Another trade deadline has come and gone, and I must say, this one was more exciting than I expected. I didn’t see the Yankees, Astros, or Dodgers making huge splashes, given that all three are in a daunting position both for first place in their divisions and a first-round playoff bye. There were also relatively few short-term rental options available; Juan Soto, Frankie Montas, and Luis Castillo, among others, could always be traded, but with none of them free agents after this season, teams could also pull them back if they didn’t like the offers. Meanwhile, players like Willson Contreras, Ian Happ and Carlos Rodón stayed put, also to my surprise. By and large, though, we had a whirlwind of a 48-hour period leading up to the deadline.

So, who won and who lost? That’s a bit of a loaded question, because the definition of winning and losing varies depending on each franchise’s goals. A contending team improving, a rebuilding team getting worse but acquiring a stable of prospects, or an indolent team only re-signing its 37-year-old closer are all things that can be considered a win in one way or the other. But we’re here to do some hardcore ranking, so let’s look only at who improved themselves the most in 2022.

To keep this all science-y rather than a somewhat arbitrary exercise, I first projected the entire league’s rest of season in ZiPS and then repeated the exercise with all trades since July 19 unwound. Since some teams primarily got overall playoff boosts and some teams saw improvement mainly in terms of World Series gains, I took each team’s rank in both categories and then ranked everyone by the harmonic mean of those two ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

With just hours to go until Tuesday’s trade deadline, the Twins shored up their bullpen, acquiring All-Star closer Jorge López from the TwinsOrioles for four pitching prospects. López, a 2020 waiver claim who was once a big part of a Mike Moustakas trade, has blossomed in 2022 upon being converted to a full-time reliever, saving 19 games for the O’s and putting up a 1.68 ERA and 2.99 FIP. Heading to Baltimore are Cade Povich, Yennier Cano, Juan Nunez, and Juan Rojas.

Not to be outdone, the Brewers made a relief addition of their own, picking up Matt Bush for pitcher Antoine Kelly and second baseman/third baseman Mark Mathias. Finally back after the second Tommy John surgery of his career, Bush has been sterling in his return, striking out 11 batters per game with his fastball returning to the upper 90s. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros shook up their first base situation on Monday, acquiring 1B/DH Trey Mancini from the Orioles as part of a three-way trade that also included the Rays. Mancini, the longest-tenured player on Baltimore’s roster, was having a solid, if not spectacular, season, hitting .268/.347/.404 with 10 homers and 1.2 WAR in 92 games, with most of his playing time this season split between first base and designated hitter and an occasional appearance in a corner outfield role. He’ll be a free agent at the end of the season, though there is a $10 million mutual option. To land Mancini, the Astros sent outfielder Jose Siri to the Rays and pitcher Chayce McDermott to the O’s, with Tampa shipping pitcher Seth Johnson to Baltimore and Jayden Murray to Houston.

To look at this trade more easily, let’s separate it into three different transactions.

The Baltimore Orioles acquire pitchers Seth Johnson and Chayce McDermott for 1B/DH Trey Mancini

From a PR standpoint, there will likely be some sharp elbows thrown at the Orioles locally. Baltimore is having its first even marginally playoff-relevant season in a long while, and Mancini has been with the team through the entire process. As its veteran rebuild survivor, he played a similar role that Freddie Freeman did for the Braves while they went through their own painful renovations. His battle with colon cancer, diagnosed on his 28th birthday, and subsequent grand return after surgery and six months of chemotherapy only served to make him more beloved in town.

Basically, the on-field case for keeping Mancini and letting him walk at the end of the season involved a very “now” outlook for the team. It does make the Orioles a bit weaker over the next two months, but it’s only a major loss if you look at the consequences in a very binary fashion, in that Baltimore is in the wild card race with Mancini and out of it without him. Once you move past that, the calculus for whether a trade like this is a good idea comes out very differently. Read the rest of this entry »

Bryan Shaw will reach two milestones the next time he takes the mound. The 34-year-old Guardians reliever has made 499 regular-season appearances in a Cleveland uniform, and he’s thrown 999-and-two-thirds professional innings. Neither should come as a surprise. Shaw has never been a star, but he’s always been a workhorse. Moreover, he’s a Terry Francona favorite.

“He’s like a lineman,” the Guardians manager said of Shaw. “When they allow a sack, everybody notices. When [Shaw] gives up runs, people want to bury him. But he saves our ass, time and time again. He pitches when other guys can’t… He’s been a trouper for a long time.”

Now in his 12th big-league season, and in his second stint with Cleveland, Shaw has led the American League in appearances in four different seasons, each time with his current club. The right-hander has appeared in 733 games overall — he’s also pitched for the Diamondbacks, Rockies, and Mariners — which ranks fifth-most among active pitchers.

He knows where he stands among his peers. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Hassell III hasn’t experienced much adversity in his young career. Since being drafted eighth overall by the San Diego Padres in 2020 out of a Tennessee high school, the 20-year-old outfielder has climbed to No. 42 on our Top 100 Prospects list while logging 134 wRC+. Last night he was in the starting lineup for the National League in the All-Star Futures Game.

He’s shown that he’s well-equipped to handle adversity when it does occur. The sweet-swinging Nashville-area native went through a cold stretch in May, and just as he was emerging from it, he contracted COVID. That learning experience is what Hassell chose to share when I sat down with him in late June to ask about his season to date.

“I had a 3-for-30 stretch — something like that — which I hadn’t had in pro ball, or really anywhere,” said Hassell, who has spent the season with the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps. “Playing every day you’ve got to be able to make immediate adjustments, and it took me awhile to get going again. Basically, I had to begin simplifying things, which is something I continue to do.”

Mature beyond his years, the third-ranked prospect in the Padres system agreed when I suggested that a slump doesn’t necessarily mean that changes are in order.

“That can be an adjustment itself, realizing that you don’t need to change anything,” said Hassell, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series in April. “At least not mechanically. It’s about knowing who you are, and like I said, keeping things simple. Looking back at video, it might be, ‘There is is no real difference between that guy and what I’m doing now.’ That’s why I’m big on the mental part of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 983

On this episode, we discuss the surging underdogs of the AL East before a chat about finishing up prospect lists in time for one of the most eventful weeks on the baseball calendar.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Geoff Arnold, broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles. We hear about the club’s recent win streak, exceeding expectations in a very challenging division, and how doing so has made for an entirely different environment at the ballpark. Arnold tells us how stoked the team is for All-Star Jorge López, and how Tyler Wells deserved a nod as well. We also hear about the team’s strong farm system, why Brandon Hyde deserves consideration for Manager of the Year, how the team might handle the trade deadline, and who the O’s might take first overall in the upcoming amateur draft. [3:22]
• In the second segment, lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and managing editor Meg Rowley discuss the herculean task that was finishing the 2022 prospect lists. We hear about how the sausage is made when it comes to this annual feat, including how the process has changed over the years. The duo also look ahead to the crowded field of All-Star events, including the Futures Game and the amateur draft, and discuss what they are excited about while also lamenting the week’s imperfect scheduling. Finally, we hear suggestions for how the draft and Futures Game could be marketed differently at a time when fans seem more interested than ever in prospects. [34:34]

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The Baltimore Orioles have been exceeding expectations this season, and an improved offense is one of the reasons why. Second from the bottom in runs scored last year, the Birds went into yesterday’s off day tied with the Chicago White Sox for seventh-most in the American League. While improved pitching and defense has arguably had a bigger impact, plating more runners has greatly benefitted the team’s fortunes.

Ryan Fuller has played a key role in the offensive uptick. A former University of Connecticut infielder who joined the Orioles organization as a minor league hitting coordinator in 2019, Fuller was promoted to big league co-hitting coach, along with Matt Borgschulte, last November.

In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series, Fuller discussed the club’s new school meets old school philosophy — and some of the notable players who embrace it — when Baltimore visited Boston earlier this season.

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David Laurila: What is your approach — the Orioles approach — to hitting?

Ryan Fuller: “Organizationally, what we believe in starts with making great swing decisions, swinging at the right pitches in the zone, and taking pitches that aren’t in the zone. If we do that, hard contact is going to come. And if we make hard contact, OPS, scoring runs — whatever metric you want to look at — is going to heighten. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night, the Orioles beat the Mariners, turning an early 7–0 lead into a 9–2 win. In the annals of history, a last-place team beating a fourth-place team in a midseason game won’t exactly be one that old baseball historians recount in future documentaries. But it did cause the O’s to cross a symbolic threshold, guaranteeing that they’d have their first winning calendar month since 2017 (counting a 2–1 March 2019 would be a scurrilous case of loopholery). That’s not exactly cause to break out a Melchizedek of the bubbly stuff, but it’s progress for a team whose rebuilding efforts seemed to be lacking that characteristic.

One thing that bedeviled the Orioles was how little of a boost they received at the start of the rebuilding process. Mike Elias may have been hired after the 2018 season to oversee the reconstruction, but it was the old brain trust who got the ball rolling with major trades, dealing away Manny Machado, Zack Britton, Kevin Gausman, Jonathan Schoop, and Darren O’Day and receiving 15 players in return. Until this season, it looked like the only one that would make any impact on the team’s future would be Dillon Tate, picked up from the Yankees in the Britton trade, who has made his home as a mid-tier reliever. You can make an argument that the best minor leaguer involved in an Orioles trade during the first year of the rebuild was a player who was traded from Charm City, not acquired, when the O’s sent minor league veteran Mike Yastrzemski to the Giants.

The lost 2020 minor league season was problematic for everyone on the planet, but in a pure baseball context, I’ve argued that it was especially so for a Baltimore team flooded with Triple-A tweener pitchers and not enough places to play them. Fast-forward to our second season of relative normalcy, and you start to see a real foundation start to come together. We were generally bullish around here about Baltimore’s farm system coming into the season; my colleagues Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein rated the team very highly, and ZiPS had the team with the best prospect in baseball both at catcher and on the mound. ZiPS is even more positive about the team’s future now as most of the top prospects have improved their stock, some massively, rather than see it slide. Let’s run down some of the projection changes since the start of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Lyles plays for a Baltimore Orioles team that stands 34-39 and is currently projected to finish 72-90. For the 31-year-old right-hander, that qualifies as more of the same. Lyles is in his 12th big-league season, and not once has he played a full year with a team that finished above .500. Moreover, he’s been on four clubs that lost 100-plus games. The worst of the worst was the 2013 Houston Astros, who went 51-111, a staggering 45 games out of first place.

The three seasons in which he’s played for multiple teams haven’t been much better. In each of those years, one of the two clubs he took the mound for ended up losing over 90 games. To date, Lyles has never pitched in the postseason.

That he never anticipated such a dearth of winning would be stating the obvious. Selected 38th-overall in 2008 out of a South Carolina high school, Lyles entered pro ball with the same lofty hopes and dreams as his draft-class peers. When you’re young and talented, visions of championship glory come with the territory.

He did reach the big leagues in relatively short order. Seventeen when he signed, Lyles was a precocious 20 years old when he debuted with the Astros in 2011. His first outing was a harbinger of things to come. The fresh-faced youngster allowed just a pair of runs over seven innings, only to see the bullpen blow the lead, depriving him of a win. At season’s end, Lyles was 2-7, the team 56-106. Read the rest of this entry »

What is your favorite baseball memory? I posed that question to 10 major league players, and in nearly every instance, the response began with a question of their own: “Does it have to be from my own career?” While all were happy to share one (or more) meaningful memory from their time in the big leagues, it was primarily magic moments from their days as fans and/or young amateurs that stood out the most.

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Jackie Bradley Jr., Boston Red Sox

“I have two. Being able to have all of my family members at the All-Star game with me in San Diego in 2016 is one. The other is having my family with me in London, England for the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry series [in 2019]. They were all with me for the [2018] World Series as well, so there are actually three: All-Star Game, World Series, and being able to travel all the way to London, halfway around the world, to watch me play. In no particular order, those would be my favorite baseball memories.” Read the rest of this entry »