We all knew the Angels were desperate to add at the deadline. How desperate? Well, how desperate would you have to be to call your ex — two of your exes, actually — on a Sunday night?

The Halos continued their deadline restocking process by reacquiring a pair of their former first-round picks, Randal Grichuk and C.J. Cron, from Colorado in exchange for minor league pitchers Jake Madden and Mason Albright. (No, not the former secretary of state, but I’m gonna keep doing a double-take every time I see Albright’s name until well into his big league career.)

Every big league organization has its own special circumstances and cultural idiosyncrasies, but this trade brings together the two teams that have the best claim to being in unique situations. With Shohei Ohtani three months from free agency, the Angels sit four games out of a Wild Card spot with two teams to climb over. They face time pressure unlike anything most franchises have ever experienced. And the Rockies, well, are the Rockies. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals are officially engaging in a moderate short-term rebuild, trading Jordan Hicks to Toronto for pitching prospects Sem Robberse and Adam Kloffenstein, and Jordan Montgomery to Texas for righty Tekoah Roby, infielder Thomas Saggese, and reliever John King. Each of these players could suit up for the Cardinals in the big leagues within the next 12 months, especially King (already a big leaguer) and the two pitchers coming back from Toronto, who will likely be added to the 40-man roster after the season. Roby and Saggese have spent their 2023 seasons at Double-A Frisco and are within range of the majors even though they don’t have to be put on the 40-man until after the 2024 slate. You can see where each of the newly-acquired prospects falls on the Cardinals list over on The Board.

Let’s start by going over the Montgomery return, since the most significant prospect acquired by the Cardinals comes over in that deal. Roby, 21, moved onto the Top 100 prospects list when I updated the Rangers system a couple of weeks ago, and he would have been even higher if not for his current shoulder injury, which shelved him in early June. Before he was shut down, Roby was consistently working with four plus pitches. He was sitting 94–95 mph with riding life, bending in one of the nastier curveballs in the minors, tilting in a similarly shaped slider in the mid-80s, and turning over a tailing low-80s changeup, all of which were capable of missing bats. He looked like a contender’s four-pitch, mid-rotation starter, like a less physical Hunter Brown.

Roby’s delivery does have some violence, but he’s always thrown strikes in spite of this. He is slightly undersized (but well-built) at 6-foot-1 and has now had arm injuries in two of his three pro seasons, so there’s definitely relief risk here despite his strike-throwing track record. From a stuff and pitch execution standpoint, he is where Jack Leiter was expected to be when he was drafted. On upside, Roby is a huge get for the Cardinals and could be the big league club’s best starting pitcher within a year or two. Once healthy, he has a chance to kick down the door, though shoulder issues can be particularly scary and destabilizing to a young pitcher’s career. Read the rest of this entry »

2023 has been a rough year for the St. Louis Cardinals. They’re used to living in the NL Central penthouse, looking askance at whatever team happens to battle them for supremacy in a given season. Sometimes they lose those battles – the Cubs put together a nice run in the mid-2010s, the Reds had their time in the sun before that, and the Brewers have been a thorn in St. Louis’ side in recent years. But this kind of collapse – 47-60 and last place in the division – is unheard of.

The silver lining? The Cardinals had a ton of expiring contracts coming into the season, which means they have a ton of players to trade. With the deadline quickly approaching, they’re starting to turn those players into prospects. In two deals on Sunday, the Cardinals sent out Jordan Montgomery, Jordan Hicks, and Chris Stratton. Montgomery and Stratton are headed to the Rangers; meanwhile, better hope Hicks has a passport, because he’s now a Blue Jay. Eric Longenhagen is covering the prospects who are coming back to the Gateway City in a separate piece. Here, I’m just going to focus on how these three fit with their new teams, and the Cardinals’ general strategy from here on out.

Let’s start with the Rangers. This one is pretty straightforward: Montgomery slots into a hilariously deep Texas rotation. After acquiring Max Scherzer on Saturday, their playoff rotation looked solid. Now it looks even better. Scherzer and Nathan Eovaldi (health permitting) are an above-average top duo, Montgomery is overqualified as a third starter, and after him there’s a whole grab bag of guys I wouldn’t feel either great or terrible about as my last playoff starter. Dane Dunning, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney, and Martín Pérez are all cromulent options, and the three who don’t draw a rotation assignment might play up out of the bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »

Figuratively speaking, Bryce Elder is pitching well under par. In 21 starts for the Atlanta Braves, the 24-year-old right-hander is 8-2 with a 3.18 ERA. Killing worms is his M.O. Relying heavily on a modified two-seamer, Elder has a 53.6% ground-ball rate that ranks fifth-best among qualified hurlers. Earlier this month, he was named an N.L. All-Star in his first full big-league season.

When he’s not sinking fastballs, he’s sinking putts. Atlanta’s fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft, the University of Texas product is an accomplished golfer who shoots in the mid-to-low 70s. More on that in a moment.

Elder learned his sinker late in his freshman year of college. He’d thrown a four-seamer in high school, but lacking plus velocity — his heater was, and remains, in the 90-mph range — an adjustment was in order. His pitching coach showed him a one-seam grip, he threw a few off the mound, and the dividends soon became apparent.

The improvement was evident in the numbers. The Decatur, Texas native had a 5.55 ERA as a four-seam freshman. As a one-seam sophomore, he had a 2.93 ERA. As a junior — this in the truncated COVID season — that number was 2.08. Success in pro ball followed, but stagnation was never part of the plan. In a continued effort to get better, the righty subsequently tweaked his sinker grip. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday night, a frustrated Max Scherzer surveyed his surroundings — a Mets team in fourth place, 17 games behind the Braves, with just a 16.3% chance of making the playoffs — and did not like what he saw. Scherzer told reporters that he was “disappointed” in his team’s fortunes, while acknowledging his own role in how the season has gone. The decision to trade closer David Robertson signaled a shift to sell mode, and indicated to Scherzer that he was due a chat with his bosses.

The fruits of that conversation ripened less than 24 hours later, and the three-time Cy Young winter is now bound for Texas, with prospect Luisangel Acuña headed in the other direction. The Mets are also sending roughly $35.7 million along to offset the considerable remaining salary due Scherzer this season and next.

It’s not an Ohtani trade, but this is about as big a name as you’ll see move at the deadline otherwise. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest names on the trade market found a new home on Saturday evening as the Texas Rangers picked up pitcher Max Scherzer from the New York Mets in return for shortstop prospect Luisangel Acuña, per Andy Martino. Scherzer’s contract runs through 2024 at a hefty $43.33 million per season, with the Mets covering a little more than $35 million of his remaining deal. Per Jeff Passan, Scherzer won’t exercise his player opt-out and will remain with the Rangers through the end of his contract. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox sent closer Kendall Graveman to the Astros for catching prospect Korey Lee on Friday afternoon. Graveman, signed by the White Sox to a three-year contract days before the 2021–22 lockout started, put up a 3.30 ERA and a 4.00 FIP in 110 appearances with Chicago. This caps off a busy end-of-week flurry for the Sox: Graveman is now the fifth pitcher they’ve traded in 24 hours, after Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, Lance Lynn, and Joe Kelly.

Graveman’s peripheral numbers have slid this season as his strikeout and walk rates have continued to deteriorate, and the six homers he’s allowed this season almost match the eight he surrendered in 2021 and ’22 combined, but I’m slightly less concerned about this than I would be in many similar situations. For one, his plate discipline-against numbers don’t support his problems in these departments. Batters are making contact against Graveman less often than any time in his career (ignoring his five-appearance debut season), and his first-strike percentage, a useful leading indicator of walk rate, is better than ever.

Some of the changes seem to be from conscious approach decisions. Graveman started throwing his four-seamer a lot more often in 2022 and has continued that this year but is now almost exclusively throwing it center-high. The result has been a lot more loft on these pitches. In fact, basically all of Graveman’s pitches, including his sinker, have been hit about 10 degrees higher than last year. It’s been enough to transform him from a reasonably strong groundballer in recent years to a pitcher allowing more fly balls than average. On the negative side, his slider has lost some bite, with its break closer to league-average than at his peak, leading to a lower whiff rate (35%) than in 2022 (43%) or ’21 (44%). ZiPS sees him with a 3.59 FIP for the rest of 2023 in Houston and a 3.72 mark in 2024. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, the city of Chicago looked like it had a new boom industry: deadline rentals. The Cubs and White Sox have a ton of players set to depart after 2023, and neither looked like a playoff hopeful. The Cubs have played well enough lately to get out of that realm and into the buyers column, but that’s okay, because the White Sox have leaned into their role as sellers to compensate. After moving Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López earlier in the week, they’re continuing to dismantle their pitching staff. On Friday, they sent Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly to the Dodgers in exchange for two pitching prospects and outfielder Trayce Thompson.

I won’t try to sugarcoat it: Lynn has been awful this year. His 6.47 ERA is the worst in baseball for qualifying starters, and while there’s some encouragement to be found under the hood, it’s still not a lot of encouragement. Also, that linked article was about how he couldn’t possibly keep giving up homers at such an extreme rate, and then he gave up six in his next three starts. Whoops.

Yes, that ERA is gruesome. Yes, Lynn has looked lost on the mound, lobbing pipe shots down the middle and walking more batters than normal anyway. But his body of work before this year suggests his season can be salvaged. The Dodgers know a thing or two about getting the most out of pitchers, and Lynn is missing bats at a career-best rate even while he gets shelled. Our projection systems think he’ll pitch to a roughly 4.25 ERA the rest of the season, but going to Dodger Stadium might even shade that lower. (A countervailing concern is that Lynn hasn’t looked comfortable with the pitch clock, and there’s no accounting for that in our models.) Read the rest of this entry »

Remember when the Blue Jays and Rockies connected for a blockbuster deal that sent Troy Tulowitzki to Toronto? That was eight years ago today, and that was also when Jeff Hoffman was a top prospect. A year before that, the young right-hander was so highly touted that even though news of a torn UCL surfaced weeks before draft day, the Jays still took him ninth overall. Sure enough, he rewarded them by touching 99 in his pro debut at High-A Dunedin the next season and the Jays rewarded him by… trading him to the Rockies two months later.

The state motto of Colorado is “Nil Sine Numine,” or “Nothing without Providence,” but it might as well be “Ubi Iuvenēs Iactūs Eunt Morior,” or (if my high school Latin isn’t failing me), “Where Young Pitchers go to Die.” Perhaps it’s due to the inherent discouragement that comes from pitching on the moon, or the lack of investment in player development. Either way, Hoffman’s tenure with the Rockies started innocently enough. He tossed 118.2 innings of 4.02 ERA, 4.13 FIP ball — with a 24.2% K rate to boot — in the notoriously offense-heavy Pacific Coast League in just his second pro season (2016), earning him his first taste of the majors. But as most pitchers arriving on other planets do, the right-hander struggled to the tune of a 4.88 ERA and 6.27 FIP in 31.1 innings spread over eight appearances (six starts).

Over the next four seasons, Hoffman split his time between Triple-A and the majors. He received extended looks in the big league rotation in 2017 and 2019, but he floundered both times. Overall, he tossed 230.2 innings for Colorado’s big league club with a 6.40 ERA and 5.58 FIP, and he didn’t even crack a 2:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. To make matters worse, after that stellar Triple-A debut in 2016, he pitched to a 5.87 ERA and 4.77 FIP in 243.2 innings in the minors (all but three frames at the highest level) from 2017-19. But the strikeout potential was still there; he also K’ed 23.1% of the hitters he faced in the minors during that time. Read the rest of this entry »

Strength up the middle is important to any contender, but with so many teams still in the hunt for a playoff spot, it’s no surprise some of them are have some weak spots. Perhaps it’s easier for a team to convince itself that the metrics aren’t capturing the entirety of a weak-hitting player’s defense if they’re playing a premium position, which seems to be the case at both catcher and center fielder.

While still focusing on teams 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 — this year I have 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 at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. Interestingly enough, two of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for right field also make the list for left field: one because it’s far below, and the other because it’s right on the line. I’m listing the capsules in order of their left field rankings first while noting those two crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 1 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye upon. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are through July 26, but team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 27. Read the rest of this entry »