The Tigers are rebuilding as the Braves have tried to build a bullpen on the fly all season long. The match between the two teams is an easy one to make, and Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Tigers are close to trading away closer Shane Greene to the Braves. Robert Murray has added the return for the Tigers. Here’s the deal:
Braves Receive:

• RHP Shane Greene

Tigers Receive:

• LHP Joey Wentz
• OF Travis Demeritte

A season ago, Greene racked up 32 saves for the Tigers, but he generally wasn’t a very good reliever. His ground-ball rate at 40% was lower than in previous seasons, and too many fly balls meant too many homers and a 4.61 FIP and an ERA over 5. This season, Greene was able to get back to his ground-balling ways with a sinker/cutter/slider arsenal, and he’s been a pretty good pitcher as a result. Looking at Greene’s ERA might lead one to believe he is a great pitcher, but the underlying numbers don’t completely support that greatness.

Greene has a 1.18 ERA, which is certainly really good. Only Kirby Yates‘ 1.02 mark bests Greene among relievers this season. Expecting Greene to continue to post a 1.18 ERA is folly. He has struck out 29% of batters, which is good, while walking 8% of batters, which is roughly average. His ground-ball rate on the season is 54%, and that’s going to keep the ball in the park and limit damage, but those things alone aren’t enough to take a 3.80 FIP, which is about 20% better than average in these heightened run environments, and move it to a 1.18 ERA.

Greene’s BABIP is .181 and his left-on-base rate is 85%, and neither number is sustainable going forward. He’s also given up six runs on the season which weren’t earned, more than double his total of five earned runs. This isn’t to say Greene isn’t good, but it is enough to say Greene isn’t great. Over at Statcast, his xwOBA is a solid .282, but his actual wOBA is about 60 points lower. Greene is a solid addition to the Braves pen, and 15 years ago, the ERA and saves might have netted the Tigers a top-50 prospect. Today, Greene is another solid reliever among many available at the trade deadline. The Braves are likely to pay a premium for that need, but their top prospects were always going to be off limits. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies signed Andrew McCutchen in the offseason and he played very well before going down with a knee injury in early June. Right before the injury, the club traded for Jay Bruce in part due to Odubel Herrera being placed on leave under the league’s domestic violence policy. Since that time, Herrera has been suspended for the rest of the season while Bruce has landed on the injured list. Again seeking outfield help, the Phillies have now made a deal with the Pirates for Corey Dickerson. Jeff Passan was first with the news.

Phillies Receive:

• Corey Dickerson

Pirates Receive:

• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After putting up 2.6 WAR and a 115 wRC+ in 2017 for the Rays, the arbitration-eligible Dickerson was traded to the Pirates for Daniel Hudson and his contract. For the Pirates last season, Dickerson put up an identical 115 wRC+ and a 2.7 WAR. He dramatically lowered his strikeouts with the Pirates to make up for a loss of power and only 21 walks all year. A week into this season, Dickerson strained his shoulder and was replaced by rookie Bryan Reynolds, who has been very good for Pittsburgh, though a BABIP over .400 is doing a lot of the work. Dickerson, a free agent at the end of the season, has come back strong from the injury with a 133 wRC+ in 142 plate appearances. He’s kept the gains he made last season on the strikeout front, but he has been a much more patient hitter with a 9% walk rate in limited time. Dan Szymborski recently listed Dickerson as an under-the-radar move this deadline:

Corey Dickerson is unsigned for next season and it’s hard to see the Pirates being gung-ho about bringing him back on a larger, guaranteed contract. Dickerson’s healthy now and is putting up his typical wRC+ around 120. Given that he can actually field his position, I personally think he’s far more interesting a pickup than Nicholas Castellanos would be. The Pirates aren’t technically out of the playoff picture, but as they now have the second-worst record in the National League, the camera can’t see them standing behind the large adult sons.

Dickerson is likely to replace Adam Haseley, who has played fairly well in limited time but doesn’t have the proven bat Dickerson provides. The team went a couple weeks without a Bruce-type hitter, and now they have another one in Dickerson. This is mostly a depth move, but Dickerson provides the Phillies with another solid bat in their lineup and could put Scott Kingery more often in the infield, as Jim Salisbury notes: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hardly a National secret that Washington is in need of bullpen help. Even as the team has put themselves back into playoff position over the the last month or so, the bullpen has a 4.67 FIP and a 5.06 ERA in July. To help in the late innings, the Nationals have acquired Daniel Hudson of the Toronto Blue Jays, as first reported by Scott Mitchell. The return was first reported by Ken Rosenthal and the trade looks like this:
Nationals Receive:

• RHP Daniel Hudson

Blue Jays Receive:

• RHP Kyle Johnston

After a couple solid years in the Diamondbacks pen in 2015 and 2016, Hudson was near replacement-level for the Pirates in 2017 and then worse than that for the Dodgers a year ago. After signing a minor league contract with the Angels in the offseason, he was released near the end of spring training before the Blue Jays guaranteed him $1.5 million. With Toronto, the 32-year-old righty has been solid, putting up a better-than-average 4.21 FIP along with a very-good 3.00 ERA. His strikeout rate is pretty even from a year ago at 23%, with his walk rate up to 11% this season, but he’s only allowed five homers in 48 innings.

He throws a mid-90s four-seamer around 60% of the time and used his sinker about 10% this season, which might help explain some of his homer-suppressing tendencies. As a result, he’s throwing his slider only a quarter of the time, down from more than 40% last year with the Dodgers. This might not be an impact move for the Nationals, but they needed help and Hudson should be an improvement over what they have in-house. Lefty Roenis Elías from the Mariners should help as well.

As for Johnston, he’s a righty who didn’t make the Nationals prospect list before the season. He was a sixth-round pick in 2017 by Washington and his control problems in college carried over to the pros with double-digit walk rates in his first two minor league seasons. He is repeating High-A this year and just turned 23, but he has turned in a solid season. He’s got a 23% strikeout rate and his walk rate is down to 9% on the season in 20 starts. Over 20% of his fly balls have been infield flies, and his swinging strike rate is very good at 15%. As for a scouring report, Eric Longenhagen adds the following:

Johnston sits 89-94, and touches 97, and he can manipulate the fastball to sink or sometimes cut. He also has an above-average slider in the mid-80s, typically 82-85 but sometimes harder. While he also has a splitter, Johnston doesn’t use it often. He’s a potential reliever.

Johnston still has a ways to go, but there’s enough there to think he has a shot as a bullpen arm in the future. That seems about right for two months of Daniel Hudson.

There are always a few deadline trades made for clerical reasons rather than with a pennant race in mind. This is one of them:

Rangers get:
RHP Nate Jones
$1 million in international bonus space
Cash

White Sox get:
RHP Joseph Jarneski
RHP Ray Castro

The oft-injured Jones, who has a 2020 team option and a mutual option for 2021, will be on the shelf for the rest of 2019 due to forearm surgery performed in late May. It’s possible that a surprisingly competitive Rangers club will keep Jones around in the hopes that his stuff returns from yet another injury. More likely, Texas’ 40-man situation will lead them to decline his option. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night’s three-way trade between the Padres, Indians, and Reds, which was headlined by two mercurial big leaguers, also featured the movement of several notable prospects, including two from our Top 100 (sort of) in left fielder Taylor Trammell, who comes in at No. 31 overall, and left-handed pitcher Logan Allen, who is No. 110. As I move through the trade, talking about the young pieces used to headline, balance, and sweeten this deal to completion, I’ll remind you of who the team gave up to acquire the prospect. I’ll touch on some big league stuff throughout the piece because three-way deals make it hard to isolate analysis to just the prospects, but there’s also analysis that focuses on the major leaguers — including the Reds’ return, which I ignore because they only received a big leaguer — from Dan right here. Let’s begin by looking at the best prospect included in the trade.

Padres acquired
LF Taylor Trammell (55 FV)

Padres traded
OF Franmil Reyes
LHP Logan Allen (50 FV)
3B Victor Nova (35+ FV)

Trammell becomes our fourth-ranked prospect in a Padres system that we have rated as the second best in baseball; this deal helps San Diego close the gap between itself and No. 1 ranked Tampa Bay by about $20 million.

We like Trammell a lot, even though we moved him down from a 60 to a 55 FV in a recent update to THE BOARD. Until a slight (and ultimately unconcerning) downturn this season, Trammell had been a consistent statistical performer, which is atypical of most two-sport high school prospects (he was an electric high school running back and could have played college football) who often come to the pro game with an unrefined feel to hit. He’s a scowling, intense guy who plays with focus and effort. Across four pro seasons, Trammell has hit .273/.367/.408, amassing 112 extra-base hits and 107 stolen bases (76% success rate) in just shy of 400 career games. He’s a plus-plus runner who could be an elite defender in left field due to his range (his arm is comfortably below average, which is part of why we have him projected to left) and whose combination of speed and ball/strike recognition will likely make him a dynamic offensive catalyst at the top of a lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, Jesús Aguilar took the starting first base job in Milwaukee away from Eric Thames, hitting 35 homers and posting a 135 wRC+ as the Brewers rolled to a division title. This year, Aguilar’s struggles opened the job back up for Thames; Aguilar has been relegated to the weak side of a platoon. A strong month of July in part-time duty wasn’t enough to play him back into a starting role with the Brewers, but it was enough to get the Tampa Bay Rays interested and willing to part with a pitcher the Brewers can use for their own pennant drive. As first reported by Jeff Passan:

Brewers Receive

• RHP Jake Faria

Rays Receive

• 1B Jesús Aguilar

For the Rays, the need for a right-handed bat is obvious. The left-handed Austin Meadows and Nathaniel Lowe have been getting starts at first base and designated hitter against lefties, with Ji-Man Choi only playing against righties and catcher Travis D’Arnaud getting time at first as well. Aguilar and his righty bat should be able to relieve some of the poor matchups the Rays have found themselves in. Aguilar has bad splits against lefties this season, but that’s more likely a product of generally hitting poorly and some randomness than weird reverse platoon splits. And while his 2019 performance has been wanting, with an 82 wRC+, he’s shown some signs of putting things together over the last month, as the rolling wRC+ graph shows.

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday’s trade of Jason Vargas to the Phillies wasn’t exactly a blockbuster, but it was noteworthy as the rare intradivisional pre-deadline swap. Some might view in-season deals with direct rivals to be taboo, but they do occur, and as today’s one-size-fits-all deadline approaches, I thought it might be fun to take a quick look at the recent history of such trades.

To keep this from becoming unruly, I’m confining my focus to the 2012-19 period, the era of two Wild Cards in each league — a cutoff chosen because it expands not only the number of teams who make the playoffs, but also the group who can at least envision themselves as contenders. For this, I’m using the Baseball-Reference Trade Partners tool and counting only trades that occurred in June, July, or August, which we might more accurately call midsummer deals rather than deadline ones — though some of them were definitely of that variety. I’m omitting straight purchases, which generally involve waiver bait, though I have counted deals in which cash changed hands instead of a player to be named later.

Read the rest of this entry »

When we talk about teams not taking advantage of the best seasons of their stars, there’s no better example than Mike Trout and the Angels. You could make a 90-win team by simply building a .500 team around Trout, and yet the Angels have been able to do this only once with their center fielder. But they’re hardly the only team to fritter away the prime of top talent. Enter the Colorado Rockies.

The Rockies can hardly be called a grand failure on the field, having won 87 and 91 games in 2017 and ’18, making the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time in franchise history. But you could also argue that it’s a team that you can say underperformed those win totals, especially last year. The 2018 Rockies won 91 games, but that was with two legitimate Cy Young and MVP contenders; after successfully doing the hard part and finding legitimate stars, they’ve repeatedly failed to put a halfway competent team around those stars.

To illustrate this, here is team WAR from 2017, 2018, and 2019 (through July 29) outside of a team’s top two position players and top two hitters. As noted above, the Rockies have done as good job finding high-end talent as any team in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Blake Parker, who signed with the Phillies as a free agent today for terms not yet disclosed, struck out 33.9% of the batters he faced as an Angel in 2017 and walked just 6.3%. That performance earned him two consecutive one-year, $1.8 million deals: one with the Angels, for 2018, and one with the Twins for this year. Parker wasn’t all that effective in Minnesota, though, posting a 5.35 FIP over 36.1 innings pitched, and he lost Rocco Baldelli’s confidence in July, earning just six appearances after getting 12 in June. Now he’s a Phillie, after the Twins designated him for assignment on July 24 and he cleared waivers three days later.

The problem in 2019 appears on the surface to be velocity, especially on the fastball. That pitch was averaging 93.9 mph just two years ago, then dropped down to 92.8 last year and 92 so far this year. Parker can succeed without a fastball at 94 — he posted a 2.90 FIP over 46 innings with the Cubs in 2013 while it sat at 92.8 — but he threw his curveball nearly a third of the time back then, and that pitch has never been particularly effective. In late 2018, he added a cut fastball that he now throws about 7% of the time, almost entirely at the expense of his four-seamer, but the overall package just hasn’t come together. His strikeout rate and swinging strike rate are both down even as contact against him is up:

Read the rest of this entry »

A glimpse at Robbie Ray might look like an ace at work. Four times this season, Ray has struck out at least 10 batters while walking one hitter or fewer. Only Gerrit Cole, Chris Sale, and Max Scherzer have more matching games. Since the beginning of the 2016 season, Ray has struck out 31% of batters faced; among the 183 starters with at least 200 innings, only Scherzer and Sale have higher strikeout rates. The strikeouts are great, but Ray’s walk rates and inability to pitch deep into games has long held him back. While he has continued to work to get better, the changes have continued to lead Ray back to being the generally above-average pitcher he’s always been.

Ray’s first full season with the Diamondbacks in 2015 was a solid one, with a 22% strikeout rate, a 9% walk rate, and an ERA and FIP both in the mid-threes, about 10% better than average. Ray tried to get better by changing his delivery slightly, as he told David Laurila in 2016, and become a “strikeout madman”, as August Fagerstrom detailed. His strikeouts went way up, but so did his homers, though his 3.76 FIP was again about 10% better than average. Some bad luck on balls in play meant an ugly 4.90 ERA and the questions began about Ray’s ability to pitch deep into games and limit hard contact.

In 2017, Ray ditched his changeup as well as his sinker and used his curve much more, as Eno Sarris wrote at the beginning of the season. Ray increased his strikeout rate even more, though his walk rate climbed a bit as well and he still gave up his fair share of homers on the way to a 3.72 FIP that was 15% better than league average. It was Ray’s best season and whatever bad luck he had from 2016 turned itself around in 2017, to the tune of a 2.89 ERA and a handful of down-ballot Cy Young votes. Last year was a disappointing one, as Ray missed two months with an oblique injury and posted his first below-average FIP in Arizona. His walk rate surged, though after a rough start to open the second half, he closed the season well with a 3.78 FIP that was about 10% better than average and a 2.83 ERA thanks to a very low BABIP. Read the rest of this entry »