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With the August 1 trade deadline fast approaching, the question on every baseball fan’s mind is: Will the Los Angeles Angels trade Shohei Ohtani?

Or at least, it was the question on every fan’s mind. On Wednesday evening, Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci reported that the 52-49 Angels have pulled Ohtani off the trade market.

What this piece presupposes is: What if they hadn’t?

We compiled this whole thing before Verducci’s report (and the Angels’ subsequent trade for Lucas Giolito), and we’re going to run it as a thought exercise because we aren’t about to let Arte Moreno ruin our fun. That Ohtani is reportedly no longer available perhaps suggests that the real offers Perry Minasian and Co. received were underwhelming. So what would it take to pry Ohtani loose?

Others have taken that question for a spin, and now it’s our turn. Eleven members of the FanGraphs staff agreed to act as the GMs of opposing clubs and put their best proposal forward in an effort to land the two-way star. You’ll find those offers below. Teams are listed in descending order of their FanGraphs playoff odds. Prospect-eligible players have their Future Value grades noted in parentheses; you can find full scouting reports and tool grades for prospects and recent graduates on The Board.

And now, to the offers!

Los Angeles Dodgers
Angels Receive: C Diego Cartaya (55 FV), 2B Michael Busch (50 FV), SP Gavin Stone (50 FV), SP Nick Frasso (40+ FV), OF Jonny Deluca (40 FV)
Dodgers Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

Probably the last thing Arte Moreno wants to do is trade Shohei Ohtani to the team next door, but if he were willing to, I’d like to think this package from the Dodgers might look acceptable.

I used the 2021 Max Scherzer/Trea Turner blockbuster as a template, though in this case the All-Star hitter and All-Star pitcher being acquired are one and the same. In that deal, the Dodgers sent the Nationals starting pitcher Josiah Gray (55 FV), catcher Keibert Ruiz (55 FV), starting pitcher Gerardo Carrillo (40 FV) and outfielder Donovan Casey (not ranked) — and in that case they got an extra year of control (that of Turner) for the package. Here, with the competition so heavy, I’m going to have to include more talent and concede that extra club control while hoping that I at least get the inside track on retaining Ohtani once he hits free agency.

With All-Star catcher Will Smith in place and still with two years of club control, and with Dalton Rushing at High-A and likely to crack the Top 100 Prospects list next year, I’m headlining my package with Cartaya, a 21-year-old catcher who placed 28th on the Top 100 list this spring but who admittedly is having a rough first taste of Double-A. From the team’s wealth of pitching prospects, I’m tabbing Stone, who has scuffled in his three starts for the Dodgers this year but looks like a mid-rotation starter in the making, and Frasso, who was acquired in the Mitch White trade last summer and currently boasts a 32% strikeout rate at Double-A. I’m not opposed to swapping either of these pitchers out for Ryan Pepiot, Michael Grove, or even Emmet Sheehan, all of whom have more major league experience but probably lower ceilings.

I’m also including Busch and Deluca. Busch is a hitter with no clear defensive position (he can spot at second base); if this deal goes through, the Angels will have the DH slot open. Deluca is a fifth outfielder and depth piece, somebody with a big league future but not an overwhelming one. – Jay Jaffe

Tampa Bay Rays
Angels Receive: SP Taj Bradley, 1B Kyle Manzardo (50 FV), SP/RP Ian Seymour (40+ FV)
Rays Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani, RP Carlos Estévez, and C Gustavo Campero (HM)

In this league, teams are often wary of the risk associated with trading potential long-term pieces for a rental. However, much like the Diamondbacks, Orioles, and Reds, the Tampa Bay Rays have plenty of prospect depth and young big leaguers to pull from. And while it sounds like Yandy Díaz will be able to avoid an IL stint for his recent groin injury, it isn’t totally clear when the team’s most productive hitter will be able to rejoin a lineup that is trying to reclaim its spot atop the AL East. That, plus a pitching staff thinned by injuries, makes it clear that reinforcements are in order and should be pursued aggressively. Thus, the Rays should propose the following deal: Taj Bradley, Kyle Manzardo, and Ian Seymour for Shohei Ohtani, Carlos Estévez, and Gustavo Campero.

Bradley is an obvious headliner for an organization that will need pitching following Ohtani’s departure. The Rays right-hander can be inserted near the top of the Angels rotation, and any deal between these two teams would most likely have to include him. From Tampa’s perspective, a rotation of Ohtani, Shane McClanahan, Tyler Glasnow, and Zach Eflin (Eflin left Wednesday’s start with left knee discomfort, though his initial MRI results were encouraging) would be the best in the American League and would provide sufficient justification for trading away a talented, controllable pitcher such as Bradley. Eflin’s injury hurts, but a playoff top three of Ohtani, McClanahan, and Glasnow is tempting. Manzardo is directly blocked in the majors by the likes of Díaz and the combination of Luke Raley and Harold Ramírez. He’s an upper minors first baseman and is expendable in the short-term. You build up prospect depth for moves like this. Lastly, Seymour is facing a 40-man roster crunch coming off Tommy John surgery but has potentially electric stuff. He’d have more of an opportunity to stretch out as a starter in an organization like the Angels.

Adding Ohtani the pitcher would extend an already good rotation, but the big premium here is at the plate. In the last two months, the Rays’ have run a 99 team wRC+, and the lineup suddenly looks closer to average than elite. Ohtani would help bolster an offense that has struggled against right-handed pitching – he boasts a 195 wRC+ and 27 home runs against right-handers, though he’s not exactly shabby against southpaws. In addition to Ohtani, Estévez would bolster a bullpen that has lost countless relievers to significant arm injuries. He’s under team control through 2024, and unlike other Rays relievers, he isn’t even a project. Lastly, Campero is a late-blooming catching prospect who could provide offensive impact at what might be the only weak position in the organization. Despite Edgar Quero being traded to the White Sox and opening up a promotion, he is still blocked by Logan O’Hoppe. – Esteban Rivera

Baltimore Orioles
Angels Receive: INF Joey Ortiz (50 FV), OF Colton Cowser (45 FV), SP/RP DL Hall (45 FV)
Orioles Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

More than just about any other team, the Orioles are in an enviable position when it comes to the Ohtani talks, able to trade what amounts to expendable, close-to-the-majors talent — and they don’t even have to touch Jackson Holliday.

This isn’t to disparage Ortiz (the 51st-best prospect in baseball), Cowser (the Orioles’ no. 6 prospect, who dominated Triple-A before his call-up), or Hall (the team’s no. 9 prospect), all of whom have what it takes to contribute at the major league level. Rather, the three are replaceable on the big league roster.

Ortiz was the best-ranked of the three prospects midseason, but he can’t consistently earn playing time on a roster that’s got Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, Ramón Urías, Adam Frazier and Jorge Mateo covering second, third, and short — Ortiz has just 34 big league plate appearances despite a 141 wRC+ in Triple-A.

Cowser is currently on the big league roster, though he’s off to a slow start with a 45 wRC+ in 42 PA. Of course, the Orioles wouldn’t trade him because of that, but his opportunities will probably dwindle when Cedric Mullins is back from the IL, and Heston Kjerstad (regarded as the better prospect and also capable of playing first base) is also knocking on the door.

Hall is the only pitcher in the proposed deal and also the biggest unknown; he’s been down in Sarasota working on regaining his velocity and just pitched for the first time at any level since June 14 in a game on Monday. But his strikeout stuff has been tantalizing when in the majors; he’s struck out more than a third of the opponents he’s faced in his 16.2 big league innings.

Ultimately, the always-straddling-the-line Angels would find themselves with three players they could have in the majors immediately or at least imminently. Ortiz could take over at second base for the struggling Luis Rengifo right away, and Cowser could take an outfield spot and a few half-days in the Ohtani-less DH spot. Even with his velocity in peak form, Hall carries significant relief risk, but he could shore up a bullpen corps that has Carlos Estévez, Matt Moore, Jacob Webb, and José Soriano as its only really trusted options.

And, of course, Ohtani would give a boost to an Orioles lineup that’s solid (11th in the majors in OPS) but lacks a truly terrifying bat, and bolster a middling rotation (15th in the majors in ERA) that’s currently relying on a breakout from Grayson Rodriguez as its best hope for a step forward. The O’s could easily accommodate the kind of six-man rotation that Ohtani’s been accustomed to, particularly with Rodriguez’s innings being monitored anyway. – Jon Becker

Texas Rangers
Angels Receive: CF Evan Carter (50 FV), 2B Justin Foscue (50 FV), SP Jack Leiter (50 FV), RP Kumar Rocker (40+ FV), LF Dustin Harris (40+ FV)
Rangers Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

I’m really hitting the gas here because I think Texas is the place where a two-month audition would be most meaningful to a club’s chances of signing Ohtani this offseason. Take him to a Cowboys game, romance him with what Texas has to offer at the cost of a slightly longer plane ride home, and remind him about the income tax rates in the Lone Star State relative to California.

I’m okay with coughing up Carter here because it looks like Leody Taveras has actually arrived. I’m personally kind of lukewarm on Carter (more on that here), but based on the types of players the Angels tend to acquire, I bet they’re not. The internet hype around Carter makes the optics of this deal with him at the center pretty attractive for the Halos.

Ditto for Leiter and Rocker, two marquee names Arte Moreno already knows. Leiter will probably be a solid big league starter, but I don’t think the Rangers would feel burned in a serious way by moving him within the division. Rocker I had evaluated as a reliever before his recent injury, and he seems fine to give up as a sweetener for the most talented player on the planet (he was the last guy I added to this offer).

Before you puke because this is too much to give up, remember that I’m essentially getting two players here. Texas doesn’t really have room for Justin Foscue on a star-studded big league infield, so he can go. Again, Foscue’s a good player, but he and Dustin Harris would both appeal to Anaheim’s statistical sensibilities in a way I’m eager to leverage because he’s superfluous to the Rangers for as long as the trio of Marcus Semien, Corey Seager, and Josh Jung is hitting. Aside from the rehabbing Rocker, this entire offer is composed of near-ready players who can help make Los Angeles’ rebuild go more quickly. Texas would have Earth’s hottest ticket for three months, with the hope that Shohei likes the way the wind blows through his hair in Arlington and signs up for more. – Eric Longenhagen

Toronto Blue Jays
Angels Receive: 1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Blue Jays Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani, OF Jo Adell

Would the Toronto Blue Jays be bold enough to trade one of their cornerstones — a player with two-plus years of team control remaining who was born in Canada, no less — for a rental plus a former top prospect who has thus far fallen short of his potential? Probably not, but the idea has more merit than you might think. If I were Toronto GM Ross Atkins, I might very well get Angels GM Perry Minasian on the horn and ask if he would consider dealing Shohei Ohtani and Jo Adell for Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Far-fetched? Assuming Minasian picked up the phone, not necessarily. Here is why the Angels might agree to the trade:

First and foremost, it seems unlikely that the Anaheim-based club will be able to re-sign Ohtani this winter, which makes trading him a good idea. That said, while the yield from a deadline deal would provide more bang for the buck than draft-pick compensation, it’s not as though a Juan Soto-like package is in the offing. Not for a player about to become a free agent. For that reason, acquiring a 24-year-old All-Star who could immediately replace Ohtani in the middle of the lineup is safer than betting on prospects who may or make pan out. It would certainly be more palatable to the fanbase. Rather than jumpstart a rebuild, why not retool and continue to (or at least try to) contend?

Here is why Toronto might propose the trade:

The Blue Jays came into the season with high expectations, and this would be a win-now move that could propel them to the World Series. Not only would the lineup get stronger, the starting rotation would as well. Their postseason odds would go up meaningfully, and a one-two-punch of Ohtani and Kevin Gausman is something no team would want to face in October. The short-term gain is obvious.

As for the long-term, this would indeed be a risky move for the Jays. Even so, the potential upside goes beyond a short-term, flags-fly-forever World Series run. Toronto is a multi-cultural city that Ohtani could easily fall in love with over the coming months, greatly increasing the chances that he’d choose to call Ontario home for years to come. As for Vladdy Jr., his wRC+ has fallen in each of last three seasons, dropping from 166 to 132 to this year’s 121. As a first baseman, is his long-term value going to be worth what he’ll be paid in Canadian or American dollars? Adel would be the wild card in this deal. At worst, the Blue Jays would have a depth piece who is under team control for several more seasons as consolation should Ohtani sign elsewhere. At best, Adel becomes the player many once envisioned. It’s certainly possible. – David Laurila

Philadelphia Phillies
Angels Receive: SP Ranger Suárez, 2B Bryson Stott, SP Mick Abel (55 FV), CF Justin Crawford (45 FV), SP Griff McGarry (45 FV), 2B/SS William Bergolla (40+)
Phillies Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani, 2B David Fletcher

The Phillies aren’t a favorite to land Ohtani, but after a couple of trades with the Angels at last year’s deadline that worked out well for both sides, maybe these two clubs can figure something out. After all, this is Dave Dombrowski we’re talking about. He pulled off the Miguel Cabrera trade. He pulled off the Chris Sale trade. He pulled off the Yoenis Cespedes trade – twice. Philadelphia might seem like a long shot for Ohtani, but no one is a long shot for Dombrowski.

The Phillies don’t have the big-name headliner the Angels are looking for – they aren’t selling low on Andrew Painter – but they can sweeten the deal with an extra top 100-type prospect. The Angels want two? The Phillies can give them three: Mick Abel, Griff McGarry, and Justin Crawford. That’s two starting pitchers who could join the rotation by 2024 or 2025 and a center fielder of the future. On top of that, if L.A. is nervous about a deal centered around young pitching, Philadelphia can throw in William Bergolla. He’s only 18, but the young shortstop has plate discipline and contact skills beyond his years.

The Angels could also use some big league talent, so the Phillies can entice them with Ranger Suárez and Bryson Stott. Suárez has a lower FIP than almost everyone in the Angels’ rotation (including Ohtani), and he’s under team control for two more years. Stott is another young, talented infielder to pair with Zach Neto, and he won’t reach free agency until 2029.

Finally, it’s time for the cherry on top. One of Dombrowski’s most valuable skills as an executive is convincing ownership to spend, so Philadelphia can definitely take on a bad contract. Anthony Rendon is a bit too much to ask, even for Dombrowski, but how about David Fletcher? You have to think Perry Minasian would love the chance to erase a mistake from early in his Angels’ tenure.

Altogether, Philadelphia is offering high-upside prospects, controllable big leaguers, and a bit of financial freedom. Other teams have the high-end prospects to beat this offer, but it’s the best the Phillies can do without throwing in the entire IronPigs roster, the rights to the Phanatic, and the clubhouse kitchen sink. It’s not Jackson Holliday, but it’s a whole lot better than a compensatory pick. – Leo Morgenstern

San Francisco Giants
Angels Receive: INF Casey Schmitt, SP Kyle Harrison (55 FV), 1B Victor Bericoto (40 FV)
Giants Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

If I’m the Giants, I’m still reeling from 2021’s early playoff exit after a 107-win season, 2022’s utterly underwhelming swoon, and this past offseason’s Aaron Judge and Carlos Correa near-misses. Given recent history, the front office must be especially hungry to make a deep postseason run, and with the Judge and Correa budget largely unspent, they might also be ready to open up the checkbook for Ohtani this winter. But why wait?

To get the Angels interested, let’s start with Kyle Harrison. The left-hander breezed through the lower minors and debuted with Triple-A Sacramento this spring at the age of 21, which is more than six years younger than the average pitcher at that level. He’s experienced some growing pains this year in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, but it’s really the first resistance he’s encountered in his young career. The Angels are already short on arms before dealing Ohtani, so a high-ceiling, near-ready pitching prospect could be a welcome centerpiece, as much as it would pain the Giants.

It’s too bad catching isn’t a big need for the Angels. The Giants seem inclined to hang on to switch-hitting rookie catcher Patrick Bailey, but Joey Bart or Blake Sabol could have been of interest if it weren’t for Matt Thaiss and Logan O’Hoppe.

Where the Giants can address another need is in the infield. There isn’t much in the way of infield depth behind 22-year-old Zach Neto. The Giants, meanwhile, are getting career-best years (or close to it) from Thairo Estrada, Wilmer Flores, LaMonte Wade Jr., and J.D. Davis, and have all but Davis under team control through at least 2025. Casey Schmitt – a versatile defender with some pop who debuted at the age of 24 in May – fits this deal well.

Power-hitting 21-year-old first baseman/corner outfielder Victor Bericoto, who just got the call to Double-A Richmond, rounds out the deal, giving the Angels another player with pretty clear potential to make a big league impact.

Three top-25 prospects is a scary haul to give up for two months of any player, especially with Harrison involved. But offer much less and Farhan Zaidi can expect to be outbid. If they’re able to keep Ohtani in San Francisco long-term, the cost to get him in the door will be soon forgotten. – Chris Gilligan

Arizona Diamondbacks
Angels Receive: SS Geraldo Perdomo, CF Druw Jones (50 FV)
Diamondbacks Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

I was assigned Kim Ng of the Marlins in the Effectively Wild version of this exercise. (It went very badly, thanks for asking.) So I called shotgun on Arizona for the reboot before the podcast went live. I figured the Diamondbacks were an ideal trade partner: They have needs at both DH and in the rotation, and their playoff fate is very much up in the air, so Ohtani could make as big a difference there as anywhere. The D-backs play in a park where Ohtani could put up truly hilarious offensive numbers, and they’re a fairly big-market team (even if they don’t always spend that way) with an up-and-coming core that could benefit from the additional shine. Plus, this would be a perfect time to cash in on Druw Jones, who’s one of the few prospects with enough star power for the Angels to sell to the public as an appropriate return. At the same time, he’s not too good to be untouchable from Arizona’s perspective. Jones is currently on the shelf with a hamstring injury, and questions are starting to pop up about whether he’ll reach the lofty ceiling that was projected for him out of the draft. Maybe he’ll straighten things out and get back on track, but the Diamondbacks could opt to move him rather than risk him losing “half the return of a blockbuster trade” value.

Then I listened to the podcast and Ginny Searle, playing Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen, nailed it. The final offer: Jones, Brandon Pfaadt, Drey Jameson, and Yu-Min Lin. I think that’s the perfect pitch, from Arizona’s perspective, and sure enough it won the whole thing. Now I not only have to land Ohtani for my beloved Snakes, I have to do it through different means.

So I’m going to start with Jones and add Geraldo Perdomo. You want pizzazz? How about one of the biggest stars in the minor leagues, the no. 2 overall pick a year ago? And on top of that, how about a 23-year-old shortstop who’s under team control through 2027, has a .389 OBP, and made the All-Star team this very year? If Ohtani is A-Rod, this is your Alfonso Soriano. Plus, it bears repeating, Druw Jones. Does that leave a gaping hole in my own infield? Yes. But if I have Ohtani I can figure it out later. – Michael Baumann

New York Yankees
Angels Receive: INF Oswald Peraza, SP Clarke Schmidt, OF Jasson Domínguez (50 FV), RP Chase Hampton (35+ FV)
Yankees Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

The Yankees haven’t shown nearly as much faith in Oswald Peraza as they have in Anthony Volpe, often passing over the former for veterans. Why is anyone’s guess, but Peraza would be extremely appealing to the Angels. His burgeoning 60-grade defense could slot in nicely next to Zach Neto up the middle for years to come. He’s no slouch with the bat, either: In 645 Triple-A plate appearances, he’s slashed .260/.337/.463 for a 106 wRC+, in line with his 108 mark in 118 major league PAs thus far.

High-floor, big league-ready talent? Check. Near-ready high-ceiling prospect? Jasson Domínguez fits the bill. The switch-hitting outfielder, already in Double-A at just 20 years old, has tremendous pop and speed despite some swing-and-miss to his game. If he doesn’t stick in center, it could spell trouble for his overall value. But the upside is power rarely seen at a premium up-the-middle spot, and Domínguez’s physicality just might be what it takes to unseat Mike Trout in center as the latter begins to decline defensively.

Another high-ceiling play is right-hander Chase Hampton, who we had as the Yankees’ 33rd-ranked prospect coming into this season after glimpsing a velo increase and a new cutter/slider in spring training. He’s taken his new tools and run with them, earning a promotion to Double-A after his first 47 pro innings came with a 40.5% strikeout rate in High-A.

Rounding out the deal is Clarke Schmidt. After posting a 6.00 ERA through his first 10 starts this year, the former first-rounder has refined his new cutter and come into his own; over his last 10 starts, he’s pitched to an even 3.00 ERA. While his FIP hasn’t changed much, the recent success is due to a newfound ability to limit hard contact: his barrel rate has shrunk 3.8 percentage points and his hard-hit rate has dropped 6.5. The cutter is especially improved — it’s averaging 1.2 extra inches of cut and 1.3 of drop since his 10th start.

If the Yankees make the out-of-favor Peraza the headliner, they could easily shift DJ LeMahieu over to third, where for the time being, he could approximate the youngster’s value. Ohtani, meanwhile, could slot right into Schmidt’s spot, and they could even go to a six-man rotation — as the Angels have — upon Nestor Cortes‘ return. As for Ohtani’s spot in the lineup, Giancarlo Stanton will have to spend more time in right field in order to free up the DH spot. But Big G hasn’t been a huge negative in the field; on a per-inning basis, he’s placed 341st out of 444 fielders with at least 100 innings under their belts in fielding run value. Plus, since joining the Yankees, he’s hit six points of wRC+ better when he’s been in the field. This deal — and its ripple effects — should ensure the Bombers another playoff spot. – Alex Eisert

Cincinnati Reds
Angels Receive: SP Brandon Williamson, SP Lyon Richardson (45+ FV), 2B Edwin Arroyo (45 FV), 1B Christian Encarnacion-Strand (45 FV)
Reds Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

What would it take for the Reds to make a play for Shohei Ohtani? When Effectively Wild played the Ohtani trade game last week, that was the question I tried to answer, assuming the role of Nick Krall to Ben’s Perry Minasian.

My proposal, which ultimately didn’t win out, was Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Edwin Arroyo, Brandon Williamson, and Lyon Richardson for Ohtani. Benasian turned it down, but I wanted to take another crack at making an argument for my offer.

I think this type of offer is realistically the best the Reds would do in this situation. It would be absolutely shocking to see Elly De La Cruz or Matt McLain move in a trade, so I can’t just throw one of them in to land Ohtani. Whether it’s justified or not, the Reds simply aren’t going to spend much money under the current ownership regime, so there’s no chance of Ohtani being extended. They’re also not going to trade away too much talent that they’ll have to replace later.

Encarnacion-Strand is still looking for a final defensive home, but the power is real and while ZiPS isn’t quite sold on him overall, especially as a starting third baseman, it sees him as having some .500 slugging percentage seasons in the majors. He’s also in the big leagues, and even if he turns out not to be the highest upside offensive player offered for Ohtani, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the safest bat we would see in an offer. I think this is important to the Angels; whether or not Ohtani’s gone for good, I don’t think this is a team with the stomach for a full rebuild. Williamson and Richardson fit along these lines. Neither has a super high ceiling, but both have a pretty high floor, as well as the ability to contribute quickly to a retooled Angels team.

Arroyo, on the other hand, does have a decent ceiling and was on our preseason Top 100, though his FV has slipped since then. His inclusion ensures the Angels get significant value for an Ohtani rental. The team is very short on middle infield prospects now that Zach Neto has graduated from eligibility, and there’s a long-term hole that Arroyo could fill here.

Is it enough? I’m not sure, but either way, I’m not going to try to do a bad Nick Krall impression again anytime soon. – Dan Szymborski

Seattle Mariners
Angels Receive: SP Bryce Miller, SP Emerson Hancock (45 FV), CF Jonatan Clase (45 FV), 2B Michael Arroyo (40+ FV)
Mariners Receive: DH/SP Shohei Ohtani

The Mariners will almost certainly be in the running to sign Ohtani this offseason once he hits free agency. The chants of “Come to Seattle” that rained down during the All-Star game made the fans’ hopes quite clear, and the Mariners would be remiss if they didn’t make a competitive offer for the generational talent this winter. But what about the 2023 season? The M’s have hovered around .500 for nearly the entire year, never creeping more than three games over that mark or falling more than five games below it. That has put them on the AL playoff bubble, though the strength of their pitching staff indicates they’ve underperformed a bit. Pushing all their chips in for a remote shot at a repeat postseason appearance would be a pretty big risk, though for Ohtani, it might be worth it.

The Mariners send: RHP Bryce Miller, RHP Emerson Hancock, CF Jonatan Clase, 2B Michael Arroyo.

Any trade package from the Mariners needs to start with one of their young starting pitchers. The Angels have struggled to develop impact talent on the mound and the Mariners are swimming in young pitchers with plenty of team control. Logan Gilbert and George Kirby are probably off the table, so the M’s offer would be centered around one of Bryce Miller or Bryan Woo. I like Woo a little better than Miller because his secondary pitches seem a little more developed, but Miller has the best graded pitch between the two of them in his fastball.

Emerson Hancock has been a little inconsistent at Double-A Arkansas this year, but he’s a nearly big league-ready starter with a deep repertoire and enough prospect shine to be a nice complement to Miller. He’d be ready to contribute to the Angels rotation as soon as September. Clase has the big athletic tools that the Angels have so often coveted in prospects and he had a phenomenal start to the season in High-A Everett, posting a 197 wRC+ in 21 games there. He’s come back down to earth after getting promoted to Double-A, though his combination of power and speed should be enticing for the Angels.

Finally, with Cole Young looking like he’s on the fast track through the Mariners system and Colt Emerson and Tai Peete getting drafted this year, it seems like Michael Arroyo is getting buried on Seattle’s middle infield depth chart. That shouldn’t affect the way the Angels value him, and he has the potential to become the second-best prospect in this deal, though he’s still a little raw around the edges. He’s currently posting a 116 wRC+ as an 18-year-old at Single-A Modesto. – Jake Mailhot

The Joey Bart Era, such as it was, may already have ended in San Francisco. Struggling to fill the shoes of Buster Posey — admittedly, a ridiculously tall task for anyone — the 26-year-old backstop strained his groin in mid-May; by the time he was healthy enough to return, the Giants had shifted their focus to a younger catcher they were even happier with in Patrick Bailey. After finishing last season in High-A, the 24-year-old Bailey rocketed through the minors this spring, and upon arrival has hit and fielded well enough to help turn the Giants’ season around.

Recall that Posey retired abruptly after the 2021 season, at age 34. The move shocked the entire baseball world, not just the Giants, who had just won 107 games and planned to discuss retaining him upon the expiration of his nine-year, $169 million contract, whether by picking up his $22 million option or by hammering out a longer-term deal. Yet Posey, who had opted out of the 2020 season in order to spend time with his family, which had expanded to include two adopted twin daughters who had been born prematurely, felt the pull of home. Having checked every box for a Hall of Fame resumé except the padded career totals, the sad decline, and the long goodbye, he hung up his mask.

The Giants pivoted to Bart, who had looked like the heir apparent when he was taken with the second pick of the 2018 draft out of Georgia Tech. In Posey’s absence, he had done the bulk of the work behind the plate in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but his inexperience showed, and he spent most of ’21 in the minors. While he began the 2022 campaign with promise by homering off Sandy Alcantara on Opening Day, he was optioned to Triple-A Sacramento in early June. Though he played somewhat better upon returning a month later, he finished with just a .215/.296/.364 (90 wRC+) line and an astronomical 38.5% strikeout rate in 297 PA, with -3.7 framing runs and a meager 0.6 WAR.

After making a two-inning cameo on Opening Day of this season, Bart landed on the injured list due to a mid-back strain. He additionally missed time in late April due to right groin tightness, then was diagnosed with a Grade 1 left groin strain in mid-May. In between all of the injuries, he hit just .231/.286/.295 (63 wRC+) in 84 PA; while he trimmed his strikeout rate to 25%, he walked just twice (2.4%). He started 22 of the team’s 43 games before landing on the IL a second time, with Roberto Pérez making five starts before suffering a season-ending rotator cuff tear and rookie Blake Sabol starting 16 games.

Enter the 6-foot-1, 210-pound Bailey, who was chosen with the 13th pick of the 2020 draft out of North Carolina State. He entered last season at no. 76 on our Top 100 list as a 50 FV prospect but was downgraded due to his early-season struggles at High-A Eugene, where he had finished the 2021 season. While he finished with a respectable .225/.342/.420 (113 wRC+) line with 12 homers, he missed the Top 100 — not just ours, but every major top prospect list of note throughout the industry. Baseball America, for example, ranked him 27th among Giants prospects, calling him a plus defender with “sound footwork and quick release” but also “a switch-hitter with an inconsistent approach [who] gets in trouble when he starts chasing power.” The publication saw his ceiling as that of “a defense-minded backup catcher.”

It wasn’t until last week that Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin published the Giants’ Top 49 Prospects list here. Ranking Bailey third behind Luis Matos and Kyle Harrison, they began the entry with a mea culpa: “Time to eat double crow here, as Bailey was just outside the Top 100 when he was drafted and throughout 2021 before we rounded his FV grade down during an uneven 2022. When we put together the lengthy Giants Imminent Big Leaguers piece, Bailey was not included, as we didn’t anticipate he’d spend just two weeks each at Richmond and Sacramento before the club decided to insert him as their primary big league catcher.”

Indeed, Bailey moved quickly this spring, hitting .333/.400/.481 (143 wRC+) with two homers in 60 PA in Double-A and .216/.317/.353 (61 wRC+) in 60 PA at Triple-A. He got the call when Bart hit the IL, debuted with a late-inning cameo on May 19, and went 1-for-3 in his first start the next day, singling off the Marlins’ Tanner Scott. The day after that, he clubbed a solo homer off Jesús Luzardo and added another RBI later in a 7–5 win. A week after his debut, on May 26, he went 4-for-5 with three RBI in a 15–1 rout of the Brewers; three days later, he went 3-for-5 with a double, a homer, and four RBI in a 14–4 shellacking of the Pirates.

The hits keep coming, and the Giants keep winning. Bailey is batting .302/.336/.512 for a 128 wRC+ — second on the team behind LaMonte Wade Jr.’s 139 — with five homers in 139 PA. The Giants, who were 20–23 before he was called up, are 27–17 since; they won nine straight from June 11 to 21 and soon after pulled to within 1.5 games of the NL West lead. They’ve since fallen back to third place in the division behind the Diamondbacks (50–37) and Dodgers (48–38) and are three games out at this writing, though they’re in a virtual tie with the Phillies (46–39) for the third NL Wild Card spot.

The one win during the team’s recent 1–6 skid was something of a Bailey showcase. Last Friday (June 30), in the eighth inning of the opener of a three-game series against the Mets at Citi Field, he hit a 432-foot three-run homer to center field off David Robertson, turning a 4–2 deficit into a 5–4 lead. With heat-throwing closer Camilo Doval issuing a one-out walk in the ninth, Bailey then made a perfect throw to nab pinch-runner Starling Marte attempting to steal, thus ending the Mets’ franchise-record streak of 35 straight stolen base attempts. On the next pitch, Doval struck out Brandon Nimmo to preserve the win.

“That was as good as it gets,” manager Gabe Kapler said afterwards. “That was superstar-caliber stuff.”

Getting back to our prospect team’s evaluation of Bailey: while putting a 40 present and 50 future grade on his overall defense and a 45 grade on his throwing, they noted, “He is a skilled one-knee’d receiver, great at beating the pitch to the spot in all parts of the zone, often subtly shifting his body to help him receive borderline pitches with strike-stealing stillness.” The numbers back this up; by FanGraphs’ measure, Bailey is 4.8 runs above average in framing in just 302 innings behind the plate, and by Statcast’s measure, he’s four runs above average. He’s done a great job against the running game, with pop times to second base averaging 1.87 seconds. He’s thrown out 12 out of 31 stolen base attempts for a 39% success rate, nearly double the league average of 20%; Statcast rates him as two runs above average in that department, but one run below average in blocking.

On the offensive side, while Bailey hit well from both sides of the plate in college, he struggled mightily against lefthanders in the minors, albeit in a comparatively small sample, an average of less than 50 PA per year. “A natural righty, he viewed the splits as being in part because of a lack of opportunity — he had just 61 at-bats against lefties last year — and made adjustments this spring to his swing and approach,” wrote NBC Sports’ Alex Pavlovic. “The Giants sent Bailey off to Double-A with a plan to spend more time on his right-handed swing during batting practice since he won’t get as many opportunities in games.”

The practice seems to be paying off, because Bailey has not only been effective against lefties within a very small sample, but he’s also put up insane numbers thanks to a BABIP that’s nearly double what it was in the minors — and quite unsustainable. Those have propped up a righty performance that’s slightly above the league average for a catcher (86 wRC+) but hardly exceptional, with strikeout and walk rates that rate as concerns.

Contact-wise, Bailey’s got enough total batted ball events that he’s past the point where the numbers start to stabilize. While the individual platoon splits haven’t entirely reached that point, his actual numbers from both sides are close to his expected numbers — and quite robust:

Bailey really is hitting the ball much harder from the right side of the plate, not that anyone should expect him to maintain Rogers Hornsby’s 1924 numbers.

Getting back to the walk and strikeout stuff: Bailey’s rates are out of balance, but it’s not as though his 44.7% swing rate, 29.1% chase rate, or 9.9% swinging-strike rate stand out as egregious or as marks that can’t be attached to reasonable production. Consider, for example, this list of players who are within 0.2 percentage points of his overall swing rate, two points of his chase rate, and one point of his swinging-strike rate:

Those are largely productive hitters, and the biggest difference seems to be that they’re taking fewer called strikes than Bailey en route to more balanced walk and strikeout rates. But again, it’s not like he is extraordinarily passive or aggressive. Note his -1 run rating in the Statcast shadow zone; he’s taking slightly more pitches in that zone than the league average (52% to 47%) and slightly more than average in the heart of the zone (31% to 28%) as well:

Anyway, for now as he’s making his way around the majors for the first six weeks of his career, Bailey has been exceptionally productive. I would caution that while he appears to have taken a significant leap forward from his minor league stats and pre-2023 scouting profile, the Posey comparisons he’s drawn — comparisons to a franchise pillar and future Hall of Famer (seriously, fight me) who began his career by winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 2010 — are over the top. “Hey, let’s pump the brakes a little bit,” said Kapler in response to that line of discussion prior to Bailey’s big game in New York. “It’s a month into his career. Let’s let things unfold.”

As for what this means for Bart, he hasn’t exactly been Pipped out of a job given his struggles, but it’s tough to see him getting it back. For the near future, he may be blocked by Sabol, a Rule 5 pick from the Pirates who’s hitting .251/.313/.438 (104 wRC+) and putting up decent defensive numbers while splitting time between catching (26 starts and a total of 228 innings) and left field (183.2 innings). With his versatility, the Giants could carry three catchers, but doing so only to have Bart sit on the bench instead of working to improve at Sacramento probably isn’t in his best interest. For the longer term, he may be a change-of-scenery candidate — a player whose value is currently at the lower end of its range but one who was previously judged to have the makings of an everyday catcher, who has fewer than 500 PA under his belt, and who still has five years of club control remaining. If he doesn’t get another look in San Francisco, somebody out there will give him a shot.

As the Giants approach the August 1 trade deadline, it will be interesting to see if Bart’s name comes up as they shop to fill their needs. In the meantime, we should probably expect Bailey to cool off and should hope that folks cool it with the Posey comparisons; he casts a long enough shadow over the Giants’ organization as it is. Nonetheless, it’s exciting for any rookie to arrive, put his claim on a starting spot, and help turn his team’s fortunes. Let’s see where Bailey goes with this next.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Francisco Giants. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

I hate to admit it, but I’m a bit of a grump these days. Specifically, I’m a grump about position players pitching. Every time Jay Jaffe chronicles the spread of the tactic, I get annoyed right alongside him. When some disinterested backup infielder lobs the ball in at 40 mph, I cringe. I was a fan of the rules that limited when teams can send hitters to the mound; in fact, I remember being disappointed that the rules weren’t more stringent when they first came out.

With that said, I have to take it all back now. I’m in on position players pitching – as long as we’re specifically talking about Brandon Crawford. He took the mound to close out a 13-3 Giants victory yesterday and did so in a way that position players simply don’t anymore: He tried as hard as he could.

There have already been multiple excellent breakdowns of how Crawford had always wanted to pitch and how he got the opportunity. I can’t match that kind of coverage – but I can take a different angle. He looked borderline acceptable out there, something you can’t often say of hitters taking the mound. How acceptable? Let’s do a pitch breakdown. Read the rest of this entry »

LaMonte Wade Jr. is having a wonderful season. As Michael Baumann wrote a few weeks ago, the step forward he’s taken in his swing decisions have fueled a career high 156 wRC+ and .429 OBP, both significant improvements from his 2021 breakout campaign. And while much of his development is the result of him reducing his swing rate, he’s still doing more damage on contact than his previous self. Last Friday, the man nicknamed “Late Night LaMonte” (due to his .975 career OPS in high leverage situations) inserted himself into the record books early in the evening, sending Dean Kremer’s first pitch of the game deep to right field for the 100th splash hit in Oracle Park history:

Since its opening in 2000, the right field wall has been one of the most distinctive features of Oracle Park. Despite measuring just 309 feet down the line (the second shortest of any big league park), it has been one of the most difficult to clear for a home run, with the wall’s 24-foot height and wind from the neighboring San Francisco Bay helping to suppress long balls. According to Statcast, Oracle Park is among the most difficult parks for left-handed hitters to hit homers despite grading out neutral overall. But on 100 occasions, hitters managed not just to clear the right field wall, but also to leave the stadium entirely. Read the rest of this entry »

Across a career in baseball that spanned over 40 years, Roger Craig was at various points a hotshot rookie who helped the Dodgers win their only championship in Brooklyn, the first and best pitcher on an historically awful Mets team, the answer to a trivia question linking the Dodgers and Mets, a well-traveled pitching coach who shaped a championship-winning Tigers staff, and a culture-changing, pennant-winning manager of the Giants. He was particularly beloved within the Giants family for his positive demeanor and the way he shook the franchise out of the doldrums, though it was via his role as a teacher and evangelist of the split-fingered fastball — the pitch of the 1980s, as Sports Illustrated and others often called it — that he left his greatest mark on the game.

Craig didn’t invent the splitter, which owed its lineage to the forkball, a pitch that was popular in the 1940s and ’50s, but he proved exceptionally adept at teaching it to anyone eager to learn, regardless of team. For the pitch, a pitcher splits his index and middle fingers parallel to the seams, as in a forkball grip, but holds the ball further away from the palm, and throws with the arm action of a fastball. The resulting pitch “drops down in front of the batter so fast he don’t know where it’s goin’,” Craig told Playboy in 1988. “To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a fastball that’s also got the extra spin of a curveball.”

Given its sudden drop, the pitch was often mistaken for a spitball, so much so that it was sometimes referred to as “a dry spitter.” It baffled hitters and helped turn journeymen into stars, and stars into superstars. After pioneering reliever Bruce Sutter rode the pitch to the NL Cy Young Award in 1979, pitchers such as Mike Scott, Mark Davis, Orel Hershiser, and Bob Welch either learned the pitch directly from Craig, or from someone Craig taught, and themselves took home Cy Youngs in the 1980s. Jack Morris, Ron Darling, and Dave Stewart won championships with the pitch, as did Hershiser. Years later, the likes of Roger Clemens, David Cone, Curt Schilling, and John Smoltz would find similar success with the pitch, though it eventually fell out of vogue due to a belief that it caused arm problems, an allegation that Craig hotly refuted.

Not that Craig was a hothead. Indeed, he was even-keeled, revered within the game for his positivity. Such traits were reflected in the tributes paid to him after he died on Sunday at the age of 93, after what his family said was a short illness. “We have lost a legendary member of our Giants family.” Giants CEO Larry Baer said in a statement. “Roger was beloved by players, coaches, front-office staff and fans. He was a father figure to many and his optimism and wisdom resulted in some of the most memorable seasons in our history.” Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone feel up for a rousing game of “Guess the Player from the Anonymized Stat Line?” I usually don’t like this game; it was a fun way to kill time on Twitter 10 years ago, but it feels kind of hacky anymore. But this one’s a real doozy, a fun enough set of anonymized stat lines that I’m willing to set aside my distaste and dive right in.

Here are three players from the NL West. They are all in the top five in the majors in walk rate among qualified hitters. They play for different teams, and for the most part they play different positions. Nevertheless, all three are within a couple tenths of a run of each other in terms of baserunning and defensive value — the bat is the important thing:

Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony DeSclafani put up a clunker last Monday. He gave up five runs and 10 hits over seven innings — to the Nationals of all teams — and the Giants lost 5-1. That’s nothing out of the ordinary; good pitchers have bad outings all the time. DeSclafani has been solid in San Francisco, but he’s more above average than elite. Giving up five runs is hardly an earth-shattering outcome.

Would you find that start more interesting if I told you that all five runs came in the first inning? Probably – that’s a lot of runs to give up in one inning followed by six clean sheets. On the other hand, that’s baseball: sometimes you’re the steamroller, and sometimes the other team has your number for 15 minutes.

Afterwards, though, Maria Guardado’s game story had an interesting detail:

“After the rough start, DeSclafani convened with pitching coach Andrew Bailey in the dugout and learned that he wasn’t getting his optimal shapes on his slider and his two-seamer. He made a mechanical adjustment between innings, tweaking the way he took the ball out of his glove…”

For 100 years, that wouldn’t have been a particularly interesting quote. That’s just the kind of thing that pitchers and pitching coaches say after bad outings. “Oh, I/he was doing this thing wrong, as you can see from the runs. But then we changed that thing, as you can see from the lack of runs afterwards.” But these days, we can go to the tape. Read the rest of this entry »

In the sea of prospects, Casey Schmitt barely caused a ripple. The only Top 100 list the infielder made before this season was Baseball Prospectus’ Top 101; he just squeezed in near the end at no. 94. The computer projections were no kinder, with ZiPS only projecting him as the fourth-best prospect in a rather weak San Francisco Giants system, just barely in its Top 200. Yet these limited expectations didn’t stop Schmitt from engulfing opposing pitchers in his first three big league games, as he went 8-for-12 with two home runs and two doubles.

Obviously, having three big games isn’t a guarantee of stardom — or even viability — in the majors. For example, Vaughn Eshelman started his major league career by throwing 13 shutout innings over his first two starts. He only had eight quality starts left in him (out of 28) and was out of the majors two years later. He might be best known for going on what was then the DL as a result of burning himself with a candle. Read the rest of this entry »

Before Matt Harvey, Fernando Valenzuela, Dwight Gooden, and Mark Fidrych, there was Vida Blue, who checked just about every box that an electrifying pitching sensation can. The fireballing lefty debuted in the majors at age 19 in 1969, pitched a no-hitter as a rookie the following year, started the All-Star Game and won MVP and Cy Young honors in his first full season while being featured on national magazine covers, and helped a flamboyant and rowdy A’s squad to three straight world championships, but not before butting heads with owner Charlie Finley over his salary, his name, and even his lack of facial hair.

Working primarily with fastballs and only occasionally mixing in curves and changeups, the green-and-gold-clad Blue was sight to behold on the mound for his high leg kick, smooth delivery, and easy velocity. “A muscle-rippling 6 ft., 190 lbs., he has none of the herky-jerky, elbow-popping moves that invariably send fastballers to the showers — or the osteopath,” wrote TIME for its August 23, 1971 cover story. “Rather he has a kind of loose, flowing grace that allows him to snap off a high, hard one with seemingly effortless ease.”

From the dizzying heights of that initial climb, it’s tough to go anyplace but down. But while Blue couldn’t replicate his phenomenal 1971 performance, when he went 24–8 with a 1.82 ERA, 301 strikeouts, and eight shutouts, he made five more All-Star teams before substance abuse problems derailed his career, resulting in a short stint in prison and a year-long suspension from baseball. Though haunted by the what-ifs that come with so many tales of too much, too soon, he did his best to rehabilitate himself, his career, and his image thereafter, maintaining his profile as a Bay Area icon and as one of the Black Aces.

RIP Vida Blue. No-hitter at 21, MVP/CY at 22, 3x World Series winner 22-24, 6x All-Star pic.twitter.com/kI9h2aJk2n

— Jay Jaffe (@jay_jaffe) May 7, 2023

Blue passed away on May 6 at age 73. No cause of death was formally disclosed, but he was known to have been battling some form of cancer. He was frail and in need of a cane when he appeared at the Oakland Coliseum on April 16, for the 50th anniversary celebration of the 1973 champions. “I know he hung on for that last anniversary celebration like the absolute gamer he was,” wrote A’s broadcaster Dallas Braden on Twitter. Blue is the third member of the A’s dynasty to pass away this year. Third baseman and team captain Sal Bando died in January, and reserve outfielder Jesus Alou passed away in March.

On a garishly-outfitted team that included Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Rollie Fingers, Blue was among the most colorful members. “We were the team everybody wanted to come see: the freaks with the mustaches, with the long hair, that took batting practice in black shoes but came out to play in white shoes,” he told Jason Turbow, author of the 2017 book Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s.

Finley even tried to capitalize on Blue’s surname by offering him $2,000 to change his first name (some sources say middle name) to “True,” but Blue told him that the name he shared with his father was too important to change. “It means ‘life’ in Spanish. I loved my father. Now that he’s dead, I honor him every time the name Vida Blue appears in the headlines,” Blue told TIME. “If Mr. Finley thinks it’s such a great name, why doesn’t he call himself True O. Finley?” Over the pitcher’s protests, the owner nonetheless instructed the A’s radio and television announcers to refer to Blue by the nickname, and had the scoreboard operator show “True Blue” as pitching until Blue asked them to stop. “I was pissed and I let him know,” he later said.

Vida Rochelle Blue Jr. was born on July 28, 1949, in Mansfield, Louisiana, a small town near Shreveport in the northwest corner of the state. He was the oldest of six children born to Vida Sr., a steelworker, and Sallie Blue. Mansfield was segregated when he was growing up; its Black high school, DeSoto High, had no baseball team, but when the principal recognized Blue’s talent, he assembled one.

Blue also starred as a quarterback in high school and was recruited by major college programs such as Notre Dame, Purdue, and Houston at a time when Black QBs were a rarity. When his father died at age 45 during his senior year, Blue concluded that despite preferring football, he could better support his family via baseball, where his pitching had caught the eye of Kansas City A’s scouts Ray Swallow and Connie Ryan. He was wild but effective; he once struck out 21 in a seven-inning no-hitter but lost because he walked 10, and overpowered his catcher as much as the opposing hitters. “There were a lot of passed balls and dropped third strikes,” coach Clyde Washington told TIME.

The A’s picked Blue in the second round of the 1967 amateur draft, signing him for a $25,000 bonus. “When you’re from Mansfield, that’s a trillion dollars,” he told the Washington Post’s Candace Buckner in 2021; the money would help put his siblings through college. After debuting in the Arizona Winter League later that year, he dominated from the outset at A-level Burlington in 1968, striking out 17 and allowing only three hits in eight innings in his debut, and later pitching a seven-inning no-hitter. He finished with a 2.49 ERA and 231 strikeouts in 152 innings.

Blue lasted just 15 games at Double-A Birmingham in 1969 before the A’s brought him to the majors. He debuted on July 20, eight days before his 20th birthday, and scuffled against the Angels, allowing five runs (three earned) and two homers in 5.1 innings. He got his first win in his next start nine days later, allowing four runs in eight innings against the Yankees. After two more starts, he spent the rest of the season in the bullpen, but he was shaky, finishing with a 6.64 ERA in 42 innings. “It was a shame to bring up a kid like that when he hasn’t pitched two pro years,” said Joe DiMaggio, then a coach with the A’s. “He throws as hard as anybody, but he hasn’t learned to pitch yet.”

Blue spent most of 1970 at Triple-A Iowa, where former All-Star Juan Pizarro took him under his wing, showing him a curveball grip and suggesting changes to his delivery. Pizarro “helped me more than any single person in my career,” Blue later said. He struck out 165 in 133 innings and posted a 2.17 ERA before the A’s called him up in September. In his second start, he threw a one-hit shutout against the Royals, walking four and striking out seven; Pat Kelly’s two-out single in the eighth ended his no-hit bid. Two starts later, on September 21, Blue no-hit the Twins, walking one and striking out nine while matched up against eventual AL Cy Young winner Jim Perry. “We never even saw the ball,” said slugger Harmon Killebrew afterward. “But we sure heard it good.”

Blue made two more starts, finishing 2–0 with a 2.09 ERA and 35 strikeouts in 38.2 innings and surpassing the 50-inning threshold that qualified him as a rookie. He was done with the minor leagues.

Oakland had won 88 games in 1969 and 89 games in ’70, finishing second in the AL West both times. With Blue ready to join Hunter and Blue Moon Odom in the rotation, the A’s were primed to take the next step. Blue drew the Opening Day start against the lowly Senators but didn’t get out of the second inning, though three days later he threw a rain-shortened, six-inning shutout, striking out 13 Royals. He followed that with a two-hit shutout of the Brewers, then threw a pair of four-hit shutouts within his next four starts. By late May, he was 10–1 with a 1.03 ERA and 10 complete games in 12 starts, prompting The New Yorker’s Roger Angell to check in at Fenway Park. “Vida Blue, I discovered, is a pitcher in a hurry. Each inning, he ran to the pitcher’s mound to begin his work and ran back to the dugout when it was done,” he wrote in a dispatch that was included in The Summer Game the following year.

“In the field, he worked with immense dispatch, barely pausing to get his catcher’s sign before firing; this habit, which he shares with Bob Gibson and a few others, adds a pleasing momentum to the game. His motion looked to be without effort or mannerism: a quick, lithe body-twist toward first base, a high lift and crook of the right leg, a swift forward stride — almost a leap — and the ball, delivered about three-quarters over the top, abruptly arrived, a flick of white at the plate, His pitches, mostly fastballs and always in or very close to the strike zone, did not look especially dangerous, but the quick, late cuts that most of the Red Sox batters were offering suggested what they were up against.”

Blue was everywhere that summer, featured on the covers of Sports Illustrated and TIME, and within LIFE Magazine as well. Roommate Tommy Davis helped him navigate the media requests, but Blue wasn’t exactly ready for the attention. “It’s a weird scene. You win a few baseball games, and all of a sudden you’re surrounded by reporters and TV men with cameras, asking things about Viet Nam and race relations and stuff about yourself,” he told TIME. “Man, I’m only a kid. I don’t know exactly who I am. I don’t have a whole philosophy of life set down.”

Vida Blue on the cover of Time Magazine, August 23, 1971. pic.twitter.com/GSUyD70nmO

— Baseball In Pics (@baseballinpix) July 30, 2022

By the All-Star break, Blue was 17–3 with six shutouts and a 1.51 ERA, capped by 11 scoreless innings with 17 strikeouts against the Angels. He was the obvious choice to start the All-Star Game for the AL; in the NL, Dock Ellis basically dared Sparky Anderson to name him as the starter, telling the media, “I doubt very seriously if they’ll start a brother from the American League and a brother from the National.” The ploy worked, and for the first time two Black pitchers started the All-Star Game. Blue supplanted Denny McLain as the second-youngest pitcher to start the Midsummer Classic, though some of the aforementioned phenoms would soon surpass him:

In the game at Tiger Stadium, Blue allowed three runs in three innings, serving up homers to Johnny Bench and Hank Aaron but getting the win — the AL’s only victory from 1963 to ’82, as it turned out. Ellis served up Jackson’s famous, massive homer off the transformer atop the ballpark and gave up another to Frank Robinson.

Blue threw a one-hit shutout against the Tigers in his first start after the break and won his 20th game via a 1–0 shutout win over the White Sox on August 7. With a shot at 30 wins, he completed five of his remaining 11 starts but notched just four more wins and faltered a bit in September. Fatigue was probably a factor; his 312 innings that year is the most by a pitcher in his age-21 season during the post-1960 expansion era, and likewise for his 24 complete games.

The A’s won 101 games and the AL West title that year, but in the franchise’s first postseason appearance since 1931, they were swept by the reigning world champion Orioles in the ALCS. Blue carried a 3–1 lead into the seventh in the opener but got into a jam, gave up three straight two-out hits, and departed on the wrong end of a 5–3 score. After the season, however, he beat out Mickey Lolich for the AL Cy Young award and Bando for the AL MVP award.

After making just $14,750 during his stellar season, Blue set his sights on a much larger payday, with his attorney Robert Gerst asking Finley for $115,000. Finley took the negotiations public and countered with a $50,000 offer. Blue lowered his demands, indicating he would sign for $85,000, but Finley wouldn’t budge, declaring his offer final. Blue held out as Marvin Miller, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, used the situation to draw attention to the game’s reserve clause, which gave the pitcher no other recourse. On March 16, Blue even called a televised press conference and — with tongue in cheek — announced he was retiring to take a job as the vice president of public relations for the Dura Steel Products Company. Finley wished him well but wouldn’t raise his offer. “Evidently he is [serious]. I have to assume that he is,” said the owner. In late April, with the season underway, commissioner Bowie Kuhn helped broker a $63,000 deal between Blue and Finley, though the stubborn owner clarified that he still hadn’t moved off $50,000; of the rest, $5,000 was as a signing bonus, and $8,000 was for his college fund.

Having missed spring training, Blue was in no condition to pitch yet. He didn’t make his first appearance until May 24 and went just 6–10 with a 2.80 ERA for a team that won 93 games. Embittered by the contract squabble, he was the only A’s player who turned down Finley’s offer of a $300 bonus by refusing to grow facial hair for the team’s Mustache Day celebration that year. It was a trying season that scarred him; in his 2011 autobiography, Vida Blue: A Life, he traced his substance abuse problems back to that season. “Along with all the glory that I’d achieved, there was a growing darkness reaching for me,” he wrote. “And the light began to dim as early as 1972.”

Blue pitched out of the bullpen during the ALCS against the Tigers, closing out the Game 5 clincher by earning a save with four shutout innings. He earned another save in the World Series opener against the Reds. After a total of eight relief appearances, he started Game 6 but took the loss; still, the A’s won Game 7, securing their first of three straight titles.

Blue returned to the rotation and pitched well, if not up to the caliber of his 1971 showing. He went 20–9 with a 3.28 ERA (109 ERA+) in 1973, striking out just 158 in 263.2 innings, but he struggled in the postseason, going 0–2 with a 7.00 ERA in 18 innings over four starts. He didn’t even make it out of the first inning in the ALCS opener against the Orioles, and in his best start, a 5.2-inning, two-run effort against the Mets in Game 5, the A’s didn’t score any runs for him. Again, however, the team prevailed in a seven-game World Series.

In 1974, after going 17–15 with a 3.25 ERA, Blue finally made a postseason start worthy of his legend, throwing a two-hit shutout against the Orioles in Game 3 of the ALCS, with Bando’s solo homer off Jim Palmer the game’s only run. This would be Blue’s only postseason win, though he pitched well in two World Series starts against the Dodgers, allowing five runs in 13.2 innings in his starts in Games 2 and 5. He left a tie game after 6.2 innings in the latter, and then Joe Rudi greeted Mike Marshall with a first-pitch homer in the bottom of the seventh, providing the decisive run that would give the A’s their threepeat.

Blue had one of his best seasons in 1975, going 22–11 with a 3.10 ERA (121 ERA+) and starting his second All-Star Game, where Dodgers Steve Garvey and Jimmy Wynn exacted a modicum of revenge for the previous fall by hitting solo homers. On September 28, the regular season’s final day, he pitched five hitless innings against the Angels; with Glenn Abbott, Paul Lindblad, and Fingers combining for four hitless innings themselves, the A’s completed just the third combined no-hitter in AL/NL history. With 98 wins (their highest total since 1971), they won their fifth straight AL West title, but Oakland couldn’t make it out of the ALCS against the Red Sox, and Blue couldn’t escape the fourth inning of Game 2 of the three-game sweep.

That winter, the momentous Messersmith-McNally decision put an end to the reserve clause, which restricted the right of players to switch teams. Faced with the necessity of either paying his stars fairly or losing them to free agency, Finley began dismantling his dynasty. He traded Jackson to the Orioles just before Opening Day, and on June 15, he sold Fingers and Rudi to the Red Sox for $2 million and Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million. Just prior to the trade, Blue had agreed to a three-year contract worth $515,000 and received a promise that he would not be traded; within an hour, Finley reneged, claiming he was acting as the agent for the Yankees.

After deliberating for three days, Kuhn nullified the sales on the grounds that they were not “in the best interests of baseball.” Finley sued and ordered Chuck Tanner not to play the three players or even let them suit up until the team threatened to go on strike. Blue didn’t pitch for nearly three weeks, which cost him another shot at 20 wins; he finished 18–13 with a 2.35 ERA (142 ERA+), his best run prevention since 1971.

While Fingers and Rudi left via free agency after the season, Blue’s three-year contract had been ruled valid, and he spent 1977 as one of the few bright spots on a 98-loss team. In January 1978, Finley tried to sell him to the Reds for $1.75 million, but that, too, was rejected by Kuhn. Finally, on March 15, he was traded across the bay to the Giants in exchange for seven players (Gary Alexander, Dave Heaverlo, Phil Huffman, John Henry Johnson, Gary Thomasson, Alan Wirth and player-to-be-named-later Mario Guerrero) and $300,000.

Blue went 18–10 for the Giants with a 2.79 ERA in 1978. He made history that summer as the first pitcher to start the All-Star Game for both leagues (since then, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Roy Halladay, and Max Scherzer have done so as well) and finished third in the Cy Young voting. He spent three more seasons with San Francisco, rebounding to make two All-Star teams after posting an uncharacteristically bad 5.01 ERA in 1979; in 1981, he became the first (and still the only) pitcher to notch wins for both All-Star teams. On March 30, 1982, he was traded to the Royals along with Bob Tufts in exchange for four players (Craig Chamberlain, Atlee Hammaker, Renie Martin and Brad Wellman); at the time, he was reportedly making $600,000 a year, signed through 1988.

Blue was merely solid in 1982; the Royals, who had taken over AL West supremacy from the A’s, won 90 games but finished second in the division, missing the playoffs for just the second time since their run began in 1976. In 1983, Blue’s career hit the skids: he went 0–5 with a 6.01 ERA, lost his rotation spot, and was released on August 5. He had even bigger problems, as he became ensnared in an FBI investigation into a Kansas City cocaine ring that intersected with baseball to such an extent that the investigation target’s basement was known as “The Cooperstown Room.” After cooperating with a federal grand jury and completing a rehab program, Blue — who had started using cocaine while with the Giants — pled guilty to possession of three grams of cocaine and received a $5,000 fine and a one-year prison sentence, with all but 90 days suspended. Teammates Willie Aikens, Jerry Martin, and Willie Wilson were also arrested for attempting to possess cocaine and similarly sentenced. Kuhn suspended all four for the 1984 season but reduced the suspensions of all but Blue upon appeal in mid-May. Blue was released from prison after serving 81 days.

After being reinstated, Blue returned to the Giants and pitched for two more seasons, one bad, the other pretty good. In 1985, he testified about the proliferation of cocaine within baseball at the Pittsburgh drug trials. On the heels of a 10–10, 3.27 ERA showing in 1986, the 37-year-old southpaw re-signed to a $300,000 contract with the A’s but retired abruptly during spring training. Soon afterwards, the Los Angeles Times reported that he had failed three drug tests administered as part of his probation during the season and was charged with violating his parole. Federal law prevented the probation office from violating confidentiality by informing either MLB or the Giants. Blue had additionally been subject to random drug testing as a condition of his reinstatement by Kuhn’s successor as commissioner, Peter Ueberroth, but had not tested positive in that context.

“I reached the point where I had to choose between baseball and life,” Blue told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite of his decision to retire in 1997. “I needed to work full time getting myself back on ground.”

Blue wasn’t entirely done with pitching, spending 1989 and ’90 in the Senior Professional Baseball Association, after which he served as a community representative for the Giants, visiting schools to warn children about the dangers of drugs and serving as a commissioner of a youth baseball program sponsored by the team. “My problem gave me a wake-up call. Now I like seeing myself as a person who can bring some joy to others’ lives,” he told Fimrite.

His battles continued, however. After being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol for the third time in a six-year span in 2005, he was sentenced to six months in jail but allowed to serve his sentence in a residential alcohol treatment program after completing a rehab program; doing so was also a condition of his reinstatement with the Giants. According to Buckner, he was arrested again as recently as 2016, resulting in a night in jail and the loss of driver’s license.

Blue often expressed regret about not getting elected to the Hall of Fame. Appearing first on the 1992 BBWAA ballot, he received just 5.3% of the vote, enough to stick around, but he topped out at 8.7% in his four-year run. He believed his cocaine problems cost him a shot. “That Hall of Fame thing, that’s something that I can honestly, openly say I wish I was a Hall of Famer,” he told Buckner. “And I know for a fact this drug thing impeded my road to the Hall of Fame — so far.”

While one can certainly sympathize with Blue’s regrets and imagine that without his problems he might have accumulated the career numbers to earn a spot in Cooperstown, his actual ones aren’t Hall caliber. That’s true whether considering his traditional numbers or his advanced ones, though they do compare favorably to Hunter, his longtime teammate, whose career ended at age 33 due to arm problems but who was elected in 1987, his third year of eligibility.

Hunter won 20 games more times than Blue (five to three), made more All-Star teams (eight to six), and won more championships (five to three) thanks to his time with the Yankees, which no doubt raised his profile. He had a stronger postseason resumé as well, but the lack of scandal attached to his name didn’t hurt. He owns the third-lowest S-JAWS of any AL/NL starter in the Hall, however; Blue’s score exceeds just three others besides that trio.

With or without the Hall, Blue’s legacy encompasses the thrills he provided at his peak as well as the work he put into reclaiming his life and his dignity after his drug-induced detour. He helped so many in need and inspired countless others, including future pitchers such as Santa Clara native Mark Langston, Livermore native Randy Johnson, and Oakland native Dave Stewart. “I remember watching a 19-year-old phenom dominate baseball, and at the same time alter my life,” wrote Stewart via Twitter after Blue passed away. After watching Blue, he followed in his footsteps, joining him among the Black Aces, the informal fraternity of 15 African-American pitchers who have won 20 games in a major league season, and helping the A’s to three pennants and a championship.

“I worked my tail off to polish that image back up and renew the name Vida Blue Jr.,” he told Buckner. “It’s a constant battle to do that every day.” By all accounts, he succeeded.