The deafening quiet of this year’s July trade market was disturbed on Thursday night with the announcement that the Seattle Mariners were acquiring first baseman Josh Naylor from the Arizona Diamondbacks. Naylor has provided more than respectable offense for the Snakes this year, hitting .292/.360/.447 with 11 homers, good for a 123 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR. Heading to the desert in return are two minor league pitchers, lefty Brandyn Garcia and righty Ashton Izzi.

While the Diamondbacks have generally disappointed in 2025, little of the fault can be placed at Naylor’s feet. The team expected to compete in 2025, but lost Christian Walker to the Astros in free agency, so the hope was that Naylor would fill the hole for a year before hitting the open market himself. He was never going to be an elite defensive first baseman like Walker, but the expectation was that he would at least provide a similar level of offense. Naylor is likely to fall well short of his career-high 31 homers from 2024, but he’s compensated for that by adding nearly 50 points of batting average, meaning his 123 wRC+ is actually slightly higher than his 119 mark from last season.

If the season ended today, the Mariners would make the playoffs as the second AL Wild Card, and the five-game separation between them and the division-leading Astros is not an insurmountable distance. Houston’s edge in the AL West seems even smaller when you consider how much of its lineup is currently out hurt. The injured quartet of Yordan Alvarez, Isaac Paredes, Jeremy Peña, and Jake Meyers would represent a huge chunk of any team’s offensive value. First base has been a particular source of trouble for the M’s this year, with their first basemen ranking in the bottom third in baseball with a combined 0.4 WAR. The original plan had been for Luke Raley to get the lion’s share of the playing time at first, mostly against righties, with fill-ins around him to take care of the southpaws. However, injuries to Mitch Haniger and Victor Robles thinned out Seattle’s corner outfield and DH depth and pushed Raley mostly to right field. As a result, the team was forced to give a lot of playing time to Rowdy Tellez; he posted an execrable .249 on-base percentage with the Mariners before they dropped him in June.

Naylor is not a superstar, so naturally, his acquisition doesn’t dramatically change the face of the AL West race. After last night’s win over the Angels, ZiPS gave the Mariners a 76% chance to make the playoffs and a 24% probability to win the division. These numbers would be 72% and 21% without the trade.

So, what’s the cost for their new first baseman? Neither Garcia, nor Izzi was torching up the prospect lists, but then again, Naylor is a free agent after the season, making this trade is a pure short-term rental. The 25-year-old Garcia has already made a brief major league debut, and since I don’t believe the Diamondbacks are going to go full rebuild, that has a lot of allure over the compensation draft pick they would have gotten if they’d held onto Naylor and he’d signed elsewhere this offseason. Garcia is a hard-throwing lefty sinkerballer with a three-quarters delivery who predictably induces a lot of grounders. My colleague Eric Longenhagen gave him a 40+ FV when Seattle’s top prospects list was published last month.

The ZiPS projections see Garcia as a solid, though unspectacular, mid-bullpen arm with at least some upside.

As a 21-year-old in High-A ball, Ashton Izzi has more developing to do than Garcia, but even with decidedly mixed results, the righty showed enough upside for Eric to also give him a 40+ FV. According to Eric, Izzi boasts a four-seamer that sits around 94 mph with solid movement. He gets “near elite” extension with his fastball, but it doesn’t generate many whiffs. Izzi also has a usefully average two-seamer, Eric says, as well as a sweeper and a cutter; the sweeper is a big swing-and-miss pitch for him. His changeup is mediocre, and Eric is concerned that Izzi will struggle to develop a good weapon to wield against lefties. Overall, per Eric, if Izzi can clear his developmental hurdles, he can make the majors as a starter.

In all, I think getting two real prospects, one who can impact the parent club immediately, is an absolutely fair return for Naylor. The Mariners have only two playoff wins over the last two decades, and now is the time to go all-in to add to that total. Their offense is better this season than in previous years, but they still needed to fill their hole at first base, and Naylor represents a major upgrade over what they had before.

The Arizona Diamondbacks, like King Solomon confronted with a baby, split their first 100 games straight down the middle. With the trade deadline looming a week from Thursday, the Diamondbacks could use a little wisdom right now, because it’s tough to tell whether they should buy or sell.

As of this writing, Arizona sits in fourth place in the NL West, nine games behind the Dodgers. Even after sweeping the Cardinals, a direct Wild Card rival, over the weekend, the Snakes still need to leapfrog four teams — including St. Louis — in order to slither in to the National League’s final Wild Card position. Five and a half games out of the playoffs with 61 games to go is a substantial hill to climb, especially for a team that’s been devastated by injuries. And the Diamondbacks, with their plethora of impending free agents, could command the market if they chose to sell.

Selling is the pragmatic move, the temperate move, the sustainable move, the move for the guys with the longest view in the room, and all the other business school-informed malarkey that gets spouted by the quarter-zips upstairs.

Poppycock, says I. Don’t listen to them, or my colleague Jay Jaffe. The Diamondbacks should go the other direction, and buy at the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

This was supposed to be the Diamondbacks’ year. After sneaking into the playoffs in 2023 with just 84 wins, then scoring upset after upset to reach the World Series, they improved to 89 wins last year, missing out on October only due to a tiebreaker. The near-miss stung, but the response — signing Corbin Burnes to head their rotation, and keeping the rest of their core intact en route to a club record payroll ($197 million) — made sense. Unfortunately, things haven’t panned out this season, and as the July 31 trade deadline approaches, I believe the Diamondbacks would be best served by selling. (My colleague Michael Baumann feels differently, and will soon make the case on why they should approach the deadline more aggressively.)

Arizona isn’t a bad team. The Diamondbacks have gone just 50-51, but they’ve outscored their opponents by 17 runs; they’re roughly two wins shy of their PythagenPat-projected record and three wins shy of their BaseRuns-projected records. But they’re also running fourth in the NL West, nine games behind the Dodgers (59-42), and they’re 5 1/2 games out of the third NL Wild Card spot, currently occupied by the Padres (55-45), with the Giants, Cardinals, and Reds (all 52-49) between them. It’s not the distance that’s working against them with 61 games to play, it’s the traffic. With so many teams vying for playoff spots, the Diamondbacks have just a 14.9% chance of reaching the postseason — better at least than the Reds (10.8%) — but their odds of winning the World Series are down to 0.7%. It’s tough to envision them making a deep October run not only without Burnes, who underwent Tommy John surgery in June, but with lesser versions of Zac Gallen, Brandon Pfaadt, and Eduardo Rodriguez than they expected. Read the rest of this entry »

Merrill Kelly is having a rock-solid season. Over 21 starts comprising 122 innings, the 36-year-old right-hander has a 9-6 record to go with a 3.32 ERA and a 3.48 FIP. Those numbers are pretty much par for the course. Over the past three-plus seasons — all with the Arizona Diamondbacks — Kelly has made 97 starts and gone 39-22 with a 3.42 ERA and a 3.75 FIP. Neither overpowering nor of ace quality, Kelly is nonetheless a good pitcher who adds value to a big league rotation.

He could soon be taking the mound for a different team. Signed by the D-backs in December 2018 following a four-season stint in the KBO, Kelly is now on the doorstep of free agency; should Arizona decide to be sellers at the deadline, he could find himself in another team’s uniform come August 1. If that happens, the club that acquires him would be getting a known commodity. He has put up between 2.2 and 3.2 WAR in four of his last five seasons, with the exception coming last year, when injuries limited him to just 13 starts and 73 2/3 innings. His overall big league ledger reads: 62-49, 161 starts, 946 1/3 innings, 3.76 ERA, 3.97 FIP, 13.9 WAR.

With free agency looming, I spoke with the veteran hurler earlier this year about his approach to pitching, his evolution on the mound, and his steady performance since returning stateside.

“That’s an interesting question,” Kelly replied when asked how how he gets hitters out. “I would say that I do it in a lot of different ways. Ideally, I would like to get them out on as few pitches as possible. I guess you’d consider that a little bit more old school. Read the rest of this entry »

If you followed along with my Replacement Level Killers series, you’re no doubt familiar with the disheveled state of the Twins. After last year’s epic late-season collapse, Minnesota started slowly, clawed its way back into contention, and then stumbled during a 9-18 June; the team is now 48-51 with 17.5% Playoff Odds, still good enough to qualify for my series highlighting the weakest spots on contenders. Within that series, the Twins made a major league-high five appearances: at catcher, first base, second base, third base, and right field. An underrated part of their struggles is their defense. To the extent that they can still be considered contenders, their glovework stands out as the worst of any playoff hopeful based upon the methodology I used to identify the best team defenses thus far a few weeks ago.

Along with that piece, this is part of my annual midseason dip into the alphabet soup of defensive metrics, including Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (FRV), and our own catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages). Longtime standby Ultimate Zone Rating has been retired, which required me to adjust my methodology.

On an individual level, even a full season of data isn’t enough to get the clearest picture of a player’s defense. Indeed, it’s not at all surprising that samples of 800 innings or fewer produce divergent values across the major metrics; different methodologies produce varying spreads in runs from top to bottom, spreads that owe something to what they don’t measure, as well as how much regression is built into their systems. Pitchers don’t have FRVs, and DRS tends to produce more extreme ratings (positive and negative) than Statcast. But within this aggregation, I think we get enough signal roughly 60% of the way through the season to justify checking in; I don’t proclaim this to be a bulletproof methodology so much as a good point of entry into a broad topic. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, Ben Clemens laid out five fun things to watch during the second half of the 2025 season. The one that caught my eye was the race to lead the league in bunts for base hits. The contestants all make plenty of sense. The group of Kyle Isbel, Jacob Young, TJ Friedl, Victor Scott II, and Xavier Edwards includes four light-hitting, fleet-footed center fielders and one light-hitting, fleet-footed shortstop. But there’s another bunting race going on, and in it, these four speedsters – along with everyone else in baseball – are getting dusted by Jose Herrera, the Diamondbacks backup catcher whom Statcast rates as the 491st fastest out of 510 qualified players this season. It’s the race to lead the league in sacrifice bunts, and no one in baseball is quite so eager to choose the greater good over their own personal gratification than Herrera.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Herrera is tied for fourth in attempted sac bunts. He just leads the league because he’s batting a thousand on his attempts. (Not literally, of course; a successful sac bunt doesn’t count toward your batting average at all.) The other players I’ve mentioned have failed, fouled, or whiffed on their bunts a lot, but not Herrera. We’re going to put Herrera’s proclivity for the sacrifice into context a little later, but let’s start with the obvious question. Why does Herrera bunt so much? It can’t just be because he’s good at it. It’s certainly not because he thinks he can beat out a hit with his third-percentile sprint speed. Often enough, he’s not even pretending to run hard. On this play, it’s not so much that he’s sacrificing himself as it is that he’s just kind of surrendering. Read the rest of this entry »

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 clubs 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), I’ve also 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 is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly within the context of the rest of their roster. I’ve batched the two corners into one supersized roundup because three of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for left field also make the list for right field, and because there’s plenty of crossover in play with regards to personnel. The capsules are listed in order of their left field rankings first, while noting those crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the July 31 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye on.

Royals*

Good grief, somehow Royals corner outfielders have combined for -3.8 WAR, suggesting that the 47-50 team would be over .500 if it had found some typically unremarkable replacement level outfielders to fill those posts. Manager Matt Quatraro has used nine left fielders and eight right fielders, with some crossover between the two. Somehow, only one player at each position has managed even a 100 wRC+ in their thin slice of playing time, namely Jonathan India in left and Drew Waters in right. India, who’s played all of 21 games in left, is new to the position at the major league level; his glove is a liability no matter where you put him and he’s hitting just .251/.332/.348 (91 wRC+) overall. Waters, who’s played 41 games in left, 21 in right, and 22 in center, has hit just .243/.288/.316 (66 wRC+) overall, suggesting his 105 wRC+ in 53 PA in right is a fluke. Mark Canha has collapsed to a 49 wRC+ with career worsts in just about every key Statcast category, though his stints on the injured list for an adductor strain and (currently) tennis elbow have possibly contributed to his woes. None of the other principals at either corner has spent time on the IL.

Hunter Renfroe, who began the year as the regular right fielder, was a full win below replacement before he was released in late May. Jac Caglianone, a 22-year-old 50-FV prospect who has taken over right, has been the next-worst, at -0.9 WAR. Caglianone entered the season ranked no. 47 on our Top 100 Prospects list but had never played above High-A; he’s hit a cringeworthy .140/.196/.264 (22 wRC+) in 138 PA while chasing 41.1% of pitches outside the zone. At some point a responsible adult would send him back to the minors for more seasoning despite the occasional 466-foot homer. Instead, he’s 4-for-40 this month including that July 10 shot. Cool, cool.

In eight seasons of doing this series for FanGraphs (plus a handful of times at Baseball Prospectus and Sports Illustrated), I can’t recall even a fringe contender so hamstrung by an inability to find reasonably productive players at offense-first positions. It’s a testament to the quality of the Royals’ pitching and the play of Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia and Vinnie Pasquantino that this team even has a shred of a chance at a playoff spot. This is the part where I normally suggest potential trade targets who could help shore up the situation; in this case the answer is “just about anyone not already on the Royals roster.” Candidates such as the White Sox’s Andrew Benintendi and the Marlins’ Jesús Sánchez look like Juan Soto and Aaron Judge next to this crowd.

Reds*

Nothing the Reds have done with either outfield corner has worked for very long or very well. Manager Terry Francona has used 10 different left fielders and eight different right fielders, with six players getting time at both. Offseason acquisition Gavin Lux has logged a team-high 34 starts in left while bouncing around to make 30 more at DH, nine at second base, and five at third. Overall, he’s hit .265/.355/.379 (106 wRC+), but his play in left has been, uh, DH-caliber (-6 FRV, -4 DRS in 278.2 innings). Austin Hays, who’s split his time about equally between left (21 starts) and DH (23 starts), has been very effective when available (.287/.323/.517, 124 wRC+) amid three separate IL stints for left calf and left hamstring strains and a left foot contusion; he and Lux have generally shared the left field and DH roles against righties.

Jake Fraley has started 39 games in right, all but one against righties; he’s hit .224/.336/.376 (100 wRC+), but has served IL stints for a left calf strain and a right shoulder sprain, the latter of which he returned from just before the All-Star break. Will Benson has split his time between left (17 starts), right (22 starts), and center (three starts), with just four from that total against lefties; he’s scuffled to a .223/.276/.427 (87 wRC+) line. Of the eight other corner outfielders Francona has tried, only Santiago Espinal has a wRC+ of at least 100 in that capacity, but that’s over just 30 PA, and his overall 63 wRC+ factors into the Reds’ placement on the third base list.

With Hays and Fraley both healthy, the Reds are in better shape than they’ve been for most of the season; the pair has spent just about two weeks together on the active roster (the second half of April). Still, between those two and the everyday play of Lux at one position or another, they’re a bit light (spoiler alert: they’ll be on the DH list as well), with a right-handed bat probably their bigger need. Unlike the Phillies (below), they’re less inclined to add payroll, but as one of the league’s younger teams, they should think in terms of multiple years. Three righties who could be available, the Rangers’ Adolis García, the Orioles’ Ramón Laureano, and the Angels’ Taylor Ward, each have another year of club control remaining; the first two will be arbitration-eligible, the last has a $6.5 million option. Red Sox lefty Wilyer Abreu, who’s got one more pre-arbitration season, offers even more upside and control but will require a greater return.

Phillies*

As noted in Wednesday’s installment, the Phillies rank 27th in the majors in total outfield WAR at 0.3, with left field the weakest of the three positions. Max Kepler spent the better part of a decade as a league-average hitter with a good enough glove to be a two-to-three-win right fielder for the Twins, but last year, he made two trips to the IL and slipped to a 93 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR. The Phillies didn’t overcommit, signing him to a one-year, $10 million deal, but his offense has continued to lag. His 90 wRC+ (.210/.307/.371) is a career low, and in his first taste of left field — the easier of the two corners — his -2 FRV is as well. Kepler’s average exit velocity is about 2 mph higher than last year, with his barrel rate improving from 6.2% to 11.4%, and his hard-hit rate from 36.6% to 44.8%, but he’s fallen 51 points short of his .412 xSLG.

Right fielder Nick Castellanos needs no introduction to readers of this annual series. Four years into a five-year, $100 million deal with the Phillies, his timing remains impeccable: he’s landed here annually. His offense isn’t completely terrible for a change; his 107 wRC+ (.273/.313/.438) is in line with his final 2022 and ’23 lines, and only three points shy of the major league average for right fielders. Alas, he’s a DH stuck in the field because the Phillies already have a better DH in Kyle Schwarber. Castellanos’ defensive metrics are on track to be his worst since 2018; after averaging -9 DRS and -12 FRV in his first three seasons in Philly, he’s at -14 DRS and -12 FRV with 66 games to go.

The Phillies have recently given a bit of playing time in left field to 25-year-old rookie Otto Kemp, an undrafted free agent who hit .313/.416/.594 at Triple-A Lehigh Valley and is at .247/.316/.337 (86 wRC+) with a 28.6% strikeout rate through 98 PA thus far in the majors. Kemp has 30-grade contact skills due to his problems with secondary stuff, and his defense at third base, his primary position in the minors, is shaky. He might work as the short half of a corner platoon, but the Phillies really need to add a quality bat. Abreu, García, and Ward each offer some firepower (not necessarily without flaws), while Benintendi and Sánchez would at least raise the production floor.

Padres

Where have you gone, Jurickson Profar? A nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you… The departure of their 2024 left fielder left a hole that the Padres have tried to fill using 10 different player. The bygone platoon of Jason Heyward and Oscar Gonzalez wasn’t up to the task. What has worked lately, particularly on the offensive side, has been using Gavin Sheets in left. The ex-White Sock has hit .265/.324/.451 (119 wRC+) in 44 games at DH, 34 in left (with all but two of them coming since May 25), and 12 at first base. Historically, the 6-foot-3, 235-pound lefty has been brutal in right field (-23 DRS, -18 FRV in 1543 innings) but has been within one run of average in the two metrics in 263 innings in left thus far. He’s been light against lefties (96 wRC+, compared to 128 against righties), so he could use a platoon partner, particularly one who can also serve as a defensive replacement; neither Brandon Lockridge nor Bryce Johnson have shown themselves to be up to the task, but this shouldn’t be the hardest problem for A.J. Preller to solve at deadline time.

Dodgers

Michael Conforto’s one-year, $17 million deal flew under the radar this past winter given the team’s fancier expenditures, but like those, the early returns aren’t too hot. The 32-year-old Conforto has hit just .184/.298/.322 (80 wRC+) with eight homers and subpar defense in left field (-3 DRS, -3 FRV). July is his first month with a wRC+ of at least 100, albeit in just 38 PA, and there’s no underlying batted ball trend suggesting notable improvement. Indeed, Conforto’s Statcast contact numbers, while still above average, are down relative to last season, and he’s lagging well behind both his .243 xBA and .421 xSLG, with his 99-point shortfall in SLG the seventh-largest in the majors.

While the Dodgers have alternatives in left, Enrique Hernández figures in the third base picture with Max Muncy sidelined, and Andy Pages — whose 205 wRC+ in 44 PA is propping up the offensive numbers here — is better used in center or right. One as-yet unexplored option would be to add rookie Dalton Rushing to the mix. The 24-year-old backstop has hit just .221/.293/.309 (73 wRC+) since debuting in mid-May, but a weekly diet of 10 PA can’t be helping his cause, and he does have 33 games of minor league experience in left.

It’s not inconceivable that the Dodgers cut bait on Conforto, particularly if they have a roster crunch. But so long as their offense is scoring a major league-high 5.33 runs per game, the matter is less urgent than their perennial need for pitching amid so many injuries.

Astros

The Astros haven’t entirely buried the Jose Altuve experiment yet, but the 35-year-old star has started just two of Houston’s last 19 games in left (and 39 overall) compared to four at designated hitter and 13 at second base. His offense (.277/.336/.465, 121 wRC+) has been fine, but his defense at the new position has been brutal (-8 DRS, -4 FRV in 325 innings), and it’s been no picnic at second either (-3 DRS, 0 FRV in 263 innings). His best position these days is probably DH, and with Yordan Alvarez sidelined due to inflammation in his right hand with no clear return date, that option is at least open.

Of the eight other Astros who have played left, the best on both sides of the ball has been Mauricio Dubón, who’s made more starts at second than left (29 versus five) while also filling in at shortstop (where he’s helped to cover for the loss of Jeremy Peña to a broken rib), third, and the other two outfield spots. He’s hitting a comparatively robust .255/.292/.415 (96 wRC+) overall and is, of course, a better defender than Altuve at either post, but he belongs at a position where he can best utilize those defensive skills. The Astro who’d merit a closer look is Zach Dezenzo, but the 6-foot-5, 220-pound rookie was recently transferred to the 60-day IL while recovering from a capsule strain in his left hand. He’s just 6-for-47 while playing left but is hitting .245/.321/.367 (96 wRC+), with a 16.4% barrel rate and a .440 xSLG offsetting his 33.9% strikeout rate. He’s eligible to return in August, so the Astros may push forward with their current jumble and hope he can help later. Still, with apologies to Cooper Hummel, Taylor Trammell, et al, this team needs a garden-variety left fielder who can hit a lick and catch the ball.

Diamondbacks

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is now in his third season as Arizona’s left fielder. While his .251/.299/.421 slashline represents drops of 28 points of AVG, 23 points of OBP, and 14 points of SLG relative to last year — for a 10-point drop in wRC+ (from 108 to 98) — his average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are virtually unchanged, and his xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA have only fallen by six or seven points. Aside from a 4.5-percentage point drop in strikeout rate, resulting in more batted balls, nothing’s really changed for him on the offensive side. He’s on this list because of a bit of bad luck here and a dip in defensive metrics there (from 3 DRS to -6, and from 1 FRV to -2), but he’ll probably remain the everyday left fielder unless the Diamondbacks clear out some outfield depth and cut salary ahead of the trade deadline — in which case he could wind up with another team on this list.

Guardians

Originally drafted and developed by the Guardians, Nolan Jones made four Top 100 Prospects lists (2019–22) before being traded to the Rockies in November 2022. Following a strong rookie season in Colorado (20 homers, 20 steals, 137 wRC+, 3.7 WAR), he battled injuries — most notably a lower back strain — and struggled in 2024, hitting just .227/.321/.320 (69 wRC+) with three homers. The Guardians reacquired him in March and have generally started him against righties either in right (45 times) or center (12 times), with nine starts against lefties spread across the three outfield positions. Unfortunately, the lefty-swinging 27-year-old’s offense hasn’t returned; he’s batting just .229/.319/.330 (87 wRC+), though as noted in the center field installment, he’s hitting the ball harder than those results suggest, with a 91.5-mph average exit velocity (3.3 mph higher than last year), an 8% barrel rate, and a 46.3% hard-hit rate. He’s cut his groundball rate, is pulling the ball more often, and has even shaved his strikeout rate to 26.5%. The 95-point gap between his .425 xSLG and his actual mark is tied for the majors’ ninth-largest.

Jones could use some better luck and a better supporting cast. Jhonkensy Noel plummeted from last year’s 118 wRC+ to zero — yes, a 0 wRC+ — with a .140/.162/.215 slashline, earning him a ticket back to Triple-A Columbus. Current platoon partner Johnathan Rodríguez has been only slightly better (.140/.189/.220, 12 wRC+). Given their 46–49 record and other trouble spots (including shortstop and center field), the Guardians may wind up selling or holding, but one trade candidate who would make sense is Laureano, who spent parts of 2023 and ’24 with the team. The Guardians did release him last May, but his 135 wRC+ for the Braves and Orioles since then suggests he’s worth another look.

Mariners

The early-April loss of starting right fielder Victor Robles to a fracture of the humeral head in his left shoulder cost the Mariners a valuable catalyst. Luke Raley took over the position, but he strained his oblique in late April, missed seven weeks, and upon returning took over the long half of a first base platoon. Leody Taveras came and went. Fortunately for the Mariners, Dominic Canzone arrived from Triple-A Tacoma and has more or less saved the day. The 27-year-old lefty, who’s closed up his stance somewhat and is swinging the bat harder, has hit a sizzling .319/.340/.564 (158 wRC+) in 97 PA. Yes, he’s chasing nearly 38% of pitches outside the zone and walking just 3.1% of the time, but he’s also barreling the ball 15.6% of the time, and both his .300 xBA and .564 xSLG are in line with his actual numbers. He’ll cool off eventually, but currently this doesn’t look like a serious problem for the Mariners, and there’s still hope that Robles can return in September to provide support.

Cardinals

Jordan Walker entered the 2023 season as a 60-FV prospect ranked no. 12 on our Top 100 list, but in parts of three seasons, he’s produced diminishing returns, including a meager .210/.267/.295 (60 wRC+) with a 33% strikeout rate in 191 PA this season. He’s been largely absent from the lineup since late May, first missing a couple of weeks due to inflammation in his left wrist, then enduring a bout of appendicitis in late June. While on his latest rehab assignment, the Cardinals are again tinkering with his swing, but so far, he’s gone just 7-for-46, albeit with five extra-base hits, at Double-A Springfield and Triple-A Memphis.

Walker’s still just 23, but it’s fair to wonder if he’ll ever live up to that lofty prospect billing, at least in St. Louis. The good news for the Cardinals is that Alec Burleson has taken over right field and absolutely raked, hitting .333/.374/.592 (158 wRC+) in 138 PA. Overall, the 26-year-old lefty has hit .293/.340/.466 (125 wRC+), though he could use a platoon partner; he has a career 52 wRC+ against southpaws.

Twins

Matt Wallner can mash. In 2023 and ’24 combined, he hit .254/.371/.515 (148 wRC+) with 27 homers in 515 PA for the Twins, even while striking out a whopping 34% of the time and spending chunks of both seasons in Triple-A. The Twins hoped that he could approximate that production across a full season, but a mid-April hamstring strain curtailed his strong start; he didn’t return until May 31 and has managed just a 91 wRC+ since. His overall line (.205/.299/.449, 107 wRC+ with 10 homers) in 41 games in right and 12 at DH rates as a disappointment. He’s getting under too many balls; his 21.8% infield fly ball rate is the second-highest of any player with at least 150 PA. Trevor Larnach, who covered right for part of Wallner’s absence and has lately been sharing the job, has hit a modest .245/.311/.415 (102 wRC+) while playing 34 games in right plus another 59 at DH and in left field. Willi Castro, the only other Twin with at least 20 PA as a right fielder, has struggled in his time there (28 games but just 15 starts) but has hit for a 124 wRC+ overall in his utility role.

Considering this is now the fifth position at which the Twins have made a Killers list, it’s clear they’ll have to solve some problems from within in order to challenge for a playoff spot. Despite his struggles, Wallner’s recent track record provides more reason for optimism than, say, Ty France at first base.

Fernando Tatis Jr. was fortunate that the pitch that hit him on the right wrist last week didn’t cause a fracture, but elsewhere in the NL West, Corbin Carroll wasn’t so lucky. On Monday, the Diamondbacks learned that their 24-year-old star has suffered a chip fracture in his left wrist, the result of being hit by a pitch on June 18; he hadn’t played since. Carroll is the second Arizona regular to land on the injured list this week due to a pitch-induced fracture that was only discovered belatedly, after catcher Gabriel Moreno, and he’ll miss significant time. As if the Diamondbacks — who lost ace Corbin Burnes and late-inning relievers Justin Martinez and A.J. Puk to Tommy John surgery earlier this month — needed more bad news, they’ve lost infielder Ildemaro Vargas to a fractured metatarsal, and are crossing their fingers in hopes that both Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez can avoid the IL after making early exits from Monday’s blowout win.

In the eighth inning of last Wednesday’s game in Toronto, Carroll was hit on the left hand by a 91-mph sinker from the Blue Jays’ Justin Bruihl. While he stayed in the game to run the bases, he departed at the end of the inning:

Initial X-rays were negative, and both Carroll and the Diamondbacks hoped that the timing of the right fielder’s return would depend mainly on pain tolerance. After missing the team’s next four games in Toronto and Colorado — during which he remained available to pinch-run and play defense, though the call never came — Carroll was reexamined when the team arrived in Chicago to play the White Sox on Monday. MRI results and additional testing revealed that he had suffered a chip fracture on the back of his hand.

A chip fracture, sometimes referred to as an avulsion fracture, occurs when a small piece of bone is pulled away from the larger bone, generally by a ligament or tendon. “That’s still a little bit confusing to all of us,” said manager Torey Lovullo of the diagnosis. “He’s going to continue to get some opinions just to find out what that official diagnosis means and what the time frame will be.” Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote yesterday about the Mets optioning Francisco Alvarez back to Triple-A, but plenty more catcher news broke over the weekend. We’ll start in Baltimore, where a left oblique strain sent Adley Rutschman to the injured list just as he was starting to look like he had figured things out. As you’ll surely recall, Rutschman was off to a great start last season, but his performance dropped off after he took a foul ball to his right hand on June 20. Rutschman ran a 138 wRC+ with 15 home runs before June 30 and a 61 wRC+ with four homers through the end of the season. Both he and the team have steadfastly denied that the drop-off in his performance was related to the hand injury, and after his ugly start to the 2025 season, the rest of us were starting to believe them. Rutschman ran a wRC+ of 84 through May 20, but in his last 23 games, he’s been at 129:

Then on Friday, his right side “flared up” during batting practice, to use the words of interim manager Tony Mansolino. “Hopefully it’s not too long,” Mansolino told reporters. “When you play in that type of heat down in Tampa, and you’re playing this long stretch and you’re in the middle of the season, it probably puts you at more risk for things like that.” On Sunday, the team announced that an MRI showed a mild oblique strain and that Rutschman would be out at least until the All-Star break. That means he’ll miss at least one month (21 games).

This is the first IL stint of Rutschman’s career, and it comes when the team has no margin for error at all. The Orioles are 10 games below .500. They’re not only in last place in the AL East, but they’re trailing the fourth-place Red Sox by five games, and we now give them just a 4.4% chance of making the playoffs. Since May 20, Rutschman has put up 0.7 WAR, third-most among the team’s position players. He’s an enormous loss, but at least in the clubhouse, no one is resigned to selling at the deadline. “We’re trying to win, and we’re trying to develop,” Mansolino told reporters. “I think, if we went full-blown development right here in June, when that third Wild Card spot is floating around .500, I don’t know if that’s the right decision for the Baltimore Orioles and the city of Baltimore and the fans.”

Toward that end, the team could really use catching help. The Orioles have put up 0.3 WAR from the catcher position this season, which ranks 26th in baseball. Rutschman has chipped in 1.1 WAR, but his contributions have been almost entirely negated by those of Gary Sánchez and Maverick Handley, both of whom have totals preceded by minus signs. Sánchez returned from a wrist injury 10 days ago, and his splits are extreme: -6 wRC+ before the injury and 196 wRC+ after. That’s about what you’d expect from him. He’s an all-or-nothing slugger who will run big slumps and big hot streaks, and when you average it all together, he looks like a solid backup. When Sánchez was out, the team called up Handley, and to say that he hasn’t worked out would be an understatement. Handley is 27 and last appeared on one of our lists of the Orioles’ top prospects in 2022. He has gotten into 16 games and is currently running a wRC+ of -42. He has three hits. He is striking out over 38% of the time.

In Samuel Basallo, the team also has a blue chip catching prospect at Triple-A Norfolk. Basallo topped our Orioles prospect list in April and is currently ranked fifth on The Board, making him the top catching prospect in baseball. Still, the team clearly doesn’t feel he’s ready to make the jump. Mansolino said the team hasn’t even discussed calling him up. “I don’t think you take a guy like Sammy Basallo and you bring him to the big leagues just because there’s a need,” said Mansolino. “I think you bring a Sammy Basallo to the big leagues when he’s destroyed Triple-A in all facets of the game — his at-bats, his defense, his everything. So when he destroys Triple-A and he knocks the door down, to me, then he becomes part of the conversation. I don’t personally think you bring a guy to the big leagues with that type of profile until that happens.”

Basallo is currently running a 152 wRC+ with 15 home runs in Norfolk, which looks a lot like knocking the door down, but he’s only 20 years old, and he still only has 69 games under his belt at Triple-A. It’s hard to fault the Orioles for following whatever path they believe will give their top prospect the best chance of developing to his full potential. But that means Handley is back up in Baltimore again for at least a month. This sure seems like a time when the Orioles could go looking for an affordable veteran backstop. Maybe even one who knows the team and its pitchers. Surely that would be too much to ask for, right? Right?!

On Sunday, The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka astutely noted that the Braves had released catcher James McCann from his minor league deal. The same McCann who spent the past two seasons with the Orioles, serving as a perfectly cromulent backup catcher. According to reports, McCann was looking for a multi-year deal this offseason, but the Orioles were reluctant to make such a commitment due to the presence of both Rutschman and Basallo. McCann didn’t get his deal, instead signing a minor league pact with the Braves. A few weeks ago, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the deal had a rolling opt-out clause, allowing any team to offer a major league deal to McCann, at which point the Braves could either call him up or let him go.

An hour after Kostka noted McCann’s release, Rosenthal reported that McCann had signed with the Diamondbacks. We’ll transition to the Diamondbacks shortly, but we should close out the Orioles section by noting just how big bringing back McCann could have been for the team. McCann is nobody’s idea of a savior. He has a career 82 wRC+, and his catching didn’t grade out well last season. But he’s a veteran who has two years of experience with this Baltimore pitching staff. He ran a 125 wRC+ in the minors for the Braves this season. He’s put up a positive WAR in every season since 2019, and just having a catcher whose wRC+ doesn’t start with a minus sign would be a huge step up for the Orioles.

We have no way of knowing whether the Orioles were also pursuing McCann, but even if they were, money can’t have been the reason he ended up going elsewhere. McCann will be making the major league minimum during his time in Arizona (and a prorated $180,000 during his time in the minors), and his experience in Baltimore makes him more valuable there than anywhere else. It’s a real missed opportunity, but it could be an indication that the Orioles see things the way Dan Szymborski sees them: That it’s time to give up on the 2025 season.

Now we’re on to Arizona, where catching injuries are just the start. On Friday, A.J. Puk underwent internal brace surgery. Last night, manager Torey Lovullo said during the Diamondbacks’ postgame show that Corbin Carroll, who hasn’t played since taking a sinker to his left wrist on Wednesday, was diagnosed with a chip fracture and will be going on the injured list. Jay Jaffe will be covering this miserable news in depth tomorrow. Today, though, we’re going to finish by talking about catcher Gabriel Moreno. Moreno went on the IL with a right hand contusion on Thursday, and his stint was made retroactive to June 15. On Friday, the team announced that the injury was actually a hairline fracture of his right index finger. It dates back to this fluky wild pitch from June 6:

The team had been trying to avoid an IL stint, playing Moreno just three times over the next two weeks. Amazingly, he even hit a home run during that stretch, but he pretty clearly wasn’t himself:

The injury is a major blow to a Diamondbacks team that’s 7 1/2 games back in an extremely tough NL West, and just 2 1/2 games out of the final Wild Card spot. We currently have them with a 31.9% chance of making the playoffs, but losing a star catcher in Moreno (not to mention one of the best players in the game in Carroll) really, really hurts. Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo, Eugenio Suárez, and Pavin Smith are all legitimately playing like stars, but the Diamondbacks have one of the weaker pitching staffs in the league. This really could be too much to overcome. What’s 31.9% minus Carroll and Moreno? The answer depends on how long they’re out and whether they look like their old selves when they return. Lovullo has said that Moreno’s timetable will be measured in weeks rather than days, which is an ominous sign. It’s also rough because Moreno was on pace for the best season of his excellent young career.

In 2022, Moreno put up 0.8 WAR over just 25 games as a rookie in Toronto, and after being traded to Arizona for Daulton Varsho over the offseason, he followed it up with a 2.3-win 2023 season despite missing 20 days due to shoulder inflammation. Last season, he put up 2.5 WAR despite two different IL trips that limited him to just 98 games. Moreno has never run a wRC+ below 102, and his catching has graded out as excellent in every season of his career. He’ll break the three-win mark as soon as he’s able to get a full, healthy season, but once again, that won’t be happening this year. Although his 105 wRC+ wasn’t a career best, Moreno had showcased a more aggressive approach that boosted his hard-hit rate all the way from 41% in 2024 to 47.2%.

Backup catcher Jose Herrera is running a 68 wRC+ over 33 games, which is actually a bit of an improvement from his career mark. Unfortunately, his glove is grading out worse than it did in previous seasons. This would seem like the perfect time for the Diamondbacks to bring up the 25-year-old Adrian Del Castillo, whom Eric Longenhagen and Travis Ice ranked second in the organization in December, but injuries have derailed that possibility too.

Once a highly-touted catching prospect out of Miami, Del Castillo fell in the draft and struggled in his first three minor league seasons before exploding in 2024. His defense isn’t going to impress anybody, but he’s got enough power to make up for it and earn some time at DH or first base as well. Last season, he ran a 136 wRC+ with 26 homers in 105 games in Triple-A Reno while dropping nearly 10 percentage points from his strikeout rate. When Moreno went down with an injury in August, Del Castillo got called up to Arizona and kept right on hitting, running a (very, very BABIP-aided) 146 wRC+ despite striking out nearly a third of the time over 25 games. A shoulder injury cost Del Castillo the first two months of this season. He only got back into action in May 20, spending 12 games in the Arizona Complex League then spending five back in Reno before injury struck again. This one seems to be less serious, a back injury that shouldn’t cost Del Castillo too much time, but he hasn’t played since June 15. It’s hard to imagine calling him up to the majors after he’s played just 17 games this season, 12 of them on the complex.

The Diamondbacks originally called up the 32-year-old Aramis Garcia to fill in when Moreno went down. Garcia had been running a 122 wRC+ with 10 home runs in Triple-A, but he got into just two big league games before the Diamondbacks designated him for assignment and signed McCann. McCann has already reached out to former Oriole teammate Corbin Burnes to get up to speed on the Arizona pitching staff. “I’m the new guy trying to get on their page, and that’s what I’m going to try to do as quickly as possible,” he said. MLB.com’s Casey Drottar reported that Lovullo has yet to determine an official role for McCann. Given Herrera’s performance, it’s not hard to imagine McCann getting significant playing time in the somewhat unlikely event that he continues the hot hitting he showed in Gwinnett.

There’s no guarantee that McCann will perform, but it’s encouraging that the Diamondbacks are doing what they can to make sure the catcher position doesn’t end up as a black hole. Maybe league-average performance is the absolute best the Diamondbacks should expect from the duo of Herrera and McCann, but finding a veteran replacement who represents a clear upgrade over what the team has waiting in Triple-A is exactly the kind of move they should be making as they gear up for the second half.

The Diamondbacks did things the “right way,” to the extent that the right way means anything. After making the World Series unexpectedly in 2023, they went into the offseason with an exciting group of hitters and an unsettled rotation, so they opened the vault and signed two of the top-10 free agents that year — Eduardo Rodriguez and Jordan Montgomery — both starting pitchers. When those two flamed out in 2024 but the hitters kept producing, they went back to the well and signed Corbin Burnes, another marquee option. They refused to include top starting prospects in trades. They already had Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly in the fold. This is how you build a top rotation.

Er, well, this is a way that you can build a top rotation, but this particular iteration hasn’t panned out. In Phoenix, things are falling apart on the mound. Let’s look through Arizona’s problem rotation spots (read: everyone other than Kelly) and see if we can find a solution for each before it’s too late for the team’s 2025 season.

Corbin Burnes

The Problem: Injury
Burnes got off to a slow start in the desert, but like the weather in his new place of work, he was heating up as the year wore on. His cutter isn’t quite the devastating weapon it was during his 2021 Cy Young season, but it’s still a menace. He’s still one of the best in the business when it comes to spinning breaking balls. A well-located Burnes curveball is an absolute masterpiece, a pitch that will make you question the very basics of physics and reality.

In Burnes’ most recent four starts, he’s gone nuclear: 31% strikeout rate, 2.19 ERA, 2.67 FIP. He’d also been stacking up volume: Three of his past five starts lasted seven innings. But the most recent start ended prematurely in the fifth inning, when Burnes felt sharp tightness in his elbow, saw his velocity drop, and left the game. Burnes said after the game that he didn’t know the severity of the injury, telling reporters, “I’ve never had anything like it before, so I really have nothing to compare it to.”
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