Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m not sure that Zach Lowe, the progenitor of this format and an incredible NBA writer, ever thought that it would get spun off into baseball. I’m certain that he didn’t think it would get spun off into baseball by someone who likes both popups and bunts an unhealthy amount. But here we are. Speaking of which, I know what you’re thinking: What does Ben think about the two catcher’s interference infield flies from this week? I thought they were more annoying than amusing, and that’s not what we’re about here at Five Things. So let’s talk about a far more delightful popup, plus some infield hits, pretty pitches, and exciting series.
1. A Schwarbloop Kyle Schwarber hits majestic home runs. Sometimes they hang in the air for an improbable length of time. Sometimes they get out of the park before you can blink. Not only is there a name for them – Schwarbombs – but Wawa even makes a drink named after them. You can’t get any more Philadelphia than that. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
The Mets entered this season caught in the middle of contending and rebuilding, and that was by design. Their strategy during the offseason was to assemble veteran players on short-term contracts who could either help the team make a wild-card push if things went well or flip them at the deadline if the club floundered. And, oh boy, floundered is putting it mildly. After sitting a game above .500 at the end of April, the Mets have posted an abysmal 8-19 (.296) record in May. I didn’t expect to be declaring them as hard sellers on May 31, but that’s pretty much their only viable option at this point unless they turn things around quickly. Shortstop Francisco Lindor acknowledged as much after Wednesday night’s game.
“The front office is going to make decisions no matter what. Whether it’s to add or subtract, whether it’s to focus on the next season or focus on August and September, they’ve got to make decisions,” Lindor said. “We don’t have 100-plus games for that moment, but we do have time to make sure we are above water. I’ve always said stay above the water. Before the All-Star break and before the trade deadline, you’ve got to stay above the water. You can’t have the water be nose deep. I’m not a good swimmer. We’ve got to make sure — we’ve got to find ways to get the water to at least our shoulders because [otherwise] that’s when the decisions come in, [and] it’s the one we don’t want.”
If, indeed, the verdict from the front office is not the one Lindor wants, these are some of the players the Mets could trade away by the July 30 deadline.
The Shiniest Rental
Pete Alonso is more Mercedes-Benz than Rolls-Royce these days, as I’m pretty convinced his best days are already behind him at age 29. He has a 121 wRC+ since the beginning of last season, down from 137 he posted over his first four years. A righty first base-only is a risky proposition in free agency, and his lack of positional flexibility will dampen his trade value as well. He’s undoubtedly an impact bat who lengthens any lineup, and despite his dip in production, he’s still one of the game’s great home run hitters. The thing is, he’s no longer in that upper echelon of dangerous, all-around hitters.
For that reason, along with the fact that he’s on an expiring contract, the Mets shouldn’t expect a package of multiple top prospects for him. I think he’ll get a return closer to the one the Orioles got for Trey Mancini two deadlines ago. The Mets could, of course, make a trade more enticing by paying down some of Alonso’s salary. As it stands, whichever team acquires him will have to pay about $6.8 million for the remainder of the season.
Further complicating things is that the best contenders all have fairly capable first basemen. Every team currently in playoff a position is getting at least league-average offensive production from that position. From my vantage point, Alonso would fit best with the Mariners or Rays, teams that both lack power production and are not getting much from their DHs at the moment: Entering play Thursday, Seattle’s DH wRC+ was of 79; Tampa Bay’s was 85.
Another factor to consider: The Mets may decide that any potential trade return would be less valuable to them than the draft pick compensation they’d receive if Alonso were to decline their qualifying offer. This seems unlikely, though, because the Mets cleared the last luxury tax line last year, so the pick they’d get if Alonso walks in free agency would come after the fourth round of the 2025 draft. If the Mets can’t get a prospect or two worth more than a fourth-round pick for Alonso, they should hold onto him and use those extra two months to work out an extension or try to re-sign him after the season.
Everyone Needs Pitching
The Mets were smart to load up on rental pitching in hopes that those hurlers would bounce back enough to either (a) help lead the Mets to the playoffs or (b) be worth something to someone else in a trade. So far, pretty good results there!
Luis Severino (on a one-year deal worth $13 million) still isn’t dominating as he was back in his peak years of 2017 and 2018, with his strikeout rate up only a point-and-a-half from his horrendous final act with the Yankees last year. But his newfound sinker — now representing 19% of his pitches, per Statcast (3% last year) — has served to deaden the contact against him considerably, with the average exit velocity he’s allowing down 3 mph; his groundball rate is up nearly nine points. The lack of swing-and-miss, and his corresponding reliance on contact, makes him more of a mid-rotation arm than a frontline starter, but he’d clearly be an upgrade for just about any team looking for starting pitching.
Sean Manaea is in a more complicated situation, as his two-year, $28 million contract allows him to opt out after this season. It’s certainly trending that way with a 3.16 ERA (3.46 FIP, 4.20 xERA) in 10 starts, making it an almost certainty that he’ll test free agency this offseason so long as he stays healthy. But that’s a double-edged sword: Teams may be scared to acquire him in the event that he gets hurt or underperforms and they’re saddled with his $13.5 million salary for 2025, and the Mets may market him as a player with over a year of club control left and ask for a more valuable return as a result.
Throwing Darts
I don’t think any of these players would return much in a trade, but considering the Mets acquired a guy who’s now a top-100 prospect for Tommy Pham at last year’s deadline, it’s always worth crossing your fingers and hoping that your pro scouting department comes back with under-the-radar names that you can add to the organization:
• Putting J.D. Martinez in this section feels a little rude given his pedigree, but he’s a DH-only who’s popped just four homers in 30 games (including the go-ahead blast in last night’s 3-2 win over the Diamondbacks) and is striking out a third of the time. The same factors that caused Martinez to sign at the very end of spring training will work against his trade value, too.
• Harrison Bader has played like an ideal bottom-of-the-order bat, with an above-average wRC+, and he actually has reverse splits this year that belie his career norms. As usual, he’s done his best work in the field, with 2 DRS and 4 OAA in center. At absolute minimum, he’d be a perfect fourth outfielder for a contender.
• Adam Ottavino has hit a rough patch, with his ERA soaring from 2.95 to 5.48 over the course of just four appearances in which he allowed seven runs across three innings. Still, he’s struck out opponents at his highest rate since his breakout 2018 season, and his FIP (3.55) and xERA (3.07) portend better results to come.
• Jose Quintana isn’t the contact-suppression king he was last year; he’s already allowed nine homers in 58.2 innings after surrendering just five in 75.2 innings last season. But the guy takes the ball every fifth day, and there’ll be a team willing to give up a lottery-ticket prospect for him, especially if the Mets pay down some of his $4 million-plus that he’ll be owed after the deadline.
Not every rental can always be traded, of course, no matter how extensive the rebuild is. Brooks Raley would’ve been a hot commodity at the deadline, but he’ll be out until sometime next season after undergoing Tommy John surgery this week.
The Mets also have long-term contracts for Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, Edwin Díaz, and Jeff McNeil on the books, but I’d be extremely surprised if any of them are moved. All four are underperforming (and Díaz is currently on the IL with a shoulder impingement), though I still think Lindor, Nimmo, and Díaz can be key parts of the next good Mets team.
Even if the initial reaction to the trades are underwhelming — rentals just don’t return all that much — this should be a formative deadline for the Mets. I don’t expect them to get a Luisangel Acuña– or Drew Gilbert-level prospect, nor do I see their moves signaling a hard reset for 2025 or an expansive rebuild. But as David Stearns and Steve Cohen look to recalibrate and lay a foundation for the future, they’re certainly not going to just sit on their hands and hold onto anybody if the right deal is there.
It’s the double-R that makes it tricky. In the name Victor Robles, all of the emphasis is front-loaded. Victor is spondaic and Robles is trochaic, which means three stressed syllables in a row followed by that one last unstressed syllable: VIC-TOR RO-bles. It’s a shout followed by a whisper, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But even if you cheat a little bit and turn the first name into a trochee — VIC-tor RO-bles, sing-songy like Mickey Mantle or Dr Pepper — you still can’t get it to flow because you need to pause between those two Rs, lest the two names get pressed together into one breathless pileup of syllables: victorrobles. No matter what you try, that emphatic start grinds to a halt.
After more than 10 years and nearly as many false starts, the center fielder’s time with the Washington Nationals has come to a complete stop. The team designated Robles for assignment on Monday, eight days after his 27th birthday. They now have a week to trade, waive, outright, or release him. Robles, who is in his eighth season as a big leaguer, would almost certainly opt for free agency rather than accept an outright assignment to the minors. Despite his struggles, he seems likely to garner another opportunity. To Washington fans who had been dreaming on him since 2015, Robles often seemed tantalizingly close to finally breaking out. Over the course of his career, Robles has a combined .725 OPS in his first 10 games of a season and a combined .576 OPS in his last 10. He has a career 93 wRC+ in March and April; May is the only other month when he’s within 10 points of that mark. Many of those hot starts were also marred by early-season injuries: a hyper-extended elbow in April 2018, a sprained ankle in May 2021, back spasms in May 2023, a strained hamstring this April. He just never found a way to keep it going. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-USA TODAY NETWORK
Robert Gasser was flying mostly below radar as a prospect when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in July 2022. Pitching in the Midwest League one year after being drafted 71st overall out of the University of Houston, he was putting up solid but by no means eye-catching numbers with San Diego’s High-A affiliate. Earlier in the season he’d been assigned a 40 FV and a no. 14 ranking on our 2022 Padres Top Prospects list.
Shortly after that first piece about Gasser was published, the Padres dealt him to the Brewers as part of the Josh Hadertrade, which at the time was widely panned by Milwaukee fans. While the consternation was understandable, the criticism is increasingly abating. Nearly two years later, Gasser is four starts into his MLB career and boasts a 1.98 ERA and a 2.52 FIP over 23 innings. In three of his outings he’s gone at least five frames and surrendered one run or fewer.
How has he gone from a low-profile prospect to a pitcher getting good results at baseball’s highest level? There has been no magic bullet, Gasser said, and he hasn’t made any especially notable adjustments since we first spoke in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »
William Contreras stopped being an unheralded star a while ago. He was merely “the backup catcher” in Atlanta, but he smashed last year as the undisputed starter in Milwaukee and he’s backing it up with another spectacular season. He’s the face of one of Statcast’s new bat speed metrics. He’s a shoo-in All-Star and one of the betting favorites to win NL MVP. So this isn’t a “hey, have you heard he’s good?” article, because of course you have. The real question is, what has he changed this year?
Contreras’ standout skill is his thunderous raw power. He cracked 20 homers in just 376 plate appearances during his breakout 2022 and is one of the hardest swingers in the game. As you might expect, he has swing-and-miss issues, with his 13.4% swinging strike rate the price he pays for trying to crush everything he swings at. But that’s ok. His hard-hit rate, barrel rate, maximum exit velocities, and HR/FB rate are all gaudy.
Here’s the thing, though: While power might be his most obvious carrying tool, Contreras has quietly developed into much more than just a one-note power hitter. You can’t see it in the surface numbers – he’s walking about as much as he always has and striking out as frequently as he did last year – but he’s completely revamped his approach at the plate, and it’s downright sterling these days. In fact, maybe we should be talking less about how Contreras compares to Juan Soto in squared up contact, and more about how he compares to Soto in strike zone mastery. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Washington Nationals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
I think everyone has moments where they wonder just what the hell they’ve done with their lives. I’ve been blessed with the divine spark of human consciousness, and a body to tote those thoughts around in, and what have I accomplished? I had one of those moments recently while I was holding a friend’s baby, trying to make her laugh. What a delightful and important but most of all profound thing, to create a whole other person and cultivate her — from scratch — into a happy adult.
Or the next best thing, creating art. I’ll speak to what I know: music. I’m left in awe of songs that, through dynamic contrast and precision of rhythm and density of countermelody, seem to be carrying that divine spark themselves — the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, or Typhoon’s “Prosthetic Love.” So much care and emotion went into such composition that it’s hard not to be bowled over by the emotional transference of the artistic process even as you’re astounded by how precisely the pieces have been crafted and how seamlessly they fit together.
Again: What am I doing with my life to show that I value this gift? How am I using this spark to shape the world into a better place? How am I passing this light on to others? This thought burst out and grabbed me recently when I was poking around our site’s pitcher defense leaderboards and noticed something interesting about Josh Fleming. Read the rest of this entry »
When Steven Kwan left the Guardians’ May 4 victory after straining his left hamstring, the Guardians owned the American League’s second-best record (21-12) as well as a 1.5-game lead in the AL Central. While Kwan was their most productive hitter at the time, they’ve thrived in his absence, going 15-6 thanks in part to a nine-game winning streak that ended at the hands of the Rockies on Monday. All of that has netted them the league’s second-best record (36-18)… and a 2.5-game lead in the Central. Baseball is a funny game sometimes.
The Guardians haven’t gained as much ground as you might expect given that the Royals ran off an eight-game winning streak that began on the same day as Cleveland’s streak and have gone 14-7 in Kwan’s absence; meanwhile, the Yankees have gone 15-5 to supplant the Orioles (12-7) as the team with the league’s best record. Still, the streak did create some daylight between the Guardians and the Twins, who were tied for second in the division with the Royals but have since gone 10-11 to fall to 6.5 games back.
A soft schedule probably didn’t hurt the Guardians, either. After winning the rubber game of their three-game series with the Angels sans Kwan, they took two of three from the Tigers, lost three of four to the White Sox (oops), then took two of three from the Rangers before sweeping consecutive three-game series from the Twins, Mets, and Angels. Collectively those teams have a weighted winning percentage of .418, with the Twins (.547 via a 29-24 record) the only ones at or above .500.
Kwan’s injury is a convenient inflection point for analysis. If it’s still somewhat arbitrary, it does offer a window into the Guardians’ overall performance, as well as how they’ve maintained a .714 winning percentage without him. Read the rest of this entry »
We knew the best hitter in baseball this year would be a multi-positional talent. We knew he would play for one of the top teams in the league. We knew the value of his contract would begin with the words “seven hundred” and the first syllable of his last name would be a source of complex carbohydrates. What we didn’t know is that it would be Guardians catcher/outfielder/first baseman/third baseman/DH David Fry, who is making $741,100 this season and currently leads the majors (min. 50 PA) in OBP (.488), OPS (1.079), wOBA (.459), and wRC+ (204).
The Brewers took Fry in the seventh round of the 2018 draft, eventually sending him to the Guardians during the 2021-22 offseason as the player to be named later in a trade for right-hander J.C. Mejía. Fry had first appeared on the Brewers’ top prospect list ahead of the 2020 season, when Eric Longenhagen ranked him 24th in a weak system, noting the positional flexibility that made him “an interesting potential bench piece.” That assessment largely stuck as Fry rose through the minor leagues (and switched organizations), although he was downgraded from a 40 FV to a 35+ FV in 2021 and eventually fell out of the Guardians’ top 50 ahead of the 2023 season. Eric tweaked his evaluation that year, subtly downgrading Fry from “interesting potential bench piece” to “interesting 26th man candidate.” It was a fair assessment at the time; Fry was roughly a league-average hitter in his first full season at Triple-A (105 wRC+). Entering his age-27 campaign, there wasn’t much reason to bet on his upside.
Yet, Fry was hard to ignore during his first full spring in big league camp in 2023. He bookended that spring training with home runs in his first and last at-bats and hit well in between, too, finishing with a 154 wRC+ in 19 games. Although he didn’t make the Guardians’ Opening Day roster, he surely made a good impression; after a solid month back at Triple-A, he earned his call to the show. Playing catcher, first base, corner outfield, and a little bit of third (with a couple of pitching appearances to boot), Fry showed off his versatility while hitting well enough (106 wRC+) to collect major league paychecks for the rest of the year. Entering 2023, ZiPS projected a .291 wOBA from Fry, and he boosted that projection to a .306 wOBA before the start of this season. Nobody would call his performance last year a breakout, but he put himself on the inside track to play a role for Cleveland once again in 2024. Read the rest of this entry »
Brice Turang grew up swinging a bat, and the fruits of those labors are coming to fruition in his second MLB season. Following up on a rookie campaign in which he logged an abysmal .585 OPS, the 24-year-old Milwaukee Brewers second baseman is flourishing to the tune of a .301/.366/.428 slash line and a 128 wRC+ over 188 plate appearances. Showing that he can be more than a threat on the bases — he swiped 26 bags a year ago and is 19-for-20 so far this season — Turang also has 15 extra-base hits this season, as many as he had in all of 2023.
The son of former big league outfielder Brian Turang, Brice Turang was drafted 21st overall by the Brewers in 2018 out of Santiago High School in Corona, California. He was ranked no. 65 on our Top 100 Prospects list entering last year. At the time, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote that Turang was “almost certain to have a significant and lengthy big league career,” albeit someone who “has never been a sure bet to do enough offensively to be an impact everyday player.” Two months into his sophomore season, one in which the Brewers are surprisingly atop the NL Central standings, Turang is looking like a hitter — small sample size acknowledged — who you just might not want to bet against.
In the latest installment of my Talks Hitting series, Turang discusses his gap-to-gap approach to his craft, which is driven more by competing than data.
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David Laurila: How have you developed as a hitter over the years?
Brice Turang: “A lot of it is that I hit basically every day. My dad owned a facility and I would go with him from three o’clock to nine o’clock every night. I loved it. I loved going to work with him. I’d be in the cage all the time, hitting, [developing] hand-eye coordination. Then, as you get into pro ball, the work you do is more of a quality-over-quantity type of thing.”
Laurila: There wasn’t nearly as much hitting data available when your father played. How does the way you learned from him relate to the present day?
Turang: “I don’t look at the data. I’m up there to compete and hit the ball hard. I mean, the data is what it is. You can put a number on anything, so I don’t really even think about it. I just compete and try to hit the ball hard up the middle, hit a line drive up the middle.” Read the rest of this entry »
