With apologies to Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers, for my money the most eye-catching deal ahead of Monday’s trade deadline was the Red Sox acquiring Adley Rutschman in a six-player blockbuster with the Orioles. Not only did a switch-hitting All-Star catcher move from one Wild Card contender to another, but he did so within the same division — and he’s more than a rental, with one more year of arbitration eligibility before he reaches free agency. Though he’s currently on the injured list due to inflammation in his left wrist, Rutschman is reportedly nearing a rehab assignment, and once he returns, he should provide a substantial upgrade for a team whose catchers landed on my Replacement-Level Killers list a few weeks ago.

Rustchman wasn’t the only prominent catcher on the move to a contender on Monday, as the Marlins traded Liam Hicks to the Rays, but he’s a part-time backstop whose hitting makes him a useful DH and first base option as well. While the concurrence of his being dealt illustrates that trading for a catcher on the fly in the midst of a playoff race isn’t unheard of, such moves do stand out. They’re not to be undertaken lightly because of the weighty responsibility that falls on a catcher’s shoulders in terms of quickly having to build relationships with a new pitching staff to understand repertoires, situational preferences, and interpersonal dynamics. Odds are that those newcomers are also expected to provide more offense than the catchers they replaced, because offensive slumps often spur teams to make such changes. Read the rest of this entry »

You might have thought it was the Presidents Day Blowout Sale in San Francisco, as all 2026 models MUST GO, with 0% APR financing and additional dealer cash. All kidding aside — or maybe not, since this is a Szymborski piece — the Giants were one of deadline’s the most aggressive sellers and they continued the trend yesterday by trading two more veterans to contending teams. Heading to the Yankees is outfielder Heliot Ramos, who has hit .264/.304/.424 with nine homers in 74 games this season, good for 0.7 WAR, down numbers compared to his 2025 and especially his All-Star 2024 season. Elsewhere in the AL East, the Red Sox acquired lefty reliever Erik Miller, who has a 2.76 ERA and a 3.34 FIP, with 12 strikeouts per nine alongside six walks; Boston also picked up minor league outfielder Carlos Gutierrez. Of course, the Giants didn’t help restock these division rivals out of the goodness of their hearts: they received infielder Marcelo Mayer from the Red Sox, and pitcher Henry Lalane and infielder Kaeden Kent from the Yankees.

Over the weekend, I wrote about the Yankees trading for Luis García Jr. to help bolster their lineup until they get Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton back healthy. Through the use of cry-laughing emojis in our company Slack, fellow FanGraphiér Jeff Zimmerman quite rightly noted my possible naïveté in having confidence that this particular result would actually come to pass. Whether or not the Yankees hacked my computer, received a telepathic message from Jeff, or (most likely) came to the same conclusion, they’ve hedged their bets on their veterans returning by picking up Ramos.

Early in his career, Ramos appeared to be a star in the making. That stardom seemed almost within reach in 2024, but his power didn’t continue to develop (just the opposite), and he turned out to be a rather middling defensive corner outfielder who couldn’t stick in center. Still, Ramos does do something well: He hits left-handed pitching. Indeed, even in a rather mediocre season, he’s gone after southpaws to the tune of a 127 wRC+. I think García was a necessary addition to the Yankees offense, but the team also needed someone who could tee off on lefties, which García doesn’t, and who has experience in the outfield. And while Ramos is certainly below average out there — his 2026 numbers have rebounded from his dreadful 2025, though they’re still slightly under water — he at least has experience playing in the outfield. In fact, if I’m being perfectly honest, he’s probably as valuable of a player overall as Stanton, albeit without the highlight reel, 120-mph home runs. Ramos isn’t a free agent until after the 2029 season, so unless he’s traded again, the Yankees will have him in the mix over the next few years, assuming they want to. Here’s his ZiPS projection:

If you told me six weeks ago that the Red Sox would be one of the hottest teams in baseball and would be buyers at the trade deadline, I would have been shocked beyond belief. After all, not only would you have had an actual time machine, but you would have been using it for the extremely unambitious task of telling me and my cats how teams played in July. The Red Sox went 21-4 last month, highlighted by a 15-game winning streak, the majors’ longest since the 2021 Cardinals rolled off 17 wins in a row. They entered Monday’s games with the second Wild Card spot in hand, a four-game cushion on the Guardians behind them, and a shopping list to improve the 2026 team. Their big move was acquiring Adley Rutschman from Baltimore, but that wasn’t all they did.

Boston’s bullpen certainly isn’t a weak spot; the relief corps currently leads baseball in both ERA and FIP. But as quesabirria should have shown you, great things can be made even greater. With Aroldis Chapman firmly reserved for the ninth inning, Jovani Morán was the only other lefty on the roster, and though I’m a fan of Tyler Samaniego as a relief option, there’s no question that a risk-averse playoff team would rather have Miller in October, even with the walks. Miller isn’t merely a rental, either; unless the free agency rules change this winter, the Red Sox have him cost-controlled for three more seasons after this one. Here’s the ZiPS:

Also going to Boston is Gutierrez, a smallish lefty outfielder who has the misfortune of being adequate in basically every way instead of having one standout tool to inspire scouts. He’ll draw a walk or two, and while his contact rate has dropped this year, he has generally displayed a pretty decent hit tool. He seems unlikely to really develop a whole lot of power, but he looks to me like a future fourth outfielder type. ZiPS throws out names like Jon Jay, Chris Duffy, Kerry Robinson, and Pookie Wilson (who is not related to Mookie Wilson, as far as I am aware) as comps. I kind of think of him as a poor man’s Steven Kwan. To the ZiPS!

As for the return, Marcelo Mayer sounds like a pretty big name to send to San Francisco in exchange for a solid-but-not-elite reliever. And it would have been… in 2024. However you choose to portion out the blame, Mayer has been hit with a number of injuries and, when healthy, has regressed from his 2024 form. While he’s still just 23 and could very well have a bright future, his phenom days are past, and if you suddenly gave him his prospect eligibility back by some weird authoritative fiat, he’d slot in far lower than the number-three ranking he earned on our updated 2024 Top 100. With Luis Arraez gone and Casey Schmitt almost certainly out until 2027, the path is clear for Mayer to take the second base job as soon as he’s recovered from the stress fracture in his forearm. His ZiPS:

In return for Ramos, the Giants picked up pitcher Henry Lalane and infielder Kaeden Kent.

Lalane is a big lefty with good offspeed stuff and a fastball with decent movement. The heater’s velocity has ticked up in recent months, going from the 93-95 mph range to 95-97 mph. He’s awfully old for a prospect in A-ball, but that’s due to shoulder problems that have kept him off the field. A lot of scouts see him as a future middle reliever, but I imagine that the Giants will wait to see if his breaking pitches develop further and how he fares at the upper levels. ZiPS broadly thinks Lalane has upside, though I don’t generally like publishing ZiPS seasonal lines for pitchers until they debut in Double-A since the error bars are so large.

Kent was a third-round pick for the Yankees in the 2025 draft who struggled in his professional debut, hitting .182/.217/.265 in 25 games last year. That wasn’t enough to keep him off our Yankees Top Prospects list, where he ranked 11th as a 40 FV. With the caveat that he’s a High-A repeater, he’s having a much better year in 2026, with a .302/.359/.433 slashline, good for a 107 wRC+. The Yankees have been playing him at shortstop, second, and third, so if he hits well after his high-stakes promotion to Double-A, he could at least enter the utility infield picture. A lefty hitter with a bit of power who can play anywhere on the infield is a useful role-player archetype to have. Kent’s ZiPS:

The Giants’ return for Ramos is less than what they got for Miller, but truth be told, there’s a good chance that Ramos was going to be a non-tender candidate before he hit free agency, barring a turnaround in his game.

Taken together, these trades form a tidy summary of the kind of move we typically see at the deadline. The days when you’d frequently see superstars with two months remaining on their deals fetch half a team’s farm system are now far off in the rearview mirror. Most deadline swaps make quiet-but-real incremental improvements, and that’s exactly what happened here. The Yankees get a useful outfielder who addresses a specific need. The Red Sox get a reliever who will be on their 2026 playoff roster in return for a player who was unlikely to be. And the Giants go about the yeoman’s work of converting a disappointing roster into younger players with plausible upside. None of the players acquired by the Giants are franchise-altering, but they didn’t have franchise-altering players on offer here. They accepted reality and acted accordingly, which is far better than sticking a giant inflatable gorilla on the roof and insisting that Ramos and Miller were only available at the dealership manager’s special price.

The Padres added some sorely needed starting pitching on deadline day, bringing in left-hander Robbie Ray from the Giants in exchange for a pair of prospects, right-hander Miguel Mendez and shortstop Joniel Hernandez. Ray, 34, has put up a 3.08 ERA and a 4.36 FIP across 21 starts in 2026, with 15 homers allowed, 57 walks, and 107 strikeouts over 122 2/3 innings. In 11 Double-A starts this year, Mendez has a 4.93 ERA but a 3.21 FIP with more than a strikeout per game. He’s yet to allow a home run in 2026. Hernandez signed out of Cuba back in January as an international free agent and, at age 17, is running a .927 OPS in the Dominican Summer League.

The 2021 AL Cy Young winner is not the only coveted starter heading to San Diego. In addition to Ray, the Padres also acquired right-hander Casey Mize from the Tigers just minutes before the 6 PM ET deadline. (We’ll cover the Mize trade in a separate post.)

San Diego spent the first two months of the season pleasing most of the baseball world by sticking its thumbs in the eyes of the playground’s big dog, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Wresting first place for spells in the early going, the Padres hit their high-water mark on May 18, when they stood at 29-18 with a half-game lead earned by besting the Dodgers in the opener of a three-game series. Los Angeles took the final two games, though, and the Padres haven’t been serious threats for the NL West since then. After dropping 10 of 11 games in late May, they’ve been preoccupied just trying to keep above the .500 mark. But just as things looked their bleakest, the Friars turned things around. Having won eight of their last nine games, the Padres entered Monday just a game behind both the Diamondbacks and Phillies for the final wild card spot, quieting any whispers that they’d be sellers at the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves made a couple of minor moves over the weekend, adding pitchers Rick Mahler and Bruce Sutter, with the purpose of buttressing th…wait a second…

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The 1986 2026 Atlanta Braves made a couple of minor trades in recent days, acquiring pitchers Tyler Mahle and Brent Suter to shore up their pitching depth as we enter the season’s homestretch. Suter, who turns 37 in a few weeks, had a 4.12 ERA but a 3.65 FIP in 41 games for the Los Angeles Angels, who are apparently still a baseball team. Mahle is having his first full, healthy season in years, but has generally struggled otherwise in San Francisco, posting a 5.19 ERA and a 4.38 FIP for 0.8 WAR in 18 starts for the struggling Giants.

In return for Suter, the Braves are shipping infielder Nacho Alvarez Jr. to the Angels. After getting scattered playing time in the majors in 2024 and 2025, and putting up a disappointing .216/.296/.330 line in that span, he has spent the entire regular season with Triple-A Gwinnett, with his .664 OPS on the year providing ample explanation for why he didn’t pop up on the Braves roster at all this year. He did have at least one big highlight this season, getting Mexico onto the scoreboard first in its WBC game against Great Britain with a homer off Jack Anderson.

Heading to San Francisco for Mahle is reliever Anthony Molina, a name you might recognize from being on the fringes of Colorado’s roster the last few seasons. He’s only appeared in three games for the Braves this season, but has put up a 3.64 ERA/4.01 FIP for Gwinnett. Read the rest of this entry »

Exercising your brain via puzzles and brain teasers is a good way to stay sharp. Studies repeatedly show that solving difficult problems and applying critical reasoning skills build patterns and help fight off some of the effects of aging. So congratulations to me and to the Phillies front office – and to you, since you’re reading this article. Philadelphia acquired Luis Arraez in a deadline deal on Monday, and now we all have to wrack our brains around where the team is going to play him.

The full trade, as reported by Bob Nightengale: The Giants send Arraez and reliever Caleb Kilian to the Phillies in exchange for pitchers Ramon Marquez and Marty Gair. The main attraction in this foursome is Arraez, who has rejuvenated his career in a Giants uniform after a few years in the wilderness. He signed with the Giants because they were one of the few teams who wanted him to play second base, as opposed to first base, the spot where he’d spent most of his time in recent years. That experiment has gone exceedingly well, and Arraez has also recaptured some of his offensive spark. The result is his best season, as measured by WAR, with two months left to go.

His appeal to the Phillies is straightforward at a base level: They need to add some good hitters, basically. Their lineup has a lot of big names, but it also has a depth issue. Prior to the Arraez trade, five of their everyday starters had below-average offensive lines on the season, and that doesn’t count Bryan De La Cruz, who has hit well in eight games with the team. Philadelphia is on course to score its fewest runs per game (by a lot) since before Bryce Harper signed with the team in 2019; in other words, this is the worst Phillies offense of the current era. Read the rest of this entry »

COOPERSTOWN, NY — “I took pride in playing second base, a position that keeps you in every play and demands toughness, but my bat was always my ticket,” said Jeff Kent during his Hall of Fame induction speech on Sunday. “I learned a long time ago from Tommy Lasorda, one of the best motivators in the game, a simple truth that I lived by my whole career: The money lies in the RBIs.”

Kent’s philosophy cut straight to the heart of a decades-long culture war within baseball, one that helps to explain why the slugging second baseman spent 10 years on the writers’ ballot without coming close to the necessary 75% needed for election, but sailed in on his first appearance on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee last December. Hardly the darling of statheads — he ranks 22nd in JAWS at his position, for example, and only twice ranked among his league’s top 10 in Baseball Reference WAR — his prickly persona sometimes rubbed teammates and media the wrong way, but his candidacy resonated for Era Committee voters. Chockfull of executives and Hall of Fame players, the handpicked panel was more familiar with old-school measures and more inclined to reward his reputation for being free of performance-enhancing drugs, in contrast to statistically superior longtime teammate and fellow Era Committee candidate Barry Bonds, who was not elected. “Most home runs by a second baseman” played better than “most home runs all-time” thanks to the absence of a theoretical asterisk.

Along with Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones, Kent was inducted in front of an estimated crowd of 12,000 on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the Clark Sports Center. Including this year’s three inductees, a record 60 living Hall of Famers were onstage, but their audience was comparatively sparse, well short of the estimated 30,000 who showed up last year for the inductions of Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, and the late Dick Allen and Dave Parker.

All weekend long, comparisons between last year’s Induction Weekend and this one were inescapable and inevitable. Throngs of colorfully outfitted fans of the Mariners, Yankees, Astros, Phillies, and Pirates filled the streets of Cooperstown in 2025, the town was abuzz, and thanks to the timely new Yakyu Baseball exhibit — dedicated to the interchange between American and Japanese baseball — the Hall itself was packed with visitors. While a sizable contingent of Puerto Rican fans turned out for Beltrán, the streets were scarcely populated and decidedly less colorful this year. The Hall had new displays devoted to Tom Seaver memorabilia and the 50th anniversary of Rick Monday’s rescue of an American flag that was about to be set ablaze at Dodger Stadium, but this year brought no new marquee exhibit, and the Clark Sports Center field had a lot more visible, unoccupied grass.

Chalk that up to the particularities and peculiarities of this year’s class. Few Hall of Famers in any year have the international appeal of the iconic Suzuki, who came within one vote of unanimous election and addressed the omission with grace and humor in his speech. And whether they were first-year, 10th-year, or Era Committee honorees, each of the other four Class of 2025 members took unique roads to Cooperstown. They or surviving family members told gripping stories of the obstacles they surmounted.

By contrast, this year’s class of inductees lacked such universal appeal and didn’t capture fans’ imagination in the same way — at least not enough to plan a weekend trip to Cooperstown during high season. Some of the obstacles they surmounted to get elected owed to conduct that made them polarizing figures, even if it wasn’t viewed as disqualifying. Far from immortality, Beltrán, Jones, and Kent proved themselves all too human during their playing careers. Most notably, Beltrán, a nine-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove winner, and one of just eight players with at least 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, was the only player identified by name in commissioner Rob Manfred’s 2019 report on the Astros’ illegal electronic sign-stealing efforts. That exposure cost Beltrán his post as the manager of the Mets before he could even fill out a lineup card. Even as the ninth-ranked center fielder in JAWS, he wasn’t elected until his fourth ballot.

Jones reached the majors as a teenager, and went on to win 10 Gold Gloves while bopping 434 home runs and helping the Braves to 10 straight playoff appearances during his career. He ranks 11th in JAWS among center fielders, but declined rapidly in his 30s due to lax conditioning; done after his age-35 season, he finished with just 1,933 hits, fewer than any other post-1960 player elected by the writers. He disappeared from the majors after being arrested on a domestic battery charge in December 2012. (He pleaded guilty to a lesser disorderly conduct charge.) He received just 7.3% of the vote in his first ballot appearance in 2018, and needed nine years to gain entry from the writers.

Kent, a five-time All-Star and former MVP, didn’t do anything that rose to the level of either classmate’s transgressions, but in March 2002 he broke a bone in his left wrist, which he initially claimed happened while washing his truck. It soon surfaced through eyewitness accounts that he had crashed doing wheelies while riding his motorcycle, in violation of his contract. As scandals go, it was comparatively quaint; the incident became the butt of jokes, but the Giants showed leniency. Kent wound up missing just four games and turned in a season to rival his MVP-winning one from two years earlier while helping the Giants reach their first World Series since 1989.

Beyond that, during his 18-year career with the Blue Jays, Mets, Cleveland, the Giants, Astros, and Dodgers, Kent could be off-putting. “I had a habit of running my mouth,” he said in his speech regarding his early years with the Mets. At the tail end of his career, he also openly criticized what he perceived to be a lack of professionalism from his young Dodgers teammates. By his own account, he had more physical confrontations with Bonds than just the famous dugout blowup in 2002, though even in the aftermath of that incident he claimed, “We have a good relationship. We have a working relationship that I think works well on the field… I think if you guys [the media] try to create a dysfunctional relationship, that’s a farce too, because that’s not true.”

In a refreshing development, the now-58-year-old Kent has not shied from publicly displaying his emotions and his gratitude in connection with his election. That willingness to break character made his the most interesting speech of Sunday. “I’ll try not to cry now, but it’s coming, no doubt,” he said as he began his speech. A minute later, he was struggling to retain his composure as he recounted the story of his father, a Southern California police officer, promising to buy him a pickup truck if he earned a college scholarship — one he still has in his garage “as a reminder that some of the simplest things can change the entire direction of your life.”

“Standing on this stage reminds me why different people come and connect to this game,” he continued. “For some it’s a shared passion, a time spent with family and friends, for others it’s an opportunity. For me it was just a simple plan of a college education and a better way of life for my family.”

During a post-induction media session, the San Francisco Standard’s John Shea identified five times since the announcement of his election at which Kent has cried publicly. Kent didn’t dispute the count or the characterization of his softer side. “I don’t think I’m mad as much as I used to be,” he said. “You know, when you play this game, you have to play with a little hatred — I use that word lightly. People call it cockiness, or arrogance, or confidence. They call it so much, but you have to play this game with a chip on the shoulder.”

“I’m not mad any more, maybe that’s why,” he continued. “I’m a deflector, and I think I’ve deflected so much that now I have to reason with it and appreciate it,” he said, referring to the publicity and plaudits coming his way since being elected, and experiencing all of that in front of his family, from whom he spared that chip-on-the-shoulder attitude.

Kent did mention Bonds once in his speech, calling him “one of the most talented players this game has ever seen” without delving into the two stars’ conflicts. Nonetheless, his frequent repetition of phrases like “playing the game the right way” couldn’t be read as anything other than veiled references to the PED-linked players who overshadowed him during his career and on ballots, particularly when he spoke of the late Ryne Sandberg, who was a vocal critic of such players and who served on the 2023 Era Committee that rejected Bonds.

Back to the RBIs. Kent singled out former Mets teammate Eddie Murray’s counseling him that the key to staying cool in bases-loaded situations was to focus on getting the runner home from third base. “That lesson of keeping things simple stayed with me forever,” he said. Kent drove in 100 or more runs eight times during a high-offense era, in part because he hit behind Bonds as the slugger set records for bases on balls, intentional and otherwise. Yet, Kent only ranked among his league’s top 10 in a slash stat five times — twice apiece in batting average and slugging percentage, and once in on-base percentage. He was a prolific home run hitter for a middle infielder, clubbing 377 total and 351 as a second baseman, but his modest on-base percentages and subpar defensive metrics limited his value. Still, while his JAWS is below 13 of the other 20 enshrined second basemen, he’s third out of 10 among those elected by committees.

The 49-year-old Jones followed Kent by beginning with a nod to the giants at his position. “I feel like a rookie today surrounded by all these amazing Hall of Famers behind me,” he said. “There are so many guys here that I loved to watch play, and I’m happy to be here with them today. I never got to see Willie Mays play, so Ken Griffey [Jr.] was my guy. I wanted to be like him. For me and Carlos to join Griffey, Willie, and these other great center fielders in the Hall of Fame, it’s hard to put into words.”

“You can go 0-for-4 and still impact the game by taking away singles and extra-base hits. I worked hard on my routes and a preparation. I wanted to be the best center fielder,” said Jones.

The first player from the tiny island of Curaçao to be elected to the Hall of Fame paid tribute to Hensley Meulens, the first Curaçao native to reach the majors, and listed more than a dozen of the countrymen who have followed, including current major leaguers Ozzie Albies, Kenley Jansen, and Ceddanne Rafaela. He spoke of his father, Henry Jones, a legendary amateur player who caught and played center field for Curaçao’s national team in the 1960s and ’70s, and who passed away 10 years ago:

“He showed me how to work hard and play for what it takes to become a successful baseball player and a great person. Because he played center field, I wanted to be a center fielder, and he passed down every bit of knowledge [of] the game to me, like how to read balls off the bat. He hit me fly balls from foul pole to foul pole every time in Curaçao so I could track balls down, because the ocean breeze made tracking balls very difficult on the island.”

Jones also paid tribute to the other seven Hall of Famers from the 1990s and 2000s Braves teams on which he starred, namely manager Bobby Cox, general manager John Schuerholz, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Fred McGriff, and “my brother from another mother,” Chipper Jones, who debuted on the 2018 ballot alongside Andruw and “pushed for me, for my induction, for many years.”

While Chipper was one of four players elected on that 2018 ballot, Andruw nearly lost his eligibility; his 7.3% share now stands as the lowest of any player elected by the writers since the five-year waiting period was instituted in 1954. “A lot of my friends that follow the percentages closer than I did were like, ‘Hey, you’re barely hanging there,’” said Jones in his post-induction media session. “I was just happy to hang in there, [happy] that the writers kept me on the ballot. Getting in after nine years — I didn’t say I had to be the first ballot, I didn’t say I had to be the sixth year, the seventh year, or the last year, or get voted in by the Veterans Committee. I’m in the Hall of Fame now, so that’s all that matters.”

Like Jones, the 49-year-old Beltrán felt as though he were back at the beginning of his career on Sunday, opening his speech by saying, “This is the closest thing to my first at-bat in the big leagues, where I felt excited to be here but at the same time I felt very nervous. These guys really make me nervous,” he said, gesturing to the Hall of Famers behind him.

While Beltrán did not directly address the sign-stealing scandal during Sunday’s speech, it wasn’t far out of mind, particularly as the text on his plaque mentioned his “20-year career that ended in 2017 as World Series champion.” He thanked commissioner Manfred in his speech, as well as the voters: “To the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, I want to say thank you for making me a Hall of Famer… And for those that didn’t [vote for me] — that saw things different — I want to say also thank you. I appreciate your perspective. If baseball has really taught me something, I want to say is that I hope in life, we continue to measure ourselves by the same standard we have used to measure others.”

Beltrán did address the sign-stealing scheme earlier in the week during a Zoom session with reporters, saying, “[T]he fact that I’m the only player mentioned — I don’t know, it’s kind of weird. Sometimes it still gives me a bad taste in my mouth.” Later, he added, “I know that as a team we got together to do what we did, but I’ve got to tell you that this was not like one player’s idea.”

In that session, Beltrán added that after seeing Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow, manager A.J. Hinch, and bench coach-turned-Boston-manager Alex Cora lose their jobs, he knew he couldn’t last as Mets manager. “I feel like [Manfred] mentioning Carlos Beltrán in the report, that was my suspension.”

With Carlos Mendoza recently fired, Beltrán may yet get his shot to manage the Mets, for whom he’s currently a special assistant to president of baseball operations David Stearns. Within his speech, he explained his choice to wear a Mets cap on his plaque:

“Every organization shapes your career. New York shaped my life. It was here where I experienced my greatest success and some of my greatest challenges. Playing for the Mets made me a better man and a better leader. Many of the most meaningful relationships that I was able to build in my career, I did it wearing a Mets uniform. So the Mets cap, what it represents to me is growth and it represents a place where I became the best version of myself.”

Elsewhere in his speech, Beltrán saluted his fellow Puerto Rican Hall of Famers, as well as his mentors, such as Royals legend George Brett (“who taught me that greatness is built long before anybody is watching”), Astros teammates Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, who taught him the importance of playing with pain, and Giants legends Mays and Willie McCovey, with whom he would talk baseball as often as possible during his two months with San Francisco in 2011. As Puerto Rican flags waved, he delivered substantial passages of his speech in Spanish, harkening to his influential role in mandating the presence of translators in every major league clubhouse.

Induction Weekend’s festivities weren’t confined to Sunday. Friday evening featured a cocktail party to celebrate this year’s winner of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award, Paul Hoynes, the beat reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer since 1983. The party takes place on the back porch of the Hotel Otesaga, where new and returning Hall of Famers and their immediate families stay for the weekend — and where entry to everyone else is by invitation only, with signs explicitly warning, “NO AUTOGRAPHS.” The porch opens up onto a breathtaking vista starring Lake Otsego, a view that never gets old.

Saturday’s Hall of Fame Awards Presentation, conducted at the Glimmerglass Festival Theater about eight miles outside of Cooperstown, honored Hoynes as well as broadcaster Joe Buck, the recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award; Monday, for the golden anniversary of his notable rescue effort; and Bill White, winner of the Buck O’Neil Award. The last of those, which is presented no more than once every three years, honors “an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.”

The choice of White for that honor was particularly resonant, at least to this scribe. Though he was an eight-time All-Star and seven-time Gold Glove winner at first base during his 13-year playing career, White didn’t accrue the kind of numbers that themselves typically drive election. He did start for the Cardinals’ 1964 World Series winners, and while with that organization, he made an impact by speaking on the record about the shoddy treatment of the team’s Black players, including Curt Flood and Bob Gibson, as well as himself. His exposure to those players’ not being invited to a St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce’s “Salute to Baseball” breakfast held in a segregated hotel led the Cardinals to press for integrated lodging for spring training, a trend that spread to other teams training in segregated Florida.

White followed his impressive career with pioneering roles as a broadcaster and executive. In 1971, he began an 18-year run calling Yankees games and working for national networks, one that made him the first full-time Black play-by-play broadcaster in any sport. After retiring from broadcasting, he spent five years (1989–94) as president of the National League, making him the first Black person to assume such a post and the highest-ranking Black executive in any sport at the time. As a candidate for election on the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee for Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, he fell two votes short.

“This award is meaningful, because when I grew up, I never imagined a life in baseball,” White said in a prerecorded video accepting his award. “Baseball was a way to earn money for medical school. But signing a contract with the New York Giants put me on a different path. Rooming with Willie Mays helped me become a better baseball player. I played with and against some of the greats of the game. Some of the best years of my life were as a broadcast partner with ‘Scooter,’ Phil Rizzuto. We had a lot of fun, and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. I was so happy to see him elected to the Hall of Fame. And finally, the years I spent as president of the National League and on the Hall of Fame board were amazing. During my time at the National League, we added a couple of new teams and I helped contribute to the game’s growth, and I want to thank the board for this honor.”

During Saturday night’s cocktail party in the Hall of Fame plaque gallery — the highlight of my Induction Weekend every year, an event that’s like watching a childhood baseball card collection come to life — I summoned the courage to introduce myself to the 92-year-old White, who was holding court in the Hall’s lobby. After congratulating him, I expressed my hope he still might be elected to the Hall proper. He thanked me and said words to the effect that he was more than satisfied with this honor. “I used to run this place, you know,” he said, referring to his presence on the board of directors starting in 2000.

Somehow, his dealing with that less-than-perfect outcome felt like a metaphor for the entire weekend. This year’s induction festivities may not have been everybody’s favorite celebration or celebrants, but it wasn’t hard to find something to take from each of their roads to Cooperstown.

On Tuesday night, as I watched Luis Arraez, sparkler in hand, chatting with Otto Lopez outside the National League dugout, I couldn’t help but reflect on how he ended up in Philadelphia. This is Arraez’s fourth All-Star selection, but it’s also his first in four years. Although we’re only 90 games into the season, his 3.7 WAR is already a career high. As you surely know, the biggest improvement in his game came with the glove. Michael Rosen put it simply enough back in May, with an article titled “Luis Arraez Is Good at Defense Now.” At the time, Arraez had put up 5 FRV over 30 games. In the ensuing 61 games, he’s accrued another 3 FRV. The pace has slowed down, but he’s still grading out as an excellent defender (though the other defensive metrics admittedly disagree).

Today, however, we’re interested in Arraez’s offensive improvement. Arraez won his first batting title in 2022, and he did more than just put up a high batting average. He also walked more than he struck out, earning a 130 wRC+. He followed it up with a 131 mark in 2023, though he did so in a slightly different fashion. Both his walks and his strikeouts dropped below 6%, but he ran a .362 BABIP, which led to a .354 batting average. Essentially, he leaned way, way into his status as a contact god, and the sky-high BABIP made it all work out beautifully.

But Arraez took things too far. In 2024 and 2025 combined, his walk and strikeout rates fell below 5%, and his .307 BABIP, while above the league average, wasn’t good enough to carry an offensive profile that features no walks and no power. He ran a 107 combined wRC+, and because he was putting up negative value in the other parts of the game, he ended up with just 2.0 WAR. That put his value squarely between an average player and a replacement-level one. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Fourth of July! To commemorate the United States’ Semiquincentennial, I’m going to run through some fun baseball stats that feature the number 250, and also ask a few trivia questions, which you can answer in the comments. As of Thursday morning, there is one player in MLB history with exactly 250 career home runs. He’s an active player for an NL West team. Can you name him? Seven players have recorded exactly 250 doubles in their career; only one of them is in the Hall of Fame. The six non-Hall of Famers are Ozzie Albies, Travis Hafner, Deivi Cruz, Bruce Bochte, Irish Meusel, and Jake Daubert. The Hall of Famer is a 19th century catcher. Who is it?

There are 25 members of the 250 Home Run/250 Stolen Base Club, nine of whom are Hall of Famers. Sorted by home runs, those nine are Willie Mays (660 HR, 339 SB), Andre Dawson (438, 314), Carlos Beltrán (435, 312), Rickey Henderson (297, 1,406), Craig Biggio (291, 414), Ryne Sandberg (282, 344), Joe Morgan (268, 689), Derek Jeter (260, 358), and Robin Yount (251, 271). Two others are active: José Ramírez (295, 311) and Jose Altuve (263, 326). Can you name the other 14 members of the 250/250 Club? Lastly, seven players have tallied at least 250 hits in a season. Six of them — Ichiro Suzuki (262 in 2004), George Sisler (257 in 1920), Bill Terry (254 in 1930), Al Simmons (253 in 1925), Chuck Klein (250 in 1930), and Rogers Hornsby (250 in 1922) — are Hall of Famers. Can you name the one non-Hall of Famer?

I’ll reveal the answers in next week’s mailbag. In this week’s edition, we’ll answer your questions on challenging the first pitch of a game, sustained runs of low playoff odds, a team of Frank Thomases and Luis Aparicios, and more. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday marked the one-year anniversary of the blockbuster trade that sent Rafael Devers from the Red Sox to the Giants in exchange for a four-player package. Neither team marked the occasion by throwing a party; mercifully, both were idle, and so didn’t sink further below .500. The deal hasn’t worked out well for either side, though it’s the Giants with an expensive and apparently declining slugger on the books. While Devers was fairly productive after being dealt last season, so far in 2026, the 29-year-old first baseman has surrounded one very good month (May) with a pair of miserable slumps that are just part of the reason the Giants are buried in the NL West standings.

We’ve told and re-told the story of the drama in Boston that led up to the Devers trade, but the streamlined version is that the signing of third baseman Alex Bregman bumped Devers off his natural position. After that, a lack of communication between the front office and the slugger — whose defense at the hot corner had eroded — exacerbated the team’s attempts to slot him first at designated hitter and then, after Triston Casas was injured, at first base, a position he had never played before and was reluctant to begin learning in-season. On June 15, 2025, the Red Sox sent Devers to the Giants for lefty Kyle Harrison, righties Jose Bello and Jordan Hicks, and outfielder James Tibbs III, with the Giants assuming the roughly $254 million remaining on Devers’ 10-year, $313.5 million contract, which runs though 2033.

The Red Sox were just 36-36 at the time of the trade, the Giants 41-30. Over the remainder of the season, the two teams’ fortunes reversed, with Boston going 53-37 and securing a Wild Card berth, just the team’s second trip to the postseason since winning the World Series in 2018, and San Francisco going 40-51 and missing the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons. Each team has changed managers since, with the Giants axing Bob Melvin in favor of Tony Vitello — the rare manager to make the jump directly from the college coaching ranks — last October and the Red Sox firing Alex Cora in late April. Those varying paths have led the two teams to similar spots: the Red Sox are 29-41, last in the AL East, while the Giants are 29-43, two games out of last place in the NL West. (Note that throughout this piece, stats from our site include those from Devers’ two plate appearances in Tuesday night’s suspended game against the Braves, while those from Baseball Savant do not.) Read the rest of this entry »

Shane Baz features a five-pitch mix: a four-seam fastball and a knuckle curve being the most prominent in terms of usage. The Baltimore Orioles right-hander also throws a cutter, a curveball, and a changeup. And then there is the offering that reluctantly remains in his back pocket. Baz would love to one day unleash his knuckleball on major-league hitters.

“I threw one when I was a kid, up until I was probably 13 or 14,” explained Baz, who was a big Tim Wakefield fan while growing up in Tomball, Texas. “It was my only off-speed pitch up until then — I was just fastball/knuckleball — so I’ve got a lot of experience with it. I actually try to throw it in every bullpen [session]. I’ll definitely get it into a game, eventually. I just have to convince [pitching coach Drew] French to let me throw it. Maybe next spring training I’ll be able to mix some in and show him what it looks like in a game. I mean, it’s pretty good.”

Baz went on to say that that he threw his pet pitch with a three-finger grip — “fingers on the horseshoe, right by the label” — in his younger days, but once his hands got bigger he went to “the traditional two-finger knuckleball.” And while he basically stopped throwing it in games once he matured and developed more pitches, he’s never lost his affinity for baseball’s butterfly.

At 96.1 mph, Baz’s four-seamer is above average for velocity, but while extra oomph is advantageous for heaters, that isn’t the case for low-spin floaters.

“I can get it up to about 80, but those aren’t as good,” Baz said. “I think it’s best when it’s like 70 to 75. That’s when I have the best control of it and can keep the spin really low. When I’m trying to throw it hard, it starts spinning more and not having as much knuckle effect.”

His overall understanding of the pitch is impressive, and that includes spin properties. Read the rest of this entry »