Don’t look now, but for the first time in three and a half months, the NL West has a new leader. While the Dodgers have struggled to the point of face-planting, the Padres have surged, producing a 10-game swing in the NL West standings since July 3 thanks in large part to a dominant bullpen and some timely upgrades ahead of the July 31 trade deadline. The Southern California rivals are set to square off six times in the next 10 days, starting with a weekend series in Los Angeles — but the Padres will be without staff ace Michael King, who landed on the injured list on Thursday due to left knee inflammation.

After notching 93 victories last season — the second-highest total in franchise history — and making the playoffs for the third year out of five, the Padres bolted out of the gate in 2025, winning 15 of their first 19 games and spending much of April leading the division. They fell out of the top spot on April 26, but spent the next six weeks or so within striking distance before a 13-15 June dragged them down. Both the Padres and Giants were nine games out of first at the close of play on July 3, but since then, San Diego has put up the NL’s second-best record behind only Milwaukee (28-5), while Los Angeles and San Francisco are tied for the league’s third-worst record, half a game better than lowly Colorado and Washington (both 12-22):

The Padres took over first place on Wednesday afternoon in emphatic fashion, scoring seven second-inning runs off control-challenged Giants stater Kai-Wei Teng and cruising to an 11-1 victory. With that, they completed a three-game sweep, extended their winning streak to five games, and claimed their 14th victory in their last 17 games dating back to July 26. Later that night, the Dodgers coughed up a 5-2 lead, allowing the Angels to sweep them in Anaheim and knock them a full game out of first. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. August is a great time for reflection in the baseball world. The trade deadline has passed, which means what you see is pretty much what you get roster-wise. The playoff picture is generally clear, but no one has clinched yet. It’s too early to think about postseason rotations, but too late to think about turning the year around. The urgency mostly isn’t there – unless you’re a Mets fan trying to ward off 25 years of ghosts, of course. But the downtime of the baseball season has its own small delights, and even when you aren’t watching the brightest stars on the biggest stage, baseball is awesome. So thanks as always to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the column format, and let’s get going.

1. Opportunity
The Twins might have traded away a ton of their major league roster at the deadline, but that doesn’t mean they’re filling up the lineup with replacement players they found at a local tryout. Seven of the nine everyday position players on the current squad were drafted by Minnesota in the first two rounds. The other two, Alan Roden and Kody Clemens, aren’t exactly nobodies – they’re both third round draft picks the Twins acquired this year, and of course Clemens’ dad is famous too.

It’s tough sledding for Quad-A players looking for a major league shot. But while the starters still look like your average major leaguer when it comes to their amateur pedigree, the bench is another matter. Mickey Gasper was a 27th rounder who didn’t debut until he was 28. But he’s only the second-most improbable Twin. Ryan Fitzgerald went undrafted in 2016, didn’t reach Triple-A until he was 27, and finally got his major league break earlier this year as a 30-year-old. He went 0-3 in a single game as an injury replacement, pinch-ran in another, and got sent back down. Sometimes life in the bigs is nasty, brutish, and short.
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We’re in the phase of the minor league calendar where the domestic complex league seasons have ended, in order to accommodate the incoming draft classes, while the rest of the minor leagues continue with their regular seasons for a few more weeks. There are some recent draftees who have already been sent out to affiliates, but the majority have gotten going at their respective facilities during unofficial “Bridge League” or “Continuation Camp” activity with loose, flexible schedules and start times. There’s a big group chat in which scouts and development personnel (plus a handful of media folks, and probably a clandestine autograph hound or two) exchange lineups and pitching probables to keep everyone abreast of the goings on. Ceasing official play in Arizona and Florida allows teams to onboard their draft classes in an unofficial setting and avoids the traffic jam of minor roster spots, which would exceed the allowed amount if the draft classes were just assigned to affiliates right away.

This is also a fruitful place for rehabbers to see their first real game action since injury because teams can just “roll” innings whenever they feel like it. If you’re on a 25-pitch limit and you’ve hit your count without getting three outs, the inning will just turn over regardless of how many guys are on base. This setting is about development and is not an actual game, so it’s a safe place to shake off rust and work up a sweat. On Tuesday, when the Padres officially caught the Dodgers in the NL West race, I saw their Bridge League teams square off with two rehabbing members of their 40-man rosters getting an inning of work at the start of the game. In this piece, I’ll pass along how Kyle Hurt (Dodgers) and Bradgley Rodriguez (Padres) looked and examine whether either team has a postseason pitching weapon lurking in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers may have peaked too early. On July 3, they completed a three-game sweep of the White Sox, lifting their record to a season-high 24 games over .500 (56-32) and their NL West lead to nine games over both the Padres and Giants. It’s been mostly downhill since then for Los Angeles, starting with a seven-game losing streak from July 4–11, which included three-game sweeps by the Astros and Brewers. This week, they dropped three straight to the Angels while the Padres swept the Giants, knocking the Dodgers out of first place for the first time since April 27. The two Southern California rivals face off six times in the next 10 days, bookended by three-game series in Los Angeles this weekend and San Diego next weekend.

I’ll zoom out to the bigger picture below and in a subsequent Padres installment, but Tuesday night’s Dodgers-Angels game had a couple moments that had to be seen to be believed. The Dodgers scratched out a run in the top of the first against Angels starter Victor Mederos, but opposite number Emmet Sheehan, who has generally pitched quite well since returning from Tommy John surgery in mid-June, fell behind each of the first five Angels he faced, leading to three first-inning runs. A two-run Dalton Rushing homer tied it in the second; the Angels retook the lead with runs in the third and fourth, but the Dodgers’ two-out rally for two runs tied it in the fifth, 5-5.

The Dodgers had a golden opportunity to break the game open when Miguel Rojas and Rushing both singled off reliever Brock Burke to open the sixth. Up came Shohei Ohtani, who amid the team’s recent malaise entered the game on a 17-for-38 run that included homers in three straight games. Ohtani lined a Burke fastball up the middle, but shortstop Zach Neto, shifted about six feet to the left of second base, speared it and was perfectly positioned to double off Rojas, then fire to first. Rushing, who had ranged too far towards second, punctuated becoming the third out in the triple play by face-planting while trying to avoid a tag (luckily, he at least escaped injury). Oof.

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Jack Dreyer has been one of the top performers on a Los Angeles Dodgers pitching staff that includes no shortage of better-known hurlers. Amid relative obscurity, the 26-year-old rookie left-hander has logged a a 2.98 ERA and a 2.95 FIP over 46 appearances comprising 57-and-a-third innings. Moreover, only Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been worth more WAR (3.5) than has the 2021 non-drafted free agent out of the University of Iowa (1.3).

Our lead prospect analyst was early to the bandwagon. When our 2025 Dodgers Top Prospects list was published in late April, Eric Longenhagen described Dreyer as “incredibly deceptive,” adding that his whippy arm action delivers a fastball that has “20 inches of due north vertical break as it explodes toward the plate.”

The southpaw’s signature pitch wasn’t seen as plus during his injury-marred Iowa Hawkeyes days.

“In college, I was always told that I have average spin rate, so I can’t really throw my fastball at the top of the zone,” recalled Dreyer, who missed much of the 2019 season with a shoulder injury, then all of 2021 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. “I was told that I had a very average fastball. I kind of believed that, but then I got to the Dodgers and they were like, ‘No, actually, your stuff is really, really good. You can live at the top of the zone because of how your pitch moves.’ So, that’s kind of how I’ve adapted my pitching, using heaters at the top, which opens up my other pitches.”

Dreyer’s secondaries comprise a curveball that he’s thrown at a 10.8% clip this season, and a “bad slider” that he’s thrown far more frequently at 45.2%. More on the latter in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Prior to batting practice, pitchers stroll onto the outfield grass to play catch with each other. Keeping their arms loose is a primary objective of what’s known as “catch play,” but there is more to it than just that. As a rule, the pitchers are throwing with purpose, both in terms of velocity and making sure that their mechanics are in order. At times they are also tinkering with grips, trying to find — or rediscover — desired movement on a specific pitch. And then there is long toss. While not all pitchers employ the practice, it is common to see crow-hop throws from foul line to deep center field. One thing you’ll rarely see is the casual tossing of a baseball back and forth.

How do pitchers get paired up for catch play? Does it differ for starters and relievers? What knowledge can be gleaned from these partnerships? Are there teammates you would rather not have as a throwing partner, because they’re especially challenging to catch?

With those questions in mind, I talked to three starters (Garrett Crochet, Seth Lugo, and Michael Wacha), two relievers (Liam Hendriks and Kirby Yates) a position player turned reliever (Lucas Erceg), a pitcher turned pitching coach (Mark Prior), a pair of pitchers turned broadcasters (Jeff Montgomery and Steve Sparks, and a longtime bullpen catcher (Javier Bracamonte).

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Garrett Crochet, Boston Red Sox left-hander:

“Greg Weissert is my catch partner right now. Honestly, it kind of happened out of necessity. It was Justin Slaten for awhile, but Slaten went down [with an injury]. I was playing catch with our bullpen catcher for awhile, but I prefer to throw with another pitcher. Typically, starters either play catch with each other or with a bullpen catcher. In Chicago [with the White Sox], it was mostly a bullpen catcher for me.

“When I was coming out of the bullpen in 2021, I was throwing with Michael Kopech and everything was just real hard and real scary. Sometimes with Weisert it gets that way, too, especially with the curveball he throws. It’s different for Greg and myself, too, because he has to be ready to pitch every day, whereas I don’t. I’m probably the one that he hates to catch. But no, he loves it. He’ll get down on one knee, use a catcher’s mitt, catch flat-grounds. It’s cool. I try to get after it as much as my body allows me to. Read the rest of this entry »

Tyler Glasnow was 21 years old and full of promise as he sat atop our 2015 Pittsburgh Pirates Top Prospects list when it was published in January of that year. Our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel gave plus grades to both Glasnow’s heater and his hook, opining that the tall right-hander had no. 2 starter potential.

Despite an injury history that includes Tommy John surgery, Glasnow has largely lived up to expectations. Drafted 152nd overall in 2011 out of William S. Hart High School in Santa Clarita, California, he was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays in July 2018 (a deadline deal Pirates fans would love to forget) and logged a 3.20 ERA and 3.10 FIP over 71 starts in his five-plus seasons there. Subsequently swapped to the Los Angeles Dodgers in December 2023, Glasnow has a 3.47 ERA and a 3.28 FIP over 31 starts with his current club. He is top-of-the-rotation quality when fully fit, but he has had trouble staying healthy. Just this season, he was out from late April until early July with shoulder inflammation.

What did Glasnow’s 2015 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel wrote and asked Glasnow to respond to it.

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“Glasnow was drafted in the fifth round out of high school in 2011 as a low-profile pure-projection bet with fringy-to-average stuff and a limited track record.”

“That’s probably pretty accurate,” Glasnow replied. “I was fifth round, just more projectable, and throwing 89-91 [mph]. I had a decent curveball, but it wasn’t very good yet. My stuff was decent for high school, but compared to pro ball, not really. I was lower velo, mostly just two pitches, and I had a very bad changeup.”

“He blew up in 2013, dominating Low-A with a fastball that hit 97 mph. He continued his progress at High-A in 2014, sitting 93-96 mph and hitting 98 mph.” 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 »

Well, here it is, folks. This is our final transaction analysis piece of the 2025 trade deadline, and we’re covering two outfielders who will now be in position to help playoff contenders. On Thursday, the Dodgers acquired outfielder Alex Call from the Nationals in exchange for pitching prospects Eriq Swan and Sean Paul Liñan. And the Reds traded with the A’s for veteran Miguel Andujar, sending back pitching prospect Kenya Huggins, so under no circumstances can we accuse Cincinnati of prospect hugging.

We’ll start with the Dodgers-Nationals deal. Here’s my analysis: Alex Call is pretty good. He can help the Dodgers win. You are welcome. ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke news of the deal, while Andrew Golden of the Washington Post reported the names of the pitchers headed to Washington.

To the continued and possibly eternal chagrin of Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein, Call will not be simply taking over Michael Conforto’s spot in left field. Earlier on Thursday, the Dodgers traded the lefty-hitting James Outman to the Twins in exchange for reliever Brock Stewart, leaving a space for the right-handed Call as a fourth outfielder and likely platoon partner for Conforto. If you put the two trades together to compare apples to apples, you get Call for Outman (and Stewart for two prospects). Call is three years older than Outman, with roughly the same amount of service time. He’s hitting much better than Outman right now and allows the Dodgers to get another right-handed bat in the lineup, but he offers a bit less upside in the future.

Call is 30 years old, and he has a career 102 wRC+ in 920 plate appearances. He’s been significantly better this season, running a 118 wRC+. He doesn’t have wild platoon splits either. This season, he has a 124 wRC+ against lefties and a 115 wRC+ against righties. Over his career, those numbers are 110 against lefties and 97 against righties. Conforto has much better career numbers against righties, but this season, he only has a wRC+ of 85 against them. It wouldn’t be unreasonable at all to just plug Call in as the starting left fielder and call it a day, and it would make Craig so happy.

Call has a reputation for speed and defense, but it’s worth at least noting that his sprint speed has declined some this season, and his defense has graded out closer to average so far. It’s possible that he’ll get some of that speed back, as he’s less than a year out from a tear in the plantar fascia of his left foot. Regardless, he should be able to hold down all three outfield positions when called upon. With James Wood, Dylan Crews, and more recently, call-up Daylen Lile in the outfield, Call no longer looked like a part of Washington’s future. On the other side, the Dodgers have made a decent upgrade to an outfield that has come up just a bit short all season.

Swan is a 23-year-old right-handed starter, and at 6-foot-6 with a fastball that hits 100 mph and iffy control, he certainly looks like a Washington Nationals prospect. He didn’t put up good numbers in college, and he hasn’t put up good numbers in the minors due to wild walk totals, but did you hear me say that he was 6’6” and can throw a hundo? Swan’s 4.43 ERA and 4.34 FIP this season mark big improvements from 2024, but he’s still a big development project. Eric Longenhagen ranked him 13th in the Dodgers system with a 45 future value back in April, but he now downgraded Swan to a 40+ because he looks more likely to end up as a reliever.

That said, Swan could be a pretty good reliever. Right now, Eric has a 70-grade on Swan’s slider. He can hit the zone with it, and its whiff rate is approaching 50%. The fastball is sitting 96, but it’s playing down and he isn’t throwing strikes with it. It might end up as a pitch that’s only good for trying to attract whiffs above the zone. But that’s as a starter. If Swan ends up as a max-effort reliever, a plus-plus slider and a high-90s fastball could work just fine.

The Venezuelan-born Liñan is 20 years old, and you won’t read anything about him that doesn’t start and end with his changeup. Eric put a 55 present value on the pitch back in April, when he ranked Liñan 30th in the Dodgers system with a 40 FV. Liñan has moved around the minors a bit this season, beginning in Low-A, making two spot starts in Triple-A, then going down to High-A. He got shelled in one of those Triple-A starts, but even so, he’s got an overall ERA of 2.78 and FIP of 3.29 in 18 appearances and 14 starts across those three levels. He’s walking more than 10% of the batters he’s facing, but he’s also striking out nearly a third of them. It’s worth noting the environment, too, because they make Linan’s ERA- of 61 and FIP- of 74 look even better. Jeffrey Paternostro of Baseball Prospectus wrote a very fun article about how to evaluate Liñan back in May, and I strongly recommend it. For now the question is how Liñan will develop and whether he can come up with anything else to complement his changeup. Eric wrote up a new blurb for him today, so I’ll give it to you verbatim:

Liñan had a dominant start to his 2025 season and was promoted out of Low-A Rancho after just a half dozen starts. He made two emergency starts at Triple-A before heading to High-A Great Lakes, where he had been good (but no longer dominant) in 10 outings prior to the Alex Call trade. Liñan’s best pitch is his tail-action changeup, which moves enough to have overwhelmed A-ball hitters so far. He beats a lot of hitters with his fastball for a guy sitting 91-92, but Liñan’s command may not be fine enough for that to be true against big league hitters. Strike-throwers with great changeups like this tend to pan out in the fifth starter range, at least, and if Liñan can exceed this projection it’ll be because he’s either sharpened his fastball command to thrive with 40 velocity, or he’s found a much better breaking ball than the cutter he’s throwing now.

This seems like a pretty good haul for Call. He’s a good player, but he fits better in the Dodgers’ current plans than he does in the Nationals’ future plans. Swan and Liñan are genuinely intriguing prospects who could contribute in the majors, but they’ve both got a lot of developing to do.

Now let’s get to the other deal. After trading with the Pirates for third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes and getting starter Zack Littell from the Rays, the Reds kept on adding, sending Huggins to the A’s in exchange for Andujar. Ari Alexander of KPRC2 first reported the deal. Andujar is a nine-year veteran, but he’s finally on the brink of free agency and is performing, which meant that at the deadline, the A’s could turn him into a pitching prospect, the highest level of reincarnation a being can attain according to the religion practiced by the baseball team in Sacramento.

Andujar is no one’s idea of a star, but he’s crushing left-handed pitching, and for a Reds team with a 79 wRC+ against lefties, sixth worst in baseball, he must look like a piña colada in the desert. Andujar put up a 129 wRC+ and 3.9 WAR with the Yankees as a 23-year-old rookie in 2018, finishing second in the Rookie of the Year voting behind some guy named Shohei Ohtani. In the seven years since, injuries and inconsistency have limited Andujar to fewer than two seasons’ worth of games, and he’s put up -0.4 WAR with a combined 86 wRC+. That said, Andujar has looked better recently. He’s running a 107 wRC+ in 2025 and a combined 105 wRC+ over the last three years. Andujar is batting .422 with a 186 wRC+ in 48 plate appearances against lefties this season. Those numbers will play in any lineup.

This season, Andujar has split his time between third base and left field. The Reds have gotten just 0.4 WAR from the third base position and 1.9 WAR from the three outfield positions, both of which rank 26th among all teams. With Hayes joining the club, Andujar won’t see too much time at third, but he can combine with Noelvi Marte, who has now been moved from third base to the outfield, to platoon with lefty batters Gavin Lux and Jake Fraley. Connor Joe or Will Benson will need to be sent down once TJ Friedl returns from the paternity list. It’s a lot of moving parts for a small upgrade, but it is an upgrade nonetheless.

The Reds drafted Huggins, a Louisiana Tech commit, out of junior college in 2022, and Eric ranked him 26th among the organization’s prospects this May, with a 40 FV. However, Eric now has a 40+ grade on him, because after recovering from Tommy John surgery that torpedoed most of his 2023 and 2024 seasons, Huggins looks more like a starter. His changeup improved in a major way, giving him a third pitch, but there’s more behind it. “This guy’s conditioning totally changed during his TJ rehab,” Eric said. “He’s not as big as Sean Manaea, but he’s built like young Manaea, just an absolute unit. The better conditioning might be why his delivery is more under control now and he’s throwing strikes.”

Huggins is 22, and after the injury, he’s in his third attempt at Low-A with fewer than 40 professional appearances under his belt. There’s still reliever risk here. However, he has a 3.69 ERA and 3.64 FIP through just over 63 innings so far this season in Low-A Daytona, which gives him an ERA- and FIP- of 87. “He’s a little behind the developmental curve and still at Low-A,” Eric said, “but Huggins hasn’t been shy about mixing in all of his pitches; he’s throwing his sinking changeup (which might end up being his best pitch) to righties, and he can land a backdoor slider for strikes reliably. He has a lot of No. 4/5 starter ingredients now.”

This is a minor deal, but it’s easy to see the appeal on either side. Andujar’s skill set is somewhat limited, but it fits in Cincinnati and he comes at a reasonable price. The injuries make it hard to know how much Huggins will be able to offer, but there’s certainly enough to dream on.

It’s a big deadline for relief pitchers, even for teams that aren’t operating in the Mason Miller or Jhoan Duran tier. The Orioles bullpen continues to get picked over like a charcuterie board: Andrew Kittredge is Chicago-bound, with the Cubs sending Wilfri De La Cruz the other way.

The Tigers beefed up their bullpen by picking up Paul Sewald from the Guardians in exchange for a player to be named later or cash. A few hours later, Detroit sent minor league pitchers Josh Randall and R.J. Sales to Washington for Kyle Finnegan and added Codi Heuer from Texas for minor league depth. Finally, the Dodgers are bringing Brock Stewart back from Minnesota, with James Outman going in the other direction.

Let’s take those in order. Read the rest of this entry »