Another trade deadline has come and gone, and I must say, this one was more exciting than I expected. I didn’t see the Yankees, Astros, or Dodgers making huge splashes, given that all three are in a daunting position both for first place in their divisions and a first-round playoff bye. There were also relatively few short-term rental options available; Juan Soto, Frankie Montas, and Luis Castillo, among others, could always be traded, but with none of them free agents after this season, teams could also pull them back if they didn’t like the offers. Meanwhile, players like Willson Contreras, Ian Happ and Carlos Rodón stayed put, also to my surprise. By and large, though, we had a whirlwind of a 48-hour period leading up to the deadline.

So, who won and who lost? That’s a bit of a loaded question, because the definition of winning and losing varies depending on each franchise’s goals. A contending team improving, a rebuilding team getting worse but acquiring a stable of prospects, or an indolent team only re-signing its 37-year-old closer are all things that can be considered a win in one way or the other. But we’re here to do some hardcore ranking, so let’s look only at who improved themselves the most in 2022.

To keep this all science-y rather than a somewhat arbitrary exercise, I first projected the entire league’s rest of season in ZiPS and then repeated the exercise with all trades since July 19 unwound. Since some teams primarily got overall playoff boosts and some teams saw improvement mainly in terms of World Series gains, I took each team’s rank in both categories and then ranked everyone by the harmonic mean of those two ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday was trade deadline day, and you know what that means: enough trades of marginal relievers to blot out the sun. Every team in the playoff race can look at its bullpen and find flaws, and so every one of them was in the market for a reliever who can come in for the fifth, sixth, or seventh inning and do a more reliable job of getting out alive than the team’s current bullpen complement. That’s just how baseball works; every year, a new crop of pop-up relievers posts great numbers, while the old crop enjoys middling success. It’s a brisk trade market, even if the returns are rarely overwhelming. Here’s another roundup of such trades. Read the rest of this entry »

While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), 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.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, making exceptions here and there, but for the designated hitters, I’ve lowered that to 0.3, both to keep the list length manageable and to account for the general spread of value; in the first full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.1 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, and only 10 have gotten more than 0.6. DHs as a group have hit .239/.317/.404 for a 104 wRC+; that last figure matches what they did as a group both last year and in 2019, and it’s boosted by the best performance by NL DHs (103 wRC+) since 2009, when their 117 wRC+ accounted for a grand total of 525 PA, about 32 per NL team.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bryan Shaw will reach two milestones the next time he takes the mound. The 34-year-old Guardians reliever has made 499 regular-season appearances in a Cleveland uniform, and he’s thrown 999-and-two-thirds professional innings. Neither should come as a surprise. Shaw has never been a star, but he’s always been a workhorse. Moreover, he’s a Terry Francona favorite.

“He’s like a lineman,” the Guardians manager said of Shaw. “When they allow a sack, everybody notices. When [Shaw] gives up runs, people want to bury him. But he saves our ass, time and time again. He pitches when other guys can’t… He’s been a trouper for a long time.”

Now in his 12th big-league season, and in his second stint with Cleveland, Shaw has led the American League in appearances in four different seasons, each time with his current club. The right-hander has appeared in 733 games overall — he’s also pitched for the Diamondbacks, Rockies, and Mariners — which ranks fifth-most among active pitchers.

He knows where he stands among his peers. Read the rest of this entry »

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 in this batch in particular, I don’t get the sense that any of these teams have these positions atop their shopping lists. With catchers, framing and the less-quantifiable aspects of knowing a pitching staff make it easier for teams to talk themselves out of changing things up unless an injury situation has compromised their depth.

All statistics in this article are through July 26, though team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 27.

Cardinals

Yadier Molina may be a future Hall of Famer, but his final major league season hasn’t gone smoothly. The 39-year-old backstop reported late to spring training due to personal reasons, then hit just .213/.225/.294 (46 wRC+) in 138 plate appearances before landing on the injured list with right knee inflammation in mid-June. With the team’s permission, he soon returned to his native Puerto Rico, a move that did not escape the notice of his teammates, who value his presence and leadership even when he’s not able to play up to his previous standards. Molina finally began a rehab assignment on Monday.

In Molina’s absence, the Cardinals have started Andrew Knizner behind the plate 51 times, and he’s reminded them that even by the standards of backup catchers, he leaves something to be desired. The 27-year-old has hit .199/.291/.248 (64 wRC+) and is 5.5 runs below average in our framing metric; his WARs have now been in the red for all four of his major league seasons, with a total of -1.7 in just 443 PA. Baseball Prospectus’ comprehensive defensive metrics put him 5.2 runs below average for his framing, blocking, and throwing as well. His backup, Austin Romine, owns a 47 wRC+ while catching for four teams over the past three seasons; his most notable accomplishment as a Cardinal is in joining Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado among the ranks of unvaccinated players who were unable to travel to Canada for this week’s two-game series against the Blue Jays.

Back in June, St. Louis gave a look to Molina’s heir apparent, Iván Herrera, who entered the season at no. 75 on our Top 100 Prospects list and has hit .295/.385/.432 at Triple-A. The 22-year-old Panamanian has a plus arm and potentially a plus hit tool as well as average raw power; his framing is below average and his receiving average. He was called up to replace Romine for the Toronto series but did not play.

With the trade market not offering a lot of obvious solutions (an intradivision trade for Willson Contreras probably isn’t an option), the Cardinals, who have gone just 24–26 in June and July but are still entrenched in the second Wild Card spot, would probably be better off pairing Molina with Herrera than Knizner or Romine. One possible option is Oakland’s Sean Murphy, who will be arbitration eligible for the first time this winter and who placed 37th on our Trade Value list; he could pair with Herrera for the next year or two and still be dealt while having club control remaining. 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 »

Who has been your most influential teammate? I asked that question to 10 major leaguers — two each from five different teams — and all of the answers came after a moment of thoughtful consideration. Most couldn’t name just one, and there was another common theme that emerged, as well. A combination of appreciation and admiration was genuinely expressed with each and every response.

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Harrison Bader, St. Louis Cardinals

“Paul Goldschmidt. I like to watch just enough video to familiarize myself with the pitcher in terms of his tempo in the stretch, in the windup, his arm slots on different pitches, and maybe his tells on the base paths. Anything past that, I don’t like to watch. Paul has been the most influential, because I trust his assessment of the pitcher and his approach far more than anything I would create on my own. That’s because he keeps it really simple; he keeps it very straightforward. That approach helps him be very successful for his team. Because of that, I’ve learned to understand pitchers — when to open up a little more, when to stay focused on maybe driving the ball back up the middle. Little things like that allow you to be successful over nine innings.”

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Tucker Barnhart, Detroit Tigers

“Four come to mind, and it starts with Skip Schumaker. Skip and I played together in 2014 and 2015, and he was the guy I defaulted to if I had any questions. This was back when I was trying to figure out what the big leagues were like. So, Skip was one of my guys. We still talk. Read the rest of this entry »

John Schreiber has been a find for the Red Sox. Claimed off waivers by Boston from the Detroit Tigers prior to last season, the 28-year-old sidewinder has come out of the bullpen 30 times this year and allowed just 12 hits and two earned runs over 29 innings. Schreiber has 35 strikeouts to go with three saves and a pair of wins in as many decisions.

He’s not the same pitcher who failed to distinguish himself in Detroit.

“I’d mainly been a four-seam/slider guy,” explained Schreiber, who logged a 6.28 ERA over parts of two seasons with the Tigers. “In college and for most of my pro-ball career, that’s all I threw. Two years ago I started working on a better changeup, and last year I started throwing my sinker. Paul Abbott is our Triple-A pitching coach, and he helped me work on a two-seam sinker. I’ve gotten really comfortable throwing that.”

Schreiber still features his old mix prominently — this year he’s thrown 35.3% four-seamers and 35.8% sliders — but his 22.5% sinker usage has added a whole new twist. The 2016, 15th-round draft pick out of the University of Northwestern Ohio is now far less predictable, and just as importantly, he’s better able to match up with hitters who do damage on high heaters. Read the rest of this entry »

Eli Morgan is one of the best-kept secrets in baseball. He’s not a high-leverage reliever for a marquee team. He’s not even the best or most famous reliever on his own team. Heck, he was a middling five-and-dive starter in the majors just last year. But none of that matters anymore, because now he has a cheat code:

That changeup is absolutely ludicrous. It looks like no other pitch in baseball. It’s slow, much slower than the rest of Morgan’s arsenal. Every other one of his pitches is in the vicinity of league average, while his changeup is the slowest in baseball. That makes for huge separation from his fastball; if the two started on the same trajectory, the changeup would fall 30 more inches than the fastball on its way to home plate. That’s nearly half an Altuve. Read the rest of this entry »

In the bottom of the 10th inning of last night’s Guardians/Rockies game, Charlie Blackmon made a bad read. No, not this one:

That wasn’t the greatest baserunning decision ever – if Andrés Giménez had snared that ball, Blackmon would have been stuck at second – but you can at least understand his hesitation. The ball was still in the air nearly the whole way there, a double play would be disastrous, and hey, if it gets through Giménez, a runner on third with no one out almost always scores, right?

Right? Wrong:

This was a series of tough decisions that went awry, and since I love bad baserunning, I had to break it down.

Let’s start with the first step. I can’t tell whether the Rockies had the contact play on, forcing Blackmon to head home with the crack of the bat and re-evaluate based on the ball’s path. He was hardly blazing headlong down the line at first contact:

Read the rest of this entry »