.

Just as important, however, was the blocking value of the move. When it looked like Scherzer was on the way to San Diego, I wrote a transaction analysis of that deal that focused on how much of a boon adding Scherzer for a one-game playoff would be — it would be worth, per my rough math, a three percentage point better chance of winning that game as compared to starting Yu Darvish. If the Giants had acquired Scherzer, the upgrade from Kevin Gausman would have been even steeper. If the Dodgers end up in the Wild Card game despite their best efforts, they won’t have to face one of the best pitchers of our generation there — and both rivals will have to turn to lesser starters rather than Scherzer as the regular season wears on. Read the rest of this entry »

The NL West has been a slugging match all year. The Giants have the best record in baseball. The Dodgers are hot on their heels and just added two All-Stars to go for the division title, with the Padres in hot pursuit. San Francisco wasn’t going to take that lying down, though. As Jeff Passan first reported, the team has acquired Kris Bryant from the Cubs in exchange for two prospects, Alexander Canario and Caleb Kilian.

Bryant has been a hotly rumored deadline chip for seemingly forever; as soon as the Cubs hit a rough patch in the standings, they announced their intentions to sell off pieces that weren’t controllable past 2021, with him, Anthony Rizzo, and Javier Báez the obvious candidates for a move. All three have now been dealt to contenders, and for my money, Bryant is the best player of the three. He’ll slot into San Francisco’s roster all over the place, one of the perks of trading for him; he plays all four corner spots capably and has even started 10 games in center as the Cubs dealt with injury and ineptitude in the outfield. He’s not going to win a Gold Glove out there anytime soon — and the less said about his two innings at shortstop, the better — but if you’re looking to squeeze Bryant’s bat into the lineup, there are any number of possibilities.

That bat is the reason San Francisco made this trade. Rumors of Bryant’s demise were greatly exaggerated; he had an absolutely abysmal 2020, playing in only 34 games and compiling easily the worst line of his career, but he’s been back to his old tricks in 2021. That game is power and walks, and it’s worked to the tune of a .267/.358/.503 slash line, an on-base-light approximation of his career line.
Read the rest of this entry »

There are some big trades percolating around baseball today. Trea Turner and Max Scherzer were merely the opening salvo; the Cubs have gone into full everything-must-go mode, José Berríos got swapped for two top 100 prospects, and the Phillies are shelling out for multiple starters. It’s a time for big trades — unless you’re the St. Louis Cardinals, who mostly shuffled the deck chairs on Friday in a trade with the Minnesota Twins. Our analysis of the acquisition of Jon Lester is forthcoming, but that’s not all they did. You’re gonna want to be sitting down for this one, because it might put you to sleep, and that would be dangerous if you were standing:

JA Happ goes to Cards for Gant

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) July 30, 2021

J.A. Happ (pronounced “Jay”, just for value) is not what you’d call a great pitcher, at least this year. His 6.77 ERA could have told you that — but if you hate ERA for some weird reason, what about his 5.40 FIP, 5.28 xFIP, or 17.3% strikeout rate and 1.9 HR/9? He’d been interesting in previous years — lefty starters with control tend to be valuable — but as his velocity went, so did his effectiveness, leading to this year’s horror show.

That’s not to say there’s nothing redeemable about Happ; even in a greatly reduced state, he’s an innings eater, having completed seven innings four times this year in 19 starts. That’s useful for the Cardinals, because their bullpen is a castle made entirely of brutal, gut-wrenching walks. With so few arms to choose from, the top three relievers have been worked hard, and injuries have decimated their rotation; even after acquiring Happ, it prominently features Wade LeBlanc, with four reasonable starters on the shelf at the moment (Jack Flaherty, Miles Mikolas, likely gone-for-the-season Carlos Martínez, and definitely gone-for-the-season Dakota Hudson). Read the rest of this entry »

If it feels like the Blue Jays have been on the cusp of breaking through for years, that’s because they have. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and crew have put together a fearsome offense (with some help from the friendly confines of Dunedin and Buffalo). Hyun Jin Ryu and Robbie Ray have provided some pitching, but not enough; only three teams have gotten fewer innings out of their starters, and the Jays’ bullpen has been no great shakes either.

To compete this year, Toronto needed another starter, and now it has one. Per Ken Rosenthal, the Jays have acquired José Berríos from the Twins in exchange for prospects Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson, a move that will have implications for both teams for years to come.

As is customary when prospects of such lofty stature are involved, Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will cover the specifics of the two in a separate piece. In this one, you’re stuck with me, and we’ll try to assess how this trade affects the two squads without diving into the nitty-gritty of what Martin has been doing with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

The Jays have conflicting interests at this deadline. They’re 4.5 games out of the second wild card spot and had a 25.9% chance of reaching the playoffs before adding Berríos to the mix. That’s a great reason to go for it, but it also merits caution; the team is so stacked and so young that this might be the worst Toronto squad of the next three or four years, not the best. Trading for a bevy of rentals two years too early would hardly be a crippling blow, but with such a talented roster, building for the future and the present would beat doing only one or the other.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past 10 or so years, the Dodgers have built a juggernaut, with enough talent to withstand both divisional rivals and injury woes. They’ve won the last eight NL West titles and been to three of the past four World Series. This year, though, it looked like that hegemony might finally, finally come to an end. Corey Seager is hurt. Mookie Betts has been banged up and is on the IL. Gavin Lux is out. Dustin May tore his UCL. Cody Bellinger missed a long stretch with a hairline fracture in his leg before suffering a hamstring injury. Clayton Kershaw hasn’t pitched in nearly a month. But with the Giants overperforming and the Dodgers facing an onrush of injury (and suspension), maybe this could be the year.

That feels less likely now, because the Dodgers just flipped the trade market on its head in one fell swoop, acquiring Max Scherzer and Trea Turner from the Nationals for a kingly ransom of prospects (update: the trade is now official)– Josiah Gray, Keibert Ruiz, Gerardo Carrillo, and Donovan Casey. The deal isn’t final yet, but it appears all but done and will likely be officially announced Friday. Turner was the best position player on the market. Scherzer was the best pitcher on the market. They’re both Dodgers now, more cogs in the most powerful machine in baseball, one that looks increasingly likely to dispatch the Giants and bring home the NL West crown yet again.

As is customary with such a big deal, we’ll cover it in two parts. Here, Eric Longenhagen gives Nats fans a piping-hot helping of prospect analysis — there’s plenty of it in a deal of this magnitude. I’ll focus on the major league side of things, which is to say the Dodgers’ side of things; Washington was already dead in the water in the NL East, but now they’re super dead. Read the rest of this entry »

Most deadline trades follow a familiar coda. A team with fading hopes and eyes full of prospects gets rid of an overperforming reliever, or perhaps a soon-to-depart slugger. A contender who needs more pitching (so, all of them) gives up on its prospect-hugging ways long enough for a few to slip through its grasp. Wham-o! It’s a trade. This one is … well, it’s not that:

Source confirms: Astros acquire RHPs Kendall Graveman and Rafael Montero from Mariners for IF Abraham Toro and RHP Joe Smith. Montero had been designated for assignment. First: @brianmctaggart

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 27, 2021

Kendall Graveman is definitely the aforementioned overperforming reliever. He’s been incredible this year, one of the best closers in the game. No longer a middling starter, he converted to relief in 2020, added velocity and started dominating. His 0.82 ERA is better than he’s actually been — shocker, that — but he’s cooked up an enviable mix of strikeouts and grounders, and he’s done it when it counts; he’s recorded 18 shutdowns this year (adding at least 6% of win probability) and only three meltdowns (losing 6%).

Rafael Montero? He hasn’t been that. He has 12 of those fancy shutdowns, but 12 meltdowns to match. The Mariners are 23–8 in one-run games, but it’s been because of Graveman, not Montero. In fact, they’ve swapped roles; Graveman now finishes games, and Montero sets him up. He, too, is a capable pitcher. But he’s been dicey this year, even at the underlying metric level, and that 7.27 ERA — ew!

Anyway, neither of them are Mariners anymore. The Astros snapped them both up, and they’ll fold them into their middle-of-the-road relief corps; they’ve been only 16th in baseball in park-adjusted ERA and 20th in park-adjusted FIP. Ryan Pressly has been great, but he’s a man, not an entire bullpen. Houston could certainly use the help.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s July, which means the A’s are trading to improve their bullpen. Whether it’s Jake Diekman, Mike Minor, Jeurys Familia, or any of a seemingly unending number of other moves, they always seem to find an arm they can bring in to redo their leverage roadmap and provide a little extra playoff oomph. Last night, they acquired Andrew Chafin in exchange for Greg Deichmann, Daniel Palencia, and cash, as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand first reported.

Chafin has been downright spectacular this year. In 39.1 innings, he’s allowed only nine runs, good for a 2.06 ERA. He’s done so by limiting home runs; he’s only given up one all year, and while that’s unlikely to persist, he does plenty of things right that should continue to limit homers. He gets grounders, with a 50% groundball rate so far this year. He’s limited hard contact, too: opponents have barreled up only 5.1% of their batted balls and have hit only 32.3% of them 95 mph or harder.

Do those two things, and homers are harder to come by. Baseball Savant’s xHR, which is a descriptive estimate of home runs based on contact quality, thinks Chapin “should” have allowed only 1.1 dingers so far this year. That doesn’t mean it will keep happening — it’s based on the actual contact allowed, which is volatile — but it’s a good sign that he hasn’t given up 20 warning track blasts or anything of that nature.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »