Last Friday’s trade deadline was one for the ages. If you haven’t checked out all of our analysis here at FanGraphs, I highly recommend you do so. Most of this year’s swaps were of the prospects-for-free-agents-to-be variety, meaning it will take years to assess who got the most out of a trade. Hindsight is 20-20. Even when the Dodgers famously dealt Pedro Martinez for Delino DeShields, it was somewhat defensible at the time, though of course we all know how that ended up. And so in the wake of the deadline passing, I thought I would check in on how a seemingly irrelevant deal from the 2019 deadline is working out: the Angels acquisition of Max Stassi. The Angels are on life support at the moment, having dropped two of three to the Athletics over the weekend to fall below .500. Our latest projections give them a 1.1% chance to make the playoffs. But without the offensive output from Stassi over the past two months, those odds would be even lower.

Since his return from the Injured List on June 1, Stassi has been on a tear, emerging as a quality bat from an unlikely position. His 170 wRC+ is the seventh-best mark among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances over that stretch. He leads all catchers in wRC+ during that span, along with a handful of other categories, including slugging percentage.

As a catcher, he’s not getting the plethora of plate appearances that hitters at other positions get. He’s only eclipsed 200 plate appearances once, in 2018, when he played in 88 games for the Astros and hit .226/.316/.394 for an even 100 wRC+. He ended the year with 2.8 WAR mostly due to his superior skills behind the plate. In 2019, Astros sent him to the the Angels in exchange for two long-shot prospects in the aforementioned deadline deal. He’s a back-up catcher, or at least, he has been up until now. He thrived in a small sample as recently as last year when he slashed .278/.352/.533 with seven homers in just 105 plate appearances. He’s following it up with an even better campaign in 2021. So how has Stassi gone from a glove-first backstop to one of the league’s best hitting catchers? 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 »

Over the last few days, the Yankees addressed their surprisingly punchless and right-handed heavy lineup by adding Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo. In the waning minutes before the trade deadline, they struck a deal with the Angels to bring in another southpaw: left-handed pitcher Andrew Heaney. In exchange, New York will send a pair of pitching prospects to Los Angeles: Janson Junk and Elvis Peguero.

Heaney is playing out the last year of team control before he hits free agency this offseason. Over the last four years, he’s posted a strikeout-to-walk ratio a touch under four, the 26th best mark among the 100 qualified starters during that period. Unfortunately, he’s struggled with a gigantic home run problem that has led to some ugly ERAs that far outpace his peripherals.

This year, all those strengths and weaknesses are in full effect. He’s posting fantastic strikeout (28.2%) and walk (7.7%) rates but he’s allowed 16 home runs in 94 innings. Because his batted ball profile skews so heavily towards elevated contact, his home-run-per-fly-ball rate is around league average, but his HR/9 is the 15th highest among all starters with a similar number of innings pitched. That doesn’t bode well for a move to Yankee Stadium, which has boosted home run totals by 7% over the last four years.

Heaney’s pitch repertoire is rather odd. His four-seam fastball was classified as a sinker for much of his career because it moves horizontally like a sinker does but it doesn’t have the telltale vertical movement. He gets that horizontal action on his heater because he throws from an extremely low arm angle. With an odd release point and an uncommon movement profile, his fastball has been a whiff-generating machine. Opposing batters swing and miss nearly 30% of the time against his heater. Read the rest of this entry »

For a brief period on Saturday night, it appeared possible that not only would the single-season record for no-hitters fall, but that two pitchers — the Angels’ Patrick Sandoval and the Astros’ Framber Valdéz — would spin no-hitters on the same day for just the third time in history. Neither was successful, but on Sunday, the Yankees’ Domingo Germán put in his own no-hit bid, one that not only fell short but turned into a debacle. While this season’s breakneck pace of no-hitters has slowed down drastically, with just one in June and none in July after six in April and May, the drop in the number of close calls hasn’t been quite as sharp, but even so, the concentration of such games from Saturday and Sunday was notable.

Valdéz had the earlier of the two no-hit bids on Saturday night. The 27-year-old lefty has generally pitched well this season, but in his first four outings of June had struggled with his mechanics and compromised his command, walking 15 in 22.1 innings, and getting tagged for 27 hits and 15 runs (13 earned). Even against a Rangers team that entered having lost 10 straight games, his command woes — which had abated somewhat in his July 18 outing against the White Sox, when he walked just two hitters in 6.1 innings — returned, but this time he was effectively wild, walking six in six innings without allowing a hit or a run; he threw just 53 strikes out of 99 pitches. Despite sandwiching two first-inning walks around a wild pitch, and walking two more in the second, he escaped both jams and kept the Rangers off the board. Only twice did he retire the side in order, but each of the other two walks he issued came with two outs.

Valdéz needed a game-high 23 pitches to get through the sixth, with the final two hitters of the frame — Nate Lowe, who walked, and Curtis Terry, who struck out looking — each battling through eight pitches. For manager Dusty Baker, it was a no-brainer to remove him even given that he hadn’t given up a hit. Via MLB.com’s Brian McTaggert, “If we’d left him out there to get the no-hitter, he’d be up to 140 pitches,” said Baker, who decades ago gained a reputation for pushing his young pitchers too far, one that’s no longer applicable. “You’ve got to think logically what’s best for him.” Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Across the country and around the world, it’s the Daily Prospect Notes.

Graham Ashcraft, RHP, Cincinnati Reds
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Chattanooga Age: 23 Org Rank: 22 FV: 40

A threat to walk everyone in the ballpark in college, Ashcraft seemed like a surefire reliever after the Reds drafted him in the sixth round of the 2019 draft. But a weird thing happened between then and now: He found a way to throw strikes, started going deeper in games, and did both while still missing bats. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski, who will be chipping in on Daily Prospect Notes once a week. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Today, we have a few notes from a series between Tri-Cities and Everett, the High-A affiliates of the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners, respectively.

Jordyn Adams, CF, Los Angeles Angels
Level & Affiliate: High-A Tri-Cities Age: 22 Org Rank: 2 FV: 50
Line: 2-5, two infield singles, 3 SO

Adams is having a bad season. After a lower-leg injury sidelined for more than a month, the 22-year-old has been ice cold since returning to the lineup. Now more than 100 PAs into his season, he’s hitting .174/.260/.261 with a 35% strikeout rate, good for a 49 wRC+.

At the plate, he looks lost. He’s struggling to identify breaking pitches out of the hand, taking strikes on balls that bend into the zone and flailing early on pitches spinning down and away from him. He also swung and missed at several low-90s fastballs in the zone. When he does make contact, everything’s on the ground, much of it hit weakly the other way. Mechanically, he’s inconsistent as well, alternately lunging at low breaking balls or pulling off the plate on swings against the heat.

He’s also raw in the field: Two nights ago, he fielded a short fly with runners on first and second and despite no intent from the lead runner to advance, Adams came up firing and launched the ball well over the third baseman’s head. His 80-grade speed is also playing down at the moment. At the plate, he’s not quick out of the box, and on one occasion he posted a 4.3 DTL on a grounder to short. There’s more speed in the tank than that, and it’s possible that the leg injury is still bugging him, but at present he’s not consistently impacting the game with his wheels. Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels and Braves have both suffered through largely disappointing seasons and through some serious woes in the outfield. In Los Angeles, a calf injury to Mike Trout and Justin Upton’s back issues have kept the two off the field for a significant amount of time. In Atlanta, things are even more dire. Marcell Ozuna dislocated two of his fingers back in May, but a pending domestic violence charge means he likely won’t see the field again this season. Then, on the Saturday before the All-Star break, Ronald Acuña Jr. tore the ACL in his right knee, ending his season.

Both teams are within shouting distance of a playoff spot; the Braves are four games behind the Mets in the NL East, and the Angels are five and a half back in the AL Wild Card. But to have any hope of making noise down the stretch, they needed to bring in reinforcements for their outfield depth. That’s exactly what both teams did during the break. On Wednesday, the Angels signed Adam Eaton after he was released by the White Sox on Monday. On Thursday, the Braves traded for Joc Pederson, sending prospect Bryce Ball back to the Cubs in return. Trying to replace the production of Acuña or Trout is a fool’s errand, but finding someone who’s above replacement level (even if barely in both cases) goes a long way toward filling the holes in these two lineups.

In their final game before the All-Star break, the Braves ran out two converted infielders in the corner outfield spots, playing Ehire Adrianza in right and Orlando Arcia in left. In Pederson, they’re getting a capable outfielder who can play anywhere — he has plenty of experience in center field and covered left regularly in Chicago — and who’s an offensive boost to their lineup. With Guillermo Heredia already in center, Pederson will probably shift over to right, with Atlanta likely to use a rotating cast of players in left for now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball just wrapped up All-Star week, or better put, baseball just wrapped up Shohei Ohtani week. What more can be said? He hit six 500-foot home runs in the Home Run Derby on Monday night, then served as both the American League’s starting pitcher and leadoff hitter in the All-Star Game on Tuesday. On the mound, he threw an even 100 mph and earned the win after his one spotless inning of work.

All that put Ohtani front and center, as it should have. He is baseball’s home run leader, with 33. He’s slugged nearly .700, and among qualified hitters, his 180 wRC+ is beat only by Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 189. He has also made 13 starts on the mound, pitching to a 3.49 ERA; his 30.7% strikeout rate ranks seventh in the AL among those with at least 50 innings. We are so lucky to have borne witness to a first half that has been uniquely and historically great.

Part of the reason Ohtani has been such a marvel this season is his sheer volume of play. When he first entered the majors in 2018, the Angels sat him on the days both before and after his pitching appearances. This season, though, things are different, as he appeared in 87 of the team’s 89 first-half games. What’s more, he has also taken at-bats in 10 of his 13 starts on the mound. The Angels said during spring training that they wanted to maximize Ohtani’s usage this season, and they certainly have. That’s just one of the many ways in which he has impressed; he’s a two-way player who’s playing just about every single day. Read the rest of this entry »

MLB passed the halfway mark of the 2021 season over the long holiday weekend, providing a convenient spot to take a break, look back over the preseason projections, and hopefully not cringe too much about how the predictions are shaking out. Since this is the big midseason update, I used the full-fat ZiPS model for individual players in addition to the normal depth chart reconfiguring, with all the high-fructose algorithms rather than the leaner one used for daily updates.

Let’s start with the American League standings.

I was making a “do not panic” argument on behalf of the Yankees back when they were 5–10 and some people were digging for their doomsday preparedness kits, and while it might not be time to find where you left those water purification tablets, the situation is bleaker now than it was three months ago. Not that the team is actually worse; New York has been on an 88-win pace in the games since that reference point. But an 88-win pace isn’t nearly enough to get out of an early-season hole in a division where there are three other teams with more than detectable pulses. Even projected to play solid baseball the rest of the season, the Yankees have gone from the favorite to the projected fourth-place team.

Read the rest of this entry »

When you sit back and daydream about the perfect changeup, which one comes to mind? Do you think of Luis Castillo’s circle changeup, or maybe Gerrit Cole’s power change? Perhaps modern pitchers aren’t doing it for you and Trevor Hoffman has your favorite changeup. Regardless of what changeup takes shape in your imagination, there is always room for a new one to catch your fancy.

That’s Patrick Sandoval and his changeup is one of the nastiest pitches in baseball. I know that is quite the claim, but take a look at the best swinging strike rates for starting pitchers, broken down by individual pitch.

Being sandwiched between two of the most supremely talented players in the game is no easy feat, not to mention the number of Cy Young awards and All-Stars appearances that comprise the rest of the list. In fact, Sandoval sticks out like a sore thumb as he’s nearly unheard of compared to these other pitchers. Sandoval has the best whiff inducing changeup in baseball this season and it’s not particularly close. The next best among starting pitchers is Brandon Woodruff’s changeup with a 23.0% SwStr%, or Raisel Iglesias’ changeup at 27.7%, if you are interested in relievers as well. Read the rest of this entry »