With just hours to go until Tuesday’s trade deadline, the Twins shored up their bullpen, acquiring All-Star closer Jorge López from the TwinsOrioles for four pitching prospects. López, a 2020 waiver claim who was once a big part of a Mike Moustakas trade, has blossomed in 2022 upon being converted to a full-time reliever, saving 19 games for the O’s and putting up a 1.68 ERA and 2.99 FIP. Heading to Baltimore are Cade Povich, Yennier Cano, Juan Nunez, and Juan Rojas.

Not to be outdone, the Brewers made a relief addition of their own, picking up Matt Bush for pitcher Antoine Kelly and second baseman/third baseman Mark Mathias. Finally back after the second Tommy John surgery of his career, Bush has been sterling in his return, striking out 11 batters per game with his fastball returning to the upper 90s. Read the rest of this entry »

If you ever wondered how committed the Braves were to Austin Riley, they expressed their feelings clearly on Monday, agreeing with him on a 10-year, $212 million contract that will keep him in the lineup through at least the end of the 2032 season. After 2021’s breakout campaign, Riley has proceeded to break out once more, hitting .301/.360/.604 for 4.6 WAR in 101 games, that slugging percentage being enough to lead all National League hitters. The Braves also get an option season for 2033.

As a prospect, Riley was at risk, at times, of falling into the tweener gap, that dreaded place where a player doesn’t field well enough to handle third base in the majors but also doesn’t have the bat to be a good starter at first. His runner-runner breakouts have eliminated the chances of that scenario; he’s adequate enough defensively to stick at the hot corner for now, and his bat is more than capable enough to keep him a plus at first or designated hitter.

Like most of the rest of the team, Riley got off to a relatively slow start this season; at one point in late May, his line stood at an unimpressive .224/.309/.436. But from that May 22 nadir, he’s wreaked havoc on pitching staffs around the league, putting up a monster .350/.395/.713 line with 21 homers in 61 games:

Over the last 30 days, nobody’s been more of an offensive force than Riley, and he’s a primary reason that the Mets feel a lot less comfortable in the NL East than they did a few months ago. He’s put himself into the thick of the NL MVP race, and if you believe the ZiPS projections, his onslaught against the league’s hurlers isn’t stopping any time soon:

ZiPS projects that if Riley hit free agency this winter, he’d merit a 10-year, $258 million contract, though he wasn’t going to get quite that much as a consequence of not making it to the open market until after the 2025 season. The computer projects arbitration year salaries of $9.2 million, $15.5 million, and $21.3 million, giving an overall estimate of $202 million over 10 years. In other words, my projections consider this a very reasonable contract, one in which Riley is selling his free agent years to Atlanta at a fair price. If the defensive projections turn out correct, he may need to move off of third base toward the end of his time in Atlanta, but it’s way too soon to start fretting about the exact configuration of 2030’s lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros shook up their first base situation on Monday, acquiring 1B/DH Trey Mancini from the Orioles as part of a three-way trade that also included the Rays. Mancini, the longest-tenured player on Baltimore’s roster, was having a solid, if not spectacular, season, hitting .268/.347/.404 with 10 homers and 1.2 WAR in 92 games, with most of his playing time this season split between first base and designated hitter and an occasional appearance in a corner outfield role. He’ll be a free agent at the end of the season, though there is a $10 million mutual option. To land Mancini, the Astros sent outfielder Jose Siri to the Rays and pitcher Chayce McDermott to the O’s, with Tampa shipping pitcher Seth Johnson to Baltimore and Jayden Murray to Houston.

To look at this trade more easily, let’s separate it into three different transactions.

The Baltimore Orioles acquire pitchers Seth Johnson and Chayce McDermott for 1B/DH Trey Mancini

From a PR standpoint, there will likely be some sharp elbows thrown at the Orioles locally. Baltimore is having its first even marginally playoff-relevant season in a long while, and Mancini has been with the team through the entire process. As its veteran rebuild survivor, he played a similar role that Freddie Freeman did for the Braves while they went through their own painful renovations. His battle with colon cancer, diagnosed on his 28th birthday, and subsequent grand return after surgery and six months of chemotherapy only served to make him more beloved in town.

Basically, the on-field case for keeping Mancini and letting him walk at the end of the season involved a very “now” outlook for the team. It does make the Orioles a bit weaker over the next two months, but it’s only a major loss if you look at the consequences in a very binary fashion, in that Baltimore is in the wild card race with Mancini and out of it without him. Once you move past that, the calculus for whether a trade like this is a good idea comes out very differently. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rockies conjured up their own trade deadline magic, extending their closer, Daniel Bard, to a two-year contract extension reportedly worth $19 million. Bard, who turned 37 last month, has done a solid job as Colorado’s closer for the second straight season, putting up a 1.91 ERA — though with a considerably less impressive 3.55 FIP — in 37 appearances for the last-place Rockies this season.

Colorado had previously dropped hints that there were not going to be many, if any, trades of veteran talent this week. As this extension highlights, this was not a negotiating position to entice other teams to make more lucrative offers for its most valuable players. At this point, I doubt anyone in baseball thought otherwise, as the Rockies have long been notorious for not treating the trade deadline as an opportunity either to improve the team in a pennant drive or to rebuild/retool to help achieve future goals. For one of the best examples, look no further than last season, when they decided not to trade Trevor Story (to Story’s confusion) or Jon Gray, instead preferring to let the former walk for a compensation pick and, since he received no qualifying offer, the latter move on with no compensation for the franchise.

Don’t get me wrong: for a lot of teams, getting Bard as either a short-term rental or on this exact contract would have been a very good move. If he were not the best reliever plausibly available this week, he was certainly in the top tier, and a wide variety of contending teams with middling-or-worse bullpens, such as the Cardinals, Twins, or Blue Jays, ought to have had an interest in swapping prospects with real futures for his services. Bard’s 1.91 ERA this year is no more “real” than his 5.21 ERA last year in the opposite direction, but he’s an above-average closer, and it’s nice to be able to sign one of those in free agency to a two- or three-year deal at a reasonable price.

Liking Bard for the rest of 2022 and/or the next two seasons is not the least bit odd; it just makes little sense for the Rockies to be the organization to act on that positive evaluation. Even more baffling is that, when it came to Gray, they never went above a three-year, $35–$40 million offer — one they didn’t even make until the very end of the 2021 season. Valuing a solid starting pitcher only a little more than a solid closer is just the latest example of this organization’s dysfunction. Why trade for a 22-year-old and have to wait 15 years for him to become a 37-year-old veteran when you can just keep the player you have? Read the rest of this entry »

After a small amuse-bouche in the form of an Andrew Benintendi trade to get our deadline appetites drooling in anticipation, the Mariners have served up a mighty entrée in the form of landing Luis Castillo, arguably the best pitcher plausibly available this week, in a late Saturday trade. Heading the quartet of players heading to Cincinnati is shortstop Noelvi Marte, the No. 11 prospect both on the midseason update on The Board and in my preseason ZiPS Top 100 Prospects. Joining Marte is shortstop Edwin Arroyo, starting pitcher Levi Stoudt, and reliever Andrew Moore.

Castillo’s season got off to a rocky start thanks to lingering issues with a sore shoulder. Those are always concerning, but he was able to debut in early May after a thankfully eventless rehab stint. After some spotty command in his first game back, he’s been absolutely solid, making his second All-Star team this year; in 14 starts for the Reds, he has struck out 90 batters against 28 walks, putting up an ERA of 2.86, a FIP of 3.20, and 2.1 WAR. That’s enough for 16th in the NL despite Castillo not debuting until Cincinnati’s 29th game. While it wouldn’t impress Old Hoss Radbourn or Amos Rusie, Castillo is a workhorse by 2022’s standards, finishing the fifth inning in every start since his first one and boasting a streak of four consecutive games of at least seven innings, with three of the four opponents (Braves, Rays, Yankees) being quite dangerous.

Naturally, landing Castillo makes Seattle’s rotation a considerably more dangerous unit. ZiPS gives it an even bigger boost than our depth charts do, bumping it from 18th in the league in projected rest-of-season WAR to 10th. Overall, ZiPS thought the Mariners were a .527 team going into the season, and now my projections see them as a .545 team with an 84% chance of making the playoffs, up from 76%. This move is more about making the team as dangerous in the playoffs as possible; the Mariners could add Juan Soto, too, and the math of an 11-game deficit would still make winning the AL West a tough road.

As exciting as it is to see the Mariners do whatever they can to push themselves over the top this season, this move may even be a bigger deal for the 2023 season. Pencil in $15 million for Castillo’s salary, and the M’s have a committed luxury tax number of just around $115 million, with only Adam Frazier and Mitch Haniger as significant free agents. Having a solid rotation already put together gives Seattle nearly unlimited options this winter.

Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Yankees added outfield help on Wednesday night, closing a deal with the Kansas City Royals to acquire outfielder Andrew Benintendi in return for three lower-level pitching prospects. Coming off his first career All-Star appearance, Benintendi is having what is easily his best season since 2018, fortunate timing for him given that he’ll hit free agency for the first time this fall. In 93 games for the Royals, Benintendi has hit .320/.387/.398 for a career-best 126 wRC+, and his 2 WAR already makes 2022 his second-best full season.

It would be hard to argue that much has gone wrong for the Bronx Bombers in 2022 — even after a month of .500 ball, the Yankees remain on a 108-win pace. But I doubt anyone would claim that Joey Gallo’s annus horribilis is what they had in mind when they sent four prospects to the Rangers for him and Joely Rodríguez almost exactly a year ago. Over his time in New York, Gallo has hit .160/.293/.371, good for an 89 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR. While that’s a pretty robust line for a .160 average, secondary skills can only go so far. There was an argument to be made that Gallo’s lousy stint at the end of 2021 was a BABIP-related blip, but this year, his approach at the plate has completely fallen apart. Always a brutally poor contact hitter, Gallo has to be selective to survive, and in what might be him reacting to his poor August/September last year, he’s been aggressive at the plate in a bad way. How bad? He’s been about 80% more likely to swing at an out-of-zone pitch than he was in 2021 — not a great approach when you miss as often as Gallo does. Even his exit velocity numbers have dropped off the charts. Gallo’s not officially gone yet, but I’d be astonished if he’s Benintendi’s teammate for more than a few days. Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Dan Szymborski: It’s chat time!

12:01

Dan Szymborski: And yes, that’s a Gordon Solie reference in the teaser for the link on the main page to this chat.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: I saw it too and in fact retweeted it! Whether it’s the factor or not is a trickier matter. Causation is a cruel mistress. But it’s at least *interesting* and worth a deeper exploration

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Maybe I’ll look at it in August at some point. But this week is TRADE DEADLINE MADNESS~!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: or it better be!

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We’re just about a week from 2022’s trade deadline, and so far, it’s been a quiet one. This weekend’s trade of Daniel Vogelbach for Colin Holderman is the most significant swap yet this July unless you’re a fierce partisan for Christian Bethancourt or Tyler Wade.

It would be highly unusual if we didn’t get a lot more trades of far more significance this week, but knowing what happens will involve some waiting. And since waiting to talk about moves isn’t fun, it’s about time for my yearly feature in which I kick things off with some trade imagineering. None of these are predictions of what actually will happen, but kind of a kickoff exercise where we have a lot of fun discussions — hopefully not too many of them involving people being mad at ol’ Szym!

The San Francisco Giants acquire OF Juan Soto from the Washington Nationals for SS Marco Luciano, P Kyle Harrison, OF Luis González, OF Heliot Ramos, and the privilege of not being P Patrick Corbin’s employer

I’m actually unconvinced that the Nationals trade Soto at all this week and expect a trade to be more likely in the winter than right now. While the Yankees seem to be the clearest target, I think them making a deal is the most likely at a point where they have more clarity on the status of Aaron Judge and how much money exactly they have to play with, especially with Washington’s apparent insistence on including Corbin in a deal.

Corbin is a giant monkey wrench; this is not a simple case of a small amount of money going one way or another, but a deal with more than $60 million remaining, with little hope of it being anything but a de facto charge. I think the inclusion opens the way for a team in a better situation to eat the $60 million rather than give another top prospect. For me, that makes trying to conjure a deal with the Giants work. San Francisco has payroll room to play with and doesn’t have the depth in top prospects that teams like the Yankees and Mariners can offer. Plus, it may just be my memory playing tricks with me, but I remember the Giants having a long relationship with another franchise corner outfielder with tremendous power and nearly clairvoyant plate discipline.

Ramos is basically one of the extras at this point, and González is included because Washington also appears to want current major league talent in return for some odd reason. If Washington’s red line is Logan Webb, I politely thank them for my time and look elsewhere; if I’m starting with a trade of three years of Webb for two years of Soto and a forced acquisition of Corbin, I’m not sure I’d include any prospects of interest. Two top-50 prospects and picking up Corbin’s deal, the financial equivalent of a 65 FV prospect, plus a decent MLB-ready player and an extra or two is as far as I would go if I’m the Giants. Read the rest of this entry »

In what has been a relatively quiet July so far on the trade front, the Mets made two minor trades over the weekend, both with the Pirates. First, they picked up designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach in return for reliever Colin Holderman. In a separate transaction, Pittsburgh also sent catcher Michael Perez to Queens in return for the team’s favorite kind of player: cash.

As a power-and-walks hitter without much defensive value, Vogelbach was not a favorite of prospect-watchers, but the internet at least partially fell in love with him due to his Rubens-esque proportions. While his major league career hasn’t exactly resulted in any Large Adult MVP memes, he’s established himself in the big leagues as a power-hitting DH, albeit one with a fairly limited role. You don’t want him in a game against a left-handed pitcher, and ideally, you don’t want him standing in the field with a glove, either. If you need a part-time DH who can also come off the bench and ruin a right-handed reliever’s evening, though, then Vogelbach is your man. His .228/.338/.430 triple-slash in Pittsburgh is hardly eye-popping, but in 2022, that’s enough to get you a perfectly serviceable wRC+ of 118.

As a Met, Vogelbach’s line should look even better than that, as he’s joined a team that has less of a reason to let him face lefties. With an extremely thin roster, the Pirates started him 14 times against left-handed starters, about 40% of the time. They had no lefty-masher on hand to serve as a complement to Vogelbach, and when he wasn’t starting, they regularly turned to Yoshi Tsutsugo, another left-handed hitter, or used the position to rest other players. The Mets, on the other hand, are quite content to use J.D. Davis against lefties — he’s started all 35 games against them — and appear to have finally decided that his best position is DH. If Dominic Smith had been hitting at all, a trade like this would not have been necessary, but with a .560 OPS this year after last year’s .667, the team is basically at wits’ end when it comes to getting consistent production out of him. I’d actually be surprised if Smith is on the roster after the deadline, and at this point, a divorce may be best for both parties. Read the rest of this entry »

Compared to the never-ending trudge of MLB’s CBA negotiations this winter, the 2022 season feels like a drag car race; I find it difficult to believe we’re already just two months away from the playoffs. But while playoff-relevant teams and their players are primarily thinking about October right now, it would be a lie if they claimed there was no peeking ahead to free agency. After all, decisions to sign or not sign will be among the most significant that players will make in their professional lives, and the right contract can change the fate of a franchise, for good or ill.

As we reach baseball’s trade deadline, the point of no return, I thought I would enlist ZiPS to the task of projecting which possible free agents have helped their cases this year. After all, the salaries players can expect to get in free agency can change decisions teams make right now. Just to keep everything on an even playing field, the exact order is based on theoretical four-year contracts.

1. Aaron Judge, New York Yankees (+$32 million)

Judge made a massive gamble on himself entering the season by turning down a deal worth $230.5 million over eight years, and while I don’t think there’s any possible season that would have actually catapulted him into the $300 million-plus territory that’s generally populated by younger players playing more crucial positions, he’s done about all he can to make his case. The projection systems all have his mean outlook getting him just over that 50-homer line for the second time in his career, and in a much more difficult environment for home run hitting than existed in 2017.

ZiPS isn’t convinced, though, that Judge is going to do better than the Yankees’ initial offer, and as great as he’s been, I still share that skepticism. He’s establishing a higher baseline for himself from which to decline throughout his 30s, but some of the reasons that hold down his value still remain: he’ll be 31 in 2023, and he’s a corner outfielder. I don’t think there’s any team in baseball that will give Judge more money than the Yankees will be willing to, and I don’t think the Yankees have any intention to offer him $280 million. Feel free to pop back into the comments in six months if I’m wrong!

Read the rest of this entry »