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 »

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 »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to next week’s trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2023-2027, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2027, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2021 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there isn’t a lot of room between the players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there’s not much of a gap between, say, the 35th ranked player and 50th. The magnitude of differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several folks I talked to might prefer a player in the honorable mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. I think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. 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 »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to next week’s trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2023-2027, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2027, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2021 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there isn’t a lot of room between the players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there’s not much of a gap between, say, the 35th ranked player and 50th. The magnitude of differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several folks I talked to might prefer a player in the honorable mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. I think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is nearly here and once again, team behavior will be affected by 40-man roster dynamics. Teams with an especially high number of currently-rostered players under contract for 2023 and prospects who need to be added to the 40-man in the offseason have what is often called a 40-man “crunch,” “overage,” or need to “churn.” This means the team has incentive to clear its overflow of players by either packaging several to acquire just one in return, or by trading for something the club can keep — international pool space, comp picks, or, more typically, younger players whose 40-man clocks are further from midnight — rather than do nothing and later lose some of those players to waivers or in the Rule 5 Draft. Teams can take care of this issue with transactions between the end of the season and the 40-man roster deadline in November, but a contending team with a crunch has more incentive to do something before the trade deadline so the results of those deals can bolster the club’s ability to reach the postseason.

In an effort to see whose depth might influence trade behavior, I assess teams’ 40-man futures every year. This exercise is done by using the RosterResource Depth Chart pages to examine current 40-man situations, subtracting pending free agents using the Team Payroll tab, and then weighing the December 2022 Rule 5 eligible prospects (or players who became eligible in past seasons and are having a strong year) to see which clubs have the biggest crunch coming. I then make an educated guess about which of those orgs might behave differently in the trade market as a result.

Some quick rules about 40-man rosters. Almost none of them contain exactly 40 players in-season because teams can add a player to the 40 to replace one who is on the 60-day injured list. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra spots for injured players and have to get down to 40 precisely, so if they want to keep some of their injury fill-ins, they have to cut someone else from the 40-man to make room. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball’s annual rituals have been around for so long that they feel like an immutable part of the fabric of life. Pitchers and catchers reporting, the All-Star break, September playoff chases and, of course, FanGraphs leaving your favorite player off of our top 50 trade value rankings, which we do to spite you (and them) specifically.

I kid, of course, but today does mark the first installment of our annual Trade Value Series. In the following days, we’ll release our list, taking performance, age, and contract into account. Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, and Craig Edwards all helmed this exercise at various points in the past, and after tag-teaming with Kevin Goldstein last year, I’ve taken over on my own.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten help. I considered a broad range of inputs: estimates of current value, projections of future value, age, contract status, positional scarcity, Statcast data, and anything else I could dream up. From there, I solicited feedback from the rest of the FanGraphs staff (special thanks are due to Dan Szymborski for his ZiPS assistance and Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry) and consulted with several outside sources, both public- and team-side, to compile the final order. Make no mistake, this is still my list, and it’s an inherently subjective estimation, but I’d like to think it’s an informed one. Read the rest of this entry »

With the All-Star break in the rear-view mirror, the eyes of the baseball world turn to the upcoming trade deadline, which is now less than two weeks away. Juan Soto’s sudden availability is dominating the headlines, pushing the rest of the field to the back burner with the focus on the possible blockbuster deal. Still, for the majority of teams who are priced out of the Soto sweepstakes, there’s no shortage of interesting trade candidates to go after over the next few weeks.

For teams looking for pitching help, the top option on the market is almost certainly Luis Castillo. A pair of shoulder injuries to the two other top targets has thrown a wrench into the market; Frankie Montas threw three innings yesterday in his first start since July 3, and Tyler Mahle is scheduled to make his first start off the IL on Sunday. It’s certainly possible either Montas or Mahle (or both) will be dealt in the next few weeks, but teams will understandably be more cautious with them.

Castillo dealt with his own shoulder injury this spring which held him back from making his season debut until May. He wasn’t all that sharp through his first four starts, but he’s turned it on since then, averaging more than six innings per start since and allowing just three total runs across his last four turns. During this recent hot streak, he’s struck out 33 batters (a 30.8% strikeout rate) in 27 innings. In his final start before the midseason break, Castillo held the Yankees to a single run in seven innings, allowing two hits and four walks and striking out eight.

Well known for his fantastic changeup, that pitch hasn’t been nearly as effective as it has been in the past. Over the first five seasons of his career, he ran a 41.2% whiff rate with the pitch, the fifth-highest whiff mark for a changeup during that period. This year, that has fallen to just 25.1%, a career low and the third year in a row it’s dropped. It’s still an effective pitch at limiting hard contact (.305 xwOBAcon), but batters simply aren’t swinging and missing at it as much as they used to.

To combat the slow decline of his changeup, Castillo has turned to his four-seam fastball, throwing his heater more often than his cambio for the first time since 2018:

It’s still a bit of a surprise to see him turn away from his changeup despite its lackluster results this year. That pitch has been such a dominant weapon for him, and he’s relied on it as his primary out pitch for the last three seasons. The biggest reason why he’s turned away from it, though, isn’t because of its loss of effectiveness; it’s because his four-seamer has been better than ever before. 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 »