What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below. I’ve moved all of the players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates. Our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

This deadline had its share of earthquakes, but it also featured smaller aftershocks, as teams improved their depth or addressed smaller, specific needs. So let’s run down some of the deals that might get buried by the higher-Richter scale shakes of the likes of Max Scherzer and Kris Bryant.

The Houston Astros acquired pitcher Phil Maton and catcher Yainer Diaz from the Cleveland Guardians for center fielder Myles Straw

This trade is actually a slightly unusual one, as the team in the playoff shot — it’s not Cleveland — is the one giving up the best player. Straw’s offensive profile will likely prevent him from being an actual star at any point, but he’s fast, plays enough defense, and gets on-base at a respectable enough level to be an average or even better starter in center; he’s already hit the 2-WAR threshold, after all. UZR, our defensive input for WAR, has him at +6.6 runs, while OAA has him at +5 runs and DRS has him at +2. I don’t think I’d ever play him except in a pinch, but Straw’s theoretical ability to at least stand at second or short in an emergency has some additional value, too. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers have built a commanding lead in the NL Central, with a 7 1/2-game advantage over second-place Cincinnati. The team is being carried by the best starting rotation in baseball and a solid bullpen, the second-best run prevention unit in baseball behind the Giants. The offense is far less impressive, having scored just 4.4 runs per game this year with a wRC+ of 90 that ranks 22nd in the majors. Milwaukee’s pitching staff is more than good enough to carry it into the playoffs, so the front office has been focused on bringing in reinforcements to help the lineup. The team had already acquired Willy Adames and Rowdy Tellez in separate trades earlier this season. On Wednesday, it added another infielder to the mix, agreeing to a trade for Eduardo Escobar and sending two prospects, catcher/infielder Cooper Hummel and infielder Alberto Ciprian, to Arizona in exchange.

Escobar is in the last season of a three-year deal he signed back in 2019, and with the Diamondbacks’ 2021 a total loss, he was an obvious candidate to be moved; the only question was where. The White Sox had been connected to him a little earlier this month, but a finalized deal never materialized. Instead, the Brewers swooped in and added the versatile infielder to their roster.

The switch-hitter is in the midst of a resurgent season. From 2017 to ‘19, Escobar hit 79 home runs, posted a wRC+ of 108, and accumulated 8.8 WAR for the Twins and Diamondbacks. Things fell apart last year, though, as his power dried up and his wRC+ fell to 56. He’s gone back to normal this year, with 22 home runs, a wRC+ back up to 105, and the Diamondbacks’ lone All-Star roster spot a few weeks ago. Under the hood, his batted ball peripherals look like they’re intact from or improved on his peak.

All that power that had escaped last season is back this year, and he’s increased his hard-hit rate and barrel rate, which has helped him offset a slight uptick in strikeout rate. On top of that, Escobar’s fly ball rate is pushing 50% for the first time in his career, and he’s pulling the ball more often than ever — and that batted ball profile stays consistent no matter which side he’s hitting from.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees are in a precarious position; at 41-39, they’re 8.5 games back of first in the AL East and 5.5 games out of the second Wild Card spot. Sometime soon, they’ll have to decide whether they plan on adding major league talent for a playoff push this year or retooling for the future. Today, they made a trade that doesn’t really do either, but is still a ton of fun. As first reported by Lindsey Adler of The Athletic, the Yankees acquired Tim Locastro from the Diamondbacks in exchange for minor league pitcher Keegan Curtis.

Locastro is a deeply strange player. He’s one of the few true oddities left in a game that’s increasingly moving towards multi-position mashers and fluid-role strikeout pitchers. His two standout skills are getting hit by pitches and stealing bases successfully, which is about as weird of a combination as it sounds. But they work together quite well — or at least, they did until this year, when everything has gone south in a hurry.

Getting hit by pitches doesn’t feel like a skill. If you needed any confirmation, just look at the way we describe it — it’s something done to you, rather than some great feat. You draw a walk, or hit a double — but you get hit by a pitch. Year in and year out, though, Locastro gets hit at a ludicrous rate. In the minors, 6.2% of his plate appearances resulted in a HBP. In the majors, he’s been hit in 7.5% of his plate appearances — the highest rate in league history.

That’s mostly hilarious — how can this guy be so good at something that seems so out of his control? — but it’s also real value. Across the majors, batters get hit in roughly 1.1% of plate appearances. That’s an additional 6.4% of the time that Locastro gets on base for free! His career 6.3% walk rate plays more like a 12.7% walk rate, which is downright elite.

The Yankees could use a center fielder who can get on base. With Aaron Hicks on the 60-day Injured List, they’ve given the majority of their starts to Brett Gardner, and his .318 OBP would be the lowest mark of his career. The daily rigors of playing center also aren’t optimal for a 37-year-old — he’s held up well defensively so far, but he can’t play every day, and using Aaron Judge to soak up some of the defensive innings isn’t a great solution either. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Juan Corniel, SS, Arizona Diamondbacks
Level & Affiliate: Complex Level Age: 18 Org Rank: TBD FV: TBD
Line: 3-for-5, 3 RBI, R

Notes
Corniel has been one of the Extended Spring standouts in Arizona. At a projectable 6-foot-1 or so, he’s an amalgam of twitch, athleticism, and body projection right now. He has the athleticism and actions to play shortstop but doesn’t yet have sentient control of his body. Offensively, the switch-hitting Corniel has swings that are fairly short to the ball but still explosive. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Goldstein and I have updated the pro portion of the Top 100, which means we quickly reviewed the placement of players in the 50 FV tier and above, and considered who was not yet in those tiers but should be based on how they’ve looked during the first month of the 2021 season. I still have three total org audits to do — Milwaukee, Oakland and the Cubs — before I start peeling graduates off the list. Those will be completed shortly. You can find the updated list here.

Also, if you missed it, Kevin and I updated our draft rankings and posted a Mock Draft on Monday.

The lone change up near the top of the 100 is Riley Greene moving into the top 20; he’s in the mix with several other similarly-aged players with the talent to be consistent All-Stars, like Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Corbin Carroll.

DL Hall moved into the 55 FV tier on the strength of his stuff. He’s still walking a fairly high rate of opposing batters but just on the strength of his three plus pitches, could be a Haderesque relief weapon even if he can’t start. Read the rest of this entry »

No one thought that the Arizona Diamondbacks were going to contend for their division this year. It’s been nearly a decade since any team other than the Dodgers took that title; the buzz factor, the splashy acquisitions, newly belonged to the Padres; and it didn’t take too long before the Giants proved themselves formidable contenders, too. The Rockies were, as expected, back in the rearview mirror, another star bitterly departed, their GM resigned, reports of organizational dysfunction hovering around them. What, then, of the Diamondbacks? To linger — to play spoiler, maybe. To continue onward, even if only because they have to. “#RattleOn” — that’s their hashtag. One imagines the heat, a bone-deep drought, a sound — low to the ground and strange — carrying out into the unfurling darkness until you can hear it no longer. The sound is a warning, or an object of childish entertainment, or a sigh whose meaning remains frustratingly unclear. It persists even after it’s gone.

Last week, the Diamondbacks lost seven games in a row. Six of those games were on the road. The Diamondbacks have, in fact, lost 19 consecutive road games. The record for most consecutive road losses is 22 — a mark achieved once by the Philadelphia Athletics in 1943, and later by none other than the New York Mets in 1963. No team has ever lost exactly 21 road games in a row — an entirely different Philadelphia Athletics team lost 20 straight in 1916. And there, the next name down the list: the 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks, winners of just under a third of the games they’ve played.

The Diamondbacks lost in Oakland. Ketel Marte crashed into the Coliseum, making an incredible catch — and then the ball disappeared from his glove when his back was turned. The final score was 4-0, anyway. They were unable to scratch a run across against Sean Manaea, just as they’d only managed two in seven innings off Chris Bassitt the day before. Before that, they lost in Milwaukee — a tie carried into the eighth lost and never recovered; mostly, deficits whose heights couldn’t be scaled, no matter how slight. They were swept in LA by the Dodgers; in Denver, by the lowly Rockies; in Queens by the Mets and in Miami by the Marlins. Their last road win was on April 25. They swept the doubleheader in Atlanta, 5-0 and 7-0. They were, at that point, exactly .500. Read the rest of this entry »

In May, I took a look at some of the most compelling storylines in the American League for the teams least likely to make the postseason. Since that post ran, Shohei Ohtani has been involved in a benches clearing incident (don’t worry, he’s fine) and Miguel Cabrera inched closer to his 3,000th hit with this bases-clearing double to put the Tigers ahead of the Brewers:

The Brewers are in first place in the NL Central right now, so they will not be making another appearance in this post, as our projections like their chances in a tight division race and predict that they’ll hold that spot to win the division. No, this post is for the teams that are much less likely to make the postseason — the teams that won’t play meaningful baseball in October, but that can hopefully still offer something to the fans who continue to show up. Let’s delve into the prospects, players, and milestones on the horizon for the non-contenders in the Senior Circuit. Read the rest of this entry »

Though the 13-game losing streak that left them with the NL’s worst record came to an end on Sunday, the Diamondbacks’ season has taken another turn for the worse, with Madison Bumgarner leaving Wednesday’s start against the Mets after just two innings due to discomfort in his left shoulder. Fortunately, an MRI revealed nothing more than inflammation, though he landed on the injured list anyway, joining three other members of the team’s starting five. That’s hardly the only issue holding down the rebuilding Diamondbacks, who at 20–38 are on pace to lose 106 games.

Even before he took the mound on Wednesday at Chase Field, Bumgarner’s performance this season had veered all over the map. He allowed 17 runs in 13.2 innings over his first three starts, then went on a five-start run during which he allowed just three runs in 30 innings. On April 25, he spun a seven-inning no-hitter — a feat not officially recognized by Major League Baseball, but the high point of the 31-year-old southpaw’s season — in the nightcap of a doubleheader against the Braves. Bumgarner’s performance has deteriorated since then, however, with 16 runs and eight walks in 14 innings over three starts from May 17 to 28.

Even that couldn’t have prepared anyone for what took place on Wednesday. Facing a makeshift Mets lineup that included James McCann in the third spot and just two regulars (leadoff hitter Jonathan Villar and cleanup hitter Pete Alonso) who entered the game with a wRC+ of 100 or better, Bumgarner began by allowing six straight hits, including a three-run homer by McCann, and four runs. The Diamondbacks countered by piling up five runs against Mets starter David Peterson and reliever Robert Gsellman, with Bumgarner’s own two-out RBI single giving his team a 5–4 lead. But he couldn’t hold it in the second inning, yielding a one-out single to Villar and then a two-out RBI double to McCann.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Bryce Johnson, CF, San Francisco Giants
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Sacramento  Age: 25   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35
Line: 5-for-5, 2 2B

Notes
Johnson was a 2017 sixth round pick out of Sam Houston State, his draft stock driven by his above-average speed, terrific baseball frame, and feel for the strike zone. His career .271/.358/.361 line in the minors perfectly illustrates his offensive skillset and flaws. He’s the sort of hitter who can be a bench outfielder if he can play a dynamic center field, where Johnson is closer to average. While the hitting environment in Las Vegas (where Sacramento spent their first six games) likely aided Johnson’s incredible start to the year (.684/.727/1.263 with five multi-hit games in six days), his swing is clearly different now than it was in 2019, so maybe he will actually hit for some more power now. His stride is quite a bit longer now than it was when we last saw him and the bigger move forward has made his swing a little more athletic. Johnson’s back foot is coming off the ground close to the time of contact, not something you’d see with his last swing’s more conservative footwork. It’s too early to re-evaluate an older hitter like this, and even if this change proves to be meaningful, Johnson is still probably just a bench player, but it might be the difference between him getting a cup of coffee at some point or not. Read the rest of this entry »