Not every deadline trade is a dramatic one, but that’s OK — teams need to make low-key moves, too. Do you think James Bond saved the world every day? No! Some days, he had to do paperwork. Some days, he had to go to the dentist, or take the car to the gas station to vacuum up the leftover Cool Ranch Doritos crumbs on the floor after they spilled out on his drive from Baltim… I mean Bristol. So let’s catch up on some of Wednesday’s smaller moves.

The Seattle Mariners acquired left-handed reliever Caleb Ferguson from the Pittsburgh Pirates for right-handed starter Jeter Martinez

The Mariners have been operating with a shortage of southpaws this season, with Gabe Speier mostly being the only lefty on the active roster. Speier’s been good, holding lefties to a .609 OPS this season, but he can’t pitch in every playoff game, and Andrés Muñoz, who handles lefties quite well, generally doesn’t make his entrance before the ninth inning, so a depth-targeted upgrade to give the team another option down the stretch and during October makes a lot of sense. Caleb Ferguson has shed some strikeouts this year as he’s more heavily integrated his sinker into his repertoire, but he’s compensated for that loss by shedding a walk per nine from last season and becoming one of the hardest pitchers in baseball to make good contact against. Of all the pitchers with at least 30 innings this season, only Adrian Morejon has allowed a lower hard-hit percentage. Ferguson gives the Mariners a second lefty in the ‘pen they can count on, something they couldn’t really say about Joe Jacques or Tayler Saucedo. Read the rest of this entry »

COOPERSTOWN, NY — During his 19-year major league career, Ichiro Suzuki rarely spoke English in public unless it was to express his thoughts about the temperature in Kansas City in August as it pertained to certain rodents. On Sunday in Cooperstown, however, he flawlessly delivered his 19-minute Hall of Fame induction speech in his second language, showing off his sly sense of humor while speaking about the professionalism, respect, and love for the fans that drove his career. “Today, I am feeling something I thought I would never feel again. I am a rookie,” he began, referring to his first seasons with the Orix Blue Wave in 1992 and the Seattle Mariners in 2001. “But please, I am 51 years old now. Easy on the hazing. I don’t need to wear a Hooters uniform again,” he quipped to the 52 returning Hall of Famers, four fellow entrants in the Class of 2025, and the estimated 30,000 people who attended the ceremony at the Clark Sports Center.

“The first two times, it was easier to manage my emotions because my goal was always clear: to play professionally at the highest level,” continued Suzuki. “This time is so different, because I could never imagine as a kid in Japan that my play would lead me to a sacred baseball land that I didn’t even know was here. People often measure me by my records: 3,000 hits, 10 gold gloves, 10 seasons of 200 hits. Not bad, eh?

“But the truth is, without baseball, you would say this guy is such a dumbass. I have bad teammates, right, Bob Costas?”

Elsewhere, Suzuki poked fun at having fallen one vote short of becoming just the second Hall candidate elected unanimously: “Three thousand hits or 262 hits in one season are achievements recognized by the writers. Well… all but one. And by the way, the offer for that writer to have dinner at my home has now expired.” On a more serious note, he advised distinguishing between dreams and goals: “Dreams are not always realistic, but goals can be possible if you think deeply about how to reach them. Dreaming is fun, but goals are difficult and challenging… If you are serious about it, you must think critically about what is necessary to achieve it.” Read the rest of this entry »

The deafening quiet of this year’s July trade market was disturbed on Thursday night with the announcement that the Seattle Mariners were acquiring first baseman Josh Naylor from the Arizona Diamondbacks. Naylor has provided more than respectable offense for the Snakes this year, hitting .292/.360/.447 with 11 homers, good for a 123 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR. Heading to the desert in return are two minor league pitchers, lefty Brandyn Garcia and righty Ashton Izzi.

While the Diamondbacks have generally disappointed in 2025, little of the fault can be placed at Naylor’s feet. The team expected to compete in 2025, but lost Christian Walker to the Astros in free agency, so the hope was that Naylor would fill the hole for a year before hitting the open market himself. He was never going to be an elite defensive first baseman like Walker, but the expectation was that he would at least provide a similar level of offense. Naylor is likely to fall well short of his career-high 31 homers from 2024, but he’s compensated for that by adding nearly 50 points of batting average, meaning his 123 wRC+ is actually slightly higher than his 119 mark from last season.

If the season ended today, the Mariners would make the playoffs as the second AL Wild Card, and the five-game separation between them and the division-leading Astros is not an insurmountable distance. Houston’s edge in the AL West seems even smaller when you consider how much of its lineup is currently out hurt. The injured quartet of Yordan Alvarez, Isaac Paredes, Jeremy Peña, and Jake Meyers would represent a huge chunk of any team’s offensive value. First base has been a particular source of trouble for the M’s this year, with their first basemen ranking in the bottom third in baseball with a combined 0.4 WAR. The original plan had been for Luke Raley to get the lion’s share of the playing time at first, mostly against righties, with fill-ins around him to take care of the southpaws. However, injuries to Mitch Haniger and Victor Robles thinned out Seattle’s corner outfield and DH depth and pushed Raley mostly to right field. As a result, the team was forced to give a lot of playing time to Rowdy Tellez; he posted an execrable .249 on-base percentage with the Mariners before they dropped him in June.

Naylor is not a superstar, so naturally, his acquisition doesn’t dramatically change the face of the AL West race. After last night’s win over the Angels, ZiPS gave the Mariners a 76% chance to make the playoffs and a 24% probability to win the division. These numbers would be 72% and 21% without the trade.

So, what’s the cost for their new first baseman? Neither Garcia, nor Izzi was torching up the prospect lists, but then again, Naylor is a free agent after the season, making this trade is a pure short-term rental. The 25-year-old Garcia has already made a brief major league debut, and since I don’t believe the Diamondbacks are going to go full rebuild, that has a lot of allure over the compensation draft pick they would have gotten if they’d held onto Naylor and he’d signed elsewhere this offseason. Garcia is a hard-throwing lefty sinkerballer with a three-quarters delivery who predictably induces a lot of grounders. My colleague Eric Longenhagen gave him a 40+ FV when Seattle’s top prospects list was published last month.

The ZiPS projections see Garcia as a solid, though unspectacular, mid-bullpen arm with at least some upside.

As a 21-year-old in High-A ball, Ashton Izzi has more developing to do than Garcia, but even with decidedly mixed results, the righty showed enough upside for Eric to also give him a 40+ FV. According to Eric, Izzi boasts a four-seamer that sits around 94 mph with solid movement. He gets “near elite” extension with his fastball, but it doesn’t generate many whiffs. Izzi also has a usefully average two-seamer, Eric says, as well as a sweeper and a cutter; the sweeper is a big swing-and-miss pitch for him. His changeup is mediocre, and Eric is concerned that Izzi will struggle to develop a good weapon to wield against lefties. Overall, per Eric, if Izzi can clear his developmental hurdles, he can make the majors as a starter.

In all, I think getting two real prospects, one who can impact the parent club immediately, is an absolutely fair return for Naylor. The Mariners have only two playoff wins over the last two decades, and now is the time to go all-in to add to that total. Their offense is better this season than in previous years, but they still needed to fill their hole at first base, and Naylor represents a major upgrade over what they had before.

If you followed along with my Replacement Level Killers series, you’re no doubt familiar with the disheveled state of the Twins. After last year’s epic late-season collapse, Minnesota started slowly, clawed its way back into contention, and then stumbled during a 9-18 June; the team is now 48-51 with 17.5% Playoff Odds, still good enough to qualify for my series highlighting the weakest spots on contenders. Within that series, the Twins made a major league-high five appearances: at catcher, first base, second base, third base, and right field. An underrated part of their struggles is their defense. To the extent that they can still be considered contenders, their glovework stands out as the worst of any playoff hopeful based upon the methodology I used to identify the best team defenses thus far a few weeks ago.

Along with that piece, this is part of my annual midseason dip into the alphabet soup of defensive metrics, including Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (FRV), and our own catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages). Longtime standby Ultimate Zone Rating has been retired, which required me to adjust my methodology.

On an individual level, even a full season of data isn’t enough to get the clearest picture of a player’s defense. Indeed, it’s not at all surprising that samples of 800 innings or fewer produce divergent values across the major metrics; different methodologies produce varying spreads in runs from top to bottom, spreads that owe something to what they don’t measure, as well as how much regression is built into their systems. Pitchers don’t have FRVs, and DRS tends to produce more extreme ratings (positive and negative) than Statcast. But within this aggregation, I think we get enough signal roughly 60% of the way through the season to justify checking in; I don’t proclaim this to be a bulletproof methodology so much as a good point of entry into a broad topic. Read the rest of this entry »

Today the Killers list turns the corner — or rather turns to the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in the outfield corners. 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 their roster. I’ve batched the two corners into one supersized roundup because three of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for left field also make the list for right field, and because there’s plenty of crossover in play with regards to personnel. 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 July 31 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye on.

Royals*

Good grief, somehow Royals corner outfielders have combined for -3.8 WAR, suggesting that the 47-50 team would be over .500 if it had found some typically unremarkable replacement level outfielders to fill those posts. Manager Matt Quatraro has used nine left fielders and eight right fielders, with some crossover between the two. Somehow, only one player at each position has managed even a 100 wRC+ in their thin slice of playing time, namely Jonathan India in left and Drew Waters in right. India, who’s played all of 21 games in left, is new to the position at the major league level; his glove is a liability no matter where you put him and he’s hitting just .251/.332/.348 (91 wRC+) overall. Waters, who’s played 41 games in left, 21 in right, and 22 in center, has hit just .243/.288/.316 (66 wRC+) overall, suggesting his 105 wRC+ in 53 PA in right is a fluke. Mark Canha has collapsed to a 49 wRC+ with career worsts in just about every key Statcast category, though his stints on the injured list for an adductor strain and (currently) tennis elbow have possibly contributed to his woes. None of the other principals at either corner has spent time on the IL.

Hunter Renfroe, who began the year as the regular right fielder, was a full win below replacement before he was released in late May. Jac Caglianone, a 22-year-old 50-FV prospect who has taken over right, has been the next-worst, at -0.9 WAR. Caglianone entered the season ranked no. 47 on our Top 100 Prospects list but had never played above High-A; he’s hit a cringeworthy .140/.196/.264 (22 wRC+) in 138 PA while chasing 41.1% of pitches outside the zone. At some point a responsible adult would send him back to the minors for more seasoning despite the occasional 466-foot homer. Instead, he’s 4-for-40 this month including that July 10 shot. Cool, cool.

In eight seasons of doing this series for FanGraphs (plus a handful of times at Baseball Prospectus and Sports Illustrated), I can’t recall even a fringe contender so hamstrung by an inability to find reasonably productive players at offense-first positions. It’s a testament to the quality of the Royals’ pitching and the play of Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia and Vinnie Pasquantino that this team even has a shred of a chance at a playoff spot. This is the part where I normally suggest potential trade targets who could help shore up the situation; in this case the answer is “just about anyone not already on the Royals roster.” Candidates such as the White Sox’s Andrew Benintendi and the Marlins’ Jesús Sánchez look like Juan Soto and Aaron Judge next to this crowd.

Reds*

Nothing the Reds have done with either outfield corner has worked for very long or very well. Manager Terry Francona has used 10 different left fielders and eight different right fielders, with six players getting time at both. Offseason acquisition Gavin Lux has logged a team-high 34 starts in left while bouncing around to make 30 more at DH, nine at second base, and five at third. Overall, he’s hit .265/.355/.379 (106 wRC+), but his play in left has been, uh, DH-caliber (-6 FRV, -4 DRS in 278.2 innings). Austin Hays, who’s split his time about equally between left (21 starts) and DH (23 starts), has been very effective when available (.287/.323/.517, 124 wRC+) amid three separate IL stints for left calf and left hamstring strains and a left foot contusion; he and Lux have generally shared the left field and DH roles against righties.

Jake Fraley has started 39 games in right, all but one against righties; he’s hit .224/.336/.376 (100 wRC+), but has served IL stints for a left calf strain and a right shoulder sprain, the latter of which he returned from just before the All-Star break. Will Benson has split his time between left (17 starts), right (22 starts), and center (three starts), with just four from that total against lefties; he’s scuffled to a .223/.276/.427 (87 wRC+) line. Of the eight other corner outfielders Francona has tried, only Santiago Espinal has a wRC+ of at least 100 in that capacity, but that’s over just 30 PA, and his overall 63 wRC+ factors into the Reds’ placement on the third base list.

With Hays and Fraley both healthy, the Reds are in better shape than they’ve been for most of the season; the pair has spent just about two weeks together on the active roster (the second half of April). Still, between those two and the everyday play of Lux at one position or another, they’re a bit light (spoiler alert: they’ll be on the DH list as well), with a right-handed bat probably their bigger need. Unlike the Phillies (below), they’re less inclined to add payroll, but as one of the league’s younger teams, they should think in terms of multiple years. Three righties who could be available, the Rangers’ Adolis García, the Orioles’ Ramón Laureano, and the Angels’ Taylor Ward, each have another year of club control remaining; the first two will be arbitration-eligible, the last has a $6.5 million option. Red Sox lefty Wilyer Abreu, who’s got one more pre-arbitration season, offers even more upside and control but will require a greater return.

Phillies*

As noted in Wednesday’s installment, the Phillies rank 27th in the majors in total outfield WAR at 0.3, with left field the weakest of the three positions. Max Kepler spent the better part of a decade as a league-average hitter with a good enough glove to be a two-to-three-win right fielder for the Twins, but last year, he made two trips to the IL and slipped to a 93 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR. The Phillies didn’t overcommit, signing him to a one-year, $10 million deal, but his offense has continued to lag. His 90 wRC+ (.210/.307/.371) is a career low, and in his first taste of left field — the easier of the two corners — his -2 FRV is as well. Kepler’s average exit velocity is about 2 mph higher than last year, with his barrel rate improving from 6.2% to 11.4%, and his hard-hit rate from 36.6% to 44.8%, but he’s fallen 51 points short of his .412 xSLG.

Right fielder Nick Castellanos needs no introduction to readers of this annual series. Four years into a five-year, $100 million deal with the Phillies, his timing remains impeccable: he’s landed here annually. His offense isn’t completely terrible for a change; his 107 wRC+ (.273/.313/.438) is in line with his final 2022 and ’23 lines, and only three points shy of the major league average for right fielders. Alas, he’s a DH stuck in the field because the Phillies already have a better DH in Kyle Schwarber. Castellanos’ defensive metrics are on track to be his worst since 2018; after averaging -9 DRS and -12 FRV in his first three seasons in Philly, he’s at -14 DRS and -12 FRV with 66 games to go.

The Phillies have recently given a bit of playing time in left field to 25-year-old rookie Otto Kemp, an undrafted free agent who hit .313/.416/.594 at Triple-A Lehigh Valley and is at .247/.316/.337 (86 wRC+) with a 28.6% strikeout rate through 98 PA thus far in the majors. Kemp has 30-grade contact skills due to his problems with secondary stuff, and his defense at third base, his primary position in the minors, is shaky. He might work as the short half of a corner platoon, but the Phillies really need to add a quality bat. Abreu, García, and Ward each offer some firepower (not necessarily without flaws), while Benintendi and Sánchez would at least raise the production floor.

Padres

Where have you gone, Jurickson Profar? A nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you… The departure of their 2024 left fielder left a hole that the Padres have tried to fill using 10 different player. The bygone platoon of Jason Heyward and Oscar Gonzalez wasn’t up to the task. What has worked lately, particularly on the offensive side, has been using Gavin Sheets in left. The ex-White Sock has hit .265/.324/.451 (119 wRC+) in 44 games at DH, 34 in left (with all but two of them coming since May 25), and 12 at first base. Historically, the 6-foot-3, 235-pound lefty has been brutal in right field (-23 DRS, -18 FRV in 1543 innings) but has been within one run of average in the two metrics in 263 innings in left thus far. He’s been light against lefties (96 wRC+, compared to 128 against righties), so he could use a platoon partner, particularly one who can also serve as a defensive replacement; neither Brandon Lockridge nor Bryce Johnson have shown themselves to be up to the task, but this shouldn’t be the hardest problem for A.J. Preller to solve at deadline time.

Dodgers

Michael Conforto’s one-year, $17 million deal flew under the radar this past winter given the team’s fancier expenditures, but like those, the early returns aren’t too hot. The 32-year-old Conforto has hit just .184/.298/.322 (80 wRC+) with eight homers and subpar defense in left field (-3 DRS, -3 FRV). July is his first month with a wRC+ of at least 100, albeit in just 38 PA, and there’s no underlying batted ball trend suggesting notable improvement. Indeed, Conforto’s Statcast contact numbers, while still above average, are down relative to last season, and he’s lagging well behind both his .243 xBA and .421 xSLG, with his 99-point shortfall in SLG the seventh-largest in the majors.

While the Dodgers have alternatives in left, Enrique Hernández figures in the third base picture with Max Muncy sidelined, and Andy Pages — whose 205 wRC+ in 44 PA is propping up the offensive numbers here — is better used in center or right. One as-yet unexplored option would be to add rookie Dalton Rushing to the mix. The 24-year-old backstop has hit just .221/.293/.309 (73 wRC+) since debuting in mid-May, but a weekly diet of 10 PA can’t be helping his cause, and he does have 33 games of minor league experience in left.

It’s not inconceivable that the Dodgers cut bait on Conforto, particularly if they have a roster crunch. But so long as their offense is scoring a major league-high 5.33 runs per game, the matter is less urgent than their perennial need for pitching amid so many injuries.

Astros

The Astros haven’t entirely buried the Jose Altuve experiment yet, but the 35-year-old star has started just two of Houston’s last 19 games in left (and 39 overall) compared to four at designated hitter and 13 at second base. His offense (.277/.336/.465, 121 wRC+) has been fine, but his defense at the new position has been brutal (-8 DRS, -4 FRV in 325 innings), and it’s been no picnic at second either (-3 DRS, 0 FRV in 263 innings). His best position these days is probably DH, and with Yordan Alvarez sidelined due to inflammation in his right hand with no clear return date, that option is at least open.

Of the eight other Astros who have played left, the best on both sides of the ball has been Mauricio Dubón, who’s made more starts at second than left (29 versus five) while also filling in at shortstop (where he’s helped to cover for the loss of Jeremy Peña to a broken rib), third, and the other two outfield spots. He’s hitting a comparatively robust .255/.292/.415 (96 wRC+) overall and is, of course, a better defender than Altuve at either post, but he belongs at a position where he can best utilize those defensive skills. The Astro who’d merit a closer look is Zach Dezenzo, but the 6-foot-5, 220-pound rookie was recently transferred to the 60-day IL while recovering from a capsule strain in his left hand. He’s just 6-for-47 while playing left but is hitting .245/.321/.367 (96 wRC+), with a 16.4% barrel rate and a .440 xSLG offsetting his 33.9% strikeout rate. He’s eligible to return in August, so the Astros may push forward with their current jumble and hope he can help later. Still, with apologies to Cooper Hummel, Taylor Trammell, et al, this team needs a garden-variety left fielder who can hit a lick and catch the ball.

Diamondbacks

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is now in his third season as Arizona’s left fielder. While his .251/.299/.421 slashline represents drops of 28 points of AVG, 23 points of OBP, and 14 points of SLG relative to last year — for a 10-point drop in wRC+ (from 108 to 98) — his average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are virtually unchanged, and his xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA have only fallen by six or seven points. Aside from a 4.5-percentage point drop in strikeout rate, resulting in more batted balls, nothing’s really changed for him on the offensive side. He’s on this list because of a bit of bad luck here and a dip in defensive metrics there (from 3 DRS to -6, and from 1 FRV to -2), but he’ll probably remain the everyday left fielder unless the Diamondbacks clear out some outfield depth and cut salary ahead of the trade deadline — in which case he could wind up with another team on this list.

Guardians

Originally drafted and developed by the Guardians, Nolan Jones made four Top 100 Prospects lists (2019–22) before being traded to the Rockies in November 2022. Following a strong rookie season in Colorado (20 homers, 20 steals, 137 wRC+, 3.7 WAR), he battled injuries — most notably a lower back strain — and struggled in 2024, hitting just .227/.321/.320 (69 wRC+) with three homers. The Guardians reacquired him in March and have generally started him against righties either in right (45 times) or center (12 times), with nine starts against lefties spread across the three outfield positions. Unfortunately, the lefty-swinging 27-year-old’s offense hasn’t returned; he’s batting just .229/.319/.330 (87 wRC+), though as noted in the center field installment, he’s hitting the ball harder than those results suggest, with a 91.5-mph average exit velocity (3.3 mph higher than last year), an 8% barrel rate, and a 46.3% hard-hit rate. He’s cut his groundball rate, is pulling the ball more often, and has even shaved his strikeout rate to 26.5%. The 95-point gap between his .425 xSLG and his actual mark is tied for the majors’ ninth-largest.

Jones could use some better luck and a better supporting cast. Jhonkensy Noel plummeted from last year’s 118 wRC+ to zero — yes, a 0 wRC+ — with a .140/.162/.215 slashline, earning him a ticket back to Triple-A Columbus. Current platoon partner Johnathan Rodríguez has been only slightly better (.140/.189/.220, 12 wRC+). Given their 46–49 record and other trouble spots (including shortstop and center field), the Guardians may wind up selling or holding, but one trade candidate who would make sense is Laureano, who spent parts of 2023 and ’24 with the team. The Guardians did release him last May, but his 135 wRC+ for the Braves and Orioles since then suggests he’s worth another look.

Mariners

The early-April loss of starting right fielder Victor Robles to a fracture of the humeral head in his left shoulder cost the Mariners a valuable catalyst. Luke Raley took over the position, but he strained his oblique in late April, missed seven weeks, and upon returning took over the long half of a first base platoon. Leody Taveras came and went. Fortunately for the Mariners, Dominic Canzone arrived from Triple-A Tacoma and has more or less saved the day. The 27-year-old lefty, who’s closed up his stance somewhat and is swinging the bat harder, has hit a sizzling .319/.340/.564 (158 wRC+) in 97 PA. Yes, he’s chasing nearly 38% of pitches outside the zone and walking just 3.1% of the time, but he’s also barreling the ball 15.6% of the time, and both his .300 xBA and .564 xSLG are in line with his actual numbers. He’ll cool off eventually, but currently this doesn’t look like a serious problem for the Mariners, and there’s still hope that Robles can return in September to provide support.

Cardinals

Jordan Walker entered the 2023 season as a 60-FV prospect ranked no. 12 on our Top 100 list, but in parts of three seasons, he’s produced diminishing returns, including a meager .210/.267/.295 (60 wRC+) with a 33% strikeout rate in 191 PA this season. He’s been largely absent from the lineup since late May, first missing a couple of weeks due to inflammation in his left wrist, then enduring a bout of appendicitis in late June. While on his latest rehab assignment, the Cardinals are again tinkering with his swing, but so far, he’s gone just 7-for-46, albeit with five extra-base hits, at Double-A Springfield and Triple-A Memphis.

Walker’s still just 23, but it’s fair to wonder if he’ll ever live up to that lofty prospect billing, at least in St. Louis. The good news for the Cardinals is that Alec Burleson has taken over right field and absolutely raked, hitting .333/.374/.592 (158 wRC+) in 138 PA. Overall, the 26-year-old lefty has hit .293/.340/.466 (125 wRC+), though he could use a platoon partner; he has a career 52 wRC+ against southpaws.

Twins

Matt Wallner can mash. In 2023 and ’24 combined, he hit .254/.371/.515 (148 wRC+) with 27 homers in 515 PA for the Twins, even while striking out a whopping 34% of the time and spending chunks of both seasons in Triple-A. The Twins hoped that he could approximate that production across a full season, but a mid-April hamstring strain curtailed his strong start; he didn’t return until May 31 and has managed just a 91 wRC+ since. His overall line (.205/.299/.449, 107 wRC+ with 10 homers) in 41 games in right and 12 at DH rates as a disappointment. He’s getting under too many balls; his 21.8% infield fly ball rate is the second-highest of any player with at least 150 PA. Trevor Larnach, who covered right for part of Wallner’s absence and has lately been sharing the job, has hit a modest .245/.311/.415 (102 wRC+) while playing 34 games in right plus another 59 at DH and in left field. Willi Castro, the only other Twin with at least 20 PA as a right fielder, has struggled in his time there (28 games but just 15 starts) but has hit for a 124 wRC+ overall in his utility role.

Considering this is now the fifth position at which the Twins have made a Killers list, it’s clear they’ll have to solve some problems from within in order to challenge for a playoff spot. Despite his struggles, Wallner’s recent track record provides more reason for optimism than, say, Ty France at first base.

In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing mediocre production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book, It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have adapted it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.

When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t hew too closely to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is generally in the ballpark, though my final lists also incorporate our Depth Charts rest-of-season projections, which may nose them over the line. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a club may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it. Read the rest of this entry »

Mason Englert throws an array of pitches. The 25-year-old right-hander’s repertoire comprises a four-seam fastball, a sinker, a changeup, a cutter/slider, a sweeper, a “big curveball,” and a “shorter version of the curveball.” He considers his changeup — utilized at a 31.6% clip over his 13 relief appearances with the Tampa Bay Rays — to be his best pitch. More on that in a moment.

Englert, whom the Rays acquired from the Detroit Tigers in exchange for Drew Sommers back in February, will also break out the occasional… lets’s call it a baby curveball.

“I threw a few that were around 60 mph when I was in Durham,” explained Englert, whose campaign includes nine outings and a 1.84 ERA for Tampa’s Triple-A affiliate. “One of them was to the best man in my wedding. It was the first time I’d faced him in a real at-bat, and I just wanted to make him laugh.”

The prelude to Englert’s throwing a baby curveball to his close friend came a handful of weeks earlier. Back and forth between the Bulls and the bigs this season, he was at the time throwing in the bullpen at Yankee Stadium.

”I was totally messing around and wanted to see what kind of reaction I could get from Snydes (Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder),” recalled Englert, whose major-league ledger this year includes a 4.84 ERA and a much-better 2.93 FIP. “I lobbed it in there, kind of like the [Zack] Greinke-style curveball, and landed it. I thought he would laugh it off, but instead Snydes goes, ‘Huh. You could maybe use that early in counts to some lefties.’ That was him having an openness to, ‘Hey, make the ball move different ways, do different things, use them all.’” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Seattle Mariners. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth 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 »

We’ve been writing about Cal Raleigh a lot lately, as we should. He’s currently on pace for 9.9 WAR, which would constitute the greatest season of all time for a catcher. Although his defense has taken a step back from its previous heights, Raleigh is running an absurd 182 wRC+ and leading baseball with 26 home runs. He’ll have to come down to Earth at some point, but he’s all but certain to lead all catchers in home runs for the third straight season. He’s nearly doubled the second-place Logan O’Hoppe’s 14. Raleigh has a real shot to break Salvador Perez’s record of 48 home runs by a catcher – if he keeps up his current pace, he’ll break it by 16 homers!

On May 19, Ben Clemens wrote about how well Raleigh’s new, more selective approach was working out. Even though Raleigh was taking more pitches over the heart of the plate in hitter’s counts (a trend that has continued in the ensuing weeks), the patience has allowed him to get ahead more often and do damage. “Does all of this mean that Raleigh is going to maintain his 170 wRC+?” Ben asked. “No way.” That was the only answer he could have given. To suggest otherwise would have been sabermetric malpractice. But, uh, Raleigh didn’t exactly regress back to the mean from there on out. From May 20 to June 8, Raleigh was the best hitter in baseball, slashing .348/.427/.894 with 13 homers for a 267 wRC+. His average exit velocity was 97.2 mph! That’s what it takes to – barely – hit better than Aaron Judge. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I wrote an introduction to Statcast’s latest round of bat tracking metrics. MLB.com’s Mike Petriello wrote a real primer, so I tried to build on that by analyzing how the different metrics work together using a couple common pitch types. We’re still figuring out how to use these new toys, but today I’d like to explain how my first dive into the bat tracking metrics led me to one particular player who is doing something weird, which led me to learn something small about the way swings work. After all, that’s why we’re here exploring all these strange new numbers in the first place.

In my first shot at playing with the metrics, I tried to establish something simple. I pulled the overall bat tracking data for all qualified players, and I focused on Attack Direction, which tells you the horizontal angle of the bat at the moment of contact (or, in the case of a whiff, at the moment when the bat is closest to the ball). That seemed pretty straightforward to me. As with most bat tracking metrics, it’s also a timing and location metric. You generally need to meet inside pitches further out in front of home plate. If you’re behind the pitch, your bat will be angled toward the opposite field, and you won’t pull the ball. If you’re out in front of the pitch, your bat will be angled toward the pull side, and you’ll pull it. A player’s average Attack Direction should correlate pretty well with their pull rate, and the numbers pretty much bear that out. Attack Direction and pull rate have a .60 correlation coefficient:

Most of the dots are clustered around that very clear trendline. Players who pull the ball more tend to have their bats angled toward the pull side just as you’d expect. What interested me was that green dot way at the bottom. It belongs to Leody Taveras. I guess it is Leody Taveras, if we really believe in our graphs, which we probably should at this particular website.

Taveras has a moderately low Attack Direction, four degrees to the pull side, but he’s got the third-lowest pull rate of any player on this chart. I couldn’t help wondering how exactly he was doing that. Before I dug into it too deeply, I was reminded that the fact that he’s a switch-hitter might have something to do with it. So I pulled the data again, this time separating out all players by handedness. On the chart below, switch-hitters will appear twice:

The correlation isn’t quite as strong, because switch-hitters are now broken into two different players with two smaller samples (that’s how small-sample right-handed Patrick Bailey got way down at the bottom). But there are two green dots now! And they’re both Leody Taveras! From both sides of the plate, Taveras looks like he should have a pull rate that’s a bit above average, and instead has one of the very lowest pull rates in the game. At this point, I was officially curious, so I started poking around.

First, I specifically looked at Attack Direction on balls hit to the opposite field. Since the start of bat tracking midway through the 2023 season, when Taveras hits the ball the other way, his average Attack Direction is three degrees toward the opposite field. Only four players in baseball have an average Attack Direction that’s less oriented toward the opposite field. Oddly, they’re all sluggers. Salvador Perez, Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge, and José Ramírez are all at two degrees toward the opposite field, and Austin Riley is tied with Taveras at three degrees. Taveras is definitely not a slugger. He could not be more different from these five guys. So not only is he doing something way different from most hitters when he goes the opposite way, but the only players out on that ledge with him have completely different swings than he does. There really is something weird about him.

Next, I tried looking specifically for balls hit to the opposite field even though the bat was angled toward the pull side at the moment. Just 21% of balls hit to the opposite field have the bat angled toward the pull side at all. I ran a Baseball Savant search, setting the minimum Attack Direction at seven degrees toward the pull side. Since bat tracking started, 5.5% of Taveras’s batted balls have fallen into this category. Among the 375 players with at least 200 BIP over that period, that’s the 11th-highest rate. Elehuris Montero is the champion at a shocking 10.5%, but no player who has put as many balls in play as Taveras has run as high a rate as he has.

At that point, I decided to look at individual balls that fell into this category: balls that go to the opposite field even though the bat is angled toward the pull side at contact. How exactly does this happen? Try to picture it in your mind. If the bat is angled toward the pull side, and it’s being swung in that direction anyway, how does the ball end up going in the opposite direction? There are two main answers. Here’s the less common way:

That’s Taveras way, way out in front of a curveball, hitting it off the very end of his bat. He cued it up so perfectly that if the end of his bat were cupped, the ball might have just gotten stuck in there. So that’s one way to do it. In fact, 21% of the balls we’re looking at, hit to the opposite field even though the Attack Direction is seven or more degrees to the pull side, are squibbers hit off the end of the bat below 80 mph. That’s one way to do it.

The other way is much more common, and it looks like this:

Of those same balls, hit to the opposite field even though the Attack Direction is seven or more degrees to the pull side, 50% are classified as popups, and 65% have a launch angle above 38 degrees. Basically, when you hit a ball in that weird manner, it’s almost always going to be either a cue shot or a popup. Leody Taveras taught me that.

This has a lot to do with Attack Angle. If your bat were perfectly parallel to the ground, but angled toward the pull side, it would be pretty much impossible to hit the ball the other way. But when you pop the ball up, you’re not hitting it flush. You’re getting under it. And regardless of the situation, your bat is almost never parallel to the ground. According to Statcast, the bat is angled downward on more than 80% of swings. If you just look at popups, that number is up above 90%. About half of popups come on four-seamers and cutters, where the batter has trouble catching up and swings just under the pitch. The rest come on softer stuff, and those pitches are usually low in the zone. I need you to do some 3D visualization in your head here, because my diagram is not very good:

On the left is a perfectly level bat, parallel with the front of the plate. Now imagine you’re angling your bat downward and you get just underneath the ball. If your bat is angled toward the opposite field or, as in the middle example, straight toward center field, you’ll likely just foul the ball off behind you or into the opposite field stands. Once you angle it toward the pull side, however, it can stay fair, bouncing up and toward the opposite field. Please imagine that the bat on the right looks so funky because it’s foreshortened, pointed out toward the first baseman. Taveras can show us what that looks like in the real world:

If his Attack Direction were zero, he would’ve fouled the ball up and into the stands down the third base line. He only kept it fair because of his Attack Direction of 18 degrees.

Look, I don’t have a big takeaway here. I just think this interesting. I think it highlights the way that the angle of the bat informs even the most mundane batted balls. If you’d asked me yesterday whether it’s possible to go the opposite way while your bat was angled toward the pull side, I would’ve had to think about it, but my first reaction would’ve been to say no. The bat and ball move through space so quickly that they can be hard to track, but the bat tracking metrics help explain why exactly Taveras pops out so very, very often, and how it’s even possible to hit a ball like that in the first place.