For a team with a losing record, the Padres were aggressive in advance of the August 1 trade deadline, swinging three trades in order to patch holes on the major league roster without fretting about the impact of further increasing their payroll. Yet their first week since upgrading their roster hasn’t gone well. Not only did they lose Joe Musgrove to the injured list on Friday, but they also followed that by losing three of four to the Dodgers this weekend at Petco Park, missing a golden opportunity to get to .500 for the first time in nearly two months and gain ground on the NL West leaders.

The 30-year-old Musgrove was scratched from his start last Wednesday in Colorado due to what was initially termed “minor” shoulder soreness. The thinking at the time was that he would just miss one turn and be able to start against the Mariners in a two-game series starting on Tuesday. But when Musgrove flew home to San Diego to be examined, an MRI revealed that he had inflammation in his right shoulder capsule. Surgery is not yet a consideration, but he’ll be shut down from throwing for at least three weeks, meaning that at best he’ll return sometime in September. The Padres won’t have much clarity until he is examined after his rest period, and then he’ll need at least a couple of weeks to rebuild his pitch count.

The injury caught Musgrove by surprise. “I honestly thought we were going in for a pretty routine checkup… but they went in and found some injury to the capsule,” he told reporters. “Every part of me wants to go out there and throw. But everything’s telling us that we needed to step back and give it some rest.”

The injury caught the Padres by surprise as well. Said general manager A.J. Preller, “At the time of the deadline, we honestly were not looking at Joe as missing a few weeks or extended time or anything like that.” Preller did reinforce the pitching staff by acquiring starter Rich Hill from the Pirates in one deadline-day trade and reliever Scott Barlow from the Royals in another, but they don’t add up to a healthy Musgrove. Read the rest of this entry »

In an attempt to arrest a slide that began in early July, the Diamondbacks were busy in the run-up to the August 1 trade deadline, but so far, their moves haven’t been enough to turn things around. In fact, they have yet to win a game in August, having finished a seven-game road trip by losing six in a row to the Giants and Twins. On Sunday, their highest-profile deadline addition, former Mariners closer Paul Sewald, failed to retire a batter in his first save opportunity since the trade. Instead, he served up a game-tying homer to Max Kepler on his first pitch and then, after a walk, a two-run walk-off homer to Matt Wallner. Ouch.

After spending the majority of the first half leading the NL West, the Diamondbacks have slipped to sixth in the NL Wild Card race, 1.5 games behind the Cubs and Reds, who are tied for the third spot. Their trend is actually worse than that. Since winning on July 1 to lift their record to 50-34 and restore their NL West lead to three games, the Snakes have gone 7-22 (.241). That’s worse than the A’s (9-19, .321) or any other team in the majors. It’s not as though they’ve been particularly jobbed in the process; their Pythagenpat record is the majors’ worst in that span as well:

To be fair, the Diamondbacks weren’t expected to be a powerhouse this year; after going 74-88 last year, they projected for 78.4 wins via our preseason Playoff Odds. In a slow-starting NL West, they took over a share of first place for the first time on April 8, when they were 5-4, and finished the month 16-13, which was good enough to tie for first. Despite going 17-10 in May, they didn’t get a share of first place again until June 1, but they spent that entire month atop the division — most of it with sole possession of first place — while going 16-11.

It was around that time that Corbin Carroll’s season started taking an unfortunate turn. On June 29 — the same day he was named as a starter for the National League in the upcoming All-Star Game — the 22-year-old outfielder left a 6-1 loss to the Rays after four innings, having experienced soreness in his right shoulder during a third-inning plate appearance. It was the same shoulder on which he’d undergone surgery to repair a torn labrum in 2021, which cost him nearly the entire season. In the wake of his removal from the game, he underwent strength testing, which showed that his shoulder was strong and stable, but the Diamondbacks gave him a breather, limiting him to a single pitch-hitting appearance over the next three days. After returning to the lineup, he played just three more games before leaving the team’s July 6 tilt against the Mets in the seventh inning, once again in pain. “I took a swing, and I felt a shift in my shoulder, shocking, tingling sensation go down my arm and then my hand go numb,” he told reporters. “I was just holding it thinking it came out of the socket, pretty much thought that the season was over.”

Despite his initial concerns, Carroll had not experienced a dislocation, and his MRI came back clean. He was back in the lineup the next day, and while he’s certainly had his moments since then — and hasn’t missed a game — his production and quality of contact are down considerably since the first incident:

Note that with two hits and two walks on Sunday, Carroll raised his post-July 1 wRC+ nine points; he was at 96 previously. Along the way, his swinging strike rate has spiked from 8.4% to 12.4%, and his chase rate from 28.8% to 32.6%, though his strikeout rate has barely budged, from 19.8% to 20.1%.

Maybe Carroll’s downturn in production is related to his shoulder woes, maybe it’s just the league adjusting to a player who looked like an MVP candidate early in the season, or maybe it’s just regression, more on which below. One way or another, it’s been poorly timed, in part because he’s not the only Diamondback who has tailed off in recent weeks:

Just four Diamondbacks have a 100 wRC+ or better since the start of July, one of them a catcher (Moreno) who has been limited to 11 of the team’s first 29 games in that span and is now sidelined by left shoulder inflammation. Moreno, Thomas, and McCarthy are the only three players with a higher wRC+ since the start of July than before, and they’re still below average offensively overall. Deadline additions Tommy Pham (from the Mets) and Jace Peterson (from the A’s) have yet to make an impact, going a combined 4-for-30, all singles.

Meanwhile, note that not only has Carroll fallen off steeply but so have Gurriel and Perdomo, both of whom joined him on the NL All-Star squad but might as well be on the side of a milk carton these days. Setting the narrative of Carroll’s shoulder injury to the side for a moment, this is striking:

All three players hit well above their Statcast expected stats through the end of June, particularly Perdomo, a slappy switch-hitter who doesn’t hit the ball hard at all; his season barrel rate is 1.2%, his hard-hit rate 19.9%. Then it’s as though the Regression Monster showed up and took a bite — each of these three players has seen about a 75-point swing in their wOBA-xwOBA differential.

Overall, the Diamondbacks hit .263/.330/.437 through the end of June, ranking fifth in the majors in scoring (5.11 runs per game) and seventh in wRC+ (106). Since then, they’ve hit just .227/.302/.373 while ranking 29th in scoring (3.44 runs per game) and 26th in wRC+ (83). Their performance against every major pitch type except changeups has fallen off by at least 50 points of SLG and 25 points of wOBA:

Yikes. They were punishing four-seam fastballs earlier in the season, but that’s stopped, and they’ve particularly gotten eaten alive by sliders and sweepers lately. What’s especially strange is the general downward trend of their more recent numbers despite the weather getting even warmer, which tends to increase offense. Of course, it’s as hot as the surface of Mercury in Arizona, so maybe the Diamondbacks have just wilted in the heat.

That does seem to be true with the team’s pitching, particularly the bullpen:

Good gravy. In writing about the Sewald trade — which sent Rojas and prospects Dominic Canzone and Ryan Bliss to Seattle — I noted that manager Torey Lovullo had been working with a matchup-based closer-by-committee system involving righties Miguel Castro, Kevin Ginkel and Scott McGough and lefty Andrew Chafin. However, I did not drill down to see just how bad things had gotten for them in the recent past. Using the July 1 cutoff again, with full awareness of the small samples in play, Ginkel has pitched well (0.75 ERA, 2.35 FIP in 12 innings), but the other three had been torched, with Castro (6.00 ERA and 6.60 FIP in 12 IP) the “best” of them, though he had stopped getting ninth-inning save chances, and Chafin (9.95 ERA and 5.63 FIP in 6.1 IP) and McGough (8.76 ERA and 6.91 FIP in 12.1 IP) utterly terrible. Chafin had two blown ninth-inning saves that led to losses in that span; he’s now a Brewer.

As for the rotation, it’s been pretty unstable, with Zac Gallen and rookie Ryne Nelson the only real constants, and both of them experiencing fall-offs since the start of July. Gallen pitched to a 3.02 ERA and 2.73 FIP in 104.1 innings through June, making his first All-Star team, but has yielded a 4.17 ERA and 4.12 FIP in 45.1 innings since, with his home run rate increasing from 0.6 per nine to 1.6. Nelson went from a 4.97 ERA and 4.44 FIP to a 5.59 ERA and 6.19 FIP, not that it should have been too surprising given his double-digit barrel rate even in the “good” times. Merrill Kelly, the team’s second-best starter, missed four weeks (most of July) due to a blood clot in his right calf but has been solid when available. Tommy Henry showed some improvement before being sidelined last week due to elbow inflammation. Brandon Pfaadt has been getting better results since being recalled on July 22 than prior, though his overall ERA of 7.11 in 44.1 innings is pretty damning. Also sporting an unsightly ERA (7.38) is Zach Davies, who has been dreadful on both sides of the divide while missing time with oblique and back injuries. Slade Cecconi, the team’s 2020 first-round pick, just made his major league debut on August 2 in place of Henry and acquitted himself reasonably well in a losing cause against the Giants, though his catcher (Herrera) had a rough time on the rookie’s first strikeout.

Given their current injury situation, the Diamondbacks now find themselves trying to stay afloat with just two starters who have demonstrated the ability to be league average or better, plus three rookies who have combined for a 5.63 ERA and 5.31 FIP. It’s not like the cavalry is on the horizon, either. The team’s playoff odds, which stood at 76.4% through the end of June (24.9% division, 51.5% Wild Card), are down to 21% at this writing, including just a 0.7% chance of overcoming their 8.5-game deficit to win the division. Considering that they lost 110 games just two seasons ago, they’ve certainly made progress to get to this point, but it seems quite apparent given their performance over the past five-plus weeks that they’re not quite ready for prime time.

It’s been a rough week for the Yankees, full of bad luck and questionable decisions that highlighted a season that had already begun to spin out of control. With the team above .500 but stuck in the basement of a very competitive AL East, general manager Brian Cashman did very little to fortify the roster before the August 1 trade deadline despite its significant holes, including two left by position players who had landed on the 60-day injured list in the past two weeks. Then, in the span of 24 hours, the Yankees lost Domingo Germán and Anthony Rizzo, both for alarming and unsettling reasons.

Prior to Wednesday night’s game, the Yankees announced that Germán would be placed on the restricted list, a move that ended his season. On Thursday, the team placed Rizzo on the 10-day injured list due to post-concussion symptoms traceable to his May 28 collision with the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr., a situation that helps to account for the first baseman’s prolonged slump, the impact of which was magnified during Aaron Judge’s eight-week absence for a torn ligament in his right big toe.

Both matters have come to light in the wake of Cashman’s puzzling approach to the trade deadline. With catcher Jose Trevino out for the remainder of the season due to a torn ligament in his right wrist, third baseman Josh Donaldson possibly out for the remainder due to a Grade 2-plus right calf strain, and with the team’s production in left field and within the rotation both ongoing problems, the Yankees emerged having acquired only relievers Keynan Middleton (from the White Sox) and Spencer Howard (from the Rangers), with the latter assigned to Triple-A. While Aaron Boone’s management of the bullpen has sometimes been questionable, the unit owns the majors’ lowest ERA by nearly half a run (3.07) and the fifth-lowest FIP (3.91). Every contender could use more relief help, but for the Yankees an extra middle-innings arm could hardly have been the top priority. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros had quite a day on Tuesday, and not just because they reunited with Justin Verlander via a trade with the Mets, nine months after he helped them win a World Series. In another callback to last year’s success, they showcased the quality of their homegrown starting pitching as Framber Valdez no-hit the Guardians. Unlike last year, when Cristian Javier threw combined no-hitters (plural!) against the Yankees on June 25 and the Phillies in Game 4 of the World Series on November 2, Valdez did it solo — making him the first Astro to throw a complete-game no-hitter since Verlander himself, on September 1, 2019.

Prior to Tuesday night, the 29-year-old Valdez had already stepped into the breach to front the Astros’ rotation after Verlander’s offseason departure. He earned All-Star honors for the second year in a row, his 3.19 FIP and 3.2 WAR both led the staff’s starters, and his 3.29 ERA trailed only rookie J.P. France, who had thrown 34.1 fewer innings (91.2 to 126). He had even notched a complete-game shutout already, on May 21 against the A’s. It was the second of his career; he had one against the Tigers last September 12.

Still, on Tuesday night Valdez was even more dominant than in those shutouts. He “only” struck out seven batters, but six of them were from among the first 12 Guardians he faced, as if to make it abundantly clear this wasn’t Cleveland’s night. He only went to a three-ball count twice, and walked just one batter: Oscar Gonzalez, who led off the fifth by winning an eight-pitch battle, a particularly tenacious plate appearance for a hacker who entered the night with a .229 on-base percentage and a 3.6% walk rate. Five pitches and one out later, Gonzalez was erased by a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Will Brennan, meaning Valdez faced the minimum of 27 on the night. Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles entered Tuesday with the American League’s best record at 65-41 thanks to a rebuilding effort that’s finally paying off. Nonetheless, the team made just one move to shore up its major league roster in the final week ahead of the trade deadline, acquiring righty Jack Flaherty from the Cardinals in exchange for a trio of prospects, infielder César Prieto, lefty Drew Rom, and righty Zack Showalter.

It’s hardly a high-impact move, particularly given that the Orioles were reportedly among the frontrunners to land Justin Verlander and could deal from strength thanks to their well-stocked minor league system. Yet Verlander — who to be fair could have used his no-trade clause to block a move to Baltimore if it weren’t to his liking — instead wound up being traded back to the Astros. What’s more, aside from Verlander and former Mets co-ace Max Scherzer, who was traded to the Rangers on Saturday, this wasn’t a market where frontline starters changed teams. Instead the moves were centered around rentals such as Lucas Giolito and Lance Lynn, whose new teams are hoping they’ll rebound with a change of scenery, while moves for better performers, and pitchers under club control, were generally stifled by the high asking prices. Notably, the Rays, who entered Tuesday a game and a half behind the Orioles, were one team willing to bite the bullet for a better-performing starter by trading for the Guardians’ Aaron Civale.

The 27-year-old Flaherty, who can become a free agent for the first time this winter, fits into the bounce-back group. The former 2014 first-round pick, who had spent his entire career with the Cardinals, made an impact in his first few seasons, placing fifth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2018 (his age-22 season) and then fourth in the Cy Young voting (and 13th in the MVP voting) the following year. For those two seasons combined, he pitched to a 3.01 ERA and 3.64 FIP with a 29.8% strikeout rate and 6.9 WAR in 347.1 innings. Whether it was his workload, which included 196.1 innings at age 23 (plus another 17 in the postseason), or just bad luck, his availability has only been sporadic since then. He’s totaled 264.1 inning since the start of 2020, and didn’t throw more than 78.1 in any season from ’20–22 due to an oblique strain and recurrent shoulder woes, which combined to send him to the 60-day injured list three times. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets’ losses are the American League West’s gains. Three days after the Rangers landed Max Scherzer, the Astros have reacquired Justin Verlander, who less than nine months ago helped them win the World Series, and soon after pocketed his third Cy Young Award. In exchange for the future Hall of Famer and a whole lot of cash, the Mets are receiving two of the Astros’ top prospects, lefty-swinging outfielders Drew Gilbert and Ryan Clifford.

This is the continuation of a stunning about-face for the Mets, who signed Verlander to a two-year, $86.7 million contract in December and opened the season with a record-setting $352 million payroll. They entered Tuesday at 50-55, 17.5 games out of first place and six back in the Wild Card race, with seven teams above them. Once owner Steve Cohen gave general manager Billy Eppler the green light to trade closer David Robertson to the Marlins last Friday, the dominoes began falling, with Scherzer waiving his no-trade clause to be dealt to Texas, and then Mark Canha being sent to Milwaukee on Monday.

As with the Scherzer deal, the Mets are eating the majority of the remaining money on Verlander’s contract to improve their return. They sent $35.5 million out of the roughly $57.7 million remaining on Scherzer’s two-year, $86.7 million contract to Texas and received middle infielder Luisangel Acuña, a 50-FV prospect who’s currently no. 56 on The Board. Via the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, the Mets will send $52.5 million of the $93 million remaining on Verlander’s pact, assuming his 2025 conditional player option vests. They’ll pay $35 million to help cover this year and next; he’s due around another $14.2 million for 2023 and $43.3 million for ’24. If he pitches 140 innings in 2024 and does not have a right arm injury that would prevent him from being on the active roster for Opening Day ’25, he’ll make $35 million, of which the Mets will pay half. Read the rest of this entry »

One day before the trade deadline, the Mariners kept busy by swinging a couple of trades with a pair of NL West contenders. They dealt closer Paul Sewald to the Diamondbacks in exchange for a three-player package — infielder Josh Rojas, outfielder Dominic Canzone, and middle infield prospect Ryan Bliss — that should help fill some holes in their lineup. To create the space necessary to fit the first two of them onto their 40-man roster, they also sent outfielder AJ Pollock, infielder Mark Mathias, and cash considerations to the Giants for a player to be named later.

Neither of the moves are blockbusters, and it’s worth noting the extent to which these three teams are clustered by record but have divergent Playoff Odds. A year after breaking their 20-season playoff drought, the Mariners (55–51) have played sluggishly; even with a 17–9 July, they’re a longshot for the playoffs, with 18.8% odds entering Tuesday morning. They’re fourth in the AL West, five games out of first place, and 3.5 back in the Wild Card race, with five teams ahead of them and in a tie with the Yankees. The moves they made could help them this year, but aren’t impactful enough to change their fate; they may help more down the road.

The upstart Diamondbacks (57–50), who were in sole possession of first place in the NL West as recently as July 8, made the more aggressive of the deals, befitting their need to improve their lot. They’re third in the NL West, 3.5 games out of first and in a three-way tie with the Brewers and Marlins for the third Wild Card spot. The Giants (58–49) are in the most comfortable position of the three teams: second in the NL West, 2.5 games out of first, and occupying the top NL Wild Card spot. Their trade might not amount to much more than taking a couple of flyers with comparatively little risk involved, and the possibility that a more substantial deal on Tuesday may make this one a footnote. Read the rest of this entry »

With the trade deadline just a day away, at last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, making exceptions here and there, but for the designated hitters, I’ve lowered that to zero, both to keep the list length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the second full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.0 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, five are in the middle ground between 0.0 and 1.0, and 10 are at 1.0 or above. DHs as a group have hit .242/.321/.419 for a 102 wRC+; that last figure is up one point from last year. This year, we’re seeing a greater number teams invest more playing time in a single DH; where last year there were three players who reached the 500 plate appearance threshold as DHs, this year we’re on pace for five, and the same is true at the 400-PA threshold (on pace for nine this year, compared to seven last year) and 300-PA threshold (on pace for 15, compared to 12 last year). That said, many of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

Strength up the middle is important to any contender, but with so many teams still in the hunt for a playoff spot, it’s no surprise some of them are have some weak spots. Perhaps it’s easier for a team to convince itself that the metrics aren’t capturing the entirety of a weak-hitting player’s defense if they’re playing a premium position, which seems to be the case at both catcher and center fielder.

While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. Interestingly enough, two of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for right field also make the list for left field: one because it’s far below, and the other because it’s right on the line. I’m listing the capsules in order of their left field rankings first while noting those two crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 1 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye upon. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are through July 26, but team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 27. Read the rest of this entry »

Today the Killers list turns the corner — or rather turns to the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in the outfield corners. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. Interestingly enough, two of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for right field also make the list for left field: one because it’s far below, and the other because it’s right on the line. I’m listing the capsules in order of their left field rankings first while noting those two crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 1 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye upon. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are through July 25, but team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 26. Read the rest of this entry »