When trades occur that aren’t quite big enough to merit their own post, we sometimes compile our analysis into a compendium like this, where we touch on a number of transactions at one time. In this dispatch, I’ll cover the Rays’ trades for upper-level depth (pitchers Manuel Rodríguez and Adrian Sampson from the Cubs, and catcher Alex Jackson from the Brewers), as well as the Mariners/Orioles swap of Logan Rinehart and Eduard Bazardo.
The Rays acquired Adrian Sampson, Manuel Rodríguez, and $220,000 of international free agent bonus pool space from the Cubs for minor league pitcher Josh Roberson. Sampson, 31, was originally the Pirates’ 2012 fifth round pick. He made the big leagues with the Mariners in 2016 and then began to hop around the fringes of various rosters, which is part of what led to his 2020 jaunt to the KBO before a return to MLB with the Cubs. He made 19 starts for the Cubbies in 2022 as a long-term injury replacement, but he has missed most of 2023 due to a knee surgery from which he only recently returned. Sampson has been sitting 90-91 mph during each of his last two minor league starts. He does not occupy a 40-man roster spot and should be considered injury replacement depth for the Rays. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s something strange going on in the desert. The Diamondbacks have been one of the best stories in baseball this year, led by Corbin Carroll and a motley crew of veterans and rookies. An early season tear sat them atop the NL West, and we gave them an 80% chance of making the playoffs on July 1. Whoops – they’ve gone 8-16 since then, the worst record in the NL, and now they’re scrambling to make the playoffs. Time to make some trades!
Tommy Pham fits perfectly with what Arizona is going for. After a desultory three-year stretch from 2020-22 where he posted a 94 wRC+, he’s been one of the lone bright spots for the Mets this year. He’s hitting .268/.348/.472, and his quality of contact has been even better than that; he has a shiny .390 xwOBA and is smashing balls left and right. His plate discipline, always a strength, has never been better. He’s posted as much WAR this year as in those three previous ones.
The Diamondbacks could use that kind of production. They’ve relied on four regular outfielders this season, and only Carroll has been good. Jake McCarthy has an 85 wRC+ and the underlying stats to match. Alek Thomas checks in at a 79 wRC+. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is the best of the group, but that’s faint praise; he’s hitting .249/.296/.448 with a 98 wRC+ himself. Murderer’s row, this is not. Read the rest of this entry »
Baseball is a game of uncertainty. Half an inch here or there can be the difference between a strikeout and a home run. Balls bounce strangely. Matchups don’t even out. The wind is blowing just the wrong way one day, or just the right way the next. But two things reoccur like Haley’s comet in the modern game: the Brewers are a few hitters short of a potent lineup and Mark Canha posts an above average but unexciting batting line. Today, those two things are teaming up – the Mets traded Canha to the Brewers in exchange for prospect Justin Jarvis.
It’s not that the Brewers plan on a punchless lineup. They’ve drafted plenty of hitters in recent years, and made trades to secure others besides. In the past few years, they’ve traded for Willy Adames, Jesse Winker, Rowdy Tellez, and William Contreras. They’ve promoted Sal Frelick, Brice Turang, Garrett Mitchell, and Joey Wiemer. Carlos Santana joined the team last week. Through it all, though, they’ve always seemed a few bats short. Someone gets injured. Someone regresses. The end result? An offense scuffling around or below league average, with a few spots providing downright embarrassing production.
This year, the entire infield has failed Milwaukee. Luis Urías hit his way back to the minors; Adames has a .202/.287/.388 line, good for an 82 wRC+. Turang is even worse, hitting .208/.278/.314 (61 wRC+). Brewers first basemen have a decidedly not nice 69 wRC+ in aggregate. Having an extra batter in the lineup hasn’t softened the blow, either: Brewers DHs have hit .205/.301/.308, the second-worst DH production across the majors. Despite a gaping hole at the top of the NL Central where the Cardinals usually feature, the Brewers have fallen out of first place thanks to the upstart Reds. They need more firepower, and the sooner, the better. Read the rest of this entry »
With the trade deadline just a day away, at last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition (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 zero, both to keep the list length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the second full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.0 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, five are in the middle ground between 0.0 and 1.0, and 10 are at 1.0 or above. DHs as a group have hit .242/.321/.419 for a 102 wRC+; that last figure is up one point from last year. This year, we’re seeing a greater number teams invest more playing time in a single DH; where last year there were three players who reached the 500 plate appearance threshold as DHs, this year we’re on pace for five, and the same is true at the 400-PA threshold (on pace for nine this year, compared to seven last year) and 300-PA threshold (on pace for 15, compared to 12 last year). That said, many of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »
This might sound familiar, but Carlos Santana has been traded to a playoff contender. After signing a one-year deal with the Pirates in the offseason, he has been sent to the Brewers to help reinforce the second-worst offense in the National League (88 wRC+). In return, the Pirates will get back teenage shortstop Jhonny Severino, an international free agent who signed for $1.2 million last summer and only has 60 professional games under his belt.
At this late point in Santana’s career, he has established himself as a reliable, average player, playing in 94 games, accumulating 393 plate appearances, and posting a 99 wRC+ this season after a 102 mark last season. The production comes through in a slightly different way, but he has a 99 wRC+ from the left side and a 100 wRC+ from the right side. Similarly, he is a reliable defender; so far, he sits at +2 OAA with a 0% success rate added. Across the board, this is an average dude.
We know who Santana is. Santana knows who he is. The Brewers know who he is. That isn’t super sexy, but the Brewers do not need sexy at first base; competence is a good first step for them. In Jay Jaffe’s Replacement Level Killers series, they topped the list at first base; no team has gotten less production at the position. Santana has accumulated 1.0 WAR on the year, so it’s not as if he is a huge difference maker, but he can provide a necessary stability as Milwaukee tries to hold on to first place in the NL Central.
As for the Pirates’ side of things: Severino doesn’t have much professional experience. This year, he has only played 12 games with 52 plate appearances in the complex league thanks to a sprained left wrist. In terms of his profile, he is a big, projectable infielder who most likely fits at third base long-term but is currently at shortstop. Overall, he has a 40 Future Value and slots in at 23rd on the Pirates list in the same tier as prospects like Dariel Lopez and major leaguers such as Nick Gonzales.
There is upside in Severino’s power, which looks like it will work to all fields. At 18 years old, he is already showing legitimate pop. There is also downside in the hit tool, though. From the little that we’ve seen, he is running a 30-grade chase rate, and his 1% walk rate is slightly concerning. But that could improve with more time; for example, he ran a 7% walk rate in 198 plate appearances last year.
To round this out, let’s look some of Severino’s at-bats:
There are a lot of lower body movements happening, and some stepping in the bucket. Maintaining connection to the ground throughout your swing is a very important part of the learning process of hitting. As you grow into strength, your effort levels to produce power become more controlled. That will be a focus for Severino as he develops and eventually moves out of the complex league. There are multiple swings here where his first move is his lead hip drifting toward third base. Sometimes he counters his stepping in the bucket with a scissor kick to even things out, but by then he already lost his hands. On the other hand, there are some swings here with serious thump (2:15 is a great example). The rotational power is clearly there; it will just be a balancing act for Severino as he ages and faces better competition.
Teams like the Pirates bring on players like Santana for a few reasons, but one of them is hoping he plays well enough to garner a return like this at the trade deadline. There is no guarantee that Severino will help the next good Pirates club, but in a deal like this, all you want is an opportunity to have something to work with, and that’s exactly what they got. For the Brewers, it shores up what has been a significant hole as they make a playoff push.
Today the Killers list turns the corner — or rather turns to the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in the outfield corners. While still focusing on 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 out of a position 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. Interestingly enough, two of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for right field also make the list for left field: one because it’s far below, and the other because it’s right on the line. I’m listing the capsules in order of their left field rankings first while noting those two crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 1 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye upon. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are through July 25, but team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 26. Read the rest of this entry »
Today, we turn our attention to the second base Killers. While still focusing on 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 out of a position 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 a team’s roster. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the August 1 deadline, and I’m less concerned with the solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than the problems. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »
In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing subpar production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have adapted it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.
When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t hew too closely to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is considered fair game. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a club may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rangers haven’t played in the postseason since 2016 (and haven’t even finished above .500 since then), but they’ve been atop the AL West for almost the entire season and are now 49–31, with a six-game lead over both the Angels and Astros. They own the majors’ largest run differential (+160) as well as its most potent offense (5.98 runs per game), and thanks to a revamped pitching staff, they’re third in run prevention as well (3.98 per game).
An underrated part of that run prevention is the team’s defense. By my evaluation of a handful of the major defensive metrics — Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, our catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages), and Statcast’s Runs Prevented (which I’ll call Runs Above Average because their site and ours use the abbreviation RAA) and catching metrics for framing, blocking, and throwing (which I’ll combine into the abbreviation CRAA) — the Rangers rate as the majors’ second-best defensive team thus far this season. The Brewers, who are in the midst of a dogfight for first place in the NL Central, are the only team ahead of them.
I’ll explain the methodology behind this conclusion below, but first a bit more about the Rangers. With Jacob deGrom sidelined after just six starts due to a UCL tear that resulted in Tommy John surgery, the team’s pitching staff has the 13th-lowest strikeout rate in the majors (22.2%), but it also has the third-lowest BABIP (.274), in large part thanks to the team’s fielders (the pitchers haven’t been especially good at preventing hard contact). Second baseman Marcus Semien is the only past Gold Glove winner of the bunch, but he’s one of five Rangers defenders with at least 5 DRS thus far, along with first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, outfielder Travis Jankowski, right fielder Adolis García, and catcher Jonah Heim. Lowe, Semien, and center fielder Leody Taveras all have at least 4 RAA, and Heim is 3.7 runs above average in FRAM and +6 in CRAA.
Not all of the metrics are as favorable for the aforementioned players, but it’s worth noting that of the 10 Rangers with the most defensive innings played at a single position, the only negative run ratings are those of shortstop Corey Seager and left fielder Robbie Grossman (both -2 RAA) and Lowe (-2.6 UZR); every other Ranger with at least 161.1 innings at a position rates as average or better. To be fair, 161.1 innings is still a small sample, and for that matter, even the 697.1 innings of Semien at second is less than ideal for a full evaluation, though we can feel better that his DRS, UZR and RAA don’t wildly contradict each other. Particularly at this stage of the season, with teams having played 78–83 games, it’s better to bear in mind the range of values reflected in an individual’s fielding metrics rather than focusing on a single one. To return to Semien: his 6 DRS and 5 RAA are contrasted by his 0.8 UZR; it’s not a matter of which one is “right” so much as it is understanding that he shows up somewhere along the spectrum from slightly above average to solidly above average.
Given all of this alphabet soup dished out in small servings, I set out to look at team defense by aggregating the aforementioned metrics, which reflect differing methodologies and produce varying spreads in runs from top to bottom that owe something to what they don’t measure as well as how much regression is built into their systems. Pitchers don’t have UZRs or RAAs, for example, and the catching numbers are set off in their own categories rather than included in UZR and RAA. I’ve accounted for the varying spreads, which range from 86 runs in DRS (from 42 to -44) to 25.6 runs in FRM (from 13.8 to -11.8), by using standard deviation scores (z-scores), which measure how many standard deviations each team is from the league average in each category. I don’t proclaim this to be a bulletproof methodology so much as a good point of entry into a broad topic. The Rangers, who entered Wednesday (the cutoff for all of the data below) tied with the Blue Jays for the major league lead with 42 DRS, score 1.86 in that category but “only” 1.37 in UZR and 1.13 in RAA (13.4 runs in the former, 10 in the latter, both fourth in the majors), and so on. Read the rest of this entry »
Around this time a year ago, Julio Teheran left the Atlantic League’s Staten Island FerryHawks for the Mexican League’s Toros de Tijuana, a move that on the FerryHawks Instagram account described as the right-hander getting “one step closer back to Major League Baseball.” Those steps were many: over the next 12 months, Teheran would suit up for Staten Island, Tijuana, Sultanes de Monterrey in the Mexican League, Toros del Este in the Dominican Winter League, the San Diego Padres as a non-roster spring training invitee, Team Colombia in the World Baseball Classic, and the Padres’ Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas. Seven teams (from four different countries) later, he got his MLB shot, signing in late May with a Brewers team that had already lost five starters — Brandon Woodruff, Aaron Ashby, Eric Lauer, Jason Alexander, and Wade Miley – to injuries. Milwaukee needed a healthy arm badly, and Teheran had been looking for just that kind of opportunity.
The Brewers couldn’t have expected much from Teheran, the way you can’t usually expect much from the most available pitcher on the day that you place a fifth starter on the injured list. He hadn’t thrown a major league pitch since April 2021 with the Tigers, when he allowed one run over five innings before hitting the IL with a shoulder strain the following week. Even his Triple-A stint in the spring had been a mixed bag in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.
But Teheran has answered the call, allowing just four earned runs and averaging over six innings in his four starts for the Brewers, striking out 16 and walking just three with a 1.48 ERA, 3.52 FIP and 4.48 xFIP. Those final two stats suggest a few balls bouncing his way through these first four starts, and he’s not going to give up a single earned run each time out there. But the early returns are strong: opposing hitters have a .396 xSLG and .294 xwOBA against him, and both his barrel and hard-hit rates (on just 70 batted balls, mind you) are comfortably above league average. In his last start on Saturday, he fanned six A’s over 7.0 one-run innings, his longest big league outing in nearly four years. Read the rest of this entry »
