On July 26, the Seattle Mariners experienced what was perhaps the apex of their season. Down 6-0 against the Astros until the third inning, they embarked on an improbable rally that would culminate in an 11-8 victory. Let’s take some time to admire Dylan Moore and his swing, which produced the grand slam that punctuated the uphill battle:

Chills! It was a great moment, and not just for Mariners fans but for baseball in general. Who doesn’t love a cathartic underdog upset? (Well, maybe not the Astros in this moment.) But it was also a reminder of how the team had gotten to that point. Despite an ugly run differential, the Mariners had managed to squeeze out key wins throughout the season. This latest against the Astros gave them a 55-46 record. Suddenly, a Wild Card berth didn’t seem out of reach.

Two weeks later, the Mariners are still going. I had planned to write this article as early as July 24, when I tweeted about the team’s offense. In the back of my mind, I sort of assumed they’d fizzle out. But here we are, and the Mariners have a respectable 58-51 record – three games behind Oakland, and just a few more behind Boston. No team has been more clutch. Read the rest of this entry »

Bo Bichette is one of the best young hitters in the game. Just 23 years old, the Toronto Blue Jays shortstop has a .299/.345/.509 slash line to go with a 128 wRC+ and 35 home runs — 19 of them coming this season — in 795 big-league plate appearances through Tuesday’s action. Drafted 66th overall in 2016 out of a St. Petersburg high school, the 2021 American League All-Star is the son of former major-league slugger Dante Bichette.

Bichette talked hitting prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite Talks Hitting ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or more of a science?

Bo Bichette: “That’s an interesting question. I’d say it’s a combination of both, but I would lean more toward it being an art. I think hitting is more mental than anything, and science kind of equates to mechanics and all that. So I would say art.”

Laurila: Hitting analytics have obviously become a bigger part of the game…

Bichette: “Yes, but for me, no. I think the analytics are more how we’re evaluated as players. Everybody has their own things that click in their head. I haven’t really looked at the analytics all that much. The one thing is that pitchers pitch up in the zone more often, so you definitely practice hitting that pitch a little bit. But I don’t pay attention to my launch angle, exit velocity, and stuff like that.”

Laurila: Is your stroke conducive to hitting the elevated fastball? Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Emiliano Teodo, RHP, Texas Rangers
Level & Affiliate: Arizona Complex League Age: 20 Org Rank: 25 FV: 40+
Line: 3 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 2 K

Notes
Like Daniel Palencia (now of the Cubs, formerly of the A’s), Teodo signed just before the 2020 season that never happened and only popped onto the radar screen in 2021, when we actually had consistent minor league activity on the backfields. He’s been parked in the 98-101 mph range and spins in an upper-70s curveball that’s at times in excess of 3,000 rpm. Skinny and featuring a fairly violent delivery, Teodo’s projection skews toward relief, but there’s ample time to develop him because of when he signed. He’s another high-variance/upside arm in the Rangers system. Read the rest of this entry »

When you pull up the position player leaderboards since May 22, you’ll see a pair of likely MVP candidates sitting on top of the list. Shohei Ohtani leads all batters with 3.1 WAR during this period and that’s ignoring the additional 1.3 WAR the two-way star has accumulated on the mound over his last nine starts. Fernando Tatis Jr. sits behind Ohtani with Cedric Mullins rounding out the top trio (perhaps this article should have been about what Mullins has done this year). But nestled behind those three is Willy Adames with 3.1 WAR in 64 games. Why is May 22 the arbitrary time frame placed on this query? That was the day Adames made his debut for the Brewers after being traded to Milwaukee from the Rays.

On May 22, the Brewers were 22-23 and sitting behind the Cubs and Cardinals in the NL Central. Since then, they’ve had the best record in the National League at 42-21 and have built a sizable cushion in the standings ahead of their division rivals. That turnaround is due in no small part to Adames’ fantastic performance over these last two-plus months. He’s hit .295/.379/.553 for the Brewers, good for a 148 wRC+, and has played excellent defense at shortstop. With Christian Yelich still struggling to reproduce his MVP-quality production from 2018 and ‘19, Adames has taken the reins as the leading run producer in the Brewers lineup.

When you compare what Adames has accomplished in Milwaukee with what he did in Tampa Bay, it certainly appears as though the change of scenery has made the difference:

Adames has shown flashes of production like this in the past, but he’s been held back by an aggressive approach that’s led to some untenable strikeout rates. He’s taken his ability to hit for power to new levels with the Brewers, and his strikeout and walk rates have both greatly improved. We’re talking about just 268 plate appearances, but there are enough positive signs in his underlying numbers that we could be witnessing a huge breakout from Adames.

Part of that might be attributable to a literal change in his scenery. Last year, Adames tested out wearing non-prescription glasses while playing at home at Tropicana Field. He was having a really difficult time seeing the ball while playing under the lights of the domed field. “I was good on the road; I just couldn’t hit at the Trop,” Adames told Tyler Kepner of the New York Times in an interview from early July.

“After they changed the lights in ’19, it was tough for me to see the ball there. Everybody thought it was mental, but it wasn’t. I was just guessing all the time there because I couldn’t pick up the ball when I was hitting.”

His issues hitting at Tropicana Field are born out in his home/road splits while playing for the Rays.

What he was able to accomplish on the road while with Tampa looks remarkably similar to what he’s done in Milwaukee. But if he was able to see the ball better on the road, and now while he’s a member of the Brewers, that should show up in some of his underlying plate discipline metrics.

I’ve broken Adames’ career down into three buckets: his home/away splits with the Rays and these last few months with the Brewers. Four of the five metrics above stay astonishingly consistent no matter where Adames is playing. But the one that has some significant differences may be the most important. While batting at Tropicana Field, Adames’ chase rate was a touch above league average; on the road as a Ray and as a Brewer, his chase rate falls well below league average.

That tracks with the way Adames described the effect of the lighting at Tropicana Field in this interview with MLB.com:

“Whenever I was out of the Trop, I feel like I was able to recognize the spin of the ball. You could see if it was a breaking ball, changeup or whatever. At The Trop, I couldn’t pick it up.”

In other interviews, he essentially said his approach while playing in Tampa Bay was just guessing at pitches and hoping to guess correctly. Everything about his approach stayed consistent, except for his ability to recognize pitches and lay off the ones that were traveling out of the strike zone.

These issues also affected the quality of contact he made at home as a Ray. Because he was guessing at which pitches were being thrown to him, when he did make contact with a pitch, he was more prone to mishit it, resulting in poor contact quality.

All of his significant batted ball peripherals were considerably weaker while hitting at Tropicana Field. He wasn’t hitting them as hard and struggled to tap into the power he’s displayed throughout his career.

Back in March, I wrote about how Adames quietly enjoyed a power breakout last year despite some major red flags in his approach. All the gains he made in terms of contact quality last year have taken another step forward this year. His barrel rate, hard hit rate, and average exit velocity are all at career highs — and that’s even including his miserable two months to start the season. All of his batted ball peripherals are even better as a Brewer. Even more encouraging, his batted ball profile isn’t as pull heavy as it was last year. He’s spreading the ball around the field again while still hitting for tons of power. He’s still hitting the ball to left field more often than he was in 2018 and ‘19, but his pull rate has come down more than 10 points from where it was last year.

Based on his struggles in Tampa Bay to start this year, it appears as though the pressure to keep his job on the Rays, particularly with Wander Franco looming, may have affected his performance on the field. That pressure, coupled with the visual issues he’s been dealing with over the last few years, really cratered his production. Now that Adames is in Milwaukee, he’s better recognizing pitches and has adjusted his approach accordingly while continuing to build on the improved contact quality he worked on last year. We’ve seen the best version of Adames over the last two months. The Brewers have to be thrilled they’ve found their long-term solution at shortstop.

The trade deadline has come and gone, and teams are approaching the two-thirds mark of the season. With the elimination of August waiver season, clubs have little room to adjust from here. Other than the smallest of moves involving minor leaguers or unaffiliated players, rosters are what they are, and evaluators have already moved on to preparing for the offseason free agent class. In some ways, it’s a frustrating time for playoff contenders, as one can feel a bit helpless; all you can do from here on out is watch what happens. For teams clearly out of the playoff race, August and September have a different dynamic, with clubs using their last 60 games to learn about their young players. There is no greater jump in baseball than from Triple-A to the big leagues. The players are exponentially better, and there are prospects who thrive (or shrink) in ballparks with third decks, bright lights, and an army of TV cameras. In terms of the 2021 season, the teams listed below are playing out the string. But they’re also using this time to figure out which of the players on their roster can be part of their next team to play late-season games that matter.

Arizona Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks had a relatively quiet deadline, but this also wasn’t a team expected to be this bad or loaded with good players on expiring deals. It will be interesting to see if Cooper Hummel, acquired from Milwaukee in the Eduardo Escobar deal, gets some major league at-bats this year. He’s had an outstanding Triple-A campaign, with more walks than strikeouts and a decent amount of power, but he also turns 27 in November, so it’s time to get going. It’s interesting to note that Arizona tried him at third base (it was just his second game at the position as a pro) during his first week in Reno, as most scouts put him firmly in the 1B/LF category. It looks like the D-backs will initially give at-bats to another older minor league slugger in the form of Drew Ellis, with the hope that one of the pair can represent an improvement over Christian Walker, which wouldn’t be asking much. The club also needs more assurances from Pavin Smith and Daulton Varsho, who so far have both looked more like nice bench pieces than everyday players on a contending team. A remarkable 36 players have taken the mound for the Diamondbacks, but the majority of their better pitching prospects are at the lower levels, so all they can really do from here is keep rolling out a variety of Quad-A-type bullpen arms to see if any of them have potential beyond that. Read the rest of this entry »

Particularly when measured against their competitors in the NL West, the Padres did not have a very good trade deadline — or even a good July. While they added depth to their infield, outfield, and bullpen with a trio of trades, none of those were impact moves. Everything they did was overshadowed by their failure to reach the finish line on a deal for Max Scherzer that was reported as “close” by multiple reporters on Thursday night. Ultimately, though, the three-time Cy Young winner went to the division rival Dodgers in a move that turn(er)ed out to be bigger than anyone expected. Beyond that, the Padres could only watch as the Giants landed slugger Kris Bryant. And to add injuries to insult, the deadline dust had barely settled when San Diego had to place both Fernando Tatis Jr. and Chris Paddack on the Injured List on Saturday.

In his post-deadline ZiPS roundup from Monday, Dan Szymborski illustrated the summer swap meet’s impact on the Playoff Odds for each individual team. His estimates showed the Giants as the NL West’s biggest winner at the deadline, with the Dodgers winners (albeit with diminishing returns given where they started), and the Padres clear losers:

All of which is to say that the Padres hurt their chances with missed opportunities, and that was before they suffered the one-two punch of the Paddack and Tatis injuries. Chronologically, the Paddack injury came first, but as Tatis is the Padres’ marquee player, we’ll begin there. The 22-year-old shortstop once again suffered a left shoulder subluxation (partial dislocation) while sliding into third base against the Rockies on Friday night. After he singled in his first-inning plate appearance, he had headed to second on Manny Machado’s hot smash to third baseman Ryan McMahon, then lit out for third when the ball ball squirted away from McMahon while trying to transfer it to his glove. Tatis slid feet first, but in attempting to evade shortstop Brendan Rodgers‘ tag, he twisted, caught his left shoulder, and immediately grabbed his arm after being tagged out. Read the rest of this entry »

At 4 PM EST last Friday, the trade deadline closing bell rang, and when it did, those of us on the outside looking in were glued to Twitter to learn about the trades that had been completed right before the countdown clock hit zero. It usually takes a little while to learn about all the transactions that get completed in those final minutes. Plenty of players found new homes, but the surprise of the afternoon was that when the dust settled, Trevor Story was still a member of the Colorado Rockies.

The Rockies are 21 games out of first place in their division. Per our Playoff Odds (and good sense), their chances of reaching the postseason this year are a big fat zero, and have been for some time. They also play in the toughest division in baseball, with the Dodgers and Padres looking like teams that will sit at the top of the National League West standings for years to come. The Rockies need to make drastic changes in order to take on those two powerhouses (and the Giants aren’t exactly slouches), and those changes should have begun on Friday. Instead, they sat on their hands, losing a golden opportunity to kick-start a return to competitiveness for a franchise that has reached the playoffs just five times in 28 seasons and has still never won a division title.

Colorado did make one trade during deadline week, sending reliever Mychal Givens and his expiring contract to the Reds for a pair of fringe pitching prospects. But that’s not starting a re-build or, if that term strikes you as too strong, re-tooling the roster so much as it is taking care of some necessary chores. And while Givens departed, there were other players rumored to be on the move who ended up staying put. Holding on to Jon Gray is a curious decision. The team hasn’t earned the benefit of anybody’s doubt, but let’s give it to them in the case of Gray, who has publicly stated his desire to stay in Colorado. Player comfort leads to better player performance, and if they can sign him to an extension, this makes sense. The jury can still be out on that one. But Daniel Bard still being the teams’ closer on August 1 is significantly more difficult to explain. Again, there is surely some loyalty here, and the Rockies deserve some credit for getting Bard back on the mound and finding a decent late-inning option in the process, but as a free agent following the 2022 season (a season in which Colorado will almost certainly not contend), the club just squandered Bard’s peak trade value, and yet another chance to boost a farm system that is among the worst in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last month after being on hiatus due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment focuses on breaking balls and features a big-league reliever, Zack Britton, and a pair of prospects, Tim Cate and Alex Scherff.

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Zack Britton, New York Yankees

“Originally, I learned [my slider] in the minors, kind of at the same time I was learning the sinker. They taught me a slider grip, more of a four-seam grip, kind of hooking the horseshoe. It was pretty good. It always had a high swing-and-miss compared to my sinker, which had more contact. I threw it a lot as a starter, but then when I went to the bullpen I didn’t throw it as much. I just relied on the sinker.

“I started developing it more in 2018. When I came over here [to the Yankees], David Robertson was talking to me about how he threw his curveball. We were playing catch and I was interested in seeing how he gripped it. He kind of presets, so that he doesn’t really have to think about anything. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ So I started doing it on my slider.

“It actually turned my slider into more of… I guess, a slurve? They don’t really characterize it as anything. It’s 79 or 80 [mph], so it’s kind of slider velocity, but with a curveball break. It’s funky with how it sweeps. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below. I’ve moved all of the players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates. Our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday’s trade deadline was one for the ages. If you haven’t checked out all of our analysis here at FanGraphs, I highly recommend you do so. Most of this year’s swaps were of the prospects-for-free-agents-to-be variety, meaning it will take years to assess who got the most out of a trade. Hindsight is 20-20. Even when the Dodgers famously dealt Pedro Martinez for Delino DeShields, it was somewhat defensible at the time, though of course we all know how that ended up. And so in the wake of the deadline passing, I thought I would check in on how a seemingly irrelevant deal from the 2019 deadline is working out: the Angels acquisition of Max Stassi. The Angels are on life support at the moment, having dropped two of three to the Athletics over the weekend to fall below .500. Our latest projections give them a 1.1% chance to make the playoffs. But without the offensive output from Stassi over the past two months, those odds would be even lower.

Since his return from the Injured List on June 1, Stassi has been on a tear, emerging as a quality bat from an unlikely position. His 170 wRC+ is the seventh-best mark among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances over that stretch. He leads all catchers in wRC+ during that span, along with a handful of other categories, including slugging percentage.

As a catcher, he’s not getting the plethora of plate appearances that hitters at other positions get. He’s only eclipsed 200 plate appearances once, in 2018, when he played in 88 games for the Astros and hit .226/.316/.394 for an even 100 wRC+. He ended the year with 2.8 WAR mostly due to his superior skills behind the plate. In 2019, Astros sent him to the the Angels in exchange for two long-shot prospects in the aforementioned deadline deal. He’s a back-up catcher, or at least, he has been up until now. He thrived in a small sample as recently as last year when he slashed .278/.352/.533 with seven homers in just 105 plate appearances. He’s following it up with an even better campaign in 2021. So how has Stassi gone from a glove-first backstop to one of the league’s best hitting catchers? Read the rest of this entry »