Ah, the trade deadline. It’s the best time of the year for baseball chaos, rumor-mongering reporting, and of course, the main event: a million trades featuring relievers you’ve heard of but don’t know a ton about. The difference between a blown lead in the seventh inning of a playoff game and an uneventful 4-2 win might be one of these unheralded arms. Heck, they could be a better option but still give up a three-run shot in a crushing loss. Or they could be a worse option! There are no guarantees in baseball. Still, here are some relievers who contending teams think enough of to trade for and plug into their bullpens.

Yankees Acquire Scott Effross
Scott Effross wasn’t supposed to amount to anything in the big leagues. A 15th-round pick in the 2015 draft, he kicked around the Cubs system for years, frequently old for his level and rarely posting knockout numbers. Then in 2019, on the suggestion of pitching coach Ron Villone, he started throwing sidearm. Three years later, he’s carving through hitters in the majors.

“Carving” might undersell it. Since his 2021 debut, Effross has been one of the best relievers in the game. In 57.1 innings, he’s compiled a 2.98 ERA and 2.45 FIP. He’s striking out 29% of opposing batters and hardly walking anyone. With his new low arm slot, he’s adopted what I like to think of as the sidearmer’s basic arsenal: a sinker, a slider, and a break-glass-in-case-of-lefty changeup. 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 »

On Saturday, the Dodgers acquired steady 36-year-old reliever Chris Martin from the Cubs in exchange for utilityman Zach McKinstry, who has spent most of the season at Triple-A Oklahoma City.

This is Martin’s seventh major league organization (Red Sox, Rockies, Yankees, Rangers, Braves, Cubs, Dodgers), but his journey has been even more winding and complex than that. Martin was a draft-and-follow by the Rockies in 2005 but blew out his shoulder during his sophomore year at McLennan Junior College in Texas and needed labrum surgery, so he went unsigned. He was again passed over in the 2006 draft and spent parts of four years in Independent Ball before signing with the Red Sox. He was traded to the Rockies as the secondary piece in a deal for Jonathan Herrera (Franklin Morales was the headline prospect), and then was traded to the Yankees for cash not long after that. He threw 20 innings for the Yankees before spending two seasons in Japan with Hokkaido. There, Martin learned a splitter from a then 21-year-old Shohei Ohtani before returning to MLB with Texas. He was a Braves deadline acquisition in 2019, and was with Atlanta in ’20 and ’21 before signing with the Cubs this past winter. 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 »

For the first time in 30 years, a pair of brothers will be in the same All-Star Game lineup. On Sunday, when the full squads were announced, catchers Willson Contreras of the Cubs and William Contreras of the Braves both made the National League team. They’ll each be in the starting lineup, as Willson won the fan vote as the NL’s starting backstop, and William, who was elected as a reserve catcher by his fellow players, has been named to replace the injured Bryce Harper as the starting designated hitter.

This is the first time since 2003 that a pair of brothers has been named to the Midsummer Classic. That year, the Reds’ Aaron Boone was a reserve for the NL while the Mariners’ Bret Boone was a reserve for the American League. The last time two brothers started the same game was in 1992, when the AL squad featured Toronto’s Roberto Alomar at second base and Cleveland’s Sandy Alomar Jr. at catcher.

By my count, a total of 18 19 sets of brothers (including one set of three brothers) has made the All-Star team at least once, with 10 sets making it in the same season at least once; both of those counts include players who were selected but did not get into the game. Five sets started in the same year at least once:

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitches are hard to classify, and the interactions between them are even more fraught. Mix up a slider and a cutter, and you’ll make the aggregates look all — wait, I started too specific. Let’s back up. Baseball is a game played between two teams, each of whom take turns trying to hit a ball thrown by the other team using a bat. The object of the game is to advance safely — wait, now this is too general. Let’s see if we can hit a happy medium.

Keegan Thompson throws a lot of pitches. Depending on how you count them — and boy, will we get into how you count them in this article, don’t worry — he throws as many as six different pitches, all with distinct properties in one way or another. Need a grounder? Keegan has a pitch for that. Strikeout? Sure thing. Want to beat a lefty, or induce a pop up, or regulate local power plants? Thompson can do the first two of those, if he picks the right pitch for the right situation.

This year, it looks like that previous paragraph is only partly hyperbole. In his 2021 major league debut, Thompson mainly worked out of the bullpen and had mixed success. He struck out an average number of batters but also ran a walk rate of nearly 13%. He went into 2022 without a clear role on the team — we projected him for a few starts and plenty of bullpen work — but with a pressing need for improvement on the command front.
Read the rest of this entry »

You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

I’m touching up prospect lists using the same complex-based clustering as usual, incorporating notes from my in-person looks, sourced data, and the opinions of pro scouts. Up is the group of teams based in Phoenix’s East Valley, with a focus on the Cubs largely due to the depth of their system, making them the team most likely to be motivated to part with prospects between now and the trade deadline. Players whose Future Value grade changed have an “Up” or “Down” arrow in the “Trend” column on The Board.

Oakland Athletics

Jonah Bride and Jordan Diaz move into the 40+ FV tier on the strength of their bat-to-ball skills. Bride, who recently made his big league debut and is currently on the IL, is a recent (part-time) catching convert who would be stuffed in the 45 FV tier if his ball-blocking and receiving had progressed more quickly and I felt more confident that he could catch often. It’s still possible that he could turn into a role player with this sort of special versatility if his defense behind the plate continues to improve, but because he can hit, Bride is at least going to be a solid part-time infielder, with third base his most natural position.

The long-term athletic projection concerns that have been a part of the 21-year-old Diaz’s profile for the duration of his young career continue to apply, and it counterweights the fact that he’s performing so well (.293/.342/.537, a 121 wRC+ as of Tuesday) as a college-aged hitter at Double-A. But Midland isn’t exactly hitter-friendly, and his feel for contact is freaky enough to value him as more than just a corner bench player.

Mason Miller (scap strain) hasn’t pitched all year after sitting upper-90s with a plus slider during late-2021 looks in Mesa. Neither has titanic 23-year-old righty Jorge Juan, due to a multitude of issues. In addition to elbow treatment, he has had setbacks unrelated to the original injury while rehabbing. He was DFA’d and re-signed to a minor league deal after being a bold, surprising 40-man add in the offseason.

A-ball righties Blake Beers (plus slider, late-bloomer traits, a great day three draft find) and Yehizon Sanchez (lanky, above-average arm strength and curveball) have been added to the A’s prospect list, and their full scouting reports are available over on The Board. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I took a look at the fascinating race for the American League Rookie of the Year award, where four of our top five preseason prospects who have made their major league debuts — three of them on Opening Day — are making for a packed and compelling competition. In the National League, the race is just as crowded, though there isn’t a clear-cut favorite. And while the race in the AL is filled with top prospects, there are far more surprises and underdogs in the NL.

Before we get into the details, here’s some important context from that previous article:

When Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association signed a new Collective Bargaining Agreement this offseason, it included some interesting provisions designed to combat service time manipulation. Top prospects who finish first or second in Rookie of the Year voting will automatically gain a full year of service time regardless of when they’re called up, and teams that promote top prospects early enough for them to gain a full year of service will be eligible to earn extra draft picks if those players go on to finish in the top three in Rookie of the Year voting or the top five in MVP or Cy Young voting. The goal was to incentivize teams to call up their best young players when they’re ready, rather than keeping them in the minor leagues to gain an extra year of team control. So far, the rule changes seem to have had their intended effect: three of our top five preseason prospects, and 11 of our top 50, earned an Opening Day roster spot out of spring training.

Of those 11 top 50 prospects who started off the season in the major leagues, just five of them were in the National League. The highest-ranked player in that group was CJ Abrams (15), with the four others falling below 30th on our preseason list. That’s not to say that there’s a lack of highly regarded prospects making their debuts in the senior circuit; there have been a few more big call-ups since Opening Day, including our No. 8 prospect, Oneil Cruz, just a few days ago. Still, the differences between the two leagues are stark when you pull up the rookie leaderboards.

With that in mind, here are the best rookie performers in the NL through June 22:

Where the AL had a trio of top prospects leading the way, the NL has seven players firmly in front with plenty of others close behind. In that group, just Alek Thomas was ranked on our preseason top 100; the others were a mix of the unheralded, the very young, or those who had already lost their prospect sheen. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin will have periodic minor league roundup post that run during the week. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Before we get to this post’s analysis, some housekeeping. I’m continuing to trudge through the last few team lists, and hope readers will understand that part of why this has taken so long is because a) we lost multiple writers to teams during the process and b) it takes a lot for me to compromise my vision for the depth and quality of my work. I’m on pace to finish just before the draft while also updating and expanding the draft prospect list so that draftees can quickly be added to their club’s pro list right after they’re picked. I realize that continuing this way during future cycles would leave valuable and relevant info unpublished for too long, and that I need to make changes. For instance, I don’t have a Cardinals list out yet while guys like Andre Pallante, Brendan Donovan and Juan Yepez are all playing big league roles. I’ve had well-formed thoughts on that group of guys since they were part of last year’s Arizona Fall League, and need to find a way to shorten the lag between when I’m taking those notes and when they’re turned into actionable info on the site, especially when it comes to short-term big leaguers.

My approach for in-season updates (which have already underway — duh, you are reading this post) will again be to group teams based on the geographic location of their spring training facility (for example, teams with East Valley facilities in Arizona are already being updated) and drill down deepest on contending clubs (within that East Valley cluster, the Giants) as they’re more likely to part with prospects ahead of the trade deadline. There will still be à la carte updates where I see a player and add them, or where someone’s performance prompts me to source info from scouting and front office contacts and brings about a change in their evaluation or valuation. Read the rest of this entry »

If there were any fears about how well Seiya Suzuki would transition to Major League Baseball, his hot start with the Cubs has probably quelled them. The 27-year-old right fielder has collected hits in each of his first six games, three of them homers. He reached base safely at least twice in each of those games (the last only with benefit of a throwing error) while demonstrating otherworldly plate discipline to go along with his impressive power. Admittedly, we’re in small-sample theater, but the show thus far is worthy of strong reviews.

It’s not as though Suzuki was expected to flop given that the Cubs invested nearly $100 million in acquiring him — $85 million over a five-year deal plus another $14.625 million as a posting fee for the Hiroshima Carp. As Kevin Goldstein described him when he signed with Chicago in mid-March, “At 27, Suzuki is a player in his prime, with an impressive track record of performance at Japan’s highest level since his teens. This is not a prospect; this is an established talent who just hasn’t played in Major League Baseball yet.”

Suzuki hit .317/.443/.639 with 38 homers and just a 16.3% strikeout rate for Hiroshima last year while winning his second batting title — a slash-stat triple crown this time — and earning Best Nine honors for the sixth straight time in Nippon Professional Baseball. While both the homers and slugging percentage represented career highs, his season wasn’t wildly far off from his career numbers in NPB (.315/.414/.570). Between ZiPS and Steamer, our projection systems figured that he would lose some power in the move to MLB, but his Depth Charts forecast for a .287/.369/.508 line and .371 wOBA still casts him as one of the game’s top 20 hitters.

At least through Thursday, so far, so good. I won’t pretend that half a dozen games is proof of anything for any player, and none of the stats in this piece are even close to stabilizing, but Suzuki has proven to be very entertaining while more than holding his own against quality pitchers from day one.

Indeed, on Opening Day against the Brewers, Suzuki reached base in each of his first three plate appearances. He worked a six-pitch walk and collected a single off reigning NL Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes — no big deal, just having immediate success against the qualifier who had the majors’ lowest wOBA allowed in 2021 — and followed that with an eight-pitch walk against reliever Aaron Ashby. In Chicago’s second game two days later, he drove in three runs, the first two against Brandon Woodruff via a sacrifice fly and a bloop single to center, the third via a four-pitch bases-loaded walk off José Ureña. He capped the series against the Brewers by crushing a three-run first-inning homer off Freddy Peralta, a 110.9-mph, 412-foot shot to left center, then working a seven-pitch walk off Peralta in his next plate appearance.

Two days later, Suzuki went yard twice, accounting for both of the Cubs’ runs in a 2-1 win over the Pirates. His first blow was a 397-footer to right center field off former Cub José Quintana, his second a 398-footer to left field off Anthony Banda. On Wednesday against the Pirates, he went 1-for-3 with an RBI single off Zach Thompson and a walk off Wil Crowe. On Thursday against the Rockies, he hit a first-inning RBI double off Kyle Freeland, and reached base again in the third on a throwing error by José Iglesias.

Here’s the “greatest hits” reel:

Through Thursday, Suzuki is hitting .368/.480/.895 for a 262 wRC+ — absurd numbers straight out of a video game, unsustainable by definition, and yet compelling just the same; he entered Thursday with a 322 wRC+, which ranked third behind only the Guardians’ Owen Miller and Jose Ramírez, but dropped to eighth with his 1-for-4 night in Colorado. He’s averaged a 91.0 mph exit velocity on his batted balls, and his 28.6% barrel rate is tied with Aaron Judge for fourth in the majors, trailing only Byron Buxton, Joey Gallo, and Giancarlo Stanton — the big boys, so to speak.

While Suzuki is hitting the ball hard, what he’s doing when he’s not hitting the ball at all stands out even more. His swinging strike rate is just 3.8% — that’s four swings and misses from among 104 pitches, one against Woodruff, one against Banda, one against the Pirates’ David Bednar, and one against the Rockies’ Justin Lawrence, the last two of whom struck him out swinging. That 3.8% rate still trails Steven Kwan’s ungodly 0.7%, as well as the rates of four other players, but it’s amazing nonetheless. I won’t pretend to know where he’ll finish, but in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008), 54 batters have qualified for the batting title with swinging strike rates of 3.8% or lower. Only two of them, however, have done so while slugging at least .500, both in 2014: Victor Martinez (.565 SLG, 3.5% SwStr%) and Michael Brantley (.506 SLG, 3.6% SwStr%). Brantley barely missed in 2019 (.503 SLG, 4.0% SwStr%), as did Albert Pujols in 2008 (.653 SLG, 4.0% SwStr%). That would be some company to wind up in.

Also impressive is Suzuki’s 10.9% chase rate, which is in a virtual tie with Christian Yelich for the majors’ lowest among qualifiers. Suzuki entered Thursday at 8.3%, the only qualifier in single digits — even Kwan’s at a comparatively normal 23.7% — but went down chasing a well-placed sinker by Lawrence:

That was just the fifth pitch Suzuki has chased outside the zone; he fouled two of them off, singled off Woodruff, and doubled off Freeland.

Again, Suzuki won’t maintain those numbers, but it’s worth noting how advanced he is at controlling the zone relative to the other Japanese hitters who have come over recently. In mid-March, just after he signed, Hiroshi Miyashita published a piece on the FanGraphs Community Research blog comparing Suzuki’s final NPB season to those of Shohei Ohtani (2016 and ’17), Yoshi Tsutsugo (2019), and Shogo Akiyama (2019) via data from the 1.02 – Essence of Baseball site, with tables covering his slash stats, WAR components, batted ball stats, plate discipline stats, and more. The plate discipline one particularly stood out to these eyes:

Among MLB qualifiers, only Juan Soto (15.1%), Max Muncy (19.1%), Robbie Grossman (19.2%) and Tommy Pham (19.3%) swung at less than 20% of pitches outside the zone; Ohtani, the only one of the above players to qualify last year, had a chase rate of 30.1% in 2021 and is at 31.1% for his career, so perhaps we can expect Suzuki’s line to wind up in a range comparable to what he did in Japan.

Speaking of Ohtani, he and Keith McDonald (the son of an American serviceman stationed in Japan during the Vietnam War) of the 2000 Cardinals are the only other players born in Japan who homered three times in their first six games in MLB, with Kenji Johjima the only other one even to homer twice; no other Japanese player had a multi-homer game so early in his major league career. (Ohtani hit .364/.417/.773 (221 wRC+) in his first six non-pitching games in 2018, in case you’re wondering.) Meanwhile, Suzuki’s six-game hitting streak is the third-longest of any Japanese player to start his career, after those of Akinori Iwamura in 2007 (nine games) and Hideki Matsui in ’03 (seven games). His 10 RBI are the most by any Japanese player in his first six games, and in fact only two players born anywhere have more RBI in such a career-opening span, the Tigers’ Dale Alexander in 1929 (13) and the Rockies’ Trevor Story in 2016 (12), while four other players had 10, including the Reds’ Jonathan India last year.

That stuff is admittedly trivial and fleeting, and we’ll have to wait and see how well Suzuki maintains his power and plate discipline as pitchers adjust to what they’ve seen. Still, it’s pretty clear that he belongs in the majors, and it appears very possible that the Cubs have a legitimate middle-of-the-lineup star on their hands.