As expected, the Yankees were among the contending teams active ahead of the July 31 trade deadline and in the days leading up to it. They filled a big hole at third base and a smaller one in their outfield, shuffled utility infielders, and restocked their bullpen as well, though the fortified unit did not get off to a flying start. But one thing they did not do was add a starting pitcher. Instead, as they worked to fit the newcomers onto their roster in the aftermath of the deadline, they chose to cut loose starter Marcus Stroman, ending the 34-year-old righty’s disappointing season-and-a-half run with the team. By doing so, they’re betting big on the live arms behind Max Fried and Carlos Rodón.

In 38 starts and one relief appearance totaling 193 2/3 innings since the start of 2024 — numbers suppressed by his 11-week stay on the injured list this season due to left knee inflammation — Stroman managed just a 4.69 ERA, a 4.73 FIP, and 1.0 WAR. Among pitchers with at least 180 inning in that span, only Logan Allen, Kyle Gibson, and Randy Vásquez produced less value. In 39 innings this year, Stroman was lit for a 6.23 ERA and 5.15 FIP while making just one quality start out of nine.

Stroman was squeezed out of New York’s five-man rotation by the return of Luis Gil. The 27-year-old righty, who won AL Rookie of the Year honors last season, suffered a high-grade lat strain in late February, before he’d even pitched in an exhibition game. Gil began a rehab assignment on July 13, making the first of two starts for Double-A Somerset before adding two more with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and maxing out at 4 1/3 innings and 75 pitches. He made his season debut for the Yankees on Sunday, and it was a rough one. Facing a Marlins team that has been playing very good baseball lately by going 30-22 since the start of June, Gil struggled with his command, walking four and yielding five hits while striking out three in 3 1/3 innings. He was charged with five runs, the last two of which scored after reliever Brent Headrick served up a three-run homer to Kyle Stowers. Read the rest of this entry »

You’re probably pretty good at baseball if you end up on this list:

I get it. “Doing damage when you elevate the ball” isn’t the only skill that’s necessary to be a good major league hitter. It’s not even close to the only necessary skill. On the other hand, look at that list! It goes 10 hitters deep, and they’re all great. The worst guy on that list is probably Christian Yelich, and he’s having a nice year despite dealing with his chronic case of can’t-ever-get-the-ball-off-the-ground-itis.

Psh! Who cares about wOBA? What even is wOBA? First of all, good news, here’s an article explaining it in great detail. Second, fine, let’s use a different statistic then. Here’s slugging percentage, same minimum of 100 batted balls:

Read the rest of this entry »

When the Red Sox acquired Dustin May from the Dodgers at Thursday’s trade deadline, they brought on board a starter with a pair of elbow surgeries in his rearview. The 27-year-old right-hander had Tommy John in 2021, then needed to have a flexor tendon repaired in 2023. Boston also brought on board a pitcher who has matured admirably since he was drafted 101st overall in 2016 out of a Justin, Texas high school.

“As a pitcher, I haven’t changed a whole lot,” May told me prior to the trade. “My stuff is pretty comparable to what it was before. But off the field, I’ve changed a lot. A lot of life changes have happened through the surgeries — a lot of good things — and I feel like I’ve definitely improved as a person and as a husband.

“We’re all very blessed, and talented, to be here,” he added. “Stuff can be taken away from you in an instant, and you can have no control over it. No matter how hard you work, or what you put into it, life can come at you very fast at times.”

A serious health scare last summer is an example. May suffered a torn esophagus that required emergency surgery. Less scary, but nonetheless troublesome, was his not bouncing back from TJ as well as he’d hoped. Read the rest of this entry »

Though many predicted heading into the 2025 season that the Orioles’ weak starting rotation and general inactivity over the offseason would come back to haunt them, even Baltimore’s biggest skeptics weren’t prognosticating that the team would sit well under .500 and 7.5 games out of playoff position at the end of July. Such as it is, the Orioles spent this year’s trade deadline turning over roughly a third of their roster. Over the last week or so, the O’s have traded relievers Gregory Soto, Seranthony Domínguez, and Andrew Kittredge, along with infielders Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Urías. Then on Thursday afternoon, Anthony DiComo reported that Cedric Mullins was on his way to the Mets; a few hours later, Jeff Passan broke the news that Charlie Morton would be joining the Tigers. The only healthy pending free agent who wasn’t traded out of Baltimore is Tomoyuki Sugano, and with Zach Eflin hitting the IL mere hours before the deadline, Sugano is now a load-bearing member of the rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

And so ends another action-packed trade deadline. It came in with a whimper, with a quiet Adam Frazier trade to the Royals, but it ended in an exciting crescendo during which seemingly every reliever in baseball moved to a new team in a 45-minute period. Whoever said comparison is the thief of joy had never heard of the ZiPS projections, here to distill that bullpen beauty pageant (and the rest of deadline period’s action) into some cold hard numbers estimating what all these moves actually mean in the big picture.

Deciding who “won” or “lost” the trade deadline is a fairly tricky philosophical question, since different teams come into deadline day with different goals. So instead, I’ll focus on a simpler question: Who helped their 2025 chances the most? That’s a more straightforward inquiry, one a projection system can assess. For this, I used my usual methodology, first projecting the league as it currently stands using the full-fat ZiPS projections, and then re-projecting the league as it stands, but having unwound every transaction made since the Frazier trade on July 16. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cubs sit just one game back of the Brewers in the NL Central, but the two division rivals exist as almost perfect inverses of one another when it comes to on-field performance. Chicago ranks second in wRC+ at 117 and 15th in ERA- at 98, while Milwaukee ranks 13th in wRC+ at 102 and fifth in ERA- at 89. Their common ground is on defense, where both teams are top three in defensive value.

Coming off a series loss against the Brewers and with the trade deadline bearing down, the Cubs added some depth to their weaker side of the ball on Wednesday by acquiring pitcher Michael Soroka from the Nationals. Soroka will be a free agent at the end of this year, after signing a one-year $9 million dollar deal with the Nats last December. In return, Washington received Triple-A outfielder Christian Franklin, Chicago’s fourth-round pick in 2021, and 18 year-old shortstop Ronny Cruz, whom the Cubs selected in the third round of the 2024 draft. Read the rest of this entry »

Having just added Gregory Soto to the bullpen, the Mets are at it again. Less than 90 minutes after his identical twin went to Pittsburgh in the Ke’Bryan Hayes trade, Tyler Rogers is also on the move.

Rogers, with his 1.80 ERA and 2.59 FIP in 50 innings this year for the Giants, has been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball. Still, he’s 34, and a rental, and a major departure from the hard-throwing Adonises the Mets might otherwise have pursued. And yet, David Stearns saw fit to give up Drew Gilbert, Blade Tidwell, and José Buttó — two big-name prospects and a guy who’s been decent in the majors this year — for two months of a guy who throws underhand. Maybe up to three months, if the Mets make the playoffs and stay there for a couple rounds.

It’s not quite that simple. Rogers is good, relievers are expensive now, and fame does not always equal value in the prospect world. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it’s been a slow week for deadline trades. The way the haves and have-nots line up this year, impactful additions are few and far between. The teams out of the playoff picture don’t have a lot to give up, and the teams with intriguing rental players are mostly already in the race. But the Pittsburgh Pirates, consistent innovators in ways to do weird things without contending, have entered the fray by trading Ke’Bryan Hayes to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for Taylor Rogers, minor leaguer Sammy Stafura and cash considerations, as Mark Feinsand first reported.

Hayes is about as far from a deadline rental as you can imagine. He signed a lengthy contract extension in April 2022 and is still on that deal; he’s under team control through as long as 2030, in fact, and for cheap! He’s due an average of $7.5 million annually for the next four years, and the pact’s 2030 club option is for just $12 million with a $6 million buyout. That’s the kind of deal that gets teams salivating: long team control at rates that would barely get you a good middle reliever in free agency.

It gets better! Hayes is one of the best defenders in baseball. Since his 2020 debut, he leads all major leaguers with 73 Outs Above Average. Think that’s a fluke? He leads all major leaguers in Defensive Runs Saved – by 28 runs! The distance between him and second place is the same as the distance between second place and 25th. There are plenty of good third basemen with good defensive numbers. Hayes is head and shoulders ahead of all of them, unquestionably, and he’s lapping the third base field again this year, with 15 OAA (second place is four guys tied with four). Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Wednesday. Would you like some sad news? Are your cheek muscles getting tired from constantly smiling because everything in the world keeps humming along so smoothly? Let’s bring you down with a roundup of star outfielder injury news. We’ll go in ascending order of scariness, so if you don’t feel sufficiently depressed at the beginning, just stick with it. We’ll get you there.

We start in Minnesota, where Byron Buxton is headed to the IL with left ribcage inflammation. Buxton was removed from Saturday’s game after experiencing pain in his ribs while he was running. At the time, the Twins said Buxton would be day-to-day with “left side soreness.” He hasn’t spoken to the press since Friday, so all updates have come from manager Rocco Baldelli. On Saturday, Baldelli told reporters, “We’re just going to get an image tomorrow morning just to see what we’re dealing with. He actually felt it more running than anything else.” The MRI delivered good news, revealing only “cartilage irritation” rather than structural damage to the ribs. The team again classified Buxton as day-to-day. “It’s a good outcome,” said Baldelli. “We’ll see how he is tomorrow and so on, but to be day-to-day with what he left the game with, it’s a good thing. We’ll measure him out, get him looked at by the trainers each day, get him a lot of treatment and hopefully he’ll be back very soon.”

Unfortunately, Buxton hasn’t gotten back into a game and the Twins have lost three of four, cementing their status as deadline sellers. Harrison Bader has taken over in center field, but he’s widely expected to be moved at the deadline. Buxton has a no-trade clause and recently reiterated his stated desire to say with the Twins for life, but the injury seems likely to silence any remaining whispers about the possibility that he could be traded too. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Correa is an Astro… again. Mason Miller is a Padre! Eugenio Suárez is a Mariner! Jhoan Duran is a Phillie! Both of the Rogers twins are about to wear new uniforms (Taylor twice over)! The 2025 trade deadline has come and gone, and it saw some blockbuster moves. To help you keep track of all the activity, I’ve rounded up all of our deadline pieces in one place. You’ll find the broader preview and summary pieces listed first, followed by links to useful site tools, relevant pieces from RotoGraphs, and of course, a team-by-team listing of the transaction breakdowns that involve your favorite squad, either as buyers or sellers. I’ll update the roundup as more deadline analysis goes live.

All of the pieces linked below took time and resources to produce. If you enjoy our coverage of the trade deadline and are in a position to do so, we hope you’ll sign up for a FanGraphs Membership. It’s the best way to both support our work and experience the site, and comes with a ton of great benefits. Now, on to the roundup! Read the rest of this entry »