Walker Buehler has been on a tear in the second half, leading all pitchers in WAR since the All-Star break at 1.8, just a hair ahead of Adam Wainwright, Frankie Montas, and Max Fried. For the season, he now ranks fourth in WAR among qualified starters (fifth if you include Jacob deGrom’s 92 preposterous innings), toting a 26.9% strikeout rate and a park-adjusted ERA 47% better than league average. His 2.11 ERA is more than half a run better than any other season in his career, and the park adjusted figure is his best by 15 points. It’s another great season from one of the consistently best pitchers in the majors; since becoming a full-time starter for the Dodgers back in 2018, Buehler has posted the 11th-most pitching WAR with the 19th-most innings pitched.

I am not breaking any news by pointing out that Buehler has been and continues to be excellent. The surface-level numbers indicate he has never been better. What caught my eye, however, was how he has gone about doing that. There have been some noticeable changes under the hood. For example, at age 26, he has lost over a full tick of velocity on his fastball compared to any prior season; based on my own research, you would expect a player of his age to lose only about 0.15 mph.

Buehler has also lost almost two percentage points on his strikeout rate. On its face, missing less bats and losing velocity is never something you want to see in a pitcher. (That said, he has brought his ground-ball rate back to pre-2020 levels, going from 35.5% last season to 43.8% this year, similar to his ’19 rate as well as a tick above the rest of the league in 2021.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we explored the roster depth of the American League playoff contenders, identifying the strengths and weaknesses that might prove decisive down the stretch for the teams whose playoff odds sit above 10%. Today, we’ll do the same for the National League squads with October ambitions.

National League East

Atlanta Braves
Strengths: Atlanta’s slow and steady climb into first place has involved a considerable amount of roster management. One side effect of all the maneuvers that have gotten them where they are is significant depth. During Travis d’Arnaud’s absence, the team learned that William Contreras is a capable big league catcher. They filled their considerable outfield holes with Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler, and Adam Duvall, while Cristian Pache, who flamed out early in the season, has finally gotten hot at Triple-A Gwinnett and should be a nice September addition. The Gwinnett infield is packed with players who have big league experience, like Jason Kipnis and Ryan Goins. The return of Huascar Ynoa, with Ian Anderson not far behind, creates a sudden bevy of rotation options. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline has passed, but that doesn’t mean teams have stopped scrambling to upgrade or at least patch their pitching staffs with veteran free agents. On Monday, the Rays signed David Robertson, who hasn’t pitched in the majors in more than two years but who recently helped Team USA win a silver medal at the Summer Olympics. On Tuesday, the Dodgers inked Shane Greene to a deal just three days after he was released by the Braves. Both are former Yankees (on the 2014 team) and former All-Stars, and both are on major league contracts. While neither is likely throw a ton of innings, both could pitch their way into throwing significant roles down the stretch.

Both of these teams — which of course met in last year’s World Series — have gotten strong work out of their bullpens to date. Through Monday, the Rays’ bullpen led the majors in WAR (6.2) while the Dodgers’ led the NL (4.4), and both units rank among their respective leagues’ best in nearly all of the other major categories:

With that said, the Rays currently have 17 pitchers on the injured list, including Jeffrey Springs, who underwent season-ending surgery to repair a torn right ACL on Monday; Matt Wisler, who’s dealing with inflammation in his right middle finger; Pete Fairbanks and Ryan Thompson, who are both out with shoulder inflammation; and J.P. Feyereisen, who’s down with biceps tendinitis. Throw in the since-traded Diego Castillo, and the Rays are currently without six of their top eight relievers in terms of total appearances, and five of their top eight (all but Feyereisen) in terms of WAR. All but Springs (and Castillo) are expected to return by the end of the month, but it’s not unreasonable for the Rays to seek out additional depth. Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Yurchak is flying under the radar as a prospect. He’s flying high in present-season performance. Unranked on our 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers Top Prospects list, the 24-year-old first baseman boasts the highest batting average among minor-league hitters with at least 260 plate appearances. Currently with Double-A Tulsa after spending the first three months of the season with High-A Great Lakes, Yurchak has come to the plate 322 times and is slashing a stand-up-and-take-notice .365/.452/.498.

Those numbers aren’t as nearly surprising as you might think. Since entering pro ball in 2017 as a 12th-round draft pick out of SUNY-Binghamton, Yurchak has put up a sumptuous .318/.413/.468 slash line. With the exception of a pedestrian year in 2018 — a 100 wRC+ in Low-A — he’s always hit.

I asked Yurchak about that lone blemish on his otherwise stellar stat sheet.

“That year, I got off on a bad track and had a hard time figuring out what was wrong,” Yurchak told me on the final Friday of July. “There was a little bit too much movement in my lower half. Part of it was that I wasn’t gathering my legs under my body. When I was landing in my load, there was a little bit of a slide with my hips, and my bat was dragging. Had I been able to make [the needed] adjustment earlier, I think the season would have gone differently for me.” Read the rest of this entry »

The 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers might be having one of the greatest disappointing seasons in MLB history. Despite being on a 97-win pace, an accomplishment that nearly every team in baseball would celebrate most seasons, they find themselves in second place in the National League West, four games behind the surprising San Francisco Giants. They’re even underperforming their preseason expectations, a notable feat considering how rare it is for projection systems to forecast a team to have more than 97 wins.

One of the primary components of this terrific-but-underwhelming paradox is Cody Bellinger, 2019’s NL MVP. Just 24 at the end of the 2019 season and sporting an ultra-spicy .305/.406/.629, 7.8 WAR line, Bellinger was quite rightly considered one of the best young players in baseball. A slugging first baseman who somehow converted into being a solid center fielder, little seemed out of reach in those salad days. Yet just two years later, at the ripe old age of 26, Bellinger is currently a platoon player.

Entering the season, ZiPS projected Bellinger for a 133 wRC+, a notable bounce-back from the decidedly middling 114 wRC+ he posted in the shortened 2020 season. And ZiPS was actually the grumpy one here; the other projections housed here at FanGraphs pegged him for a wRC+ of anywhere from 141 to 148. The results haven’t been in the same galaxy as those forecasts, or even his 2020 results. Bellinger’s 65 wRC+ is a shining beacon of misery. To put this in context, Chris Davis put up a 63 wRC+ from 2017-20 and a 60 the last time he got significant playing time in 2019. You don’t want history to rhyme, let alone repeat, when the comparison is Davis.

Of course, one mitigating factor is that Bellinger has suffered a string of injuries over the last year. First, there was a dislocated shoulder while celebrating a World Series dinger. Then this season, he’s missed time with a hairline fracture in his left fibula and a hamstring strain. We’ve seen players struggle while coming back from shoulder injuries in the past, and his maladies this season haven’t allowed for much of a run. So case closed, he’ll be fine? Not really. Read the rest of this entry »

You can’t have too much pitching, and despite boasting arguably the majors’ deepest rotation in the spring, the Dodgers are depleted enough to continue hunting for reinforcements even after their big pickups at the trade deadline. Just hours before they took the wraps off marquee acquisition Max Scherzer, they added another well-decorated 37-year-old hurler to their reserve, signing free agent lefty Cole Hamels to an incentive-based one-year deal in hopes that he can help to offset their various injuries, absences, and workload concerns.

Mind you, there are no guarantees with 37-year-old arms, and that’s especially true for Hamels, a four-time All-Star and World Series MVP who is working to put his own recent string of injuries behind him. He’s pitched in just one game since the end of the 2019 season, and the second half of that campaign was a slog. On the strength of an improved changeup, Hamels posted a 2.98 ERA and 3.59 FIP in his first 99.2 innings for the Cubs in 2019, but left his June 28 start with an oblique strain. After missing five weeks, he struggled to regain his velocity and deception, getting hit for a 5.79 ERA and 5.29 FIP in 10 starts upon returning, and he made just one start after September 16 due to shoulder fatigue. Still, he finished with a 3.81 ERA, 4.09 FIP and 2.4 WAR, the last two marks his best since 2016.

After reportedly drawing interest from 13 teams, Hamels signed a one-year, $18 million deal with the Braves in December 2019, but by the time he reported to camp in mid-February, he was already ailing, having irritated his shoulder while doing weighted ball exercises as part of his winter workouts. He was behind schedule before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down spring training. About a week before camps reopened, the Braves reported that Hamels was throwing pain free and expected to be ready to start the shortened season, but by mid-July, he was sidelined by triceps tendinitis, deemed unlikely for Opening Day, and placed on the 45-day Injured List the day before the season began. When he finally made his first appearance, on September 16, he lasted just 3.1 innings and 52 pitches, allowing three runs. Before he could take his next turn, he was placed on the 10-day IL with shoulder fatigue, and that was all she wrote.

A free agent again, Hamels reportedly drew the interest of several teams as of December, but nothing materialized before the season began. As of mid-June, he continued to build up strength throwing off a mound, but it wasn’t until July 16 that he finally threw a showcase. Representatives from 20 teams attended, but with attention focused on the July 30 trade deadline, Hamels didn’t sign anywhere until Wednesday.

His deal with the Dodgers isn’t a bank-breaker, guaranteeing Hamels a $1 million base salary (the prorated share of $3.05 million) plus $200,000 for every start or relief appearance of 3.1 innings or longer (terms updated via this AP report); additionally, he has agreed to accept an optional assignment to the minors, and the Dodgers have agreed to recall him no later than September 2. With the team already nearly $65 million past the $210 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold, and nearly $25 million past the third tier threshold, they’ll pay a surtax on his salary. They won’t get a ton of innings from him, as Hamels is first headed to the team’s spring training facility in Arizona. He’s scheduled to throw a two-inning simulated game on Saturday, and to be built up to a starter’s pitch count. The Dodgers don’t need a fifth starter until August 14 agains the Mets, but Hamels would probably have to dazzle in order to make even an abbreviated start in that game.

It’s too early to know how exactly he’ll fit into the Dodgers’ revamped rotation, which currently includes Scherzer (who dazzled in his debut, a seven-inning, 10-strikeout performance against the Astros, bookended by whiffs of Jose Altuve and Chas McCormick, the latter drawing a curtain call), Walker Buehler, Julio Urías, David Price, and a big ol’ TBD. The team lost Dustin May to Tommy John surgery in May, and in the past week placed Tony Gonsolin to the 10-day IL due to shoulder inflammation and traded top pitching prospect Josiah Gray, who had made two appearances, to the Nationals in the Scherzer deal.

The Dodgers don’t know yet when Clayton Kershaw, who has not pitched in a game since July 3 due to forearm inflammation, will return from the IL, and they have worked to distance themselves from Trevor Bauer, who hasn’t pitched for them since June 28 in the wake of sexual assault allegations. Kershaw
had worked his way back to the point of throwing a three-inning simulated game on July 27. The Dodgers hoped he could be ready as soon as this weekend, but he’s now experiencing what manager Dave Roberts termed “residual soreness,” putting his next sim start on hold. Bauer remains on administrative leave through August 6 in connection with two separate investigations, a criminal one by the Pasadena Police Department, and an MLB one in connection with its joint domestic violence policy. His leave is expected to be extended given that his next hearing concerning a temporary restraining order was postponed from July 23 to August 16. Last week, the Los Angeles Times‘ Mike DiGiovanna reported that “a majority of players do not want Bauer back under any circumstances.”

The Dodgers do have one other potential starter waiting in the wings in lefty Danny Duffy, who was acquired from the Royals on July 29. He hasn’t pitched since July 16 due to a flexor strain, however, and isn’t expected back before September. Whether as a starter or multi-inning reliever, he’s not expected to carry a huge workload, but with Urías having already set a career high for innings (129.2), and Price coming off a season in which he opted out due to the pandemic, anybody who can offer a slice of quality innings is welcome.

Hence the signing of Hamels, who in addition to getting a chance to pitch close to home (he’s a San Diego native) is hoping to prolong an impressive career during which he’s won 163 games, struck out 2,560 hitters, and helped teams to eight playoff appearances highlighted by his winning NLCS and World Series MVP honors for the 2008 Phillies. With his time away, the major round-numbered milestones and an outside shot at the Hall of Fame (he’s 13.4 points short of the JAWS standard for starting pitchers) may be out of reach unless he musters some late-career staying power:

Even without such accomplishments, another championship would probably suffice for Hamels. With the playoff-bound Dodgers, he’ll get a shot at that — if he can stay healthy.

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 »

“In a game against the aliens for the survival of the species, who are you giving the ball to?”

Some version of that question has been posed to me many times during my FanGraphs tenure. My response has typically been Max Scherzer, while the most popular answer among readers has leaned toward Clayton Kershaw. Well, now the Dodgers have both after trading for Scherzer and Trea Turner on Thursday. In the process, they gave up their top two prospects in right-handed pitcher Josiah Gray and catcher Keibert Ruiz, as well as potential late-inning reliever Gerardo Carrillo and outfielder Donovan Casey, a former two-way player and hopeful late-bloomer.

Even though Scherzer is a rental, the prospect haul Washington is getting for Mad Max and Turner, who was my pre-season pick to win NL MVP (too cute?), is substantial enough to merit its own piece. As part of the Nationals prospect list this April, I wrote that Washington’s system was so bad that I’d rather take Vanderbilt’s roster and their high school commits than the Nationals’ entire minor league system. The White Sox graduated their handful of top 100 prospects, which sank them below Washington in our rankings; this deal, which includes two top 100 prospects, moves the Nationals from 29th to 24th (our farm system calculations tend to like potential stars more than depth). Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past 10 or so years, the Dodgers have built a juggernaut, with enough talent to withstand both divisional rivals and injury woes. They’ve won the last eight NL West titles and been to three of the past four World Series. This year, though, it looked like that hegemony might finally, finally come to an end. Corey Seager is hurt. Mookie Betts has been banged up and is on the IL. Gavin Lux is out. Dustin May tore his UCL. Cody Bellinger missed a long stretch with a hairline fracture in his leg before suffering a hamstring injury. Clayton Kershaw hasn’t pitched in nearly a month. But with the Giants overperforming and the Dodgers facing an onrush of injury (and suspension), maybe this could be the year.

That feels less likely now, because the Dodgers just flipped the trade market on its head in one fell swoop, acquiring Max Scherzer and Trea Turner from the Nationals for a kingly ransom of prospects (update: the trade is now official)– Josiah Gray, Keibert Ruiz, Gerardo Carrillo, and Donovan Casey. The deal isn’t final yet, but it appears all but done and will likely be officially announced Friday. Turner was the best position player on the market. Scherzer was the best pitcher on the market. They’re both Dodgers now, more cogs in the most powerful machine in baseball, one that looks increasingly likely to dispatch the Giants and bring home the NL West crown yet again.

As is customary with such a big deal, we’ll cover it in two parts. Here, Eric Longenhagen gives Nats fans a piping-hot helping of prospect analysis — there’s plenty of it in a deal of this magnitude. I’ll focus on the major league side of things, which is to say the Dodgers’ side of things; Washington was already dead in the water in the NL East, but now they’re super dead. Read the rest of this entry »

At the start of the season, the Dodgers had so much pitching depth it was a legitimate question as to how they would effectively use all of their talent. But what was a source of strength for Los Angeles in March has become a reason for cautious concern in July, as the team lost Dustin May to Tommy John surgery in early May and Clayton Kershaw to elbow inflammation in July. In the bullpen, meanwhile, Corey Knebel was lost on April 24 to a lat injury, Scott Alexander went on the IL for a second time on July 20 with left shoulder inflammation, and Joe Kelly is day-to-day with a hamstring injury. The Dodgers shifted Tony Gonsolin and David Price to the rotation to patch some of those holes, but while that pair’s been mostly effective as starters, that’s come at the expense of bullpen depth.

The bottom line is that the Dodgers probably needed to bolster their pitching staff, and that’s been the case since even before Trevor Bauer was placed on administrative leave while MLB and the Pasadena Police Department investigate disturbing charges of sexual assault. His latest hearing was postponed until at least August 16, and MLB has extended his administrative leave until at least August 6; it’s an open question at this point if he’ll pitch again this season (or for Los Angeles).

So with 36 hours until the deadline, the Dodgers made a deal with the Royals to replenish some of that depth with injured veteran Danny Duffy, who is in the final year of his contract and could work as a middle reliever or spot starter. Given his nature as a rental, the two teams will settle on player(s) to be named later from a pre-approved list, with Los Angeles also getting some cash back from Kansas City. Read the rest of this entry »