The Los Angeles Dodgers made another move after a very active trading deadline, trading for life-long Philadelphia Phillies’ player and icon Chase Utley. The Dodgers, attempting to hold off the San Francisco Giants for a division title are currently two games ahead of the Giants, but are also one game behind the Chicago Cubs in the wild-card standings, making the division title potentially the only real avenue to make the playoffs. The Phillies will reportedly pay $4 million of the $6 million that Utley is owed for the rest of the season and in return receive minor leaguers Darnell Sweeney and right-hander John Richy. While the players the Phillies receive are not non-prospects — each appeared in Kiley McDaniel’s Dodgers write-up this past spring — for this season, the trade is centered on Utley’s potential contribution to the Dodgers.

For the Phillies, this trade is another in a series of transactions which represents a move away from their World Series’ runs at the end of last decade and toward rebuilding. For the Dodgers, in a tight playoff race where any additional help could mean the difference between the playoffs and going home despite a $300+ million outlay in salaries, the move for Chase Utley is no guarantee of success, but the possibility, especially when Utley had been rumored to go to the Giants, likely makes the move worth the effort. Read the rest of this entry »

Just before the trade deadline, the Braves, Marlins, and Dodgers struck a big deal, at least in terms of quantity of players and money being moved around; 13 players changed uniforms, and when the dust settled, the Dodgers came away with a trio of pitchers to upgrade their staff: starters Alex Wood and Mat Latos, along with reliever Jim Johnson. While they had been a heavily-rumored destination for frontline pitchers like David Price, Johnny Cueto, and Cole Hamels, the Dodgers ultimately decided to with depth over star power, adding multiple good arms rather than one great one.

Of course, a large driver of that decision was the relative cost, as they could acquire these kinds of pitchers without surrendering any of their best young talents, and they’ll also control Wood’s rights through the 2019 season; he won’t even be eligible for arbitration until after next year, so he’s going to make something close to the league minimum next year. So, while no one thinks Wood is on David Price’s level as a pitcher, he offered a better value when future years of control and financial obligations are factored in.

But choosing Wood and Latos over one better pitcher wasn’t just about getting a cheaper pitcher, or even just about getting a guy they could control for multiple years. In Alex Wood, the Dodgers were attempting to buy low on an asset with significant upside, which is exactly the kind of move that they’ve been making ever since Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi took over the baseball operations department last winter.

If you want to know why the Braves were willing to trade a 24 year old pitcher with four years of control remaining after this season, you can essentially sum up their reasoning in one easy table.

Read the rest of this entry »

This breakdown starts with the Scott Kazmir deal on July 23, but there weren’t any trades from the 16th to the 23rd, so this covers the whole second half of the month, trade-wise, up until now. I count 25 total trades with prospects involved in that span that add together to have 58 prospects on the move. Check out the preseason Top 200 List for more details, but I’ve added the range that each Future Value (FV) group fell in last year’s Top 200 to give you an idea of where they will fall in this winter’s list. Also see the preseason team-specific lists to see where the lower-rated prospects may fall within their new organization.

40 FV is the lowest grade that shows up on these numbered team lists, with 35+ and 35 FV prospects mentioned in the “Others of Note” section, so I’ll give blurbs for the 40 FV or better prospects here. I’ve also linked to the post-trade prospect breakdown for the trades I was able to analyze individually, so click there for more information. Alternately, click on the player’s name to see his player page with all his prior articles listed if I didn’t write up his trade.

I opted to not numerically rank these players now, but I will once I’ve made the dozens and dozens of calls necessary this fall and winter to have that level of precision with this many players. Look for the individual team lists to start rolling out in the next month, with the 2016 Top 200 list coming in early 2016. Lastly, the players are not ranked within their tiers, so these aren’t clues for where they will fall on the Top 200.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: the Braves are reportedly also sending Bronson Arroyo to the Dodgers, which works out to saving about $8 million. So, that’s a small benefit for Atlanta, which isn’t discussed below.

—

Update No. 2: the Dodgers are taking on some of Arroyo’s money, but not all of it. So the Braves are saving less than that $8 million. Glad we could get this straightened out.

—

A valuable lesson we all learned yesterday is that a trade isn’t official until it’s officially official. In the case of this trade, it still isn’t totally complete, so, who knows? Something else we’re aware of is that the structure is complicated. As the Braves, Dodgers, and Marlins work through their three-way exchange, this seems like the current picture of the Braves’ side of things:

Get:

• Hector Olivera
• Paco Rodriguez
• Zachary Bird
• Competitive balance draft pick

Lose:

• Alex Wood
• Jose Peraza
• Jim Johnson
• Luis Avilan

Because it isn’t official, it could always fall apart. Alternatively, it could always change its form. Beyond that, even if this does go down as understood, there are plenty of moving parts. Real people, having their lives changed in an instant! A draft pick, just after the first round! So what I’m about to do is over-simplify, but what this is really about, from the Braves’ perspective, is swapping Wood and Peraza for Olivera. The rest of it more or less cancels out, given the cost of relievers at the deadline. The Braves, perhaps, weren’t comfortable with the risk of keeping Wood and Peraza around. They’re more comfortable with the risk of Olivera, who they tried hard to sign only a few months back.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers, Marlins and Braves have pulled off a massive trade that sends Mat Latos and Alex Wood to the Dodgers, and a whole slew of other players (plus a draft pick) in other directions. The prospects involved include Jose Peraza, Kevin Guzman, Jeff Brigham, Victor Araujo and Zachary Bird. Here’s what the data say about these players. (Note: WAR figures denote WAR through age-28 season.)

Jose Peraza, Los Angeles Dodgers, 8.7 WAR

Jose Peraza is easily the most highly touted prospect who changed hands in this deal. The 21-year-old second baseman was playing in Triple-A this year, where he was hitting an admirable .294/.318/.379 with 26 steals. He put up much better numbers in the lower levels of the minors, however, including a .339/.364/.441 showing between High-A and Double-A last year.

Peraza’s offensive game is centered entirely around contact and speed. He’s struck out in just 8% of his trips to the plate this year, and has struck out less than 13% of the time in each of his five years in the minors. Peraza’s lack of strikeouts, along with his solid BABIPs, have enabled him to hit for high averages throughout his minor-league career.

Read the rest of this entry »

The headline isn’t the way the Marlins would put it. It’s not the only way to interpret Wednesday’s trade — it’s just one way to do so. The Dodgers, who’ve been in the market for rotation help, convinced the Marlins to sell them Mat Latos. The price for Los Angeles: accepting, along with Latos, Michael Morse. To soften that blow, the Marlins have thrown in a competitive-balance draft pick, to be made after the end of the first round. Now, technically, the Dodgers are sending the Marlins three minor-league pitchers. So it’s not a pure sale, and we don’t know who those players are, so maybe a conclusion shouldn’t be jumped to, but this one feels pretty safe. Those pitchers are presumably the equivalent of nothing. They won’t be as valuable as the player that draft pick turns into. The Marlins sold an asset at the deadline, and they’re the ones effectively losing the best prospect.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitch names aren’t very imaginative. What is a fastball but a ball that’s thrown fast? The ball, in fact, thrown the fastest, relative to the curveball — which curves — or to the knuckleball — thrown as if off the knuckles. The changeup is also entirely explained by the name, although this one requires you know something about another pitch. The changeup is supposed to change things up, when a hitter is looking for a fastball. It’s supposed to represent a change of speed. Absent a fastball, a changeup is nothing but a slower fastball. The changeup needs to change something up to survive.

The game has seen a lot of pitchers. For the overwhelming majority of them, we’re sitting on pretty limited information. Surely, there have been some outliers over the years, pitchers who have done unusual things with their pitches. According to conventional wisdom, a good changeup needs to be about 8 mph to 10 mph slower than the fastball. Anything less than that, it’s thought, and there’s not enough of a change of speed. The best-known exception to this idea is Felix Hernandez, who’s been known to throw changeups in the low-90s. Felix’s changeup is one of the best in the game, so he’s served as evidence that there’s more than one way to throw a hitter off with a change. Henderson Alvarez specifically cited Felix as the reason he’s willing to throw his own changeup harder. It can be rewarding to push the limits.

Zack Greinke, too, is pushing the limits. Obviously, he’s pushing the limits of un-scored-upon-ness. But he’s also become a lot more like Felix than you might have realized.

Read the rest of this entry »

The last time Zack Greinke allowed a run in a game a game that counted the regular season was June 13, when Justin Upton hit an eighth-inning homer. Even that solo shot was subject to an instant-replay review, and before that, Greinke had allowed just one run in the first. But people care about what’s come after that. What’s come after that have been six starts, spanning an out shy of 44 innings. Over those innings, opponents have batted .129; over those innings, opponents have scored not any runs. The Dodgers actually found a way to lose one of those games, but this is a streak that forces you to focus on the individual. Generally speaking, the name on the front is more important than the name on the back. But we’re all allowed to forget that, when someone’s doing something incredible.

Greinke doesn’t own the longest scoreless streak ever. Nor will he soon, probably. The odds favor the opponents being able to do at least something, and all it ever takes is one swing, on even a pretty good pitch. But we can’t declare the streak over until it’s over, and for the time being, Greinke is closer than he’s ever been. All eyes will be on his performance the next time he’s out there, because he still has a chance at an impossible record. It’s fair to wonder: how has Greinke gotten this far? How has he rattled off more than 43 consecutive scoreless innings? As best as I can tell, there are three general keys.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not to beat a dead horse, or any kind of horse, but the Matt Kemp trade has been lopsided. There’s still an awful long way to go, but for now the Matt Kemp trade is more like the Yasmani Grandal trade, and Grandal and the Dodgers couldn’t be happier. The other day on Twitter I was tipped off to an article about Grandal written by Matt Calkins. The headline: “Padres blew it with Yasmani Grandal.” It talks about Grandal’s limited playing time, and the lack of trust some Padres pitchers had in him. One paragraph stood out to me as particularly interesting:

Despite the general San Diego approach being to throw down and away, Grandal thought the power pitchers should be throwing inside in the early part of the count before using the outer half of the plate to record the out. But the veteran hurlers weren’t catching his drift, and as a result, he wasn’t catching their pitches.

Pitchers identified were Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross, and Ian Kennedy. Last season, Grandal didn’t catch Cashner. Ross eventually stopped throwing to him, and Kennedy did too. They preferred working with Rene Rivera. This year, the Padres pitching staff has struggled. From the bottom of the same article:

San Diego’s pitching, however, has disappointed, and Grandal can’t help but wonder if that would be the case had his advice been heeded.

On the one hand, this doesn’t really matter. Grandal isn’t in San Diego anymore, so everyone just ought to move on. But on the other hand, this can be an interesting thing to investigate. So let’s talk about what Grandal talked about.

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like a simple question to ask. Which recent home run was the least likely?

You could flippantly answer — the one Erick Aybar hit this year, or the one Melky Cabrera hit this year — and because they’ve got the lowest isolated slugging percentages with at least one homer hit, you would be right. But that doesn’t control for the quality of the pitcher. Aybar hit his off of Rick Porcello, who is having some issues with the home run right now.

A slightly more sophisticated approach might have you scan down the list of the worst isolated powers in the game right now, and then cross-reference those names with the pitchers that allowed those home runs. If you do that, you’ll eventually settle on Alexei Ramirez, who hit his first homer of the year off of Johnny Cueto earlier this year.

Read the rest of this entry »