Jonah Cox had never set foot in Wrigley Field prior to June 5th of this season. It turned out to be a day he won’t soon forget. Six games into his MLB career, the 25-year-old San Francisco Giants outfielder went 3-for-3 and left the yard for the first time at baseball’s highest level. In front of an announced crowd of 39,060, the visitors ran roughshod over the Chicago Cubs by a count of 18-3.
His initial impression of the Friendly Confines?
“It’s one of those stadiums you see in movies, like Rookie of the Year, so when you walk out there it’s like ‘Oh my gosh,’” the Colorado native told me earlier this week. “Knowing the history and the fanbase, it’s just a really cool place to play.”
“Oh man, the ball was flying,” Cox went on to say of the contest, which featured eight home runs, seven of them by the Giants, “It was a ton of fun watching guys swing and have so much success. Then I got the call to come in and face Hoby Milner, the lefty [in the sixth inning with the Giants leading 9-0]. I was excited to get in there, and one thing led to another.”
Did it ever. The rookie recorded his second hit of the game — and just his third in the majors — in that same inning, which ended with the Giants on top 16-0. Then came the top of the ninth. With Cubs catcher Carson Kelly toeing the rubber, Cox cleared the ivy. Read the rest of this entry »
I say this with nothing but charity in my heart: It’s generally not a good sign when your team has a load-bearing Derek Hill. When the Phillies traded for Hill in June, he was arguably less valuable than the international bonus money they picked up in the same deal.
Hill is a career fifth outfielder with a strikeout rate (31.5% in 806 career plate appearances) that would make almost any hitter unplayable, especially a hitter with a career .281 on-base percentage and a career .132 ISO. But he can run, he can play center field, and he can hit lefties a bit. Best of all — and again, I’m not trying to be unkind here — Hill could not have dreamed up a scenario in which the bar for success was lower. Read the rest of this entry »
Even by the standards of his recent, injury-marred seasons, Max Scherzer’s 2026 campaign has been a rough one. The 42-year-old righty has made two trips to the injured list, and through the end of July had taken just seven starts and allowed more than a run per inning. Even on a Blue Jays team destined to be retooled ahead of the trade deadline, he was clearly in no shape to be any contender’s hired gun. Nonetheless, Scherzer’s last two starts have been bright spots, and on Saturday evening, he notched career strikeout 3,516, officially moving him into the all-time top 10.
Scherzer wasn’t the only pitcher who reached a strikeout milestone this weekend. Aaron Nola, who started for the Phillies opposite Scherzer at Citizens Bank Park, collected his 2,000th career strikeout. Elsewhere, in a matchup that pitted the third- and fourth-ranked pitchers on the active strikeouts leaderboard, namely Chris Sale and Gerrit Cole, the latter notched his 1,000th strikeout since joining the Yankees. Then on Sunday, Jacob Misiorowski became the first pitcher to notch his 200th strikeout of the season.
I’ll get to all of those pitchers, but first Scherzer. After holding Philadelphia scoreless through five innings while scattering three hits and striking out three, he returned for the sixth inning and faced leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber, who entered the day as the major league leader in strikeouts (172) and who on June 10 in Toronto was the victim of Scherzer’s career strikeout no. 3,500. That outing was the only major league start Scherzer took between April 24 and July 27; first he was sidelined by a combination of forearm tendinitis and left ankle inflammation, and then — after lasting just 3.1 innings against the Phillies while being tagged for five runs — a bout of back spasms. He was in much better shape on Saturday evening, and in his previous two plate appearances against Schwarber had limited the slugger to a groundout and an infield single. Read the rest of this entry »
With apologies to Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers, for my money the most eye-catching deal ahead of Monday’s trade deadline was the Red Sox acquiring Adley Rutschman in a six-player blockbuster with the Orioles. Not only did a switch-hitting All-Star catcher move from one Wild Card contender to another, but he did so within the same division — and he’s more than a rental, with one more year of arbitration eligibility before he reaches free agency. Though he’s currently on the injured list due to inflammation in his left wrist, Rutschman is reportedly nearing a rehab assignment, and once he returns, he should provide a substantial upgrade for a team whose catchers landed on my Replacement-Level Killers list a few weeks ago.
Rustchman wasn’t the only prominent catcher on the move to a contender on Monday, as the Marlins tradedLiam Hicks to the Rays, but he’s a part-time backstop whose hitting makes him a useful DH and first base option as well. While the concurrence of his being dealt illustrates that trading for a catcher on the fly in the midst of a playoff race isn’t unheard of, such moves do stand out. They’re not to be undertaken lightly because of the weighty responsibility that falls on a catcher’s shoulders in terms of quickly having to build relationships with a new pitching staff to understand repertoires, situational preferences, and interpersonal dynamics. Odds are that those newcomers are also expected to provide more offense than the catchers they replaced, because offensive slumps often spur teams to make such changes. Read the rest of this entry »
Look, the Mets should not be the focus of this article. It’s trade deadline day, and we should be talking about the contenders, not the teams disassembling themselves in order to distribute their useful pieces throughout the league. But the Mets are the day’s big sellers. They’ve gotten 3.7 WAR from their bullpen this season, and they’ve traded away Huascar Brazobán and Brooks Raley, who’ve combined to provide 49% of that WAR. They’re sending Ben Rortvedt back to the Dodgers.
And so we have to start with the Mets: The last-place, 19-games-below-.500, 0.1%-playoff-odds-down-from-79.5%-on-Opening-Day Mets. Freddy Peralta is gone. A.J. Minter is gone. Luke Weaver (who provided 30% of that bullpen WAR on his own) is gone. And the Mets are not done selling. The other names being kicked around include Clay Holmes, Luis Robert Jr., and even Francisco Alvarez. It’s not a great year for the Mets, is the point. Let’s get to the trades.
Huascar Brazobán to the White Sox, Gabe Davis and Zach Franklin to the Mets
Brazobán is, at age 36, having the best season of his career. He’ll hit arbitration next year and be under team control until 2030. Since his debut in 2022, Brazobán has always put up good enough numbers. He’s never run an ERA- above 94 or an FIP- above 100. The Mets got him from the Marlins at the deadline in 2024, and he turned into a pumpkin the rest of the way, running a 5.14 ERA and a 4.31 FIP. However, he’s been great for New York for the past two seasons.
Last year, the Mets had Brazobán effectively ditch his four-seamer, cutter, and slider, and rely solely on his sinker and changeup. It’s a great combination. The two pitches have extreme arm-side run, and they come in at 96.1 mph and 90.7 mph, respectively. He does one thing really well – throw hard pitches that bore in on the hands of right-handed batters – so they’re having him do just that one thing. Over the past two years, righties have a .231 wOBA against Brazobán. Among the 219 pitchers who have faced at least 250 righties in the past year, that’s the fourth-lowest wOBA. The White Sox are getting a righty killer, which is great because this season, they’ve allowed a .320 wOBA to righties, tied for the seventh-highest mark in baseball (though we should note that their bullpen is better, running a .309 wOBA against righties, which is 19th highest).
This season, for whatever reason, Brazobán’s stuff is also working against lefties. Their wOBA against him has dropped from .379 in 2025 to .253 this year. As a result, across 46 appearances and 52 2/3 innings, he’s posted a 2.56 ERA and a 3.34 FIP. He’s on pace to set a career record for appearances, innings pitched, ERA, xERA, xFIP, and WAR. There’s definitely some luck involved here. He is running an absurd .206 BABIP and the second-lowest strand and HR/FB rates of his career. He doesn’t have great command. The Mets did not pay much for Brazobán in 2024, and he spent time in the minors in each of the last two years. Now they’re selling high and flipping him for prospects right before he starts to cost money. That may be cold comfort for Mets fans, but it’s a good trick if you can make it work. The White Sox bullpen ranks seventh by ERA and 15th by FIP this season. We should definitely expect some regression from Brazobán, but even so, he really could help them.
Now let’s talk return. The White Sox selected Davis out of Oklahoma State in the fifth round of the 2025 draft. He didn’t put up eye-popping numbers in college, but this year, the 22-year-old had a 2.63 ERA and a 2.67 FIP at High-A while striking out 30% of the batters he faced. That earned him a promotion to Double-A, where his numbers have cratered to the tune of an 8.31 ERA and a FIP to match. He hasn’t yet gotten a writeup here at FanGraphs. James Fegan slotted him in as one of the “Other Prospects of Note” in the 2025 White Sox Top Prospects list. His name was fifth under the label “Relievers Who Have a Little Something.” As such, I’m going to relay notes that Eric Longenhagen sent to me on Davis verbatim:
Coming out of his sophomore year at Oklahoma State, Davis was a big prospect and a potential first-round pick. He was a 6-foot-9 reliever who was expected to move into their rotation and, if things went well, be drafted pretty high. Instead, he struggled to throw strikes and was relegated to the bullpen again pretty quickly; his ERA was up near six for the season, and he went in the fifth round. The White Sox boldly sent him out to High-A as a starter and things went well enough that he was promoted to Double-A at the end of May, where he has struggled. This is definitely an arrow up guy, though. He’s added two ticks to his fastball, sitting 96 mph, and has touched 100 as part of a four-pitch mix. None of his secondary pitches is missing bats at a great rate, whether he’ll actually throw strikes enough to remain a starter is also unclear. But for now it’s good that he’s starting to give his cutter, slider, and changeup reps that they didn’t have in the college bullpen, and we’ll see if those improve. The Mets tend to be pretty good at improving their pitching prospects, so this is an exciting (if older) dev project for them. 35+ FV.
Zach Franklin, as Eric told me, is “more of a fully baked reliever.” He’s a 27-year-old righty with a very short arm action, almost like a catcher’s. James ranked him 20th in the White Sox organization last year. This year, Franklin has a 4.37 ERA and a 5.23 FIP in Triple-A, though we should note that his xERA and xFIP are both much lower. That’s because he’s put up an absurd 22% HR/FB, allowing nearly three homers per nine innings. Franklin is giving up all those homers for a reason: More than half the time, he throws a four-seamer with a bunch of rise. It’s racks up tons of whiffs, but when batters make contact, they hit it in the air (and this year, a long, long way). He also throws a slider and a splitter, and they rack up even more whiffs than the fastball. He’s striking out nearly a third of the batters he’s facing at Triple-A. But, as Eric notes, Franklin’s slider is closer to average, and he struggles to command the splitter. Still, Eric assigned Franklin a 40 FV, saying he “could come up tomorrow and be fine, definitely part of New York’s mix next year.”
I should end by mentioning that Eric told me a similar thing about New York’s return that I said about Brazobán: “It’s a good sign for the White Sox that they developed two lesser draft picks into desirable assets.” I don’t know if this is a trade where everybody wins. I worry that Brazobán could turn into a pumpkin just like he did when the Mets traded for him in 2024, but this is a trade involving a trio of players whose organizations have helped them find a new gear.
Brooks Raley to the Phillies, Luke Gabrysh and John Spikerman to the Mets
After four years with the Mets, Raley is bound for his sixth big league team. It would be hard to overstate just how good he was during his time in New York. After the better part of four years – he missed nearly all of 2023 due to Tommy John surgery – he’ll end his tenure with a 2.31 ERA and a 3.08 FIP. He’s a classic sinker-slider guy, and as a 38-year-old with a fastball that averages just over 90 mph, he is also a classic crafty lefty. This year, Raley is running a 1.96 ERA that’s more than a full run below his 3.10 FIP. He’s probably not going to keep stranding nearly 80% of his baserunners, but he’s outpitched his FIP in each of the past five seasons, so even though he may be out over skis just a bit, he might not be due for a sudden crash.
Raley is just a rental, but he makes all the sense in the world for a win-now Phillies team that has really struggled against left-handed hitters. Their relievers have allowed a .338 wOBA against lefties, the fifth-highest mark in baseball this season. Raley’s .235 wOBA against lefties is now the best in the Philadelphia bullpen. José Alvarado was supposed to be Philadelphia’s premier lefty out of the ‘pen, and he’s putting up the lowest hard-hit rate of his career, but everything else has gone wrong. His overall ERA is 5.71. He’s allowed a .329 BABIP and 1.38 home runs per nine innings. Even if you believe Alvarado is due for things to go his way (and his 3.39 FIP certainly makes that argument eloquently), you probably don’t want to bet your season on it, and Raley can help the Phillies right now.
Before we get into the return, I should note that Eric and I disagree on Luke Gabrysh. Specifically, Eric is only willing to put a 60 grade on his name. That’s alright; I don’t mind being the high man. Gabrysh is a 23-year-old righty whom the Phillies selected out of Saint Joseph’s in the 15th round of the 2024 draft. He’s posted a 5.14 ERA and a 5.22 FIP at High-A this season despite striking out 29% of the batters he’s faced. That’s because he’s also walking 11% of them and allowing homers to 4% of them. Gabrysh hasn’t made one of our Phillies top prospects list yet, so as we haven’t written him up before, here’s everything Eric told me about him:
Gabrysh is sitting 95-97 as a starter but ceding hard contact more than you’d think given how hard he throws. His fastball simply lacks movement often enough that it’s hittable. He currently has a cutter and slider that aren’t all that well demarcated, but he can really spin both of them. Another likely reliever, though there’s a little more variance here than Davis/Franklin because of the spin element, which is just better than either of that more-proximate-to-the-bigs duo two can offer.
John Spikerman – and here Eric and I agree: 70-grade name – came in at no. 28 on last year’s Phillies list but didn’t earn a ranking on this year’s. “Spikerman was once a center field prospect with strikeout issues,” Eric wrote, “and is now a corner outfield prospect with strikeout issues after spending the majority of his 2025 time in right.” The 23-year-old switch-hitter is running a 116 wRC+ in High-A this season, but is doing it in odd fashion. He’s dropped his strikeout rate to just under 23% and raised his walk rate to just under 20%. He has no home runs. He’s also dealt with injuries the last couple years. He played in just 62 games last year and is currently at 32 this year. Maybe the Mets think he’ll show something more when he gets healthy, but Eric has him as a fifth-outfielder type with a hit tool that might not scrape average.
In all, Spikerman seems like a flyer, while Gabrysh is a bit of a project. Maybe the Mets believe in his ability to spin the ball and figure they can help him find a fastball, or maybe they think he can focus on the cutter. Regardless, in Raley, the Phillies are getting a proven rental who can definitely help them down the stretch.
Ben Rortvedt to the Dodgers, Chayce McDermott to the Mets
Technically, this is a trade of minor leaguers, but both of these players have seen the majors often enough. You could be forgiven for not knowing that Rortvedt had ever left the Dodgers. He played well enough down the stretch for them last year, and not only did he appear during their World Series run, he batted .429 in his four postseason games. In fact, he’s had quite a journey, and I’m just going to quote from MLB Trade Rumors’ Steve Adams here because I don’t have the heart to break it down myself:
The Dodgers clearly like Rortvedt as a depth catcher…The Dodgers tried to keep him around as a depth option for 2026. Shortly after the 2025 season ended, they signed Rortvedt to a $1.25MM deal to avoid arbitration and then put him on waivers, hoping he would clear and stick around as non-roster depth.
However, that plan didn’t work, as the Reds claimed him. The Reds put him back on waivers in February and the Dodgers re-claimed him. When they tried again to get him though waivers shortly thereafter, the Mets claimed him. The Mets were then able to get him through the wire unclaimed around Opening Day.
You could argue that few players have ever known with such fine precision exactly how much their club really values them. The Dodgers liked Rortvedt enough to give him more than a million bucks but not enough to put him on the 40-man roster and avoid risking losing him off waivers twice. The Mets clearly found their affection for Rortvedt limited as well. With Alvarez, Luis Torrens, and Hayden Senger in front of him on the depth chart (and the recently claimed Shawn Ross somewhere in the mix), there wasn’t much room for Rortvedt. He’s put up an 86 wRC+ in Triple-A – better than Senger – but this is pretty much found money for the Mets. They pick up a spare catcher off waivers, wait six months, then trade him back to the team that waived him in the first place. It’s not the kind of move you’d expect from a team that started the season with World Series aspirations, but it is the kind of move you’d expect from a team that’s nearly 20 games under .500.
The Dodgers would like Rortvedt back because Will Smith has been out since early June with an inflamed disc in his neck and will need another three or four weeks to get back to Los Angeles. In the meantime, Dalton Rushing has played great, but his backups have been troubling. Chuckie Robinson is back in Triple-A after hitting for an .087 batting average in eight games, and Eliezer Alfonzo is batting a relatively gaudy .167. Steamer may think that Rortvedt can only hack a 70 wRC+ over the remainder of the season, but that’s a lot better than the numbers Robinson and Alfonzo have put up, and he’s got twice as much big league experience as those two combined. Still, there’s no guarantee that he’ll actually make it to Los Angeles, because the Dodgers finally have their dream scenario: They’ve got Rortvedt and they’re not required to put him on the 40-man.
A fourth-round pick by the Astros in 2021, the 27-year-old McDermott was a top 100(ish) prospect as recently as last year. He came in at 109 with a 50 FV on last year’s post-spring training Top 100 list, but his limited time in the majors has been disastrous. He’s made seven appearances over the last three years, and given up at least one earned run in six of them. He now has a career 12.00 ERA and a 8.74 FIP.
The Orioles DFA’d McDermott in April, and the Dodgers picked him up. He’s made two big league appearances, but I’m more interested in his minor league numbers. He has a 4.10 ERA across 32 appearances at Triple-A for the Dodgers this season, and he’s gotten there in wild fashion. He’s striking out 36% of the batters he faces, but he’s walking 18% with a 19% HR/FB. He’s running a 36% whiff rate. He’s throwing six pitches, and five of them have whiff rates over 30% (he’s only thrown six curveballs, and nobody’s swung at one yet). I don’t know how to square that with the fact that in his brief time in the majors, he hardly whiffed or struck out anybody.
McDermott is a lefty who averages 96 mph on his fastball, but the pitch is allowing a .401 wOBA in Triple-A this season. It does not appear to have a great shape. Moreover, he’s definitely not pitching like a reliever yet. Presumably, there’s a version of McDermott that could miss some bats in the majors, but he’d have to refine his pitch mix and start hitting the strike zone. The Dodgers have enough pitching in their system that a project like this isn’t worth their time, at least not when they can get another crack at Rortvedt.
Put it all together, and in these three trades, the Mets have snagged four pitchers and an outfielder. With the exception of Franklin, all of those players represent a project of some sort. Davis touches 100, but he’ll have to refine his command and work on his secondaries. Gabrysh has velocity too, but his fastball lacks shape. Spikerman’s hit tool is suspect, and he might not stay in center. McDermott also lacks control and needs to either figure out his fastball or find a new approach. If there’s a takeaway here, it’s that the Mets are betting on their pitching development machine to keep on humming. Stay tuned for more Mets sales.
Exercising your brain via puzzles and brain teasers is a good way to stay sharp. Studies repeatedly show that solving difficult problems and applying critical reasoning skills build patterns and help fight off some of the effects of aging. So congratulations to me and to the Phillies front office – and to you, since you’re reading this article. Philadelphia acquired Luis Arraez in a deadline deal on Monday, and now we all have to wrack our brains around where the team is going to play him.
The full trade, as reported by Bob Nightengale: The Giants send Arraez and reliever Caleb Kilian to the Phillies in exchange for pitchers Ramon Marquez and Marty Gair. The main attraction in this foursome is Arraez, who has rejuvenated his career in a Giants uniform after a few years in the wilderness. He signed with the Giants because they were one of the few teams who wanted him to play second base, as opposed to first base, the spot where he’d spent most of his time in recent years. That experiment has gone exceedingly well, and Arraez has also recaptured some of his offensive spark. The result is his best season, as measured by WAR, with two months left to go.
His appeal to the Phillies is straightforward at a base level: They need to add some good hitters, basically. Their lineup has a lot of big names, but it also has a depth issue. Prior to the Arraez trade, five of their everyday starters had below-average offensive lines on the season, and that doesn’t count Bryan De La Cruz, who has hit well in eight games with the team. Philadelphia is on course to score its fewest runs per game (by a lot) since before Bryce Harper signed with the team in 2019; in other words, this is the worst Phillies offense of the current era. Read the rest of this entry »
As August 3 nears, we are taking a fresh look at the farm systems of some of the clubs we expect to be buyers at the trade deadline. These teams are both contending for a playoff berth and in position to make a buyer’s-style trade for a star big leaguer, the kind that will likely require parting with a top farmhand or two. Today, I’m covering the Philadelphia Phillies.
In tandem with an evaluation of the team’s needs and deadline posture, I’ve updated Philly’s prospect list to account for graduations, incorporate the team’s new draftees, and reflect developments on the farm. The Phillies have a top-heavy system with a few key, arrow-up pitching prospects. Read the rest of this entry »
In years past, I’ve generally addressed the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in one corner outfield spot or the other within the same post, but this year’s batch of right fielders is disproportionately large, mandating a separate entry that led me to combine the left and center field lists instead. There’s still some crossover between most teams’ pools of right fielders and the positions I covered in the previous post, with a couple teams from this group landing on both lists. As they look to upgrade, there’s some fluidity as well, with teams willing to test the defensive limitations of their outfielders in order to shoehorn better bats into the lineup.
While still focusing on clubs 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), I’ve 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 the club here because its performance is worth a look.
As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly within the context of the rest of a team’s roster. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 3 trade deadline, but these are ones to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »
Having gone around the horn during the first three entries of this series, it’s time to turn to the outfield. In a break from tradition, instead of looking at the teams with trouble at either corner in one fell swoop, this time I’m addressing the ones receiving less-than-acceptable production from their left and center fielders. Right fielders will get a standalone list in order to keep the length of these articles manageable. There’s still some crossover between today’s positions and their respective lists, with two contenders double-dipping.
While still focusing on clubs 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), I’ve 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 is worth a look.
As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly within the context of the rest of a team’s roster. The capsules are listed in order of their left field rankings first, while noting those crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 3 trade deadline, but these are ones to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »
Fully appreciating what Phillies DH Kyle Schwarber is and does as a baseball player is harder than you’d think given that he really only does one thing.
Namely, this:
Obviously, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s more accurate to say that Schwarber is a distinct brand of a three-true-outcomes hitter. For his career, 49.4% of his plate appearances have ended in a strikeout, a walk, or a home run. But even among three-true-outcomes players, Schwarber is very homer-forward. Round-trippers make up a high ratio of his production, particularly among his peers who also own a batting average that hovers right around the leaguewide mark. Looking at qualified player-seasons where at least 49% of plate appearances ended in one of the three true outcomes and the player batted .255 or lower, Schwarber has three that rank in the top 10 in terms of the percentage of three true outcomes that were homers. Among that same subset of player-seasons, Schwarber has two that rank in the top six in terms of home runs per plate appearance (2025 and 2026) and four in the top 25 by home runs per hit (2022, 2023, 2025, and 2026). Read the rest of this entry »
