At best, the Rays (54-52) and Cubs (51-56) are on the outskirts of their leagues’ respective Wild Card races, and while both have been busy ahead of the July 30 trade deadline, they’re geared towards improving for down the road rather than this season. On Sunday, the two teams came together for a swap of club-controlled third basemen, with Isaac Paredes heading to Chicago and Christopher Morel to Tampa Bay along with a pair of pitching prospects, righties Hunter Bigge and Ty Johnson.
The 25-year-old Paredes is no stranger to the Cubs, as they signed him out of Mexico for an $800,000 bonus in July 2015, then traded him to Tigers on July 31, 2017 — when he was still in A-ball — alongside Jeimer Candelario in exchange for Alex Avila and Justin Wilson. Since being dealt to the Rays in April 2022, he’s developed into an effective middle-of-the-lineup hitter. After receiving down-ballot MVP support for his 31-homer, .250/.352/.488 (137 wRC+) performance last year, he made his first All-Star team this year, and is currently hitting .245/.357/.435 (130 wRC+) with 16 homers.
Despite that output, Paredes does not hit the ball very hard. His 85-mph average exit velocity ranks in just the fourth percentile, while his 26.1% hard-hit rate is in the fifth percentile; his 5.4% barrel rate is in the 26th percentile. But Paredes excels at pulling fly balls, and particularly at depositing them into the left field corner, which at Tropicana Field is closer to home plate (315 feet) than any current ballpark, since balls hit to Fenway Park’s Green Monster (310 feet away but with a 37-foot high wall) and Minute Maid’s Crawford Boxes (315 feet away with a 21-foot high wall) both require greater elevation to get out. Entering Sunday, Paredes’ 46 pulled fly balls tied him with Anthony Santander for the major league lead, with all 16 of his homers coming via that route. Read the rest of this entry »
In the abstract, you can never have too much pitching, but managing 26- and 40-man rosters means dealing with practical limits instead of theoretical ones. Last Monday, in the midst of a week in which they would need to call up one starting pitcher and activate two more from the injured list, the Dodgers designated James Paxton for assignment. On Friday, they dealt the 35-year-old lefty to the Red Sox — the team he pitched for last season, and rehabbed from Tommy John surgery with the year before — in exchange for infielder Moises Bolivar, a 17-year-old Venezuela native playing in the Dominican Summer League.
Dogged by so many injuries throughout his 11-year major league career that he’s never topped 29 starts or qualified for the ERA title, Paxton has at least been healthy enough to remain in a rotation all season; his 18 starts and 89.1 innings both rank third on the Dodgers. He did a solid job for Los Angeles at times, but the returns had diminished in recent weeks. After allowing just two runs over an 18-inning span from June 11–24 — lowering his ERA to 3.39, albeit with a 4.78 FIP — Paxton was rocked for nine runs and 12 hits in four innings by the Giants on June 30, beginning a 17.2-inning, 17-run spiral that included 12 walks and three homers over his final four starts in blue. With that run of runs, he finished his stint with the Dodgers with a 4.43 ERA, a 4.96 FIP, a 4.84 xERA, and 0.3 WAR.
Interestingly enough, the last of Paxton’s starts was against the Red Sox in Los Angeles last Sunday. In five innings, Paxton walked four and allowed four hits and three runs while striking out seven. Since it was his 18th start of the season, it meant that he maxed out the $7 million worth of incentives in his one-year deal on top of his $4 million base salary and $3 million signing bonus; he received $2 million for making the Opening Day roster, $1 million for being on the roster on April 15, $600,000 apiece for reaching the 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, and 16-start milestones, and then $1 million for the 18th. Thus the Red Sox are only paying the prorated share of his base salary, about $1.4 million. Read the rest of this entry »
While trades of relievers at the deadline are rarely the hottest moves featuring the best prospects, there are usually a lot of them. As the summer reaches its peak, contenders start to think about their bullpens down the stretch and beyond, and with modern bullpens seemingly as densely populated as the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s, there’s always room to add a quality arm. Let’s dig through them!
Editor’s Note: This reliever roundup doesn’t include the more recent trades for Carlos Estévez, Nick Mears, and Jason Adam. Ben Clemens will cover those moves in a separate post.)
The Arizona Diamondbacks acquired LHRP A.J. Puk from the Miami Marlins for 1B/3B Deyvison De Los Santos and OF Andrew Pintar
Don’t focus too much on the raw ERA or unimpressive walk rate when judging the merits of Arizona’s trade for A.J. Puk. Partially in response to their myriad rotation injuries in the spring, the Marlins took Puk’s attempt to get back into the rotation seriously, and he started the season there after a successful spring. I still think that was a well-founded experiment, but it didn’t pay dividends for Miami. Puk was absolutely dreadful as a starter, and it wasn’t long before he landed on the IL with shoulder fatigue. His four starts resulted in a 9.22 ERA, a 6.29 FIP, and an alarming 17 walks in 13 2/3 innings. He was moved back to the ’pen upon his return in mid-May, but the damage to his seasonal line was so significant that it still looked underwhelming at the time of the trade (4.30 ERA, 3.62 FIP, 44 IP).
As he has the last few years, Puk has dominated as a reliever; across 30 1/3 relief innings with the Marlins, he had 33 strikeouts and, perhaps most importantly, only six walks. The result was a 2.08 ERA/2.42 FIP, with batters managing a bleak .159/.204/.252 against him. The Diamondbacks are short on lefty relievers, with Joe Mantiply shouldering a very large share of the southpaw burden. Puk has historically been better against righties than Mantiply, so he can be used in more situations.
In return, the offense-starved Marlins pick up a couple of possible bats to add to their farm system. With a .325/.376/.635 and 28 homers combined at two levels in the high minors this year, Deyvison De Los Santos looks impressive at first look, but it’s important to contextualize those numbers. He’s playing in some very high offensive environments and there’s a lot of hot air to remove from those numbers to turn them into expected MLB performance. ZiPS translates his 2024 minor league performance to .263/.302/.428 in the majors and projects for wRC+ lines between 95 and 110 in the coming years with the Marlins. Now, that’s enough for the Marlins to be interested in him and chase any upside, but don’t be shocked if he’s not an offensive force.
Similarly, ZiPS translates Andrew Pintar’s season at .235/.302/.365 and doesn’t see a ton of growth from him offensively, viewing him as most likely to be a spare outfielder if he reaches the majors. I talked a bit with my colleague Eric Longenhagen about him on Friday and Eric still grades Pintar as a fifth-outfielder type, which is about how ZiPS evaluates him. Still, as with De Los Santos, Pintar’s interesting enough for a team like the Marlins to take a chance on him and give him an extended look; projections are frequently wrong, after all, by design!
The Seattle Mariners acquired RHRP Yimi García from the Toronto Blue Jays for OF Jonatan Clase and C Jacob Sharp
With the Blue Jays as short-term sellers, it’s hardly surprising to see them trade Yimi García, who is a free agent at the end of the season. His three-year, $16 million deal turned out to be a success for the Jays; he’s been worth 2.7 WAR and put up a 3.44 ERA/3.28 FIP over 163 appearances across two-plus seasons. This season has arguably been his best, as he’s striking out nearly 13 batters per nine innings. With Gregory Santos limping a bit after a knee injury – not believed to be severe – García slots in behind Andrés Muñoz in the Mariners’ bullpen pecking order. Seattle’s relief corps has been in the middle of the pack, but adding García to a group that features Muñoz, a healthy Santos, and Taylor Saucedo gives the M’s an excellent quartet of high-leverage guys, which could be crucial in what’s shaping up to be a tight AL West race.
Jonatan Clase was listed with a FV of 40 earlier this month when Eric ran down the top Mariners prospects, but with Julio Rodríguez entrenched in center field and backed up by other outfielders who can capably cover the position (namely Victor Robles, Cade Marlowe, and even, in a pinch, newly acquiredRandy Arozarena), Clase’s ability to do so was simply less valuable in Seattle. Beyond that, the team needs more thump in its lineup at this point, and that’s not Clase’s speciality. For the Jays, Kevin Kiermaier is a free agent after the season and the organization has a real lack of center field candidates anywhere near the majors. ZiPS projects Clase at .218/.291/.373 with an 84 wRC+ for 2025 but views him as an above-average defensive center fielder, suggesting that he’s at least a reasonable stopgap option or a useful role player for Toronto. Jacob Sharp has been off the radar as a prospect, a fairly small catcher who is hitting decently well, albeit as a 22-year-old in A-ball.
The New York Mets acquired RHRP Ryne Stanek from the Seattle Mariners for OF Rhylan Thomas
The Mets have an extremely unimpressive bullpen once you get past Edwin Díaz, and now that they are firmly in contention for an NL Wild Card spot this season, they are looking to improve their relief corps. Ryne Stanek hasn’t excelled in Seattle, but the veteran reliever still throws in the high-90s, is durable, and misses bats. Guys like that will always resurface. Especially after trading for García, the Mariners have better options than Stanek to pitch in high-leverage, non-save situations. But that’s not the case in Queens, and he’s a welcome addition to the bullpen.
Rhylan Thomas isn’t a high price to pay and he largely fills a similar role to the departed Clase in Seattle’s organization, though he’s a different type of player. As a high-contact hitter, Thomas may fare well in pitcher-friendly T-Mobile Park. ZiPS sees Thomas as a .263/.313/.333 hitter with plus defense in the corners in 2025.
The Tampa Bay Rays acquired RHRP Cole Sulser from the New York Mets for cash
Cole Sulser is a relative soft-tosser who relies on deception. He had a big breakout season in 2021, but after a trade to the Marlins, he struggled with his command in ’22 and had his season marred by a lat injury that landed him on the 60-day IL. A shoulder injury ruined his 2023 and he’s spent ’24 trying to rehabilitate his value in the minors for the Mets, with mixed results. This is the third time the Rays have traded for Sulser in his career, so they seem to see something in him, and given Tampa Bay’s record with random relievers, I wouldn’t be shocked if he became useful for the Rays next season.
Cash is slang for currency, which can be exchanged for goods and services. It can be vulnerable to inflation, and because of this, it doesn’t represent a stable medium of exchange in some countries. But cash also has the benefit of being very flexible.
The Chicago Cubs acquired RHRP Nate Pearson from the Toronto Blue Jays for OF Yohendrick Pinango
Nate Pearson was rightly a hot prospect back in the day, and there were good reasons to think he’d play a key role in Toronto. Both scouts (he graduated at a FV of 55 here) and projections (ZiPS was a fan) thought a lot of his abilities, but the question was how he’d hold up physically as a starter. This worry turned out to be a real issue, and for the most part since 2019, his seasons have been marred by a wide variety of nagging injuries, costing him significant development time. Pearson throws hard, but he’s still rather raw, a problem given that he turns 28 in a few weeks and he has only two years left of club control after this one — not a lot of time for a reclamation project. The Cubs have decided to take a shot at fixing him. They are short-term sellers, but if Pearson pays off, he could be a significant player for their ’pen in 2025 and ’26.
Yohendrick Pinango is rather raw as well, a corner outfielder with decent power upside who hasn’t really shown that home run pop in the minors so far. The Cubs are kind of stacked with raw, interesting outfield prospects, while the Jays are rather short of them, making Toronto a better home for Pinango. ZiPS only translates Pinango’s 2024 season to a .344 slugging percentage; he hit well in High-A, but that was as a 22-year-old in his third stint there. Like Pearson, Pinango’s a lottery ticket.
The Boston Red Sox beat the New York Yankees 9-7 on Friday night, and regardless of which team you might have been rooting for, the game was an absolute gem. The lead changed hands fives times, the 28 combined hits included four home runs — one of them a titanic 470-foot blast by Aaron Judge — and the tying runs were on base when Kenley Jansen recorded the final out for his 440th career save. Moreover, the atmosphere at a packed Fenway Park was electric throughout. It was as close to a postseason atmosphere as you will find in July.
The loss was New York’s fifth in sixth games, so I was admittedly a bit apprehensive about asking Aaron Boone a particular question prior to yesterday evening’s affair. I did so anyway. Prefacing it by relating a press box opinion that it had been as entertaining as any played at Fenway all season, I wanted to know if, as a manager, he allows himself to think about the aesthetics of a baseball game in that manner.
His answer didn’t disappoint.
“I always try to have a little appreciation for that,” Boone replied. “Especially with what we’ve been going through as a club. We’ve struggled. There are a handful of games where I’ve felt that way, like, ‘Man, this is a really good baseball game going on.’ When you come out on the bad end it kind of sucks, but you try to have that appreciation for ‘That was a really good one.’ Hopefully we can start to be on the right side of those.” Read the rest of this entry »
After the Orioles made two trades on Friday afternoon, the old-money machine has sputtered to life with 72 hours until the trade deadline. The New York Yankees have acquired center fielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the Miami Marlins in exchange for three prospects: Triple-A catcher Agustin Ramirez is the headline name, but the Marlins also get A-ball infielder Jared Serna, along with Abrahan Ramirez from the Yankees’ Complex League team.
Having a player named Jazz on the Yankees is like Christmas morning for the folks who write headlines for the New York Post. If I could have any job in mass media, it’d be writing back page headlines for… probably not literally the Post, but a tabloid with a slightly more erudite tone.
I bring up the tabloids because any conversation about Chisholm seems to end up being a conversation about the conversation about Chisholm, so let’s get that out of the way first. Read the rest of this entry »
After a somewhat slow start to this year’s trade deadline, one of the better pitchers available has a new team, with Zach Eflin heading from Tropicana Field to the land of Old Bay and Natty Boh. (That’s Baltimore, for those of you unfamiliar with properly seasoned shellfish and/or nostalgic mass-market budget lager.) Heading back to the Rays from the Orioles are three prospects, right-handed starter Jackson Baumeister, infielder Mac Horvath, and outfielder Matthew Etzel. In his second season with the Rays, Eflin has a 4.09 ERA and 3.65 FIP over 19 starts, good for 1.8 WAR.
Entering the season, the depth of Baltimore’s rotation was something of a concern. Acquiring Corbin Burnes in his walk year did a lot to alleviate the situation, and with the seventh-best ERA and 10th-best WAR in baseball, the rotation hasn’t really hindered the Orioles’ quest to win their first World Series trophy since I was just a wee cynical kindergartener. Still, despite their positive starting pitching rankings, the water has gotten pretty choppy. Both Kyle Bradish and John Means underwent Tommy John surgery in June, and Tyler Wells is out for the season after an internal brace surgery on his UCL in . Further complicating matters is the fact that Cole Irvin, a pleasant surprise in the season’s early going, had a worse June than the Soviet army in 1941. Cade Povich was decidedly mediocre in his debut and was optioned to Triple-A earlier this month, and Chayce McDermott still has command issues to iron out. The team has good reason to expect more from those two in the future, but that future isn’t going arrive this week, and the team needed a bit more certainty in the rotation behind Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez. Read the rest of this entry »
I updated the Top 100 Prospects list today. This post goes through the pitchers and why they stack the way they do. Here’s a link directly to the list, and here’s a link to the post with a little more detail regarding farm system and prospect stuff and the trade deadline. It might be best for you to open a second tab and follow along, so here are the Top 100 pitchers isolated away from the bats. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Count me among those who worried that, with about 12 teams in the National League playoff hunt in the week before the trade deadline, there might not be enough sellers to kickstart a trade market. Well, the Philadelphia Phillies — who have the best record in baseball — and the Baltimore Orioles — who are tied for the best record in the American League — have come together and said, “To heck with all that.”
The Orioles are sending outfielder Austin Hays north in exchange for reliever Seranthony Domínguez and outfielder Cristian Pache. This being a transaction between Baltimore and Philadelphia, I assume there’s a quantity of Old Bay changing hands in the deal, but how much is as yet unspecified.
An exchange of three major leaguers between two first-place teams? Hallelujah, a challenge trade! Read the rest of this entry »
This has been a relatively down year for the no-hitter. Entering play yesterday, Ronel Blanco’s masterpiece during the first week of the season was the only no-no of the season, a far cry from the first half of 2021, which saw six solo no-hitters in 41 days, along with the ever-increasing number of combined efforts in the modern era. And while the rookie Blanco was the unlikely hero in baseball’s first no-hitter of 2024, it was an established star who broke the nearly four-month drought: Dylan Cease.
We haven’t written about Cease since his blockbuster trade to San Diego, so let’s check in on his debut season with the Padres. By most metrics, he’s taken a leap forward with his new team. His 32.5% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate are both the best of his career, the latter mark a huge development from someone who’s always run a walk rate in the double digits. Both PitchingBot and Pitching+ view 2024 as his finest season; his 3.03 FIP and 3.01 SIERA are also personal bests, and his 3.50 ERA sits behind only his mark in 2022, when he finished as the AL Cy Young runner-up. Read the rest of this entry »
CJ Abrams is one of the blossoming stars in today’s game. Entering play Friday, the 23-year-old shortstop who recently made his first All-Star appearance is batting .260/.333/.467 with 15 home runs, 16 stolen bases, a 122 wRC+, a .344 wOBA, and 1.9 WAR over 422 plate appearances. During the first month of what’s turned out to be his breakout season, I wrote about Abrams’ stellar offensive start. About a month-long slump followed, but he bounced back in late May and is showing that his plus-offensive profile is here to stay.
Now in his third season, Abrams is proving he can be the centerpiece that the Nationals can build around. Beyond his bat, his aggressive baserunning and speed make him one of the most dynamic young players in the game. Last year, despite his inconsistencies at the plate, Abrams was a menace on the paths. Thanks to his 28.6 ft/sec sprint speed (82nd percentile), according to Baseball Savant, he was worth +3 runs on the bases; he swiped 47 bags and had a 9.2 BsR.
This year, Abrams has been just as fast, but at least according to BsR, he is no longer a plus baserunner. (Baseball Savant says he’s been worth +1 run on the bases this year, which ranks 71st; he was no. 23 on last year’s leaderboard.) That’s because he’s been caught stealing 10 times already, with five of them coming via pickoffs, plus another pickoff that didn’t come on an attempted steal.
In 2023, Abrams went 47-for-51 on stolen base attempts. If he took off, the odds were in his favor. Pitchers weren’t exposing him for taking too big of leads or being overly aggressive. This year, his precipitous drop to 16-for-26 has been staggering. When a player who was so recently a great basestealer runs into a slump like this, it warrants a deep dive into understanding what exactly is going on. There are a few components of the steal that we have to pay attention to when trying diagnose this type of issue: the lead, the jump, and the situation. Let’s go through each piece and find out what’s gone wrong for Abrams. Here is a compilation of his pickoffs this year:
None of these look particularly great. He was either off balance or out by a good margin on almost every play. We can trace some of this back to his leads, so let’s start there. There are two main ways to take a lead against a lefty if you are thinking about attempting to steal second. You can take a normal 12-foot lead like Abrams did against Sean Manaea and then run on the pitcher’s first movement (as soon as the pitcher lifts his leg). Or, you can take a larger, one-way lead to possibly draw a throw over and get a feel for the pitcher’s pickoff move.
For the first one, you want to stay close enough to the bag so the pitcher doesn’t pick you off, but you want to get far enough out there that you have a good chance to be safe at second even if he does throw over; as soon as the pitcher lifts his leg, you break for second. For the one-way lead, you are an extra step or two toward second, but you are not attempting to steal on the upcoming pitch. Instead, you put all your weight on your left foot, toward first base, so you can dive back safely if the pitcher attempts to pick you off. If the pitcher doesn’t throw over, you are timing up his delivery so you can get a better jump if you decide to steal later. That doesn’t appear to be what Abrams was doing in the video above. All three times he has been picked off by a lefty this season have come early in the count, twice on the second pitch of the plate appearance and once on the first pitch.
In the 1-0 count against Manaea, Abrams took a standard 12-foot lead. He attempted to go on first movement but realized he would’ve been dead to rights, so he hesitated into shuffles instead. He should have just kept going and forced Pete Alonso to make a play. This was the most obvious mental mistake of the three. Against left-handers Kirby Snead and Alex Vesia, Abrams went on first movement, but because each pitcher expected him to go and was well-prepared to throw over, the defense caught him easily. As a pitcher, you know Abrams is an aggressive runner, but why in these two cases was it so easy? Well, this is a good time to point to Abrams’ tendencies.
Eight of his 16 swipes this season came on the first pitch, and of his six pickoffs, four were on the first pitch. If you’re a pitcher looking to control Abrams’ aggression, do it early. For lefties, it’s even easier to execute because you’re facing him as he leads off first. This goes back to the situational aspect I brought up before. Pitchers are smart, and these are the exact types of tidbits they become aware of as they prep for a good basestealer. Combine the early counts with pitchers being more willing to throw over if they haven’t yet used their allotted disengagements, and you have tough recipe for success. A potential solution here is for Abrams to wait for deeper counts before trying to steal.
The right-handed pitchers in these clips are equally prepared for Abrams to run early. He often uses the vault lead against righties. As a reminder, the vault lead is when you take your primary lead at about nine or 10 feet instead of 12. You take your same athletic stance and shuffle about 2-3 feet just as the pitcher lifts his leg. The momentum from your vault helps you accelerate into your sprint quicker than you would with a traditional, static lead, albeit with risks. The key to a successful vault lead is not the size of your shuffle; it’s your timing. If you venture too far out before or after the shuffle, or you mistime your vault and are in the air when the pitcher disengages to throw over, you risk getting picked off.
At times this season, Abrams has made both mistakes on his vault leads: Either his primary leads or his shuffles are too large. The vault lead is more technical than physical, based more on mechanics than reflexes and pure speed. Abrams is fast enough and reacts quick enough to steal bases with a traditional lead against favorable matchups, so if I were him, I would temporarily abandon the vault lead and work on getting the fundamentals down again before bringing it back in games.
Before letting you go, I also want to look at the plays on which Abrams was thrown out by a catcher to see if these caught stealings were because of bad decisions, poor jumps, or good defense. Here is a quick reel:
Off the rip, there are three plays that stick out. If you’re going to attempt steals against Gabriel Moreno and Patrick Bailey – perhaps the two best throwers in the sport – you have to pick your spots wisely. In the Arizona game, the Nationals were up two runs and the count was 0-2, providing a good opportunity to run and try to avoid a double play; against the Giants, my guess is he wanted to get into scoring position with two outs. These are valid enough reasons to run despite the poor matchups and are not comparable to the pickoff mistakes.
In the game against the Red Sox, righty Brayan Bello, who has an extremely quick slide step, was on the bump. Even runners who are faster than Abrams would have trouble reaching second safely when a pitcher delivers a 96-mph heater in the middle of the zone on a slide step. And perhaps not surprisingly, this came on the first pitch of the at-bat.
On the first play in the clip, against the Rockies, Abrams attempted to swipe third with a left-handed batter up. Even without seeing the quality of the lead that Abrams took, this was a bad decision. Dakota Hudson never took his eye off of Abrams before he delivered his pitch, making it much more difficult for him to get a good jump. On top of that, catchers love when this happens because with a lefty batting they have a clear throwing lane to third base; when righties are hitting, catchers have a more difficult play because they need to step back and around the batter before firing. Even with an inaccurate throw from catcher Jacob Stallings, Abrams was canned.
Abrams is an aggressive runner. Without his aggressions, he wouldn’t be able to steal nearly 50 bases in a season like he did last year. This isn’t something you want to take away from him. However, he does need to learn from these mistakes so he can use his speed and aggression more effectively. Most of these pickoffs and unsuccessful steals resulted from some a combination of being predictable and getting too jumpy. The good news is he is talented enough to make the necessary adjustments. Once that happens, we’ll get to see a much more complete version of Abrams, one who can swipe 40 bags at a high clip and pepper the gaps with line drives.
