Austin Wells is doing more than just establishing himself as a solid everyday catcher in his first full big-league season. Thanks in part to a hot July that saw him slug five home runs and put up a .941 OPS, he’s been batting cleanup for the New York Yankees. The 25-year-old left-handed-hitting backstop isn’t exactly on his way to becoming the next Yogi Berra or Bill Dickey, but what he’s doing is notable nonetheless.

In the present-day iteration of the Bronx Bombers, slotting into the four-hole means following Juan Soto and Aaron Judge in the lineup. Is it easier or harder to hit directly behind a pair of players who are on track for the Hall of Fame? I asked Wells that question last weekend at Fenway Park.

“I think it’s easier or harder depending on the pressure you put on yourself,” replied Wells, whom the Yankees drafted 28th overall in 2020 out of the University of Arizona. “If you look at it like you’re expected to do what they’re doing, then there’s going to be a lot of pressure to perform. Being able to stay in your zone and know what you do well takes the pressure off.”

That he’s not about to match the exploits of the team’s dynamic duo is stating the obvious. Judge has 41 home runs and a 216 wRC+ in the current campaign, while comparably a mere mortal (can a superstar be a more mortal?) Soto has 27 home runs and a 187 wRC+. Wells understands that he isn’t at their level. At the same time, he’s not about to put strict limits on his long-ball potential.

“They’re going to hit 40-plus homers every single year, and that’s not never been me,” the humble-yet-confident catcher told me. “I mean, who knows? It could possibly happen, but right now my is to keep the lineup moving. That’s where I’m at right now.”

Wells’s overall numbers on the season include eight home runs, a 116 wRC+ over 253 plate appearances, and 2.5 WAR.

Eric Longenhagen is bullish on his potential. When our Yankees Top Prospects list went up in December, my colleague described a swing “beautifully connected from the ground up,” adding that the “blend of his barrel control and the natural lift in his swing gives him a potent contact and power combination.” Despite concerns about his defense — primarily his throwing arm — Longenhagen assigned Wells a 50 FV.

His work behind the plate has been more than adequate. While his throwing remains a bit below average, Wells is plus-six in Framing Runs Above Average and he has seven Defensive Runs Saved. The strides he’s made defensively are laudable.

“I believe in my ability to get better every time I catch,” said Wells. “That’s been the biggest key, just believing. It’s led me to where I’m at now, and hopefully it continues to lead me into even better catching, better numbers, and more wins.”

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Bobby Richardson went 1 for 17 against Eli Grba.

Doug Gwosdz went 1 for 11 against Steve Carlton.

Mark Grudzielanek went 9 for 11 against Tim Hudson.

Doug Mientkiewicz went 7 for 11 against Bronson Arroyo.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia went 7 for 15 against Jeremy Guthrie.

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I recently talked to a pitcher who described what he considers the worst pitch he’s thrown all season, and while I haven’t yet shared his telling — stay tuned — the conversation did lead me down the same path with Tarik Skubal prior to last night’s Tigers-Royals game at Comerica Park. He cited a pitch that Hunter Renfroe stroked for a run-scoring extra-base the previous night.

“I threw a changeup that cut like crazy,” Skubal told me. “Whenever I do that, I usually throw the ball out. I didn’t throw the ball out. On the next pitch, I gave up a double down the line on a changeup that cut again. I should have thrown it out, but instead, I was like, ‘Ah, what are the odds I cut it twice in a row?’”

Skubal explained that of all his pitches, the changeup is most-impacted by a difference in baseballs. Moreover, not all baseballs are created equal. As the Tigers ace put it, “Some balls are wound a little different — the seams are a little different — so the seam effect isn’t consistent. I rely on a lot of seam effect with that pitch specifically.”

Skubal went on to say that the pitch he threw to Renfroe cut enough that it registered as a slider. In reality, it was a changeup delivered with a baseball that he normally would have thrown out — but regretfully didn’t.

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A quiz:

Fergie Jenkins has the most career wins (284) by a pitcher born in Canada. Which Canadian-born pitcher has the second-most wins? (A hint: He won a World Series ring in the current century.)

The answer can be found below.

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NEWS NOTES

A reminder that SABR’s 52nd annual convention will be held in downtown Minneapolis beginning this Wednesday and running through Saturday. Featured speakers include Bert Blyleven, Rod Carew, Tony Oliva, and Twins GM Thad Levine. More information can be found here.

Denny Lemaster, a left-handed pitcher whose MLB career spanned the 1962-1972 season, died on July 24 at age 85. LeMaster went 17-11 with the Milwaukee Braves in 1964 and later played with the Houston Astros and Montreal Expos.

Reyes Moronta, who had been pitching in the Mexican League after playing for four MLB teams from 2017-2023, died in a motor vehicle accident this past week at age 31 (per Baseball Player Passings). The Santo Domingo native made 136 of his 177 big-league appearances with the San Francisco Giants.

Jim Weber, the longtime play-by-play announcer for the Toledo Mud Hens, has died at age 78. He began calling games for Detroit’s Triple-A affiliate in 1975.

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The answer to the quiz Ryan Dempster, with 132 wins. The Sechelt, British Columbia native won a World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2013.

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When the Seattle Mariners acquired Justin Turner at the trade deadline, they brought on board a 39-year-old veteran of 16 big-league seasons who is, for all intents and purposes, a hitting guru in uniform. Reputation-wise, he has been akin to an extra hitting coach in the later part of his career.

I asked Mariners manager Scott Servais if veterans of Turner’s ilk can positively impact young hitters when they join a new team.

“Absolutely,” said Servais. “I’ve often said that as coaches and managers you talk to players and try to lead them in a certain direction, but players are always going to listen to players more than they listen to others — and certainly to a guy that has a track record like Justin Turner has.”

Following up, I asked the ninth-year skipper if he could give an example of a player who came to one of his teams and made an especially-meaningful impact. It wasn’t a position player he named, but rather a pitcher.

“When we signed Robbie Ray [prior to the 2022 season],” said Servais. “We’re seeing the maturing of Logan Gilbert and George Kirby. A lot of what Robbie brought, those guys have taken and run with. You see it happen all over the league… It’s welcome. Players like it. I enjoy it. If you have a guy like that who carries so much respect amongst the group, it’s a way for me to funnel messaging through.”

Servais proceeded to add an entertaining caveat:

“If he agrees. If he doesn’t agree, that’s another conversation. Those have happened before too. But it is another voice.”

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The Kia Tigers have the KBO’s best record, at 61-42-2. The Kiwoom Heroes have the KBO’s worst record, at 45-57.

Hyun Jin Ryu is 6-6 with a 3.91 ERA in 115 innings with the Hanwha Eagles. The 37-year-old left-hander spent seven seasons with the KBO club before pitching in MLB from 2013-2023.

Mel Rojas Jr. is slashing .338/.433/.593 with 25 home runs in 480 plate appearances for the KBO’s KT Wiz. The 34-year-old former Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves prospect last played stateside in 2017.

Jeter Downs signed with NPB’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks earlier this week. A first-round pick by the Cincinnati Reds in 2017 who was later part of the Mookie Betts trade between the Red Sox-Dodgers, the 26-year-old infielder was released by the Yankees on July 30.

Shugo Maki is slashing .274/.333/.482 with 16 home runs in 363 plate appearances for the Yokohama BayStars. A three-time NPB All-Star, the 26-year-old second baseman has stolen nine bases without getting caught.

The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks have NPB’s best record, at 62-31. The Saitama Seibu Lions have NPB’s worst record, at 29-64.

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I’ve mentioned Hiroto Takahashi a handful of times this season, and for good reason: The 21-year-old Chunichi Dragons right-hander has been NPB’S most-dominant pitcher. In 13 starts, Takahashi has a record of 8-1 to go with a 0.48 ERA and 89 strikeouts in 93 innings. Moreover, he has surrendered just 58 hits, none of which have left the yard.

Wanting to know more about him, I asked one of his 2023 World Baseball Classic teammates for a snapshot scouting report.

“I haven’t faced him, but velocity-wise he throws really hard,“ Red Sox DH Masataka Yoshida told me prior to a recent game at Fenway Park. “The breaking ball is elite level, too. He’s got different [pitches] in his arsenal that can be used as a put-away pitch. He definitely has the potential to come over here in the future.”

In search of another perspective, I also checked in with my friend Jim Allen (@JballAllen).

“He’s the real deal,” the Tokyo-based baseball scribe replied via email. “He lacks the velocity that makes MLB GMs drool like they do over [Roki] Sasaki, but his secondary pitches are probably better. I don’t have his max, but my guess would be 98 mph. He sits at 95.”

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Don Leshnock faced five batters in a scoreless inning for the Detroit Tigers against the California Angels on June 7, 1972. The southpaw from Youngstown, Ohio retired Leo Cardenas on a groundout, then sandwiched singles by Sandy Alomar Sr. and Mickey Rivers with punch-outs of Nolan Ryan and Vada Pinson. It was his only big-league game. Prior to that outing, Leshnock hurled a no-hitter while playing for the Carolina League’s Rocky Mount Leafs in 1970.

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FARM NOTES

Travis Bazzana hit his first professional home run on Wednesday as the High-A Lake County Captains lambasted the Beloit Sky Carp 17-5. The 21-year-old native of New South Wales, Australia was drafted first overall this summer by the Cleveland Guardians.

The Minnesota Twins promoted their top-rated prospect, Walker Jenkins, to High-A Cedar Rapids earlier this week. Drafted fifth overall last year out of a Southport, North Carolina high school, the 19-year-old outfielder had been slashing .273/.404/.413 with three home runs and a 139 wRC+ with the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels.

Cole Carrigg is slashing .284/.360/.472 with 10 home runs and a 133 wRC+, and has swiped 36 bases in 44 attempts, with the High-A Spokane Indians. Drafted in the second round last year out of San Diego State University, the 22-year-old infielder/outfielder is No. 25 on our Colorado Rockies Top Prospects list.

Keiverson Ramirez has a 4-1 record to go with a 0.71 ERA and a 2.39 FIP over 38 innings in the Dominican Summer League. The 18-year-old right-hander from Valencia, Venezuela was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals in January.

The Tigers won the Florida Complex League championship on Monday by defeating the Pirates 12-1. Detroit’s rookie-level affiliate was managed by Salvador Paniagua.

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My writeup of the trade deadline deal that sent a pair of New York Yankees prospects to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for Mark Leiter Jr. included reports on on the promising youngsters from Eric Longenhagen. My colleague isn’t the only source I solicited a perspective from. I also reached out to someone who has seen all of Ben Cowles’s games this season, and the majority of Jack Neely’s.

“Cowles shows confidence and comfortability at all three infield positions (other than first base),” Somerset Patriots broadcaster Steven Cusumano said of the 24-year-old infielder, who had a 140 wRC+ with the Double-A affiliate. “I wouldn’t say that he stuck out at any one over the other; he plays all three very, very well. He is as consistent a player as they come, including defensively, in spite of how much inconsistency there would be in what position he played every day. Also worth mentioning, he’s as good a baserunner as you’ll find. That quickness does show in the field from time-to-time and he has excellent baseball instincts.

“Neely profiles as a back-end reliever: big and intimidating presence with two excellent pitches,” he said of the 24-year-old right-handed reliever who had a 2.90 ERA over 31 innings with Somerset. “Fastball (94-97) and a really good slider (82-25). Huge frame physically, a lot of tenacity on the mound and one of the most confident players you’ll ever encounter.”

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I also solicited quotes for a trade that I didn’t write about. The Pittsburgh Pirates acquired Nick Yorke from the Boston Red Sox in exchange for right-hander Quinn Priester, and I asked two of the 22-year-old infield prospect’s former teammates for their thoughts on him.

“He’s a good player, man,” Boston infielder Jamie Westbrook said of Yorke, whom Eric Longehagen has assigned a 45 FV. “He’s got good bat-to-ball. He’s got some pop. He drives the ball to right field well. He plays a good second base and has also started to play the outfield this year. When I was with Yorkie for a short period of time in [Triple-A] Worcester, he had good at-bats and moved the ball around. I would hate to put a comp on him, but he’s a solid player.”

“Outside of the player he is, he is one of the best friends I’ve had in the organization,” said Red Sox infielder/outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela. “He’s’s a tremendous person. He’s always there for you as a teammate. And he’s obviously a good hitter. I’ve seen him through the years, and he’s getting better and better. Hopefully he will get the chance there to play in the major leagues.”

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

Over The Monster’s Maura McGurk went to a Decemberists concert and proceeded to wonder what’s next for the Red Sox now that the trade deadline has passed.

Trade acquisition Yusei Kikuchi utilized his changeup more frequently than he had in Toronto while fanning 11 batters in his Houston Astros debut. Chandler Rome has the story at The Athletic (subscription required).

The Athletic’s Zack Meisel wrote about CC Sabathia’s journey from unpolished draft pick to Cleveland Hall of Famer (subscription required).

Ron LeFlore made his major league debut with the Detroit Tigers on August 1, 1974, one year after he’d been released from Jackson State Prison, where he served a sentence for armed robbery. Adam Henig wrote about it for The Metro Times.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

The Chicago White Sox have a record of 27-86 following their worst-in-franchise-history 19th straight loss last night. The 1962 New York Mets, who infamously finished 40-120, were 30-83 through 113 games.

The Milwaukee Brewers are a big-league-best 46-4 this year when outhitting their opponents. The Detroit Tigers, at 40-4, have the second-best record when outhitting their opponents.

Nine consecutive Kansas City Royals batters had hits in the seventh inning of Friday night’s 9-2 win over the Detroit Tigers. The nine straight hits tied a franchise record that had been set in a May 7, 1980 game against the Chicago White Sox.

Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. has gone 16-for-22 in his last six games against the White Sox.

George Kirby hasn’t allowed more than three walks in any of his 79 big-league starts. The Seattle Mariners right-hander is the only pitcher in the modern era with at least 50 starts and more games started than walks allowed (56).

Max Scherzer has has 3,405 strikeouts and 112 HBPs.
Justin Verlander has 3,393 strikeouts and 113 HBPs.

In 1980, the Billy Martin-managed Oakland Athletics had five starters throw 211 or more innings and combine to throw 93 complete games. Bob Lacey, who made 46 of his 47 appearances as a reliever, threw a complete-game shutout in his lone start.

Players born on today’s date include Gabe Gabler, whose big-league career comprised three pinch-hit appearances for the Chicago Cubs in 1958. The St. Louis native fanned all three times.

Also born on today’s date was Ray Oyler, who started 70 games at shortstop for the 1968 World Series champion Detroit Tigers despite slashing just .135/.213/.186 over the course of the season. The slick-fielding, offensively-inept infielder had a sacrifice bunt in his lone Fall Classic plate appearance.

On today’s date in 1934, the New York Giants scored 11 runs in the ninth inning while routing the Philadelphia Phillies 21-4 in the second game of a Saturday double-header. Right-hander Reggie Grabowski incurred all of the damage in his lone inning of work, while Mel Ott finished 4-for-4 with two homers, a double, and six runs scored.

On August 5, 2001, the Cleveland Indians rallied from a 14-2 seventh-inning deficit to beat the Seattle Mariners 15-14. Omar Vizquel’s two-out, bases-clearing triple in the ninth tied it, while Jolbert Cabrera’s walk-off single plated Kenny Lofton in the 11th to cap the comeback.

The biggest positive of this frustrating Chicago Cubs season has been the emergence of Shota Imanaga as a frontline starter. As you probably remember, Imanaga was introduced to the wider American baseball-watching public when he started the gold medal game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic for Team Japan.

Well, he’s not the only Cubs starter who had a breakout performance against Team USA at the 2023 WBC. During pool play, Javier Assad came out of the bullpen at Chase Field and mowed down three innings’ worth of American hitters. With only nine appearances’ worth of major league experience, Assad was a relative unknown at the time. Since then, he’s claimed a regular spot in a good Chicago rotation, and pitched very well. Read the rest of this entry »

A common refrain in baseball is that you can never have enough pitching, and that doesn’t apply solely to starters. A well-stocked bullpen can be just as important to a club, which is why a lot of contenders dealt for relievers as the trade deadline approached. Two such clubs were the Boston Red Sox, who acquired Lucas Sims from the Cincinnati Reds and Luis Garcia from the Los Angeles Angels, and the New York Yankees, who acquired Mark Leiter Jr. from the Chicago Cubs and Enyel De Los Santos from the San Diego Padres.

Let’s look at two of those deals — the trades for Garcia and De Los Santos will be covered in another post — beginning with Boston getting Sims in exchange for 19-year-old pitching prospect Ovis Portes.

With setup men Chris Martin and Justin Slaten both on the injured list — their return dates are uncertain — the Red Sox have been badly in need of proven bullpen arms. Late-inning implosions contributed heavily to the team’s losing seven of 10 games coming out of the All-Star break, with Chase Anderson, Bailey Horn, and Greg Weissert among the pitchers of record in the defeats. When you’re battling for a Wild Card berth, those aren’t ideal options for high-leverage situations. Read the rest of this entry »

At best, the Rays (54-52) and Cubs (51-56) are on the outskirts of their leagues’ respective Wild Card races, and while both have been busy ahead of the July 30 trade deadline, they’re geared towards improving for down the road rather than this season. On Sunday, the two teams came together for a swap of club-controlled third basemen, with Isaac Paredes heading to Chicago and Christopher Morel to Tampa Bay along with a pair of pitching prospects, righties Hunter Bigge and Ty Johnson.

The 25-year-old Paredes is no stranger to the Cubs, as they signed him out of Mexico for an $800,000 bonus in July 2015, then traded him to Tigers on July 31, 2017 — when he was still in A-ball — alongside Jeimer Candelario in exchange for Alex Avila and Justin Wilson. Since being dealt to the Rays in April 2022, he’s developed into an effective middle-of-the-lineup hitter. After receiving down-ballot MVP support for his 31-homer, .250/.352/.488 (137 wRC+) performance last year, he made his first All-Star team this year, and is currently hitting .245/.357/.435 (130 wRC+) with 16 homers.

Despite that output, Paredes does not hit the ball very hard. His 85-mph average exit velocity ranks in just the fourth percentile, while his 26.1% hard-hit rate is in the fifth percentile; his 5.4% barrel rate is in the 26th percentile. But Paredes excels at pulling fly balls, and particularly at depositing them into the left field corner, which at Tropicana Field is closer to home plate (315 feet) than any current ballpark, since balls hit to Fenway Park’s Green Monster (310 feet away but with a 37-foot high wall) and Minute Maid’s Crawford Boxes (315 feet away with a 21-foot high wall) both require greater elevation to get out. Entering Sunday, Paredes’ 46 pulled fly balls tied him with Anthony Santander for the major league lead, with all 16 of his homers coming via that route. Read the rest of this entry »

While trades of relievers at the deadline are rarely the hottest moves featuring the best prospects, there are usually a lot of them. As the summer reaches its peak, contenders start to think about their bullpens down the stretch and beyond, and with modern bullpens seemingly as densely populated as the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s, there’s always room to add a quality arm. Let’s dig through them!

Editor’s Note: This reliever roundup doesn’t include the more recent trades for Carlos Estévez, Nick Mears, and Jason Adam. Ben Clemens will cover those moves in a separate post.)

The Arizona Diamondbacks acquired LHRP A.J. Puk from the Miami Marlins for 1B/3B Deyvison De Los Santos and OF Andrew Pintar

Don’t focus too much on the raw ERA or unimpressive walk rate when judging the merits of Arizona’s trade for A.J. Puk. Partially in response to their myriad rotation injuries in the spring, the Marlins took Puk’s attempt to get back into the rotation seriously, and he started the season there after a successful spring. I still think that was a well-founded experiment, but it didn’t pay dividends for Miami. Puk was absolutely dreadful as a starter, and it wasn’t long before he landed on the IL with shoulder fatigue. His four starts resulted in a 9.22 ERA, a 6.29 FIP, and an alarming 17 walks in 13 2/3 innings. He was moved back to the ’pen upon his return in mid-May, but the damage to his seasonal line was so significant that it still looked underwhelming at the time of the trade (4.30 ERA, 3.62 FIP, 44 IP).

As he has the last few years, Puk has dominated as a reliever; across 30 1/3 relief innings with the Marlins, he had 33 strikeouts and, perhaps most importantly, only six walks. The result was a 2.08 ERA/2.42 FIP, with batters managing a bleak .159/.204/.252 against him. The Diamondbacks are short on lefty relievers, with Joe Mantiply shouldering a very large share of the southpaw burden. Puk has historically been better against righties than Mantiply, so he can be used in more situations.

In return, the offense-starved Marlins pick up a couple of possible bats to add to their farm system. With a .325/.376/.635 and 28 homers combined at two levels in the high minors this year, Deyvison De Los Santos looks impressive at first look, but it’s important to contextualize those numbers. He’s playing in some very high offensive environments and there’s a lot of hot air to remove from those numbers to turn them into expected MLB performance. ZiPS translates his 2024 minor league performance to .263/.302/.428 in the majors and projects for wRC+ lines between 95 and 110 in the coming years with the Marlins. Now, that’s enough for the Marlins to be interested in him and chase any upside, but don’t be shocked if he’s not an offensive force.

Similarly, ZiPS translates Andrew Pintar’s season at .235/.302/.365 and doesn’t see a ton of growth from him offensively, viewing him as most likely to be a spare outfielder if he reaches the majors. I talked a bit with my colleague Eric Longenhagen about him on Friday and Eric still grades Pintar as a fifth-outfielder type, which is about how ZiPS evaluates him. Still, as with De Los Santos, Pintar’s interesting enough for a team like the Marlins to take a chance on him and give him an extended look; projections are frequently wrong, after all, by design!

The Seattle Mariners acquired RHRP Yimi García from the Toronto Blue Jays for OF Jonatan Clase and C Jacob Sharp

With the Blue Jays as short-term sellers, it’s hardly surprising to see them trade Yimi García, who is a free agent at the end of the season. His three-year, $16 million deal turned out to be a success for the Jays; he’s been worth 2.7 WAR and put up a 3.44 ERA/3.28 FIP over 163 appearances across two-plus seasons. This season has arguably been his best, as he’s striking out nearly 13 batters per nine innings. With Gregory Santos limping a bit after a knee injury – not believed to be severe – García slots in behind Andrés Muñoz in the Mariners’ bullpen pecking order. Seattle’s relief corps has been in the middle of the pack, but adding García to a group that features Muñoz, a healthy Santos, and Taylor Saucedo gives the M’s an excellent quartet of high-leverage guys, which could be crucial in what’s shaping up to be a tight AL West race.

Jonatan Clase was listed with a FV of 40 earlier this month when Eric ran down the top Mariners prospects, but with Julio Rodríguez entrenched in center field and backed up by other outfielders who can capably cover the position (namely Victor Robles, Cade Marlowe, and even, in a pinch, newly acquired Randy Arozarena), Clase’s ability to do so was simply less valuable in Seattle. Beyond that, the team needs more thump in its lineup at this point, and that’s not Clase’s speciality. For the Jays, Kevin Kiermaier is a free agent after the season and the organization has a real lack of center field candidates anywhere near the majors. ZiPS projects Clase at .218/.291/.373 with an 84 wRC+ for 2025 but views him as an above-average defensive center fielder, suggesting that he’s at least a reasonable stopgap option or a useful role player for Toronto. Jacob Sharp has been off the radar as a prospect, a fairly small catcher who is hitting decently well, albeit as a 22-year-old in A-ball.

The New York Mets acquired RHRP Ryne Stanek from the Seattle Mariners for OF Rhylan Thomas

The Mets have an extremely unimpressive bullpen once you get past Edwin Díaz, and now that they are firmly in contention for an NL Wild Card spot this season, they are looking to improve their relief corps. Ryne Stanek hasn’t excelled in Seattle, but the veteran reliever still throws in the high-90s, is durable, and misses bats. Guys like that will always resurface. Especially after trading for García, the Mariners have better options than Stanek to pitch in high-leverage, non-save situations. But that’s not the case in Queens, and he’s a welcome addition to the bullpen.

Rhylan Thomas isn’t a high price to pay and he largely fills a similar role to the departed Clase in Seattle’s organization, though he’s a different type of player. As a high-contact hitter, Thomas may fare well in pitcher-friendly T-Mobile Park. ZiPS sees Thomas as a .263/.313/.333 hitter with plus defense in the corners in 2025.

The Tampa Bay Rays acquired RHRP Cole Sulser from the New York Mets for cash

Cole Sulser is a relative soft-tosser who relies on deception. He had a big breakout season in 2021, but after a trade to the Marlins, he struggled with his command in ’22 and had his season marred by a lat injury that landed him on the 60-day IL. A shoulder injury ruined his 2023 and he’s spent ’24 trying to rehabilitate his value in the minors for the Mets, with mixed results. This is the third time the Rays have traded for Sulser in his career, so they seem to see something in him, and given Tampa Bay’s record with random relievers, I wouldn’t be shocked if he became useful for the Rays next season.

Cash is slang for currency, which can be exchanged for goods and services. It can be vulnerable to inflation, and because of this, it doesn’t represent a stable medium of exchange in some countries. But cash also has the benefit of being very flexible.

The Chicago Cubs acquired RHRP Nate Pearson from the Toronto Blue Jays for OF Yohendrick Pinango

Nate Pearson was rightly a hot prospect back in the day, and there were good reasons to think he’d play a key role in Toronto. Both scouts (he graduated at a FV of 55 here) and projections (ZiPS was a fan) thought a lot of his abilities, but the question was how he’d hold up physically as a starter. This worry turned out to be a real issue, and for the most part since 2019, his seasons have been marred by a wide variety of nagging injuries, costing him significant development time. Pearson throws hard, but he’s still rather raw, a problem given that he turns 28 in a few weeks and he has only two years left of club control after this one — not a lot of time for a reclamation project. The Cubs have decided to take a shot at fixing him. They are short-term sellers, but if Pearson pays off, he could be a significant player for their ’pen in 2025 and ’26.

Yohendrick Pinango is rather raw as well, a corner outfielder with decent power upside who hasn’t really shown that home run pop in the minors so far. The Cubs are kind of stacked with raw, interesting outfield prospects, while the Jays are rather short of them, making Toronto a better home for Pinango. ZiPS only translates Pinango’s 2024 season to a .344 slugging percentage; he hit well in High-A, but that was as a 22-year-old in his third stint there. Like Pearson, Pinango’s a lottery ticket.

I updated the Top 100 Prospects list today. This post goes through the pitchers and why they stack the way they do. Here’s a link directly to the list, and here’s a link to the post with a little more detail regarding farm system and prospect stuff and the trade deadline. It might be best for you to open a second tab and follow along, so here are the Top 100 pitchers isolated away from the bats. Let’s get to it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we have a two-fer of Killers lists covering a couple of key defensive positions, specifically the hot corner and behind the plate. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), 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 — I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot thus far is worth a look.

Cubs

Following the free agent departure of Willson Contreras, last year the catching corps of Yan Gomes, Tucker Barnhart, and rookie Miguel Amaya ranked 21st in WAR. Heading into this season, it made at least some sense on paper to have the 25-year-old Amaya — a former Top 100 prospect who lost significant development time to the pandemic and November 2021 Tommy John surgery — get more playing time while moving the 37-year-old Gomes, whose framing metrics had declined, into a backup role. Unfortunately, both have been terrible. Amaya has hit just .201/.266/.288 (59 wRC+) with average-ish defense (good blocking, poor throwing) en route to -0.1 WAR. Gomes was even worse both at the plate (.154/.179/.242, 15 wRC+) and behind it (-5 DRS, -4 FRV, -3.9 FRM) before getting released on June 21, replaced by Tomás Nido, who had just been released by the Mets. Nido has hit .202/.229/.331 (57 wRC+) overall but is just 4-for-41 as a Cub. Defensively, he’s got a mixed bag of metrics, though he’s been a whisker above average framing-wise. Read the rest of this entry »

The National League Wild Card race is wide open, with eight of the league’s 15 teams separated by a grand total of four and a half games in the standings. Five of those teams are currently below .500, their flaws on display on a daily basis — and some of those teams are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to their defenses.

On Wednesday, I investigated what a handful of the major defensive metrics — Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (FRV), and our catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages) — told us about the teams with the best defenses. Some of them appear to be playoff-bound, while others are barely hanging onto hope thanks in part to those defenses, among them the Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been five weeks since Major League Baseball unveiled its first trove of bat tracking data. In that time, we’ve learned that Giancarlo Stanton swings hard, Luis Arraez swings quickly, and Juan Soto is a god who walks among us unbound by the irksome laws of physics and physiology. We’ve learned that Jose Altuve really does have the swing of a man twice his size, and that Oneil Cruz has the swing of a slightly less enormous man. Mostly, though, we’ve learned when and where batters swing their hardest. This is my fourth article about bat tracking data, and in gathering data for the previous three, I constantly found myself stuck in one particular part of the process: controlling for variables.

As baseball knowledge has advanced from the time of Henry Chadwick to the time of Tom Tango, we first found better, more descriptive ways to measure results. We went from caring about batting average to caring about OPS. We found better ways to weight the smaller results that add up to big ones, going from ERA to FIP and from OPS to wRC+. Then we got into the process behind those results. We moved to chase rates and whiff rates, and the ratio of fly balls to groundballs. With the advent of Statcast, we’ve been able to get deeper than ever into process. We can look at the physical characteristics of a pitch, just a single pitch, and model how well it will perform. Within a certain sample size, we can look at a rookie’s hardest-hit ball, just that one ball, and predict his future wRC+ more accurately than if we looked at the wRC+ from his entire rookie season.

Similarly, when I looked at average swing speed and exit velocity from the first week of bat tracking, I found that swing speed was more predictive of future exit velocity. Exit velocity is the result of several processes: You can’t hit the ball hard unless you swing hard and square the ball up, and you can’t square the ball up if you pick terrible pitches to hit. Between 2015 and 2023, our database lists 511 qualified batters. I measured the correlation between their average exit velocity and their wRC+ over that period. R = .63 and R-squared = .40. But because bat tracking takes us one more step away from results and toward process, it’s further divorced from overall success at the plate. The day after bat speed data was first released, Ben Clemens ran some correlation coefficients between some overall metrics of success. He found a correlation of .11 between average swing speed and wRC+. Now that we have more data, I re-ran the numbers and found that correlation has increased to .25. That’s a big difference, but over the same period, the correlation between wRC+ and average exit velocity is .47.

If you want to know how hard a batter is swinging, you’ll find that it’s dependent on the count, the type of pitch, the velocity of the pitch, the location of the pitch, the depth of contact, and whether contact takes place at all. As a result, if you want to measure any one factor’s effect on swing speed, you need to control for so, so many others. The more I’ve sorted through the data, the more I’ve come to appreciate the old adage that pitchers control the action. Bat tracking shows us just how right people are when they say that hitting is reactive. It shows us that different pitches essentially require different swings.

When Tess Taruskin started putting together her Visual Scouting Primer series, she asked around for scouting terms and concepts that people had a hard time picturing. Barrel variability was at the top of my list. I know that Eric Longenhagen is giving a glowing compliment when he says that a player can move his barrel all around the zone, but I’ve always had trouble picturing that. Maybe it’s because of the way I played the game when I was younger, but I’ve never really understood the concept of a grooved swing. When I was digging through the bat tracking data, seeing the effect of the pitch type, the location, and where in space the batter has to get the barrel in order to make solid contact, it finally clicked.

There’s obviously a reason that every hitter has a book, a certain way that pitchers try to get them out. I’m just not sure I ever connected it quite so clearly to the physical act of swinging, the flexibility, quickness, strength, and overall athleticism required to execute a competitive swing on different kinds of pitches in different locations. And that’s before we even get to the processing speed, judgment, and reaction time that comes with recognizing the pitch and deciding not just whether to swing, but how to attack the ball. Bat tracking highlights the how.

There are a million ways to succeed at the plate. Derek Jeter used an inside-out swing to send the ball the other way. Isaac Paredes uses an inside-even-further-inside swing, reaching out and hooking everything he can down the line. Chas McCormick and Austin Riley time their swings in order to drive a fastball to the right field gap and pull anything slower toward left. Arraez, like Tony Gwynn before him, stays back and places the ball in the exact spot that he feels like placing it. Ted Williams preached a slightly elevated swing, making him the progenitor of today’s Doug Latta disciples, who try to get on plane with the ball early and meet it out front, where their bat is on an upward trajectory. Some players talk about trying to hit the bottom of the ball in order to create backspin and carry. I could go on and on. But no matter what school of thought batters subscribe to, they’re not the ones who decide what kind of pitch is coming. Bat tracking data show us just how adaptable their swing has to be. Here’s a map of the 13 gameday zones, broken down by the average speed of competitive swings in each zone for right-handed batters.

The batter can bend at the waist and drop his bat head on a low pitch, especially inside. A high pitch requires a flatter swing, and it’s much more about pure rotational speed. An outside pitch requires hitting the ball deeper, where the bat might not have reached full speed yet, but it also allows the batter to get his arms extended. I just described three different skills, and there are plenty more that we could dive into. Because every batter is an individual, each will be better or worse at some of them than others.

At the moment when all this clicked, I thought of Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani hits plenty of balls that are very obviously gone from the second he makes contact. But he also hits some of the most awkward home runs imaginable, swings that end up with his body contorted in some weird way that makes it seem impossible that he managed to hit the ball hard. He looks like he’s stepping in the bucket and spinning off the ball, he looks like he’s simply throwing out his bat to foul off an outside pitch, or he looks like he’s just not swinging very hard, and yet the ball ends up over the fence. Somehow this ball left the bat at 106.4 mph and traveled 406 feet.

It might appear that this swing was all upper body. However, a swing is a little bit like cracking a whip, where you’re working from the bottom up to send all of the energy to the very end of the line. Some hitters are better than others at manipulating their bodies to time that energy transfer perfectly. Here’s another way of looking at this.

On the left are the 26 homers that Cody Bellinger hit in 2023. On the right are Ohtani’s 44 homers. I realize that because Ohtani hit 18 more, his chart looks more robust. But it’s not just about the number of dots. It’s about the spread. I’m not trying to pick on Bellinger. I used him in part because he had a great season. I found his pitch chart by searching for players with the highest percentage of home runs in the very middle of the strike zone. At 46%, Bellinger had the highest rate of anyone who hit 20 home runs. If you make a mistake in the middle of the zone, he’ll destroy it. On the other hand, Ohtani is capable of hitting the ball hard just about anywhere. It’s even clearer if you look at the two players’ heat maps on hard-hit balls from last season.

Bellinger has never been the same player since his 2019 MVP campaign, and it’s generally assumed that the significant injuries that followed affected his swing. He can still do major damage, but on a smaller subset of pitches. This is one of the reasons that scouts focus so much on flexibility and athleticism and take the time to describe the swings of prospects as grooved or adaptable, long or short, rotational or not, top-hand or bottom-hand dominant. These things may not matter much in batting practice, but if there’s any kind of pitch you can’t handle, the game will find it. The best hitters find a way to get off not just their A-swing, but a swing that can succeed against whatever pitch is heading toward them.

These are the saddest of possible words,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.
Seeing projected WAR cut into thirds,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.
Quickly declining in other team’s hats,
by plate discipline or by powerless bats,
concussions and sore backs turn comebacks to splats,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.

The 2016 season was one of the greatest in the history of the Chicago Cubs, a franchise that dates back to 1870, before the National League even existed. After winning the World Series and ending a championship drought that dated back to 1908, there were a lot of reasons to think this team would continue to make deep playoff runs for another five or six years. Sure, they had a fairly old starting rotation, with only Kyle Hendricks expected to stick around for a while, but the lineup looked like it was equipped for a long stretch of dominance. Addison Russell was 22, Javier Báez and Kyle Schwarber were each 23, Kris Bryant, Jorge Soler, and Willson Contreras were all 24, and Anthony Rizzo was still just 26. The team’s big free agent signing from the previous winter, Jason Heyward, didn’t have a good first season in Chicago, but at 26, a bounce-back campaign wasn’t out of the question. Still, this version of the Chicago Cubs would turn out to only have four postseason wins and a single playoff series win (the 2017 NLDS) left in them. What’s more, the three brightest stars in that constellation, Bryant, Báez, and Rizzo, were all traded at the 2021 deadline ahead of reaching free agency. Now, years later, each faces a very uncertain future. Read the rest of this entry »