We’re in the phase of the minor league calendar where the domestic complex league seasons have ended, in order to accommodate the incoming draft classes, while the rest of the minor leagues continue with their regular seasons for a few more weeks. There are some recent draftees who have already been sent out to affiliates, but the majority have gotten going at their respective facilities during unofficial “Bridge League” or “Continuation Camp” activity with loose, flexible schedules and start times. There’s a big group chat in which scouts and development personnel (plus a handful of media folks, and probably a clandestine autograph hound or two) exchange lineups and pitching probables to keep everyone abreast of the goings on. Ceasing official play in Arizona and Florida allows teams to onboard their draft classes in an unofficial setting and avoids the traffic jam of minor roster spots, which would exceed the allowed amount if the draft classes were just assigned to affiliates right away.

This is also a fruitful place for rehabbers to see their first real game action since injury because teams can just “roll” innings whenever they feel like it. If you’re on a 25-pitch limit and you’ve hit your count without getting three outs, the inning will just turn over regardless of how many guys are on base. This setting is about development and is not an actual game, so it’s a safe place to shake off rust and work up a sweat. On Tuesday, when the Padres officially caught the Dodgers in the NL West race, I saw their Bridge League teams square off with two rehabbing members of their 40-man rosters getting an inning of work at the start of the game. In this piece, I’ll pass along how Kyle Hurt (Dodgers) and Bradgley Rodriguez (Padres) looked and examine whether either team has a postseason pitching weapon lurking in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers may have peaked too early. On July 3, they completed a three-game sweep of the White Sox, lifting their record to a season-high 24 games over .500 (56-32) and their NL West lead to nine games over both the Padres and Giants. It’s been mostly downhill since then for Los Angeles, starting with a seven-game losing streak from July 4–11, which included three-game sweeps by the Astros and Brewers. This week, they dropped three straight to the Angels while the Padres swept the Giants, knocking the Dodgers out of first place for the first time since April 27. The two Southern California rivals face off six times in the next 10 days, bookended by three-game series in Los Angeles this weekend and San Diego next weekend.

I’ll zoom out to the bigger picture below and in a subsequent Padres installment, but Tuesday night’s Dodgers-Angels game had a couple moments that had to be seen to be believed. The Dodgers scratched out a run in the top of the first against Angels starter Victor Mederos, but opposite number Emmet Sheehan, who has generally pitched quite well since returning from Tommy John surgery in mid-June, fell behind each of the first five Angels he faced, leading to three first-inning runs. A two-run Dalton Rushing homer tied it in the second; the Angels retook the lead with runs in the third and fourth, but the Dodgers’ two-out rally for two runs tied it in the fifth, 5-5.

The Dodgers had a golden opportunity to break the game open when Miguel Rojas and Rushing both singled off reliever Brock Burke to open the sixth. Up came Shohei Ohtani, who amid the team’s recent malaise entered the game on a 17-for-38 run that included homers in three straight games. Ohtani lined a Burke fastball up the middle, but shortstop Zach Neto, shifted about six feet to the left of second base, speared it and was perfectly positioned to double off Rojas, then fire to first. Rushing, who had ranged too far towards second, punctuated becoming the third out in the triple play by face-planting while trying to avoid a tag (luckily, he at least escaped injury). Oof.

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Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Between a vacation, the All-Star break, the Trade Value Series, and the trade deadline, Five Things has been on a bit of a summer hiatus. Baseball itself doesn’t stop, of course; weird and delightful things happen whether I’m documenting them or not. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this week had an extra helping of whimsy. Balls took funny hops. Good pitchers got shelled in unexpected ways. Balks took center stage. Leads changed hands late, defenders kicked things into high gear – there was so much delightful baseball this week that I struggled to narrow it down to five things. Seven things just doesn’t have the same ring to it, though, so let’s quickly nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the column inspiration and get going.

1. The True King of Contact
Writing about Luis Arraez can be a bummer sometimes. Not because he’s bad – he’s emphatically not – but because merely mentioning his name reinvigorates the age-old argument between those who say there are too many strikeouts and those who insist that slug is in the air. Should everyone be doing what Arraez is doing? Is he an anachronism? Is he underrated? Overrated? He’s so good at what he does – and what he does is so different from what most good baseball players do – that these questions are frustratingly omnipresent in any discussion about Arraez.

That said, I think I found an Arraez play that won’t divide the audience. The key is for it not to involve a ball in play, a walk, or a strikeout. Take a look at this beauty:

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Now that the deadline dust has settled – or at least, started to settle – it’s time to start making sense of it. The Padres, Twins, and Orioles were everywhere. Top relievers flew off the board. Both New York teams spent all day adding. But who did well? Who did poorly? Who was so frenetic that they probably belong in both categories more than once? I tried to sort things out a little bit. This isn’t an exhaustive list. There were 36 trades on deadline day, a new record, and more than a dozen before it. Nearly every team changed its trajectory at least a little, and this is just a brief look into the chaos. Here are the trends that most stood out to me.

Winner: Teams Trading Top Pitchers
This year’s crop of rental players was lighter than usual, but deadline activity didn’t slow. Instead, it simply spilled over into relievers under contract for a while. Mason Miller, Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, and David Bednar are under contract for a combined nine more years after 2025. That drove the prospect price up on all four. Having long-term control of relievers might be less valuable than at other positions, but it’s still valuable.

Most of the best prospects who swapped teams at the deadline were involved in a trade for top pitching. Leo De Vries, the consensus best player of the 2024 international signing period, was the big name here, but both the Phillies and Yankees offered up multiple good minor leaguers in exchange for Duran and Bednar. Taj Bradley, whom the Twins got back for Jax, is a former top prospect who won’t be a free agent until 2030. Read the rest of this entry »

In the flurry of action just minutes before the trade deadline, two postseason contenders made moves to reinforce their starting rotations with starters looking to regain their previous form before hitting free agency. The Red Sox traded prospects James Tibbs III and Zach Ehrhard to the Dodgers in return for Dustin May, while the Padres continued their deadline fusillade by acquiring Nestor Cortes, 18-year-old infield prospect Jorge Quintana and cash, sending Brandon Lockridge to the Brewers. The Brewers will cover roughly $2.4 million of the money still owed to Cortes, with the Padres covering the prorated minimum salary for the rest of the season.

Let’s start in Boston. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the deal was going down, while FanSided’s Robert Murray and MassLive.com’s Christopher Smith reported the prospect return. The Red Sox could certainly use rotation help. They rank in the middle of the pack in both ERA and FIP, but once you separate out ace Garrett Crochet, things look much less rosy; Brayan Bello is the only other starter with an ERA below 3.80. Offseason deals for Walker Buehler, Patrick Sandoval, and Justin Wilson made it clear that the Red Sox are eager to find upside in pitchers who are still finding their way after a recent injury, and May certainly fits the bill.

With palpable Walugi energy, upper-90s velocity, and pitch movement seemingly designed in a lab for maximum GIF-ability, May has been tantalizing Dodgers fans with ace potential ever since his debut in 2019. Injuries, most notably Tommy John surgery in 2021 and flexor tendon surgery in 2023, have kept him from turning into the ace it was so easy to envision him becoming. From 2019 to 2023, he got into just 46 games, an average of 9.2 per season, running a combined 3.10 ERA and 3.77 FIP. Unfortunately, flexor tendon surgery ended May’s season early in 2023, then in July 2024, right as he was getting ready for a rehab assignment, May tore his esophagus in a freak accident while eating dinner. It was a major injury that required a six-month recovery. Read the rest of this entry »

Having already pulled off trades on Thursday to add reliever Mason Miller and starter JP Sears in a blockbuster with the Athletics and catcher Freddy Fermin in a deal with the Royals, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller stayed busy in the hours before the trade deadline, pulling off swaps with the Orioles, Blue Jays, and Brewers. San Diego has added lefty-swinging outfielder/first baseman Ryan O’Hearn and righty-swinging outfielder Ramón Laureano from Baltimore in exchange for a six-prospect package of 2024 draftees, and lefty-swinging infielder Will Wagner from Toronto in exchange for catching prospect Brandon Valenzuela. They also acquired lefty Nestor Cortes from Milwaukee in exchange for outfielder Brandon Lockridge, a move that Davy Andrews will cover separately.

The 32-year-old O’Hearn and 31-year-old Laureano have both rejuvenated their careers with the Orioles, albeit on different timelines. O’Hearn had totaled -1.4 WAR in parts of five seasons in Kansas City before being traded to Baltimore for cash considerations in January 2023. After back-to-back seasons with a 117 wRC+ and 1.5 WAR for the Orioles, he made his first All-Star team this month and is currently hitting .283/.374/.463 (134 wRC+) with 13 homers and a career-high 2.4 WAR. Laureano, who was released by the Guardians last May and then turned things around in part-time duty with the Braves, has hit .290/.355/.529 (144 wRC+) with 15 homers and 2.3 WAR — his highest total since 2019 — for the Orioles. Both players have been bright spots on a 50-59 team that’s been carved up in recent days, with infielder Ramón Urías heading to the Astros, center fielder Cedric Mullins going to the Mets, with starter Charlie Morton dealt to the Tigers, and relievers Seranthony Domínguez and Andrew Kittredge to the Blue Jays and Cubs, respectively.

The six 2024 draftees heading from the Padres to the Orioles are second-round pick Boston Bateman (a 19-year-old lefty), third-rounder Cobb Hightower (a 20-year-old shortstop), fourth-rounder Tyson Neighbors (a 22-year-old righty), 12th-rounder Brandon Butterworth (a 22-year-old middle infielder), 15th-rounder Tanner Smith (a 22-year-old righty) and 18th-rounder Victor Figueroa (a 21-year-old first baseman/outfielder). Read the rest of this entry »

This, my friends, is the A.J. Preller we were promised. Mere hours after swinging a massive deal for closer Mason Miller and even fewer hours before trading for Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano, Preller made what you could argue – in one specific, absurd way – represented San Diego’s biggest upgrade of the day. Earlier this afternoon, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the Padres have traded starters Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek to the Royals in exchange for catcher Freddy Fermin. How could Fermin, a 30-year-old catcher with roughly average framing numbers who’s underperforming his career 91 wRC+ this season, possibly be a bigger addition than Miller or O’Hearn, let alone worth the two major league pitchers the Padres gave up for him? Just you wait.

It would be hard to overstate both how ugly the catcher position has been for the Padres this season and how predictable that outcome was. Coming into the season, the Padres ranked dead last in our Positional Power Rankings at catcher. We expected them to get just 0.8 WAR from the catcher position, a hair behind the Rockies. And that was before our projections knew how bad things really were. Shortly after the those rankings came out, the Padres demoted Luis Campusano, who had the best projection on the team. Instead, they rolled with Elias Díaz and Martín Maldonado. (I’m sure the Padres have their reasons for being so out on Campusano, but I have no idea what they are. For what it’s worth, he has slashed .298/.410/.555 with 15 home runs in Triple-A El Paso this season, good for a 130 wRC+. In 27 PA as a designed hitter for the big club, he’s 0-for-21 with two walks, but even so, right now at this very moment, ZiPS sees him as the best catcher of the three.)

Díaz and Maldonado have caught every single inning for the Padres this season, and the results have been even worse than expected. (Following the initial publication of this piece, the Padres DFA’ed Maldonado.) Both players have put up negative WAR. Maldonado has a 62 wRC+, while Díaz is at 67. In all, the Padres have put up -0.6 WAR from the catcher spot, and the only reason that’s not the worst mark in baseball is that the Nationals spent the first half of the season challenging for the worst team catching season of the century. Things have been even worse lately, as Díaz has put up a 38 wRC+ in the month of July. Read the rest of this entry »

It was shaping up to be a boring trade deadline day, with the most interesting rental, Eugenio Suárez, already off the board and no huge prospects or stars in play. But the San Diego Padres don’t limit themselves to the guys that everyone knows are on the block. They swung a massive, unexpected deal earlier today, getting Mason Miller and JP Sears from the Athletics in exchange for Leo De Vries, Braden Nett, Henry Baez, and Eduarniel Núñez, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported.

Miller burst onto the scene last year with one of the great relief seasons of the decade. He ramped up his fastball to nuclear velocities, sitting 100-101 mph and topping out above 103 en route to a 41.8% strikeout rate and a 2.49 ERA with peripherals that were even better. He did all that over 65 innings, a career-high workload for the 2021 draft pick. His fastball is a pitch modeler’s dream, all backspin and flat approach angle, and his slider is nearly unhittable for batters thinking “don’t get put on a poster by this fastball” from the minute they step into the box.

Miller’s 2025 encore hasn’t gone quite as well. For relievers not named Mariano Rivera, that tends to be the case. He’s still breathing as much fire as ever, but he’s aiming it a bit less effectively, and his walk rate has ballooned from 8.4% to 11.9%. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s still been very effective. Did you miss the part where I said he throws 103 with great shape and mixes in a nasty slider? Of course he’s still been effective. The decline has only been on the margins — ERA estimators in the high 2.00s instead of the low 2.00s, a low strand rate, and bam, suddenly he has a 3.76 ERA instead of a 2.49 mark. His stuff still looks really good, it’s just hard to maintain a two-handle ERA. Those are the numbers you put up when things go right, and 2025 seems more like an average year for Miller.
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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 »

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 (a .500 record or Playoff Odds around 10%), 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.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 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 fourth full season of the universal DH, 0.6 WAR represents the median, with 10 teams below zero, 11 between zero and 1.0, and eight with 1.0 or more, with only four of those eight reaching 2.0. By comparison, at this time last year, half the teams in the majors were at 0.0 WAR or less. DHs as a group have hit .239/.322/.422 for a 108 wRC+ this season, the last of which matches 2024’s final figure.

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 ’24, the number of players reaching 450 plate appearances in the DH role increased from three to four to seven; this year, we’re on pace for 10. That said, many 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.

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