If this trade deadline turns out to be a dud, you’re going to see a lot of people blaming the 12-team playoff format, which has flattened the competitive landscape around the edges of the playoff field. As of Saturday morning, 11 of the 15 American League teams have at least a 25% chance of making the playoffs. In the National League, there’s a bit more stratification, but nine of 15 teams have at least a 19% chance of making the playoffs. The few teams that are well and truly out of the race are so positioned for a reason — i.e. they don’t have many good players to sell in the first place.

You could use that as an excuse to sit out the deadline, or you could do what the Brewers and Guardians did: find another contender to trade with. The Great Lakes region’s two great perennial discount contenders hooked up on a four-player trade that sent catcher Bo Naylor and reliever Codi Heuer to Milwaukee in exchange for outfielder Blake Perkins and reliever Craig Yoho.

Credit to baseball ops bigwigs Chris Antonetti and Matt Arnold for finding a trade partner in this treacherous market, but this kind of swap does have its drawbacks. Namely: None of the four big leaguers on the move in this deal has been any good in 2026. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday afternoon, Tarik Skubal threw what looked for all the world to be his last pitch as a member of the Detroit Tigers.

Skubal fanned six Orioles — including his 1,000th career strikeout — and held the Orioles scoreless into the seventh inning. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, wanting his ace to finish on a valedictory note, let Skubal pitch himself into some trouble in the seventh, but lifted him once Leody Taveras singled in Baltimore’s first run. Read the rest of this entry »

Not counting RotoGraphs posts, Jake Mangum has been a featured player in three articles on this site since the start of last season. In two of those — one each by myself and David Laurila — the phrase “Old School” appears in the headline.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in headlines, especially my own, but in this case it tells you everything you need to know.

Mangum, a legend at Mississippi State, has a style of play that firmly rebukes generations of baseball wisdom. That’s why I wrote about him last April; if you hate hitters who strike out too much and look to hit doubles and home runs instead of dinking drop shots behind the infield, Mangum is your man. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written before about one of my favorite baseball traditions: The Rays make a run to the playoffs, and because they’re not the Yankees or Red Sox, and they turn over their entire 40-man roster every 24 months, they show up on TV with a bunch of guys the average sports fan has never heard of.

Come October, America is introduced to a weird reliever when he throws three perfect innings in the ALDS. “Who the frick is this guy?” America asks. “And how does anyone hit him?” Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals kicked off trade deadline season in earnest on Saturday night, when Boston sent left-handed pitcher Connelly Early to the Nats for corner infielder Curtis Mead.

Most consequential trades this time of year involve a contender swapping one or more prospects for an established big leaguer. Not so this one. At the time of the trade, the Red Sox and Nationals were in similar positions in the standings: The Sox were 53-50, seven and a half games out of the division lead, but half a game up in the AL Wild Card race. The Nats were 53-52, eight and a half games out of first place in the NL East, but only two games out of a Wild Card spot. Both teams are playing with house money: Boston on account of being 14 games under .500 less than five weeks ago, and Washington on account of… everything that’s happened since the start of the 2020 season.

And there’s little difference between Early and Mead in terms of age or team control: Mead is 25, and barring substantial changes in the next CBA, he’ll be arbitration-eligible after the 2027 season and under team control through 2030. Early is one year younger and one year behind Mead on the journey to both of those milestones.

Sound the alarm, friends, because what we’ve got here is a bona fide challenge trade. Read the rest of this entry »

Fifty-one weeks ago, the San Diego Padres traded a king’s ransom in prospects to the Athletics in exchange for depth starter JP Sears and hard-throwing relief ace Mason Miller.

Ordinarily, I would’ve abhorred such a move. The top prospect who went the other way, Leo De Vries, came in at no. 6 overall in the Preseason Top 100 Prospects list, and in my mind there’s no more overrated commodity in baseball than team control for a reliever. What the Phillies gave up for two and a half years of Jhoan Duran, immense a haul as it seemed at the time, was a fraction of what four and a half years of Miller cost.

Still, I kind of got it. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA — Before the Futures Game and All-Star Game, I asked a few players if there was anyone in the other dugout they were either looking forward to facing or hoping to avoid. Almost everyone — probably wisely, I must concede — declined the opportunity to give a potential World Series opponent bulletin board material.

But Jacob Latz bit.

“I’m trying to think of who has my number so far,” he said. “I gave up a homer to [Bryce Harper] in 2024. Ohtani would be cool, but he’s not playing. [Corbin Carroll], actually, I like facing him. He’s just a competitive at-bat. But probably Harper is the guy I hope I don’t face. With the hometown Philly crowd, [if I give up a home run to him] that bell is going to be ringing for, like, three minutes.” Read the rest of this entry »

Something significant happens to Chase Burns around this time every year. In 2024, the Reds made him the no. 2 overall pick in the draft. A little less than 12 months later, the former Wake Forest flamethrower made his big league debut. This summer, Burns was named to his first All-Star team, paving the way for a seven-year, $105 million contract extension.

Burns’ new contract kicks in next year and runs through the 2033 season; and in a rare occasion for a pre-arbitration extension like this, there are no opt-outs, options, or escalators. Thank God — you need a degree in discrete mathematics to know how long Julio Rodríguez is under team control, so a simple contract structure is a refreshing change. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA — “What could Jac Caglianone possibly have done to these people?” I thought to myself on Monday night. The young Kansas City Royals slugger has scarcely been in the majors a year; he’s played the Phillies only six times and not accomplished much. Surely Phillies fans didn’t have a consensus view — good or bad — on his college career at the University of Florida. If there is a historical grudge against the Royals, it’s faded to nothingness 46 years after the two teams met in the World Series.

And yet he was getting booed. I didn’t understand it. Surely Philadelphia would be predisposed to love this up-and-coming Italian-American slugger with 80-grade power and an inoffensive home market. Not all of the 43,000 sweat-drenched unfortunates in attendance were Phillies fans — enough Orioles diehards had made the trip up from Baltimore to make their customary National Anthem shout audible throughout the park — but the majority of the onlookers were locals.

And they were letting Caglianone have it.

Then Jordan Walker ducked through the arch to have Michael Buffer call his name, and the fans’ opprobrium continued. Instantly, it was clear: Hometown heroes Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper were in the Home Run Derby field, and everyone else was going to get jeered mercilessly. Read the rest of this entry »

I love the draft. Well, from a broader standpoint I find it morally abominable that workers entering an industry have no say in which company they work for or where they’ll be posted. But since we have a draft, and it seems highly unlikely that that’s going to change in the near future, I love covering it.

This is the confluence of amateur baseball (especially college ball, my great love) and the professional game. It’s the dawn of a new age of possibility; for months, we don’t know for sure where Roch Cholowsky or Jackson Flora are going to be playing in the pros. The moment in which we find out is an exciting one. I love seeing the stars of tomorrow before they’ve had their quirks sanded off by the great finishing school that is minor league baseball.

This is a minority position among baseball fans — even diehard fans — and media. In American professional sports, public interest in the draft is proportional to the proximity of draftees to the major leagues. This is as close to a law of natural science as you’ll find in sports, but since the pandemic, Major League Baseball has toyed with finding the limits of that law. Read the rest of this entry »