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.

With just four (!!!) days to go until the July 30 trade deadline, let’s round up some more news and developments from the last few days and discuss how these nuggets might affect what happens over the next 96-plus hours. Here’s the latest:

Miller Trade Could Be off the Table Following Injury

All-Star closer Mason Miller, the most tantalizing reliever on the market this deadline season, went down with an unfortunate injury this week, making it more likely that he’ll remain with the A’s for the rest of the year.

After pitching a 1-2-3 inning on Monday night, Miller fractured the fifth metacarpal in his left hand. According to A’s manager Mark Kotsay, Miller was getting treatment when “he was reminded that he had a postgame lift to get in. Out of a little bit of frustration, he just kind of pounded his fist down on a padded training table.” Miller was placed on the IL on Thursday, and there is no timeline for his return. While this is certainly better if he hurt his pitching hand, the injury surely depresses his trade value because he won’t be pitching for at least a few weeks. As a result, Oakland would be wise not to move trade this season; he is under club control through the 2029 season, and the A’s were going to move him only if they were blown away by the return package. Now that his trade value is down, the organization would be better off holding onto him and then shopping him around in the offseason, after his suitors have seen him come back healthy. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 27, 2018, a piece titled A Conversation With Oakland Pitching Coach Scott Emerson was published here at FanGraphs. Notable about the piece is that a question I’d asked about a particular pitcher, Daniel Mengden, ended up segueing into a variety of related topics. As I noted at the time, Emerson loves discussing his craft.

Six years later, that hasn’t changed. A few days before the All-Star break, I once again sat down with Emerson at Fenway Park. I wanted to ask him about pitch counts — the night before, A’s starter JP Sears threw 114 pitches across 5 2/3 innings in Oakland’s 5-2 win over the Red Sox — and expected our chit-chat would last roughly five minutes. Not surprisingly, we talked a good bit longer. Moreover — again not a surprise — we ended up discussing not just what I’d intended, but other aspects of the art and science of pitching as well.

———

David Laurila: JP Sears threw 114 pitches last night. “What is your philosophy on starters going deep into games in terms of pitch count?

Scott Emerson: “For us last night, he had an extra day of rest, and we’re also going into the break, so he’s going to have some rest there. We wanted him to get through the sixth so we could get to [Austin] Adams, [Lucas] Erceg, and [Mason] Miller. We thought that was our best chance through their lineup.

“As for me, I like starters to go as long as they can and as hard as they can. I don’t think 114 is necessarily that high of a pitch count. I thought he was throwing the ball fine. [Mark Kotsay] and I talked about it, and [Sears] felt good about himself, so we tried to get him through [Rafael] Devers. That was the goal.”

Laurila: Generally speaking, how does a pitcher’s arm action and pitching style factor into it? Read the rest of this entry »

The Milwaukee Brewers, in recent history, tend to be a little light both on offense and in the payroll department. Which makes Christian Yelich — the team’s leader in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging, and the recipient of nearly a quarter of the team’s major league salary expenditure — a pivotal figure for the franchise. Perhaps to an extent unmatched by any other position player on a contending team. (That’d be an interesting blog for another day.)

On Tuesday, the Brewers faced a situation tailor-made for Yelich: Leading 1-0, runners on first and second, two outs, the right-handed Julian Merryweather on the mound. Milwaukee had struggled to scratch out even that one run, and just a single by Yelich would’ve given the Brewers bullpen room to relax. And yet, out of the dugout stepped the right-handed Rhys Hoskins, not Yelich. Hoskins struck out, and the Brewers quickly announced that their star left fielder was experiencing back tightness.

Oh, crap. Read the rest of this entry »

Bryan Woo wasn’t highly regarded when the Seattle Mariners selected him in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of Cal Poly. That’s understandable. The low-slot righty had a 6.36 ERA in his three collegiate seasons, including a 6.11 mark in his injury-hampered junior year. After undergoing Tommy John surgery in April 2021, he made his professional debut in ’22.

Now, the 24-year-old is showing that Seattle’s director of pitching strategy, Trent Blank, wasn’t completely out of his mind when he reportedly told members of the Mariners front office prior to the draft that “this guy would be one-one for me.” While it’s unlikely that Woo is going to be as good or better than all of the 173 players drafted ahead of him, his numbers have nonetheless been impressive. Since making his big league debut in July 2023, he has a 3.60 ERA and a 3.96 FIP over 137 1/3 innings across his 28 starts with the Mariners. In 10 outings this year, he is 4-1 with a 2.54 ERA and a 3.25 FIP. It’s worth noting that this success hasn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Including four rehab outings this year, Woo logged a 2.97 ERA and 162 strikeouts over 115 innings as a minor leaguer.

Woo brought up his backstory when I asked him how he’s developed as pitcher.

“Going through the draft-and-scouting process, I feel like a lot of it was based on my potential,” Woo told me when the Mariners played in Cleveland last month. “I didn’t have great results at the time. It was based off of, ‘He could be this. It looks like he’s developing into that.’ For me, it was about believing that I could get there, that I could continue to get better. That’s kind of the story. I wasn’t too well-known. If you look at in on paper, it was never, ‘This guy is really good.’ The numbers never really showed that I was.”

Not surprisingly, Woo also brought up the fact that he’d been injured when he was drafted, and how that made for a lot of uncertainty. As he put it, “I didn’t quite know what was going to happen. It could have been a little higher. I could have gone a lot lower. I really wasn’t sure.”

He did know that his repertoire needed both refinement and enhancement. The Oakland native had a mid-90s four-seam fastball when healthy but nothing else to write home about. His slider, which he described as having been “OK,” was a pitch he’d throw here and there. He also had a changeup, but that mostly sat in his back pocket.

Developing a second heater has been especially impactful for him. He added a two-seamer to his arsenal last year while toeing the rubber for the Arkansas Travelers.

“Last year, before I got called up, our pitching coordinator came down to Double-A, where I was at,” Woo said. “He sat in on one of my bullpens and said, ‘Just try it.’ I was having a lot of high pitch count games — I wasn’t getting many quick outs — and he said that it could be a tool to use to get some quicker outs, some weaker contact. A lot of my game was strikeouts and fly balls. There weren’t many efficient outs, I guess you could say. So, we tried the two and it has progressed from there.”

So far this season, Woo has thrown 51.4% four-seamers and 27.2% two-seamers, as well as 7.2% changeups, 7.1% sweepers, and 7.0% sliders. The last of that mix, according to the righty, acts more like a gyro when he throws it low, and more like a cutter when he throws it toward the top of the zone. His circle changeup is a pitch he described as having “a little less vertical and a little bit more horizontal, as well as little bit slower, than my sinker.” Asked which of his off-speed pitches he sees as his main secondary offering going forward, he said that he’s satisfied with the progress of all three and wouldn’t take one over the other.

As for his two fastballs, the 6-foot-2 Woo wasn’t inclined to pick between them either. Instead of choosing favorites, he described why he’s had success with his heaters despite their relatively unimpressive metrics.

“Neither one plays super high metrically; the vertical and horizontal movement aren’t anything crazy,” Woo said. “I think it’s just my slot, kind of how the ball comes out, that makes them a little bit different.”

The slot is indeed different. As Pitcher List’s Jack Foley explained last summer, “At 4’11” off the ground, Woo has a release height a full foot below the average.”

Woo told me that he was more over the top in high school, only to have his arm “kind of lower on its own throughout college, post-surgery, and pro ball.” He claimed to have never purposefully dropped it down, but rather has just continued to throw in a way that feels most comfortable. Not so comfortable are opposing batters. They have just a .220 xBA and a 2.7% barrel rate against the low-slot righty this season. When healthy — he missed the first month with elbow inflammation and later was on the shelf for three weeks with a hamstring strain — Woo is hard to square up.

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.

With just seven days to go until the July 30 trade deadline, let’s round up some news and developments from the last few days and discuss how these nuggets might affect what happens over the next week. Here’s what’s new:

The Mariners Blow Their AL West Lead

Remember when the Mariners had a 10-game lead in the AL West at the end of play on June 18? Well, they surely do, and not fondly, now that it’s gone. They salvaged Sunday’s series finale against the Astros to avoid the sweep and enter the new week in a virtual tie for first, but it took just 24 games for them to blow that double-digit lead. That’s the quickest that any MLB team has ever lost a 10-game lead in its division standings.

Anyone who’s watched even a small handful of Mariners games can tell you that the offense has been the big issue for the team. Potentially making matters worse: Julio Rodríguez was removed from Sunday’s game after twisting his right ankle while leaping for a ball against the wall in center field. X-rays came back negative, and after undergoing an MRI on Monday, he’s listed as day-to-day with a mild ankle sprain. Then, in Monday’s 3-1 loss to the Angels, shortstop J.P. Crawford fractured his right pinky finger when he was hit by a pitch in the first inning. It was announced after the game that Crawford will be placed on the IL; there is no timetable for his return. Meanwhile, the Mariners placed first baseman Ty France on waivers. Though he can continue to play while he’s on waivers, he was not in the lineup Monday, and after the game he was seen cleaning out his locker, an indication that even if he clears waivers, he is not returning to Seattle.

Also not helping this offense is its home ballpark: T-Mobile Park is the most pitcher-friendly park in the league. But even by park-adjusted stats, Seattle’s offense has been quite poor; only the Pirates have a worse wRC+ among the teams with a winning percentage of at least .500.

The Mariners are still clearly on the buying side of teams entering the deadline, but their playoff hopes largely rest on winning the division outright; entering Monday, our Depth Charts projects them to have a 49.8% chance to make the playoffs and 39.6% odds to win the AL West. Back on June 25, about a weak after Seattle’s high-water mark in the standings, I wrote about the team’s anemic offense and some of the players who could help improve the lineup if the Mariners were to acquire them in a trade. All of those hitters remain with their same clubs, and Seattle’s evaporated division lead should provide the team with even more incentive to add as many impact bats as possible. The Mariners should target players whose skill sets are more “T-Mobile Park proof,” but it’s hard to imagine this offense could be worse off with any of the possible upgrades that it may acquire over the next week.

James Paxton’s DFA Sets up Musical Chairs for the Dodgers

It was a little surprising to see James Paxton get designated for assignment as the Dodgers’ corresponding move to add top pitching prospect River Ryan to their roster ahead of his MLB debut on Monday, but the fact of the matter is that Paxton wasn’t going to last much longer in Los Angeles anyhow. While he’s tied with Tyler Glasnow for the team lead in starts (18), his outings were a mixed bag at best; he averaged under five innings per start and walked 12.3% of batters faced, by far a career worst.

The Paxton-for-Ryan swap is just the first of many rotation moves coming up for the Dodgers, who will welcome Glasnow back from the injured list on Wednesday and Kershaw on Thursday. The Dodgers will have to cut a reliever to make room for Kershaw, setting up a rotation with Glasnow, Kershaw, Gavin Stone, Landon Knack, and either Ryan or rookie lefty Justin Wrobleski. Alex Vesia is the only reliever who can be optioned, and he’s not going anywhere, so the team will have a tough DFA decision afoot. My guess is that Yohan Ramírez and Anthony Banda are the most vulnerable.

But that’s just the first round of musical chairs, with at least one of Walker Buehler (hip discomfort) and Bobby Miller (ineffective and banished to Triple-A) needing a spot at some point, which could leave Knack exposed to getting optioned despite his effectiveness when called upon. There’s also the trade deadline, at which point the Dodgers may well add yet another starter to the mix.

Banged-up Braves Bolstering Bats?

Max Fried and Ozzie Albies recently became the latest in a long line of Braves players to land on the injured list.

Dan Szymborski detailed the specifics of the injuries yesterday, but the upshot is this: Whit Merrifield (who, ironically, hurt his thumb taking grounders before his first game with the Braves and is currently day-to-day) and Nacho Alvarez Jr. probably aren’t enough to paper over the loss of Albies for two months, Atlanta’s strong rotation was already spread thin before Fried got hurt because Spencer Strider is out for the year and Chris Sale and Reynaldo López are often pitching on extra rest as Atlanta monitors their innings.

Fried’s injury is reportedly a best-case scenario, so maybe the Braves feel like they can get by for a month or so with guys like Dylan Dodd, Bryce Elder, AJ Smith-Shawver, and Allan Winans, but as Dan noted, losing Albies creates a not-insignificant hit to their Playoff Odds. It certainly doesn’t help matters that Matt Olson and Orlando Arcia have struggled mightily for most of the year.

Positional flexibility fits best for the Braves, who will have Michael Harris II (and almost certainly Albies) back for the playoffs. Better versions of Merrifield (guys who can slide between the infield and outfield) include Jazz Chisholm Jr., Luis Rengifo, and Amed Rosario.

The Tigers Hold the Keys

The Tigers are on a nice little run of late, but they’re a game under .500, which makes selling at the deadline all but a guarantee. The question is this, though: To what extent will they sell? Jack Flaherty is the best rental starter on the market by far, and fellow pending free agents Mark Canha and Gio Urshela should follow him out the door to make way for younger bats auditioning for roles next year. Andrew Chafin and Shelby Miller, who have club options for 2025, could be on the move as well if the Tigers don’t plan on having them around next season anyhow and want to avoid paying their buyouts. All those players, Flaherty especially, could return something of value, but none would alter the franchise even 10% as much as would a Tarik Skubal trade.

The Dodgers and Orioles are reportedly talking to the Tigers about Skubal, and while it would be shocking to see Detroit trade the best lefty starter in baseball when he has over two years left before he’s scheduled to reach free agency, it’s still worth considering the possibility. Skubal comes with as much club control as the White Sox’ Garrett Crochet, who is far likelier to be traded, and it stands to reason that Skubal would fetch a significantly better return than Crochet.

There’s not a right answer for what the Tigers should do with Skubal. Really, the only wrong answer would be getting an unworthy return package for him because they traded him for the sake of trading him. For this reason, the Tigers are most likely going to let suitors come to them with their best offers for Skubal, and they’ll trade him only if one of them is too good to turn down.

Editor’s Note, 9:37 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include the latest information about the Mariners’ injuries and Ty France.

The number of Atlanta Braves players on the injured list has reached double digits after two of their core players, starting pitcher Max Fried and second baseman Ozzie Albies, went down over the weekend. Fried had a 3.08 ERA/3.71 FIP across 108 innings for the Braves before landing on the IL with neuritis in his left forearm, which first flared up while he was warming up for his All-Star Game appearance. In Atlanta’s 6-2 loss to the Cardinals on Sunday, Albies broke his wrist when his glove hand collided with a sliding Michael Siani on a stolen base attempt; the second baseman is expected to be out for nearly the rest of the regular season.

To replace Fried and Albies on the roster, the Braves recalled lefty Dylan Dodd and shortstop Nacho Alvarez Jr. from Triple-A Gwinnett and signed veteran 2B/OF Whit Merrifield to a major league contract.

Ozzie Albies today underwent X-rays that revealed a left wrist fracture. He is expected to miss approximately eight weeks.

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) July 21, 2024

After missing a good chunk of last year due to forearm pain, the 30-year-old Fried stumbled in his first two starts of this season but has been dominant since then. He’d also stayed healthy through the first half of the season, which was especially crucial for the Braves given the early-season loss of righty Spencer Strider to Tommy John surgery. The silver lining here – important since any mention of a pitcher’s having forearm pain justifiably will send fans into a panicked binge of one of their vices – is that there is no structural damage in his pitching arm and he will not require surgery. Instead, the Braves are choosing to be cautious with Fried because neuritis in the forearm can be related to an underlying problem with the UCL. Fried has already had Tommy John surgery once, about a decade ago when he was still a Padres prospect. Neither the Braves nor Fried have offered a timetable for his return, but Fried was optimistic that this would be a short-term issue. Per The Athletic’s David O’Brien:

“Everything structurally looks great, just a little irritated sensory nerve,” Fried said, “not one of the major muscle-functioning nerves. … Just going to let it calm down, and (I’m) hoping to be back soon.”

That there was no mention of ulnar nerve transposition surgery, which would have kept Fried out for months, has to be considered a good sign. Or, again, at least a less bad one.

After getting off to a hot start in April, Albies has struggled in recent months, and has hit just .235/.285/.376 since the end of April. He may be having arguably the worst year his career, but Atlanta was hopeful that he could return to form over the final two and a half months of the season. Losing even this lesser version of Albies lowers the ceiling of this underperforming offense, which ranks 11th among the 15 NL teams in runs scored.

Atlanta may be punchless, but it’s not witless – or should I say Whitless – as the team quickly signed Merrifield to a major league contract. Merrifield’s peak years with the Royals are long behind him at this point, and he was only available for the Braves because the Phillies released him over a week ago after he’d batted .199/.277/.295 (65 wRC+) across 174 plate appearances in a utility role. The projection systems are not bullish on Merrifield’s performance the rest of the season; Steamer expects Merrifield to post a .250/.303/.362 line over the final months of the year while ZiPS has him slightly worse, at .244/.293/.354. That said, the Braves simply don’t have any good in-house options to turn to instead. I ran the projections for every player at Triple-A or Double-A for Atlanta who has played at least three games at second base this year. I’m also including Alvarez, who has not played second base professionally but appears to be the frontrunner to replace Albies.

If ZiPS is correct, the Braves appear to have identified Alvarez as their best short-term option at second base, with Merrifield filling a utility role and serving as the best second-base Plan B.

The Phillies were already overwhelming favorites to win the NL East, with ZiPS giving them an 85% chance of taking the division as of this morning if Fried and Albies had been healthy. Assuming two missed months for Albies and an average of three weeks for Fried, ZiPS drops Atlanta’s chances of running down the Phillies from 14% to 6%. Fortunately, the Braves remain in a commanding position for one of the NL Wild Card spots. These two injuries only drop their playoff probability in ZiPS from 91% to 88%, so while unwelcome, they shouldn’t cause any premature towel-throwing.

In one last bit of looking on the bright side, Atlanta has a lot more options now than it would if these injuries happened in two weeks. We’re just over a week from the trade deadline, and there are a variety of second basemen and pitchers, of varying plausibility, available. A package that included a relief arm – Atlanta is deep here – could conceivably tempt the Orioles into parting with a prospect like Connor Norby. Amed Rosario of the Rays and Isiah Kiner-Falefa of the Blue Jays have both been solid this season. I’m not sure Atlanta could successfully trade its entire farm system and get Garrett Crochet or Tarik Skubal if it wanted to, but the price of Erick Fedde ought to be more reasonable. The Braves might choose to stick with what they have and muddle through, but it’s always nice to be able to make that choice.

It says a lot about the Braves that despite all of their nasty surprises this season, they remain on a pace to win 89 games and comfortably make the playoffs. But with these two latest injuries, the team’s margin for error has been cut thinner than a nice piece of charcuterie.

I was standing in the Yankees clubhouse on July 5 after their 5-3 loss to the Red Sox when I received an angry text from my friend Andy, a huge Yankees fan. “How many years is it now that they light it up in the first half and because [sic] absolutely terrible in the second?”

I sent him back a few texts, first correcting his typo — Andy writes for a living, but considering that many of his texts are incoherent, this one wasn’t all that bad — and then answering his question about the trajectories of New York’s recent seasons. His response: “They’re just playing such ugly baseball.”

After the performance I’d just watched, which might best be described as the baseball equivalent of the poop emoji, it was hard to argue with his assessment. It was the first time in at least the last 115 years that the Yankees lost to the Red Sox at home when leading by multiple runs with two outs in the ninth inning. They made several baserunning blunders owing either to mental lapses, a lack of hustle, compromised health or some combination of the three. They botched two throws to second base, one from the catcher on a bunt attempt that probably should’ve been caught and another on a pickoff throw that sailed into center field. They allowed two two-run home runs to the bottom of Boston’s order — one in the ninth to tie the game and the other to lead off the 10th — and then failed to push across a run in the 10th with runners on the corners, nobody out, and their third, fourth, and fifth batters due up.

The loss was New York’s 14th in 18 games, and by the time the homestand ended with a 3-0 loss two nights later, the Yankees were 5-15 over a 20-game span. A week later, when they took two of three against the first-place Orioles, it was their first series victory in a month. Now, after a win Friday and two losses over the weekend, the Yankees enter this afternoon’s series finale against the Rays with a 9-20 record since June 15. Those nine wins are tied with the White Sox for the fewest in that span.

And yet, for as awful as the past five and a half weeks have been, the Yankees remain one of the best teams in baseball. At 59-42, they enter this week first in the AL Wild Card standings and just two games behind the Orioles in the division, and their Playoff Odds have fallen to 97.5%, down from 99.9% on June 14, the last night before all the losing began. Their 12.2% odds to win the World Series are the best in the American League; only the Phillies (16.1%) and Dodgers (15.3%) have a higher probability to win it all.

If you’re having a tough time making sense of this contradictory reality — that the Yankees have played terribly for over a month and remain the most likely American League team to win the pennant — you’re not alone. When I started writing this piece, I was skeptical, too. Living in New York surrounded by Yankees fans, it’s easy to understand why people like Andy are so frustrated; it’s difficult not to get caught up in the emotions of the moment, especially when that moment has spanned nearly six weeks. I also groan with cynicism when I hear manager Aaron Boone say, “It’s all right there in front of us,” because all we can see right now is a team standing amid the ruins of a season that was supposed to be different. However, on closer examination, it’s clear that the foundation of this once-promising team is still in tact, and I think the crumbled pieces from the caved in ceiling can be fixed and supported with beams borrowed, bought, or bartered from the neighbors.

To understand how the Yankees can keep the building from collapsing further, we need to figure out what exactly has gone wrong, and to do that, we should also determine what was working well. From there, we’ll look at how they can start putting their season back together and perhaps make it even better.

For the first two and a half months, this season really was different. On June 14, with a resounding 8-1 win against the Red Sox at Fenway Park, the Yankees became the first team in the majors this year to reach 50 wins, improved to a season-high 28 games over .500, and increased their odds to win the division to 76.6%. They had one of the best pitching staffs in baseball — this without reigning AL Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole, who hadn’t yet returned from the elbow injury that forced him to miss the first 83 days of the season — and their lineup, while still top heavy, was 20% better than league average. Aaron Judge (205 wRC+ at the time) and Juan Soto (188) were the two best hitters in the majors.

Of course, since then, their season has taken a turn for the worse in ways that feel all too familiar. Their potent lineup has become stagnant. Several key contributors have landed on the injured list, most notably Giancarlo Stanton, who was enjoying a resurgent season before suffering a hamstring strain the third week of June, and more recently Jose Trevino, who despite his reputation as a glove-first catcher was one of the handful of Yankees regulars who’d been above league average at the plate this season (103 wRC+). They are no longer hitting for average and they’re not slugging like they were over the first two and a half months. The only thing to improve since they started losing is their walk rate, but walks will only get you so far if you’re not getting the hits to bring those baserunners home. Oh, about running the bases — the Yankees have been the worst baserunning team in the majors all season, but now that they aren’t hitting for average or power, their ineptitude on the basepaths has turned into a much more glaring problem.

Some of these offensive woes can be attributed to injuries and players going cold at the same time, while some portion of it is probably due to players pressing as the losing persisted. Of course, some of it is just, to borrow one of Boone’s favorite clichés, “the ebbs and flows of the season.” We should expect some rebound here. This isn’t the case of Judge alone propping up an otherwise meek lineup as he did in 2022; remember, the Yankees held their own while their captain looked lost through April. That said, this offense still lacks depth.

Meanwhile, the Yankees pitching staff, which had been the bedrock of their success, has crumbled over the past four weeks. After posting the best ERA in baseball (2.90) over their 72 games through June 14, the Yankees have the second-worst ERA (5.37) during their 29-game slide, and they are the only team whose pitching staff has been below replacement level over that span.

Boone has cited a spike in home runs allowed as one of the main sources of trouble for Yankees pitchers — that the few mistakes his pitchers are making are ending up in the seats, whereas earlier in the year, they were staying in the ballpark, providing the pitchers a chance to escape the inning unscathed. And, for the most part, he is correct. Their opponents’ home run rate has increased 87.5%, from 2.4% through June 14 to 4.5% since then. But Yankees pitchers are also allowing a higher rate of non-HR hits than they did before. Their opponents recorded non-HR hits on 16.2% of their plate appearances through June 14; that rate is 19.0% since then. Meanwhile, using the same cutoff, the percentage of hits the Yankees allowed that were home runs has gone from 13.1% to 19.3%. So, yes, home runs are a big issue here, probably even the main issue, but the Yankees are also giving up more hits in general than they did before.

As the losing has continued, Boone and the players have resorted to the same keeping-the-faith approach that hasn’t worked for them before.

“Regardless of when we’re on winning streaks or when it’s like this, I think we have a really good clubhouse, staying even-keel and showing up every day,” said shortstop Anthony Volpe after that sloppy Friday night game against the Red Sox. “We trust each other, we trust ourselves. We know we’ve got everything in front of us. We play to win, we expect to win — we’re the Yankees.”

“We’re still believing,” Soto said after the Yankees’ loss to the Red Sox on July 7. “We’re still grinding every day. We still come in with the same energy. I think that’s really positive on our side.”

“Nobody likes losing,” Judge said after the Yankees lost their July 11 rubber match with the Rays. “Nobody is happy about it. We’ve just got to keep showing up, doing our thing.”

That implies that “showing up, doing our thing” is working, and well, at least right now, it isn’t. To the fans who have been through this with the Yankees before, many of these comments sound like a lack of urgency. Simply being the Yankees won’t save them from more losing, nor will the power of positive thinking.

However, Boone is right in a sense when he says, “It’s all right there in front of us.” Unlike in 2022, when the Yankees had an even better start to the season, this year they went cold before the All-Star break, so there are more games ahead of them to turn things around. More importantly, the trade deadline is still a week away, meaning GM Brian Cashman has had time to assess the flaws of the roster and determine which moves he needs to make to improve it, and he still has more time to work the phones and make something happen. Two years ago, the Yankees were 70-34 and 12 games up in the AL East entering the day of the deadline. Their fall to earth began a few hours after the deadline passed, when they suffered the first of five straight losses that kicked off a 3-14 stretch. They couldn’t swing a trade to pull them out of their rut; they had to make due with the players they had and hope they would snap out of it. By the end of the month, their division lead was cut in half, and it was down to 3.5 games after a loss on September 9. They rebounded from there and won the division, but they were gassed and overmatched by the time they faced and were swept by the Astros in the ALCS.

This time, the Yankees can look externally to address their weaknesses, and considering their willingness to splurge for one season of Soto, we should expect the front office to double down on its intent to win it all this year with a major acquisition or two. We know the Yankees need to add a productive hitter in the infield, especially at third base. All-Star Ryan McMahon, who has another three years and $44 million left on his contract after this year, would make a lot of sense, though it’s unclear if the Rockies would be willing to trade him because of that club control.

Otherwise, the trade market for third basemen has yet to solidify because there are so many teams caught in the mediocre middle. There has been some chatter about Rays All-Star and Ben Clemens’ favorite player Isaac Paredes, but considering he’s only in his first year of arbitration eligibility and therefore is affordable and controllable through the 2027 season, it seems unlikely that Tampa Bay would trade him without getting a haul of prospects in return — especially not to a divisional foe like the Yankees.

But that doesn’t mean the Yankees shouldn’t look to the AL East to improve at third base. The Blue Jays have old friend Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the hot corner. He’s signed through next season at a relatively affordable $7.5 million, and while Yankees fans might balk at trading for someone who was best suited for a utility role during his two seasons in the Bronx, they should remember that depth is crucial down the stretch and into the postseason. Beyond that, though, they should look at IKF’s stats for this season, because if he were in the Yankees lineup today, he’d be their third-most productive hitter by wRC+ (117), behind only Judge (208) and Soto (185). Kiner-Falefa also plays excellent defense and runs the bases well. The one concern here is that Kiner-Falefa is currently on the injured list with a sprained left knee. He has started doing baseball activities and is expected back late this month or in early August.

At this point, it seems unlikely the Yankees would trade Gleyber Torres, because for as much as he’s disappointed this season, there aren’t many available second basemen who’d represent an offensive improvement, especially not ones who’d be worth the cost. If they’re going to add a bat in their infield, it will almost certainly come at third.

New York could also seek to improve its offense with an upgrade in the outfield. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman has reported that the Yankees have discussed Jazz Chisholm Jr. with the Marlins. A lefty batter with power and speed, Chisholm would slide into center field, with Judge moving to left. That would likely move Verdugo to the bench upon Stanton’s return from injury (which MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reported recently is “really close”). Verdugo started the season strong but has been awful (17 wRC+) since June 15. The Yankees’ outfield defense would get worse with Chisholm, a converted middle infielder now in his second season as an everyday center fielder, but he would be an upgrade at the plate and especially on the bases. New York could also mix and match its lineup and work Chisholm in at second base to give Torres a spell against tough righties. Chisholm has two years of arbitration left after this season, and trading for him would also fill the hole at second base that the Yankees are expected to have next season; Torres is a pending free agent, and given his lackluster performance this year, it seems unlikely that the Yankees will re-sign him. Another outfielder the Yankees could (read: should) target is Jesse Winker of the Nationals, who has a 132 wRC+ this season and, as a rental, would likely come cheap.

As is the case with every contender, the Yankees need to add at least one or two relievers. Their bullpen is especially light on high-leverage lefties, so Tanner Scott of the Marlins is the obvious best fit, but the Yankees should also see what it would take to get Andrew Chafin from the Tigers. Or, if the Yankees do decide to trade with the Blue Jays for IKF, maybe they could get Toronto to throw in righty Chad Green and make it a bigger reunion.

The Yankees will be in better shape if any of these players are on their roster come July 31, but those additions on their own are not going to solve all the problems that we’ve seen over the last month. The good news is the Yankees as currently constructed are still a good team, maybe even a great one. As we can see by their place in the standings and Playoff Odds even after such a disastrous stretch, one month of “ugly baseball” doesn’t erase all that came before it.

A more-consistent arm slot related to a move back to the third base side of the rubber has contributed to Cole Ragans’s success this season. The raw stuff was obviously already there. As Ben Clemens wrote back in March, the Kansas City Royals left-hander “looks like an absolute terror on the mound.” My colleague went on to say that if he “were designing a pitcher in a laboratory, he’d look a lot like Ragans.”

When I talked to the 2024 American League All-Star on the eve of the break, he told me that going into full attack mode following last year’s oft-reported velocity jump played a huge role in his emergence as a front-line starter. As he put it, “I kind of had to teach myself that I could get away with a little more of a miss compared to when I was throwing 90-91 [mph]. I have a good arsenal in my opinion, so I can just go after hitters.”

And then there’s the work he does in the laboratory.

“I use TrackMan in my bullpens, especially with the slider and the cutter, to kind of see where I’m at,” said Ragans, whose heater is now mid-to-high 90s. “The biggest thing for me is my release points, making sure that my pitches are in a tight cluster. I want everything coming out of the same tunnel. I don’t want to be throwing a fastball from this release height, and my slider from a lower release height.” Read the rest of this entry »

At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), I have 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 at that spot 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 third full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.0 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, four are in the middle ground between 0.0 and 1.0, eight are between 1.0 and 2.0, and three are above 2.0. DHs as a group have hit .245/.321/.421 for a 109 wRC+; that last figure is up three points from last year, and seven points from the last time I did this list, via a slash line that’s virtually identical (the majors’ slugging percentage as a whole has dropped 17 points from last season).

This year, we’re seeing a greater number of teams invest more playing time in a single DH. Whereas each of the past two seasons saw three players reach the 500 plate appearance threshold as DHs, this year we’re on pace for five; similarly, 11 player are on pace to reach 400 PA as DHs, compared to eight last year. 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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Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) this week. This is a strange week for the column. The All-Star break cut into the number of games available to watch; mathematically speaking, fewer games means fewer chances for weird things to happen. I took a weekend trip and didn’t watch any MLB games on Friday or Saturday. I’m also hard at work on the upcoming trade value series, which comes out between the All-Star game and the deadline every year – check back Monday for that annual exercise’s kickoff. In any case, that means this is a hodgepodge list: some stuff from this week, sure, but also plays and series that got left out last week, and some low-level baseball to boot. Thanks, as always, to ESPN’s Zach Lowe for the format idea. And two quick programming notes: I won’t be doing my regular Monday chat or Five Things next week; instead, I’ll be doing a jumbo-sized chat Friday morning.

1. The New Derby Format
The modern swing-happy Home Run Derby has been a great success, at least as far as I’m concerned. It’s more fun to see sluggers launch as many home runs as they possibly can than it is to see them agonize over every single swing. The format wasn’t perfect, though. I’m not trying to be a grump about it – is it even possible to be a grump about the Home Run Derby? – but there was one downside to the timed-round format: not enough drama.
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