The trade deadline has passed, but that doesn’t mean teams have stopped scrambling to upgrade or at least patch their pitching staffs with veteran free agents. On Monday, the Rays signed David Robertson, who hasn’t pitched in the majors in more than two years but who recently helped Team USA win a silver medal at the Summer Olympics. On Tuesday, the Dodgers inked Shane Greene to a deal just three days after he was released by the Braves. Both are former Yankees (on the 2014 team) and former All-Stars, and both are on major league contracts. While neither is likely throw a ton of innings, both could pitch their way into throwing significant roles down the stretch.

Both of these teams — which of course met in last year’s World Series — have gotten strong work out of their bullpens to date. Through Monday, the Rays’ bullpen led the majors in WAR (6.2) while the Dodgers’ led the NL (4.4), and both units rank among their respective leagues’ best in nearly all of the other major categories:

With that said, the Rays currently have 17 pitchers on the injured list, including Jeffrey Springs, who underwent season-ending surgery to repair a torn right ACL on Monday; Matt Wisler, who’s dealing with inflammation in his right middle finger; Pete Fairbanks and Ryan Thompson, who are both out with shoulder inflammation; and J.P. Feyereisen, who’s down with biceps tendinitis. Throw in the since-traded Diego Castillo, and the Rays are currently without six of their top eight relievers in terms of total appearances, and five of their top eight (all but Feyereisen) in terms of WAR. All but Springs (and Castillo) are expected to return by the end of the month, but it’s not unreasonable for the Rays to seek out additional depth. Read the rest of this entry »

With the elimination of the waiver deadline, the last two months of the season (or more accurately now, the last six weeks) can leave front office personnel feeling like little more than helpless observers. Problems at the big league level, whether of the health or performance variety, are going to pop up, but for the most part, the answers to those problems have to come from within. Yes, there’s the occasional player who gets designated for assignment who deserves consideration, but otherwise teams will either lean on the depth they’ve spent much of the year trying to establish or curse the risks they took in terms of depth in order to improve their big league roster. Here are the depth situations for the American League playoff contenders, with the National League to follow tomorrow.

American League East

Tampa Bay Rays
Strengths: The Rays bolt together pitching staffs as well as any team in baseball, and there are plenty more pieces available to them at Triple-A Durham should the need arise. They load up on pitch-data darlings while also developing plenty from within, and the result has been the best record in the International League, with their staff generating a team-wide strikeout rate of over 28%. With five current Durham pitchers already on the 40-man roster, managing innings down the stretch shouldn’t be an issue, be it for need or just for the purposes of keeping players fresh. In terms of position players, Vidal Bruján continues to slot in all over the diamond; his ability to play six positions makes him the most likely hitter to be called up. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Antonio Jimenez, LHP, Tampa Bay Rays
Level & Affiliate: Complex Level Age: 20 Org Rank: 26 FV: 40
Line: 5 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
Jimenez is an electric little lefty (he stands about 5-foot-10) with big arm speed who sits 91-95 and has a plus two-plane slider that he commands. He’ll also show you the occasional average changeup. He’s loose and athletic and has viable starter’s command, though he arguably falls short of starter projection at the moment due to the combination of his present repertoire depth and size. With starter-level command already in place, I’m betting on changeup improvement due to the looseness/athleticism and care less about how small Jimenez is. He belongs in the Rays system ranked ahead of the hard-throwing relief-only arms. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned in June after being on hiatus last season due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Andrew Kittredge, Matt Manning, and Tyler Wells each discussing their slider.

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Andrew Kittredge, Tampa Bay Rays

“It was after my freshman year of college, playing summer ball in Newport, Rhode Island. I actually started off calling it a cutter. It was pretty small, and it was firm. I was throwing my fastball anywhere from 90 to 94 [mph] and the cutter was around 89-91. Slowly, over time, I started getting around it a little bit more, and it got bigger and slower. By the time I got into pro ball, it was probably 83-85.

“It was a pretty good pitch for me — I had a good feel for it — and that’s kind of what I had up until 2019. Then I started throwing it harder again. I didn’t really change the grip, or my mindset, as much as I … well, the mindset was to try to stay behind it a little longer and accelerate through it at the end with hand speed. So while the velocity kind of jumped, I didn’t really plan on it doing that. The idea just was to try to tighten up the spin, and with the increased spin I added velocity. I also made it a little shorter; it’s not as big as it used to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Yurchak is flying under the radar as a prospect. He’s flying high in present-season performance. Unranked on our 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers Top Prospects list, the 24-year-old first baseman boasts the highest batting average among minor-league hitters with at least 260 plate appearances. Currently with Double-A Tulsa after spending the first three months of the season with High-A Great Lakes, Yurchak has come to the plate 322 times and is slashing a stand-up-and-take-notice .365/.452/.498.

Those numbers aren’t as nearly surprising as you might think. Since entering pro ball in 2017 as a 12th-round draft pick out of SUNY-Binghamton, Yurchak has put up a sumptuous .318/.413/.468 slash line. With the exception of a pedestrian year in 2018 — a 100 wRC+ in Low-A — he’s always hit.

I asked Yurchak about that lone blemish on his otherwise stellar stat sheet.

“That year, I got off on a bad track and had a hard time figuring out what was wrong,” Yurchak told me on the final Friday of July. “There was a little bit too much movement in my lower half. Part of it was that I wasn’t gathering my legs under my body. When I was landing in my load, there was a little bit of a slide with my hips, and my bat was dragging. Had I been able to make [the needed] adjustment earlier, I think the season would have gone differently for me.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a story that you hear all too often these days. A reliever has a breakout season, perhaps aided by leaning more into throwing his best pitch to the exclusion of everything else. He parlays that into an offseason deal, or maybe a newly-prominent role on his current team. Then the next season starts, and the bloom is off the rose. Whatever ineffable magic powered last season is simply gone.

Here’s another story you hear all too often these days. A reliever has a bad stretch, looks like he might be cooked. The Rays, though, have seen something in him. They trade for him, whisper a few sweet nothings (or, fine, mechanical adjustments) into his ear, and bam! He’s part of their bullpen army.

Here’s the fun part: Matt Wisler personifies both of these stories. He was so bad the Giants designated him for assignment after a horrid start, then agreed to a trade with the Rays. Since heading East, he’s been incredible, one of the best relievers in the game. Seriously, look at these splits:

I had to know what changed. I’ll warn you: there’s a lot of failure in this article, a lot of finding not much, before we get to the good stuff — and I promise there’s good stuff. If you’re not into seeing how a pitcher can get to wildly different results with a substantially similar process, this article might bore you. But if you’re curious like I was, read on, and delve deeply with me into the minutiae of a pitcher who didn’t change very much and yet went from unplayable to great. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below. I’ve moved all of the players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates. Our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

This deadline had its share of earthquakes, but it also featured smaller aftershocks, as teams improved their depth or addressed smaller, specific needs. So let’s run down some of the deals that might get buried by the higher-Richter scale shakes of the likes of Max Scherzer and Kris Bryant.

The Houston Astros acquired pitcher Phil Maton and catcher Yainer Diaz from the Cleveland Guardians for center fielder Myles Straw

This trade is actually a slightly unusual one, as the team in the playoff shot — it’s not Cleveland — is the one giving up the best player. Straw’s offensive profile will likely prevent him from being an actual star at any point, but he’s fast, plays enough defense, and gets on-base at a respectable enough level to be an average or even better starter in center; he’s already hit the 2-WAR threshold, after all. UZR, our defensive input for WAR, has him at +6.6 runs, while OAA has him at +5 runs and DRS has him at +2. I don’t think I’d ever play him except in a pinch, but Straw’s theoretical ability to at least stand at second or short in an emergency has some additional value, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Some teams have an instantly identifiable “type.” You know what I’m talking about: the Cardinals and scrappy-but-under-tooled infielders, the Cubs with pitchers who don’t crack 90 mph, and the Rays with platoon-ish hitters who would be stretched as everyday players. Today, the Rays got their man again — Jordan Luplow, who is exactly the kind of hitter that always seems to be lurking on Tampa Bay’s bench, waiting to ruin some poor lefty reliever’s day.

The Rays are heavier on lefties than they’d probably like this year; Kevin Kiermaier, Austin Meadows, and Brett Phillips have all gotten plenty of run in the outfield, and only Meadows is someone I’d like to run out there against same-handed pitching. In all, Kiermaier and Phillips have 152 plate appearances against lefties, where they’ve put up a combined 27 wRC+. Not great, Bob.

In 334 career plate appearances against lefties, Luplow is hitting .251/.371/.556, good for a 143 wRC+. You can’t take platoon splits at face value with such a small sample, but he truly looks like a lefty masher; he walks nearly twice as often against lefties as compared to righties, strikes out less, and hits for a ton of power, with an enviable 11.5% barrel rate against southpaws (7.9% against righties). He also smashes four-seam fastballs, and there are lefty fastballs worth smashing in the AL playoff chase. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners understandably upset their fan base on Wednesday when, while just one game out of the Wild Card race, they traded away Kendall Graveman, and to the Astros no less. While it’s still a debatable move, Seattle general manager Jerry Dipoto has shown a bit more of his hand since; after trading for Tyler Anderson to stabilize the rotation on Wednesday night, he found a better reliever than Graveman in the form of Rays closer Diego Castillo, who was acquired for righty J.T. Chargois and minor league corner infielder Austin Shenton. For Seattle, mystery solved, at least kind of; for the Rays, on the other hand, it’s a curious decision.

In getting Castillo, the Mariners have upgraded their late-inning options for the stretch run. Armed with one of the more deadly two-pitch combinations in the game, he is throwing more strikes than ever and missing more bats than ever, and given that he’s just 27, there’s still upside beyond what we’ve seen. There’s nothing complicated about what Castillo does or the way he does it; he’s a classic let-it-eat bullpen ace who sits 96–98 mph with the heater and has a slider in the upper-80s. In an era obsessed with revolutions per minute, he is the rare anti-spin guy, with below-average RPMs on both offerings, but he has found a way to add some two-plane break to his breaking ball this year. He’s also using his slider more than ever in 2021, with nearly 70% usage. Compare that to just two years ago, when he went after hitters with a nearly 50/50 mix.

While Castillo has greatly reduced his walks, he still certainly has far more control than command. It’s the same approach against every hitter: he elevates his fastball and throws his slider to the one location he can consistently get to, working the lower outer edge to right-handed hitters and back-footing lefties. It’s the kind of thing you can succeed at with quality pitches, and there’s no reason to think that success won’t continue. The Mariners added an elite high-leverage reliever who should be able to rack up saves in the Emerald City for three more years (Castillo is arbitration eligible for the first time this offseason), and they made their big league roster better, both right now and in the future.

Read the rest of this entry »