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 tradedLiam 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 »
The trade deadline was yesterday. Are you tired? I’m tired. But we’re not done yet. We’ve still got to break down the three trades the Reds managed to swing at the bell. Let’s get to it, and then let’s take a nap. First, the Reds sent reliever Caleb Ferguson to the Cardinals in exchange for $250,000 of international bonus pool space. Then the Reds hooked up with the Guardians for two intrastate deals: Cleveland sent Cincinnati pitching prospect Alejandro Rivera in exchange for first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, and, in a separate transaction, traded rookie second baseman Juan Brito in exchange for a pile of money whose size has not yet been revealed. Were I in charge of one of these Ohio franchises, I might have combined those deals into one move, as it likely would have made everyone feel a bit better. Brito would definitely feel a bit better if he thought his contract hadn’t simply been sold outright, and Lowe might have an extra bit of pep in his step if he thought he got traded for not one but two players (plus he could’ve delivered the cash considerations himself, saving the Reds a trip to the post office for a money order). Let’s take these in order, shall we?
Ferguson must be getting used to this. He got traded at the deadline from the Yankees to the Astros in 2024 and the Pirates to the Mariners in 2025. At least Cincinnati to St. Louis is his shortest move yet. The 30-year-old lefty reliever is running a 4.01 ERA and 4.23 FIP this season. That FIP is grumpy, his highest since 2019, because he’s walking 10.1% of the batters he faces and running his worst home run rate since 2020. Although his hard-hit rate is still excellent and he has a great groundball rate, batters seem more comfortable. Their bat speed against him is up more than two ticks from last season, a huge jump that makes it seem like the high home run rate might be more than just bad luck. Still, we should note that we’re talking about a small sample here. Ferguson has only made 26 appearances (24.2 inning) because he missed the first two months of the season with an oblique injury (that is, an injury to his obliques; not some sort of obscure, unparsable injury). He is also running the second-highest BABIP of his career and his expected ERA is 3.49, almost exactly the same as last year, so Statcast isn’t too worried about his contact quality.
However, we do need to note some real changes in Ferguson’s profile. His average fastball velocity has dropped from 93.9 mph last year to 92.4 mph this year. His arm angle has also dropped significantly, from 46 degrees to 39. These are big changes, and as you’d expect when a pitcher’s arm angle drops, Ferguson’s stuff has traded a small amount of vertical movement for some horizontal movement. Now, maybe this is intentional. Maybe it’s a result of the oblique injury, and Ferguson’s velocity, arm angle, or both will jump back up toward the end of the season. I don’t have a way of knowing, but it obviously didn’t scare off St. Louis.
As for why the Cardinals made this move, my only guess is that they weren’t planning on using that bonus pool money. They traded away Dustin May, JoJo Romero, and Lars Nootbaar at the deadline. After beating the Yankees last night, their playoff odds sit at 5.5%. Ferguson can take the left-handed Romero’s spot in a bullpen that ranks 24th in ERA and 21st in FIP.
That brings us to the Reds-Guardians trades. Lowe is the big-ticket item here. After a dismal 2025 season in which he ran a 91 wRC+ and put up -0.3 WAR, he is back where he’s been for most of his career, running a 120 wRC+ and, when he’s not DH’ing, providing first base defense that is better left unmentioned. However, in recent years, Lowe has been going about it in a very different fashion.
Lowe bats left-handed, but his career platoon splits aren’t that extreme. He’s got a 103 wRC+ against lefties and a 123 mark against righties. Last year, that changed. He put up a wRC+ of just 41 against lefties. It’s the main reason his season was such a disaster. This year, the Reds have been shielding Lowe from lefties at all costs. He’s only faced them 10% of the time, and while that’s a tiny sample, you can’t fault them: He’s running a 137 wRC+ against righties and a -52 wRC+ against lefties. Yes, I said negative 52. He’s going to keep on platooning in Cleveland.
To that end, the Guardians made room on the roster for Lowe and fellow trade acquisition Jo Adell by optioning Kyle Manzardo and David Fry to Triple-A. Manzardo had been platooning with Rhys Hoskins at first base, but after running a 113 wRC+ in his first full major league season last year, he’s backslid to a 95 wRC+. His defense, while not Nathaniel Lowe-bad, hasn’t helped much either. Lowe will slide into Manzardo’s spot, serving as the big spoon in the first base platoon with Hoskins.
This isn’t the sexiest move, and the defensive side will cost the Guardians some. Manzardo and Lowe have both put up -4 FRV at first base this season, but Lowe has accrued that negative value in just 30% of the innings (and to be fair to Manzardo, DRS actually thinks he’s actually been a good defender). Still, the offensive bump will more than offset that, and – stop me if you’ve heard this before – the Guards need some help at the plate. With a 93 wRC+, they rank 25th in baseball. This isn’t exactly a new problem, but Lowe should be able to provide some real help.
Cincinnati’s return for Lowe is intriguing, though the player is a ways off from the majors. The Guardians signed the 19-year-old Rivera out of Venezuela, and he’s spent the past two seasons dominating the DSL to the tune of a 1.60 ERA and a 3.97 FIP. (I know the FIP doesn’t sound that impressive, but in the DSL, that still works out to an impressive FIP- of 78.) Rivera ran a 2.44 ERA with a 3.59 FIP and a huge 36% strikeout rate in the complex this year, and made one start at Low-A before the deadline. Eric Longenhagen likes Rivera’s athleticism, noting that although the righty is just 5-foot-10, he generates six-and-a-half feet of extension. He’s got a plus changeup, and a low release gives his fastball, which sits 90-94 mph, an uphill angle. Eric put a 35+ FV on Rivera, noting that the “lack of size makes it tough to comfortably project him as a starter.”
That brings us to our last move: Juan Brito for a mystery amount of cash. You don’t need me to break down the present or future value of cash. That’s helpfully printed on the corners, so we can get right to Brito, whom the Guardians DFA’d a few hours before the trade. The 24-year-old infielder made his major league debut in April, and in 15 games, he’s put up a wRC+ of 45 and struck out more than 30% of the time. He’s mostly hit in the minors. In 2022, he ran a 131 wRC+ as a Colorado farmhand in Low-A. In 2023, he ran a 128 wRC+ across three levels for the Guardians. In 2024, he ran a 114 wRC+ at Triple-A, and in 2025, that number was 110. But you might have noticed that those numbers have trended downward over time, and Brito has been worse this year, running a 98 wRC+ at Triple-A to go with the short, ugly debut.
Even worse, as Eric and Brendan Gawlowski noted back in January, Brito’s defense has been trending downward too. While he once looked like he’d play a passable second base, “Brito has tumbled down the defensive spectrum, and after experimentation at third base and in the outfield, it’s starting to look like his best position is first base. He’ll still play second, but not particularly well.” Eric and Brendan put a 40 FV on Brito, noting that “he hits righties well enough to play a small role.” With Matt McLain struggling for the second year in a row, maybe Brito will get a chance to show the Reds what he can do at some point in the next couple months.
So those are our trades. The Cardinals bought a lefty to replace the lefty they didn’t need anymore because they were giving up on the season. The Guardians gave up an interesting young pitcher to make a small upgrade at first base, and the Reds are giving a look to an infielder whose arrow is pointing down. We did it, you guys. Let’s take that nap.
The Nationals have the misfortune of playing in the wrong league. At 55-58, they’re absolutely buried in the National League Wild Card race, 4.5 games out with four teams between them and the last spot. Meanwhile, the Guardians have the fortune of playing in the American League, where their 57-56 record not only has them in a playoff spot at the moment, but a mere three games back of the division lead. So while these two teams have played to nearly identical records (the Nats have better Pythagorean and BaseRuns records, but it’s close), Washington is selling and Cleveland is buying. More specifically, Cleveland acquired Nats ace Foster Griffin in exchange for a four-prospect sampler platter, as first reported by Mark Feinsand.
It seems like Cleveland is always hanging around the playoff race. They’ve won the AL Central six times in the last decade and finished in second place another three. Of late, they’ve done it with great bullpens and blah starters, with a contact-and-defense approach to hitters. But this year, the defense isn’t clicking like it normally does, the offense is scoring less than four runs a game, and the bullpen is outside of the top 10 in WAR for the first time since 2023, the only year since 2012 where they’ve finished below .500. In other words, the rotation has been shouldering a much heavier workload this year.
Parker Messick and Gavin Williams have been the straws stirring the drink for the Guardians so far in 2026. Joey Cantillo has been better than advertised as well. Heck, Tanner Bibee isn’t missing bats like he used to, but he’s provided valuable innings. But there just wasn’t enough there for Cleveland to feel comfortable – not enough depth, not enough certainty about who would start in the playoffs, not enough margin for error. And so they acquired not the best pitcher on the market – that’d be Tarik Skubal – but perhaps the most Guardians-y pitcher on the market, a pitchability-and-command lefty who doesn’t throw hard but still gets outs. Read the rest of this entry »
Even with rookie Chase DeLauter putting together a strong inaugural campaign, the Guardians have gotten less from their outfielders on the offensive side of the ball than all but a few other contenders. Ahead of Monday’s deadline, they acquired outfielder Jo Adell from the Angels in exchange for catching prospect Jacob Cozart, a move that appears to be a half-measure unless they can fit Adell into the short side of a platoon and limit his defensive exposure.
Currently 57-56, three games behind the AL Central-leading White Sox and occupying the American League’s third Wild Card spot, the Guardians have scored just 3.95 runs per game this year with a 93 wRC+, both of which rank as the league’s second-lowest marks. A lack of offense from their outfielders has contributed significantly to that problem:
What has Tarik Skubal been thinking about lately? The obvious answer is where he will be playing once the trade deadline passes, but that wasn’t how I posed the question to him a few weeks ago. What I was interested in were his thoughts on pitching as a whole.
“The evolution of the fastball,” replied Skubal, whom the Detroit Tigers dealt to the Los Angeles Dodgers late last night for a package of prospects. “What is a fastball and how guys pitch. In today’s game, more than ever, guys have two versions of the fastball. Maybe three. The cutter is still a fastball in my eyes, so cut-fastball, sinker, four-seamer. Lance Lynn was the guy who did it when I was first in the big leagues. He threw three fastballs. Now you see Cam Schlittler doing it, others guys doing it. The development of fastball offerings: just how much different it is now versus, say, 10 years ago? That’s something I would be interested to see.”
I dug up that info — more specifically, my colleague Jon Becker unearthed it for me — and we’ll get to that in a moment. First let’s hear more of what the always-insightful southpaw had to say.
“I think you almost have to have two different fastballs now, just to give them different looks,” Skubal told me. “Hitters are so good at covering one fastball, and if you give them two, that’s tough on them. I feel like that transition — multiple fastballs — is happening a lot right now.”
Skubal, whose arsenal is sans a cutter but includes an elite changeup, has thrown his four-seamer at a 36.5% clip this season, and his sinker at a 19.8% clip. The lesser used of his two fastballs isn’t great in a vacuum, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important weapon in his arsenal. Read the rest of this entry »
If this trade deadline turns out to be a dud, you’re going to see a lot of people blaming the 12-team playoff format, which has flattened the competitive landscape around the edges of the playoff field. As of Saturday morning, 11 of the 15 American League teams have at least a 25% chance of making the playoffs. In the National League, there’s a bit more stratification, but nine of 15 teams have at least a 19% chance of making the playoffs. The few teams that are well and truly out of the race are so positioned for a reason — i.e. they don’t have many good players to sell in the first place.
You could use that as an excuse to sit out the deadline, or you could do what the Brewers and Guardians did: find another contender to trade with. The Great Lakes region’s two great perennial discount contenders hooked up on a four-player trade that sent catcher Bo Naylor and reliever Codi Heuer to Milwaukee in exchange for outfielder Blake Perkins and reliever Craig Yoho.
Credit to baseball ops bigwigs Chris Antonetti and Matt Arnold for finding a trade partner in this treacherous market, but this kind of swap does have its drawbacks. Namely: None of the four big leaguers on the move in this deal has been any good in 2026. Read the rest of this entry »
At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contending clubs. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 10% when this series began), I’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included it here because the team’s performance is worth a look.
At the other positions in this series, I have used 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, but for the designated hitters, I’ve limited the list to the teams below zero, both to keep the length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the fifth full season of the universal DH, 0.2 WAR represents the current median, with 11 teams below zero, 12 between zero and 1.0, and just seven with 1.0 or more, with only five reaching 2.0. DHs as a group have hit .244/.325/.422 for a 106 wRC+ this season, down four points from last year’s final mark, the highest since the adoption of the universal DH.
It does appear that an increasing number of teams are investing more playing time in a single DH. From 2022 (the first full-length season with the universal DH) to ’25, the number of players reaching 450 plate appearances in the DH role increased from three to four to seven to nine; this year, they’re on pace for nine, as well. That said, all but one of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »
Having gone around the horn during the first three entries of this series, it’s time to turn to the outfield. In a break from tradition, instead of looking at the teams with trouble at either corner in one fell swoop, this time I’m addressing the ones receiving less-than-acceptable production from their left and center fielders. Right fielders will get a standalone list in order to keep the length of these articles manageable. There’s still some crossover between today’s positions and their respective lists, with two contenders double-dipping.
While still focusing on clubs that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance is worth a look.
As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly within the context of the rest of a team’s roster. The capsules are listed in order of their left field rankings first, while noting those crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 3 trade deadline, but these are ones to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »
Today, we have the first of several Killers two-fers, with a pair of lists covering the right side of the infield. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (Playoff Odds of at least 10%, a criterion that 22 of the 30 teams meet) and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot is worth a look. All statistics are through July 12.
Last week, a reader named Kevin submitted a particularly pithy mailbag question. I have reproduced it here in its entirety. This won’t take long:
Dear FanGraphs team,
Steven Kwan is broken. Should us Guardians fans have any hope that he can be fixed?
Kevin
In honor of Kevin’s brevity, I suppose my answer should have consisted of a single word, but Kwan has been one of the most interesting players in baseball for years. It’s worth taking a full look at what’s going on with him right now. Read the rest of this entry »
