While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (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 0.3, both to keep the list length manageable and to account for the general spread of value; in the first full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.1 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, and only 10 have gotten more than 0.6. DHs as a group have hit .239/.317/.404 for a 104 wRC+; that last figure matches what they did as a group both last year and in 2019, and it’s boosted by the best performance by NL DHs (103 wRC+) since 2009, when their 117 wRC+ accounted for a grand total of 525 PA, about 32 per NL team.

Read the rest of this entry »

2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my Friday chat. I’m back from a great weekend in Cooperstown, where I survived the 7-man induction ceremony in the blistering heat and got to do some cool stuff like go to the BBWAA party for Lifetime Achievement Award winner Tim Kurkjian at the Otesaga Resort Hotel, the Saturday evening cocktail party in the Hall of Fame plaque gallery, and the party the White Sox threw on behalf of Minnie Miñoso.

2:03

Jay Jaffe: I’ve been writing up a storm since returning, with just one entry to go in my annual Replacement Level Killers series, highlighting the biggest lineup holes on contenders. The corner outfielder installment just went up a little while ago https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2022-replacement-level-killers-left-fi…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: With the trade deadline just 4 days away, i see no shortage of questions in the queue about potential trades. I’ll get to some but i’m not going to dwell upon too many because I’m not somebody who has a deep knowledge of prospects and farm systems.

2:09

Jay Jaffe: Based on multiple reports it appears that the Padres and Cardinals are the two teams way out in front of the pack because of their mixes of controllable young major leaguers and high-ceiling prospects. I’d say that while it’s possible that no trade goes down, we’re looking at a 47.6289% chance of the Padres getting him (that’s an exact figure, btw), about a 31.4858333% chance of the Cardinals getting him, the Dodgers at 4.97367%, the Yankees at 3%, and then the rest of the field making up the remainder.

Read the rest of this entry »

While still focusing upon 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 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, four of the six teams below the WAR cutoff for right field also make the list for left field: two of them because they’re far below, and the other two because they’re just a hair above, and we might as well acknowledge those situations within this context. As such, I’ve used the rankings of the right fielders to determine the order of the capsules; those that also cover left field include an asterisk. I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 2 deadline.

All statistics in this article are through July 27, though team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 28.

Phillies

Bryce Harper was the National League’s Most Valuable Player last year, but he’s been limited to just 64 games overall and eight in right field due to a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right (throwing) arm and a fractured left thumb. The UCL injury limited him to designated hitter duty, but he continued to rake (.318/.385/.599, 167 wRC+ overall) until an errant fastball from Blake Snell hit him on June 25. He underwent surgery to implant pins to help heal the thumb, but as of Monday, doctors decided that he hadn’t progressed enough to have them removed; he’ll be reevaluated next Monday. Once Harper is cleared, he’ll likely need at least a couple of weeks to ramp up and complete a rehab assignment. If there’s good news, it’s that he has also been undergoing treatment on his elbow (he had a platelet-rich plasma injection in May) and plans to test his ability to throw once the pins are out.

Harper’s move to DH meant that Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos, the two defensively challenged sluggers whom the Phillies signed to big free-agent deals, had to play in the same outfield on most days; thus far, Schwarber has started in left field 89 times and Castellanos in right 84 times. The former has hit for a 119 wRC+ and leads the NL with 31 homers, but the latter has been terrible, batting just .246/.291/.365 (83 wRC+) with eight homers as well as [puts on protective goggles] -6.7 UZR, -7 RAA, and -12 DRS in 723.2 innings in right field. His -1.4 WAR is tied with Robinson Canó for last in the majors among position players. Ouch.

As NBC Sports’ Corey Seidman noted, pitchers have attacked Castellanos with low-and-away breaking balls that he has been unable to lay off. He owns a career-worst 45% chase rate (7.2 points above his career mark) and a corresponding career-high 57.8% swing rate, a combination that fits the pattern of a player pressing. Additionally, he has a career-high 42.7% groundball rate, about six points above his norm, and his .245 xwOBA on pitches outside of the zone is 33 points below his norm; his .103 xwOBA on low-and-away breaking pitches is an 81-point drop from last year and is 36 points below his norm. His overall Statcast numbers (87.8 mph average exit velocity, 7.1% barrel rate, 33.8% hard-hit rate, .299 xwOBA) are all career worsts, as is his 17.5% swinging-strike rate.

If you’ve been reading this series, you know that the Phillies have already made the list at shortstop, third base, and center field. More than likely they’re just going to gut it out here, hoping that either Harper can return to the field or Castellanos can get back on track. Read the rest of this entry »

While still focusing upon 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 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. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the August 2 deadline, and in this batch in particular, I don’t get the sense that any of these teams have these positions atop their shopping lists. With catchers, framing and the less-quantifiable aspects of knowing a pitching staff make it easier for teams to talk themselves out of changing things up unless an injury situation has compromised their depth.

All statistics in this article are through July 26, though team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 27.

Cardinals

Yadier Molina may be a future Hall of Famer, but his final major league season hasn’t gone smoothly. The 39-year-old backstop reported late to spring training due to personal reasons, then hit just .213/.225/.294 (46 wRC+) in 138 plate appearances before landing on the injured list with right knee inflammation in mid-June. With the team’s permission, he soon returned to his native Puerto Rico, a move that did not escape the notice of his teammates, who value his presence and leadership even when he’s not able to play up to his previous standards. Molina finally began a rehab assignment on Monday.

In Molina’s absence, the Cardinals have started Andrew Knizner behind the plate 51 times, and he’s reminded them that even by the standards of backup catchers, he leaves something to be desired. The 27-year-old has hit .199/.291/.248 (64 wRC+) and is 5.5 runs below average in our framing metric; his WARs have now been in the red for all four of his major league seasons, with a total of -1.7 in just 443 PA. Baseball Prospectus’ comprehensive defensive metrics put him 5.2 runs below average for his framing, blocking, and throwing as well. His backup, Austin Romine, owns a 47 wRC+ while catching for four teams over the past three seasons; his most notable accomplishment as a Cardinal is in joining Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado among the ranks of unvaccinated players who were unable to travel to Canada for this week’s two-game series against the Blue Jays.

Back in June, St. Louis gave a look to Molina’s heir apparent, Iván Herrera, who entered the season at no. 75 on our Top 100 Prospects list and has hit .295/.385/.432 at Triple-A. The 22-year-old Panamanian has a plus arm and potentially a plus hit tool as well as average raw power; his framing is below average and his receiving average. He was called up to replace Romine for the Toronto series but did not play.

With the trade market not offering a lot of obvious solutions (an intradivision trade for Willson Contreras probably isn’t an option), the Cardinals, who have gone just 24–26 in June and July but are still entrenched in the second Wild Card spot, would probably be better off pairing Molina with Herrera than Knizner or Romine. One possible option is Oakland’s Sean Murphy, who will be arbitration eligible for the first time this winter and who placed 37th on our Trade Value list; he could pair with Herrera for the next year or two and still be dealt while having club control remaining. Read the rest of this entry »

Again, the focus of this series remains 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 thus far, which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season. With most contenders reasonably well-situated at third base, I’ve loosened the criteria a bit for reasons that will become clear. As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. I don’t expect every team on these lists to upgrade before the August 2 deadline, and I’m less concerned with the solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than the problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

While still focusing upon 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 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. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the August 2 deadline, and I’m less concerned with the solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than the problems.

Rays

After hitting for a 137 wRC+ with 39 homers en route to a 5.0 WAR season in 2021, Brandon Lowe helped the Rays top this year’s preseason Positional Power Rankings. But he hit just .177/.250/.316 (66 wRC+) with three homers in April and was sidelined by a stress reaction in his lower back in mid-May, missing two months. The Rays used five other players at the spot in his absence, with Vidal Bruján (.189/.229/.233), Isaac Paredes (.164/.282/.377), and Taylor Walls (.125/.204/.188) all varying degrees of dreadful in making 14–24 starts at second.

Thankfully, Lowe was activated off the injured list just before the All-Star break and has hit .435/.458/.652 in 24 PA since returning, lifting his line to .248/.318/.454 (123 wRC+). Between him and Paredes, who has homered 13 times in 191 PA and hit .216/.293/.485 (123 wRC+) overall while playing third, second, and first base, the Rays probably have enough coverage at the position. The more pressing infield need is actually at shortstop, where Walls (.173/.254/.282, 59 wRC+ overall) is playing regularly while Wander Franco recovers from July 12 surgery to repair a fractured hamate bone; he’s probably out for another three to six weeks.

Thus, a shortstop who could also help at second would be a good trade target. The Rockies’ José Iglesias is a pending free agent, and the Marlins’ Miguel Rojas is signed through next year, albeit at just $5 million. Paul DeJong, who fell out of favor with the Cardinals and was sent to Triple-A Louisville, where he recently won International League Player of the Week honors, could be a buy-low candidate if St. Louis is willing to eat some of of his remaining salary (about $13 million including a buyout of his 2024 option). A bigger deal that also helps to cover for the season-ending injuries of catcher Mike Zunino (thoracic outlet syndrome) and center fielder Kevin Kiermaier (torn hip labrum) could shake additional options loose. Read the rest of this entry »

In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing subpar production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have presented it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.

When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t be slaves to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is considered fair game. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a team may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it.

For this series, I’ll go around the diamond, pointing out the most egregious examples of potential Killers at each position among contenders, which I’ll define as teams who are above .500 or have playoff odds of at least 10.0%. That definition covers 17 teams, all of which have odds above 25% thanks to the new playoff structure (thanks for not saving me any work, Rob Manfred). And while I may mention potential trade targets, I’m less focused on these teams’ solutions than I am the problems, because hey, human nature.

This first installment will cover first basemen. All statistics within this piece are through July 20. Read the rest of this entry »

After taking their quest to end their 20-year playoff drought down to the final day of the 2021 season, the Mariners had high hopes for this year, but they mostly sputtered during the first two and a half months of the season, squandering an 11-6 start with separate 1-10 and 2-8 skids. Since June 19, when they were 10 games under .500, they’ve caught fire, winning 22 out of 25 games and entering the All-Star break riding a 14-game winning streak, one that has pushed them into the second American League Wild Card slot with a 51-42 record.

The Mariners aren’t the only AL team that will start the second half with renewed optimism. The Orioles, who have lost at least 108 games in a season three times since 2016, their last season above .500, and appeared headed for another triple-digit loss total through the first quarter of the season, went on a 10-game winning streak starting on July 3, briefly nosing them above .500 for the first time this year. They entered the break 46-46, tied with the White Sox at 3.5 games out of the third Wild Card spot.

The two teams have surged while the Blue Jays and Red Sox have stumbled. While Toronto is still clinging to that last Wild Card spot, at the very least the race has become a four-team fight instead of simply a three-team one, with the AL Central’s second- and third-place teams (the Guardians are only two games behind the Twins, the White Sox three) lurking in the weeds as well, and the Orioles at least showing a pulse. A picture is worth a thousand words:

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend in Cooperstown, six Era Committee candidates will be inducted alongside the BBWAA-elected David Ortiz. Among them are some of the most long-awaited honorees whose supporters agonized for decades over their being shut out, both before and after their deaths. Negro Leagues player/manager/scout/coach/ambassador Buck O’Neil and Negro Leagues and American League star Minnie Miñoso both hung on well into their 90s hoping they could see the day of their induction but died before it happened. Star first baseman and manager Gil Hodges died of a heart attack at age 47, before his candidacy became the ultimate “close-but-no-cigar” example, both via the BBWAA and Veterans Committee processes. Black baseball pioneer Bud Fowler, who was raised in Cooperstown, went largely unrecognized until the centennial of his death in 2013. Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat, both of whom are 84, are thankfully alive to experience the honor, but they, too, had a long wait, after falling one and two votes short, respectively, on the 2015 Golden Era ballot.

The festivities will be tinged with more than a hint of bittersweetness due to the deferred honors, but there won’t be any shortage of joy and catharsis that these men are finally being recognized. Yet even as they take place, it feels as though a gate is swinging shut behind them — one that may not open again for awhile given the the shakeup of the Era Committee process that the Hall announced in April which reduced the numbers of committees, candidates, and votes available. I won’t rehash the road to this point (you can see the gory details in the aforementioned link), but here’s the new format, which will roll out in this order over the next three years starting in December:

• December 2022 (for Class of 2023): Contemporary Baseball – Players. For those who made their greatest impact upon the game from 1980 onward and have aged off the BBWAA ballot.
• December 2023 (for Class of 2024): Contemporary Baseball – Managers, Umpires, and Executives. For those who made their greatest impact upon the game from 1980 to the present day.
• December 2024 (for Class of 2025): Classic Baseball. For those who made their greatest impact upon the game before 1980, including Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black players

The Classic Baseball Era Committee now has purview over all of the candidates previously covered by the Early Baseball (1871–1949) and Golden Days (1950–69) committees — the two that produced this weekend’s honorees and which otherwise weren’t scheduled to convene again for 10 and five years, respectively — as well as about half of those covered by the Modern Baseball (1970–87) one. In other words, voters for that ballot now have to weigh candidates whose contributions may have taken place over a century apart. What’s more, where there were 10 candidates apiece for each of those ballots under the older system, the new ones contain only eight, and where the 16 committee members (a mixture of Hall of Famers, executives, and writers/historians) could previously vote for four of those 10 candidates, that number has been reduced to three. Candidates will still need to receive a minimum of 75% of votes to be elected.

In other words, there’s a new bottleneck in place for the older candidates, and it has happened just as the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues candidates — players and non-players alike — finally returned to eligibility after the books were closed on that period following the aforementioned 2006 election, which produced 17 honorees but froze out O’Neil. For those who make it to the ballot, the math that was already very tough is undeniably tougher. Instead of a maximum of 64 votes spread across 10 candidates (an average of 6.4 per candidate), there are now 48 spread across eight candidates (six per candidate). Electing four candidates from a single slate, which happened for the first time on the 2022 Golden Days ballot, would require each of those four to receive exactly 12 votes. Read the rest of this entry »

Even for a player with six previous All-Star selections to his name, Paul Goldschmidt is having a career year. The 34-year-old first baseman finished the first half of the 2022 season leading the National League in all three slash-stat categories (.330/.414/.590) as well as wRC+ (184). He’s deservedly the starting first baseman for the NL squad in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game, and he provides a great point of entry when it comes to the players who have helped their causes toward eventual enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This may not seem like an obvious time to check in on such players, but July is quite the logjam when it comes to the baseball calendar. In addition to the All-Star Game and its high-profile auxiliary events (the Futures Game and the Home Run Derby), we now have the amateur draft and the run-up to the trade deadline, even if the actual date of the latter has slipped to August 2 this year. Right in the middle of this is the Hall of Fame’s Induction Weekend, which kicks off this Friday and culminates in Sunday’s ceremony. It’s a time that I get a lot of questions about active players vying for future elections, and in the interest of providing a one-stop shop, here we are.

Because I would like to keep this shorter than a novella, I’m not going to dwell upon the cases of Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera, who have the major milestones that make them likely first-ballot choices, or Mike Trout, who’s already fifth in JAWS among center fielders and 14 points past the standard at the position, or Joey Votto, who’s 12th among first basemen, almost three points past the standard, and finally in the 2,000 hit club. Nor will I ruminate on the far-off possibilities or probabilities of bright young stars with seven or fewer seasons under their belts such as Ronald Acuña Jr., Alex Bregman, Rafael Devers, or Juan Soto. Additionally, I’ll skip breaking out the framing data to explain Yadier Molina’s case as he heads into the final half-season of his career.

I’m punting on pitching for this installment as well. I owe readers a couple more entries in the S-JAWS series I was working on during the lockout, and when I get back to that, I’ll look a bit more closely at Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, and Max Scherzer, all of whom have already cleared the standards. At some point I’ll also take a look at the trio of closers — Aroldis Chapman, Kenley Jansen, and Craig Kimbrel — who have each wandered into the weeds at a crucial time.

That still leaves plenty of players to discuss, even if they’re clustered in just five of the eight remaining field positions. For this exercise, I will be referencing Baseball Reference’s version of WAR for season and career totals, my JAWS metric, as well as the ZiPS rest-of-season projections created by Dan Szymborski, since one of the goals here is to give an idea of where these players will stand at the end of the season rather than crunching the numbers as if the season has ended. Read the rest of this entry »