The Phillies and Orioles consummated their second trade of the deadline period yesterday, as hard-throwing 29-year-old lefty Gregory Soto was sent to Baltimore in exchange for pitching prospects Seth Johnson and Moisés Chace. Soto has been having a pretty typical season, with a 4.08 ERA across 35.1 innings (43 appearances). He’s still throwing hard, and he’s accumulated a ton of walks and strikeouts having leaned more heavily on his incredible slider than in prior seasons. After a career-best year at avoiding free passes in 2023, Soto’s walk rate has ticked back up closer to his career norm of 12%; his fastball is also generating fewer swings and misses than ever before at a paltry 4.9% swinging strike rate, which is really low for a 98 mph heater.

Soto had mostly been squeezed out of high-leverage situations in Philly in deference to Matt Strahm and Jeff Hoffman, and was likely to see his opportunities further reduced by the recent acquisition of Carlos Estévez. While there’s nothing wrong with having a lefty who sits 98 as one of your lower-leverage guys, the way the market shaped up for multi-year relievers perhaps made it tempting for the Phillies to get more back in trade than is typical for a pitcher who is near the bottom of a bullpen depth chart. This one-for-two deal helps to build back a little of their farm system after the Estévez and Austin Hays trades.

In Baltimore, Soto joins Keegan Akin and Cionel Pérez as the lefties in the Orioles bullpen. He is under team control through next season. Any time an org like the Orioles acquires a pitcher whose results feel as though they’ve been far worse than his talent, you wonder if there’s something they might change about him that could help him be great. But Soto’s previous orgs, the Tigers and Phillies, have had recent success at improving pitchers, including late-bloomers like Hoffman. Perhaps there’s no low-hanging developmental fruit for the Orioles to reap here; Soto is 29 and might just be a semi-frustrating player who performs below what is typical for someone with his arm strength, let alone a lefty. That’s still constitutes a middle-inning upgrade for Baltimore. Will one of these teams be cursing themselves in a few months for having made the other more complete?

The Phillies got back two pitchers, one could help them as soon as next year, with the other being more of a developmental piece. Johnson, who is about to turn 26, had posted a 2.63 ERA (with a FIP and xFIP in the 4.13-4.26 range) as a starter at Double-A Bowie prior to the trade. The pandemic and an unfortunately timed Tommy John have prevented Johnson from posting a starter’s load of innings for consecutive seasons, and his 65 innings pitched as of the trade is already the most he’s thrown in a single season since 2021. Johnson sits 94-96 with riding life. An upper-80s cutter is his secondary weapon of choice, and he also has a mid-70s curveball with huge depth. There isn’t a platoon-neutralizing weapon here and the 2025 season will be Johnson’s last option year (unless the Phillies are given an extra option year because of his 2022 TJ), which together will probably squeeze Johnson into a bullpen role sometime next year.

Chace (pronounced CHA-say) is a medium-framed 21-year-old righty in his fourth pro season who has struck out more than a batter per inning each year of his career. Working in a piggyback role at Aberdeen prior to the trade, Chase has a good chance to develop a starter-quality pitch mix but probably not starter-quality command. He sits 93-96 with plus-plus vertical ride, he has a plus, 81-85 mph sweeper-style slider, and his changeup flashes bat-missing tail. Chace’s slider feel is advanced but that isn’t true of his other offerings. He’s Rule 5 eligible after this season and he’s going to be one of the more fascinating cases for protection. There are pretty clearly two viable big league pitches here right now, but Chace is quite far from the majors. Right now, I’d call him an unlikely add and bet that he doesn’t get Rule 5’d.

…

The Boston Red Sox added 12-year veteran big league reliever Luis García to the back of their bullpen, which to this point was in the bottom third of the league in combined reliever ERA and strikeout rate. Headed to Anaheim are four prospects, three of whom are relatively close to the big leagues. Former shortstop and current 23-year-old left fielder Matthew Lugo, 25-year-old first baseman Niko Kavadas, and 26-year-old reliever Ryan Zeferjahn were all at Triple-A Worcester, while 19-year-old pitcher Yeferson Vargas was promoted to Low-A just before the deal.

García has been one of the 50 most productive relievers in baseball since the 2021 season. He’s top 60 in WAR, FIP, ERA, strikeouts, and WHIP among relievers who’ve thrown at least 150 innings during that time, essentially a viable second-best reliever on a good team even as he climbed into his late-30s. García has a 1.17 WHIP this season even as his fastball velocity has declined two ticks from peak and a little more than one tick compared from last season. His sinker, splitter, and slider (especially the two secondaries, which are plus or better offerings generating huge swing-and-miss against big leaguers) remain good enough for García to play a relatively high-leverage role on a contender.

García hits free agency again this winter. It might feel like giving up four players is a lot for two months of a reliever, but if any team had a 40-man crunch this offseason it was going to be the Red Sox because of how many potentially serviceable position players they had in their system. Several of those players are now gone, including Kavadas, Lugo, Zeferjahn, Eddinson Paulino, and Nick Yorke. It’s good to have depth in the event of injury, but it’s plausible the Red Sox would either have lost a couple of these guys in the Rule 5 draft this offseason or clogged their roster trying to keep them.

Kavadas is striking out a third of the time at Triple-A, but he has enormous power and had a .975 OPS at the time of the trade. He’s posted a 57% hard-hit rate in Worcester and his swing is geared for lift in the extreme, with 20 degrees of launch on average. There will probably be a narrow window in Kavadas’ prime when he can get to enough power to be a relevant big league first baseman. A career trajectory similar to what Jared Walsh had with the Angels is feasible, where he enjoys one or two peak years of big power but over time is hindered by strikeouts in a way that is a problem for the overall profile of a 1B/DH athlete. Think Mike Ford.

A swing change and a more patient approach have unlocked an extra gear of power for Lugo and may have salvaged the former second round pick’s career, especially as he’s slid all the way down the defensive spectrum from shortstop to left field. His mistake-crushing style has him on pace to hit 30 homers in the minors this year. Hellbent on pulling the baseball, Lugo struggles to cover the outer third of the zone and swings inside a ton of pitches out there. Given his hit tool limitations and the way his defensive versatility has trended down, he looks more like an above-replacement up/down outfielder than a consistent role player.

Zeferjahn is a hard-throwing reliever who has averaged 96-98 with his fastball this year. He was utterly dominant at Double-A early in the season and was promoted to Worcester, where his command has returned to problematic career norms; he’s walking six batters per nine there. Zeferjahn’s fastball plays down because of poor movement and his lack of command, but he essentially has three average pitches and would be an up/down reliever in most orgs. He might play a more significant role for the Angels in the next couple of years. I expect he’ll be added to their 40-man roster this offseason.

Finally, Vargas is a stout, six foot righty who has cut his walks substantially compared to 2023 while also enjoying a two- or three-tick velocity spike. Vargas’ fastball averaged 92-93 last year and a scout who saw him earlier this spring had him sitting 93-95, but when I saw Vargas in June, he held 95-96 and touched 98 across three innings of work. He also has a snappy curveball in the 81-84 mph range that flashed plus on my look. At Vargas’ size, he’s perhaps more likely to be a reliever, but he’s made a ton of progress in the last year, especially in the strike-throwing department. He’s a hard-throwing developmental prospect with a good two-pitch foundation.

…

The Yankees acquired Enyel De Los Santos and Thomas Balboni Jr. from the Padres in exchange for 27-year-old Triple-A center fielder Brandon Lockridge. The 28-year-old De Los Santos was having a strange, homer-prone season in San Diego prior to the trade but has otherwise performed near his career norms. In 40.1 innings, De Los Santos has a 4.46 ERA, a 28% strikeout rate, and a career-best 7.6% walk rate. His stuff has also been consistent with career norms, but Enyel’s approach to pitching has changed. His slider usage is way up this year and his approach to locating his fastball has also shifted to the upper part of the zone. Here are De Los Santos’ fastball locations against lefties each of the last two years:

Seven of the 11 homers (in 40.1 innings!) De Los Santos has surrendered this year have been off his fastball, a pitch he’s throwing less than ever before. Especially in the Yankee Stadium bandbox, I’d expect some kind of fastball alteration to happen here, even if it’s just a return to more of an east/west style of pitching.

De Los Santos has been in the big leagues since he was 22 but because several of those have been partial seasons, he’s only just now in his arbitration years and will hit free agency after the 2026 season, at age 31. In addition to the other relief pitcher additions that crowded out De Los Santos on the roster, it’s possible the Padres’ more budget-beholden approach post-Peter Seidler made De Los Santos’ looming arb salary consequential. Perhaps the lack of leverage created by this is why the Padres had to attach a prospect to Enyel to get Lockridge. That prospect is the 24-year-old Balboni, a sidearm reliever who has had a two-tick velocity spike this season. Balboni now sits 93-96 and has a high-spin slider. He’s not a great strike-thrower, but he’s got good stuff and a pretty good shot to wear a big league uniform eventually.

Coming back to the Padres is Lockridge, a nice upper-level depth player who can really go get it in center field and who fortifies the Padres’ center field depth behind Jackson Merrill to a degree. Fernando Tatis Jr.’s injury has put pressure on the Padres’ outfield depth and forced David Peralta, who isn’t hitting, into action. Lockridge might be a better big league roster fit than Bryce Johnson, who isn’t as good a defender. Tim Locastro, Óscar Mercado, Cal Mitchell, Tirso Ornelas, and José Azocar are all in El Paso, too.

You didn’t really think teams were done swapping relievers after Friday and Saturday, did you? If you thought maybe they were tapped out for late relief help on Sunday and Monday, well, you thought wrong! If your bullpen doesn’t look like there are enough dudes to capture Helm’s Deep, you’re woefully short-armed.

The San Diego Padres acquired LHRP Tanner Scott and RHRP Bryan Hoeing from the Miami Marlins for LHSP Robby Snelling, RHSP Adam Mazur, 3B/2B Graham Pauley, and 3B/SS Jay Beshears

As one of baseball’s elite closers on an expiring contract, Tanner Scott was arguably the best short-term option available among relievers. His walk rate has peeked up a little to the numbers of the bad old days, but his first-strike percentage has stayed firmly in positive territory, which is an important indicator of where walk numbers will settle. Scott is likely to help the Padres in a very tight NL Wild Card race, but he’ll probably be even more important for them in the playoffs if they can get there. In San Diego, he teams up with Robert Suarez to asphyxiate opposing lineups late in the games. As far as elite closers who occasionally walk a few too many batters go, Scott is one of the less stressful of the genre, because he’s so hard to hit against with any authority, giving him a good shot at escaping jams following those free passes.

Bryan Hoeing is a sinker/slider reliever who has never quite clicked, as he’s never really been able to induce many swings-and-misses, nor has he mastered the art of inducing weak groundballs. He strikes me mostly as a depth guy who has plenty of years of club control left, and barring a breakout, he seems destined to be shuffled back and forth between San Diego and Triple-A El Paso a lot over the next few years. This trade is about Scott. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re barreling toward the trade deadline, which means it’s time for teams to decide if they’re in, out, or Tampa Bay. After picking which of those categories they fit into, the next move is obvious. In? Trade for a reliever. Out? Trade away your relievers. Tampa Bay? Make 10 moves, with more moving parts than you can possibly imagine. All of those types were on display this weekend, so let’s round up some reliever trades.

The Brewers and Rockies got the party started with a simple swap: Nick Mears to the Brewers, Bradley Blalock and Yujanyer Herrera to the Rockies. This one is basically what you’d expect from a deadline deal. The Brewers need relief help; they have nine pitchers on the IL, and while they just got Devin Williams back, they lost Bryan Hudson to injury earlier this week. It’s been an uphill battle to fill innings in Milwaukee this year. Mears slots right into the middle of the bullpen, helping to lengthen the number of innings the Brewers can cover with high octane arms. The Brewers have the fewest innings pitched by starters this year, so that depth really matters.
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 »

Today the Killers list turns the corner — or rather turns to the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in the outfield corners. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), 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 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.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. I’ve batched the two corners together into one supersized roundup because three of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for left field also make the list for right field, and because there’s plenty of crossover in play with regards to personnel. The capsules are listed in order of their left field rankings first, while noting those three crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the July 30 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye on. All statistics are through July 14.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Strahm making the All-Star team as a setup man with no saves is a bit of an anomaly. Especially because he didn’t take the Aaron Crow route — his team had its proverbial bases covered.

The Phillies are no. 1 in baseball in pitcher WAR. They’re no. 1 by a huge margin in starter WAR, and no. 2 (a tenth of a win behind a team that has both Emmanuel Clase and 16% more bullpen innings) in reliever WAR. So it’s no surprise that Philadelphia sent five pitchers to Texas among its NL record-tying eight All-Star representatives.

The fact that Strahm is third in his own bullpen in ERA, behind Jeff Hoffman and Orion Kerkering, is mostly a testament to how good that unit has been overall. Strahm is second among relievers in FIP and tied for third in WAR. It’s not bad for a player who was an afterthought when the Phillies acquired him on the free agent market in December 2022, the same week Trea Turner and Taijuan Walker joined the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Ryan McMahon’s first stolen base of the season. McMahon, whose sprint speed was recently downgraded from the 19th percentile to the 18th, managed that first bag by way of a delayed steal. By completely dismissing McMahon as a threat, the Pirates presented him with a perfect storm of opportunity. He took an enormous lead off third base because no one bothered to hold him on, and he waited until catcher Yasmani Grandal unleashed a lollipop back to the pitcher, then waltzed home.

Where did McMahon, who had been caught stealing four times to that point in the season, get the idea for such a brazen daylight robbery? Probably from Garrett Stubbs, who had executed the same move just a few weeks prior, stealing third base right from under McMahon’s nose. Stubbs didn’t get the same gargantuan lead that McMahon did, nor did he get to take advantage of a catcher’s big, slow rainbow tosses back to the pitcher. He simply went because he saw that catcher Jacob Stallings was paying him no attention whatsoever.

On Monday, the Rockies were involved in yet another delayed steal. After walking in the bottom of the second inning, major league stolen base leader Elly De La Cruz somehow waited two whole pitches before taking off for second as Elias Díaz tossed the ball back to Ryan Feltner.

This latest delayed steal was very different from the first two. McMahon is extremely slow — and Stubbs, while not slow, is a catcher — but everyone in the ballpark was aware that De La Cruz would likely try to take second. Both broadcast crews were talking about the threat of a steal and both feeds made sure to cut to shots of De La Cruz’s lead. While Díaz has one of the quicker arms in the league, Feltner is extremely slow to the plate. He has allowed 20 stolen bases this season, second only to Corbin Burnes with 24. Díaz stared De La Cruz down before returning the ball to Feltner after the first pitch, and Feltner attempted a pickoff before delivering the second pitch. None of that mattered against a threat like De La Cruz, but I still found it surprising that he opted for a delayed steal considering that with a pitcher like Feltner on the mound, a conventional stolen base attempt was more or less a sure thing.

De La Cruz, being De La Cruz, stole third base four pitches later; then one pitch after that, he was caught stealing home on a first-and-third steal attempt because Díaz (legally) blocked home plate. Sam Miller wrote about the rise of first-and-third steals back in February and then again this weekend. “As long as I’ve been baseballing,” he wrote, “the first-and-third situation has been what separated the pros from the amateurs.” That’s no longer the case. Sam calculated that in May and June, the runner on first took off roughly 14% of the time, compared to 10.1% in 2023 and 6.6% in the 2010s. After watching all of those plays, he concluded that defenses still aren’t really sure how to handle that situation.

Much like first-and-third steals, delayed stealing has historically been reserved for amateur ball. Because it’s a difficult thing to search for, I’m not sure whether they’ve been happening more often too or whether I just happen to have noticed a cluster. Either way, this cluster made me wonder whether baserunners should be pulling this move more often. After all, the three that we’ve seen could not have been any easier. Only one of them even drew a throw, and that was a play when everyone knew a stolen base attempt was likely. It’s true that McMahon’s steal of home came when nobody was paying him the slightest attention and the catcher returned the ball to the pitcher like a grandfather pitching horseshoes, but Stubbs isn’t exactly a burner either, and his came on a normal throw from the catcher, following a pitch where both the pitcher and the shortstop were making a real effort to keep him from getting too big a lead. Maybe this is easier than we realize. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past two-plus years, the Phillies have been one of the most successful teams in baseball. They’ve been to the World Series once and nearly made it back again last year. They’re sixth in the league in wins over that span and are within hailing distance of everyone other than the Dodgers and Braves. They have the best record in baseball this year, and it’s hardly smoke and mirrors; they’re playing .655 baseball with the run differential of a .654 team.

How do they do it? Their approach is strikingly simple. First, get a group of good pitchers. Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola form one of the best duos in the majors. Ranger Suárez is underrated, though less so after a banner first half. Cristopher Sánchez has been a revelation. The bullpen has been elite for this entire run. Simply put, the team doesn’t allow many runs.

The second part of Philadelphia’s winning formula is to have some burly power hitters smash dingers. Kyle Schwarber has hit 110 homers since the start of 2022, second only to Aaron Judge. Bryce Harper has missed time with injury, but he’s been one of the best in the game when healthy. The rest of Philadelphia’s attack is a bunch of complementary pieces (maybe that sells Trea Turner short, but I’m working an angle here) meant to help the boppers out.

Over the next few weeks, that proven formula is going to be severely tested. Last Thursday night, both Harper and Schwarber sustained fluke injuries. First, Schwarber planted awkwardly on a throw from the outfield and strained his groin. Calling it a fluke might not go far enough – this was only his third time in the field this year, as he usually handles DH duties. It wasn’t a contact injury, just an awkward step on a routine play.

Schwarber departed the game in the eighth inning. In the ninth, Harper grounded out to end the game. He felt his hamstring tighten up as he ran to first base. He was diagnosed with a strained hamstring, and both he and Schwarber hit the IL before the next day’s games.

First, the bad news. The Phillies are going to have to make the approach they’ve used to such good effect work without one of its key components. Harper and Schwarber have both been instrumental to Philadelphia’s recent run of success. This year, they’ve been the team’s best two hitters, give or take Turner’s abbreviated season. They’ve contributed 37 homers and an aggregate 150 wRC+. They’ve been worth 5.7 WAR, and that despite the positional adjustments that likely understate the value of first basemen and DHs.

Here’s an easy way to think about how the Phillies will look without their stars: So far this year, they’ve won 55 games and lost 29, a .655 winning percentage. Now, let’s subtract the 5.7 wins between Harper and Schwarber and replacement level, and add those games to the loss column instead. Now they’d be a .587 baseball team. That’s a .068 drop in winning percentage, a significant gap.

That sounds pretty dire, particularly given that Harper and Schwarber don’t occupy roles that are easily replaced. The only other obvious DH on the roster is Nick Castellanos, and he’s no Schwarber. There’s no obvious first base replacement, either – Kody Clemens has played in each of the three games since Harper’s injury, but that’s more by necessity than design. His natural position is second base, and he’s played a utility role in recent years.

While the Phillies pitching staff is almost comically deep, the same can’t be said about their position players. Johan Rojas is back in the lineup as a frequent starter with Castellanos now out of the field, but he had been demoted to Triple-A on the back of a dreadful offensive start. Clemens has been injured himself. David Dahl is getting big at-bats for the team. Whit Merrifield is hitting .193/.273/.289 and will be playing much more to make the various positional permutations work. The Phillies have a 101 wRC+ if you exclude their two injured stars. This went from a fearsome lineup to a middling one overnight.

There’s good news for Philly fans, though. First, neither injury appears to be serious. The Athletic’s Matt Gelb reported that both players could at least theoretically miss the minimum 10 days with their injuries. Manager Rob Thomson said that he thought both players could be back before the All-Star break. Sure, having an average offense instead of a great one is a big problem should their injuries linger and cause them to miss the rest of the season, but if both Harper and Schwarber return on July 8, the team is only looking at six more games without their services. They’ve already gone 2-1 in their three games since the injuries.

Remember that 68-point drop in winning percentage? That comes out to a difference of 0.4 wins over a six-game stretch. Playing without your offensive core is a blow, but baseball is a game driven heavily by randomness. Over six games, it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. No single player matters that much in the short run. No two players do, even.

I think that both Harper and Schwarber will get slightly more time to rest, though, which brings me to my second reason the Phillies don’t need to be excessively worried about these injuries. The All-Star break starts on July 15 and stretches for four days. Leave both players on the IL until then, and they could get a full 20 days to recuperate without missing an excessive number of games. The Phillies will only play six games between July 8 and July 18; it’s a relatively good time to have your best hitters on the shelf.

Will that cost the team another 0.4 wins in expectation? Sure, I suppose, though I think the actual amount is slightly less than that; Clemens appears at least a little better than replacement level to me. More important than exactly how many wins it costs them, though, is their current position in the standings. The Phillies are up eight games on the Braves. We give them an 81.5% chance of winning their division even after accounting for the dip in playing time for Harper and Schwarber. It’s never great to play with a diminished group, but these games don’t have the same import as they would if the team were locked in a tight divisional race.

When you think about it that way, a rest until July 19 starts to make a lot more sense. It’s highly unlikely that missing two hitters for six games will put Philadelphia’s season on a downward trajectory. The real fear here is some kind of injury recurrence. Soft tissue injuries are prone to re-aggravation, and both Harper and Schwarber have battled injuries in the past, though never of this exact type.

Part of the benefit of roaring out to an early divisional lead is that you can take a pragmatic approach to the rest of the year. Harper is notoriously competitive, and I’m sure he wants to come back as soon as is feasible. His return from elbow surgery in 2023 took less than six months, shorter than even the most optimistic recovery timetable predicted. But now is a good time to be prudent, because one week of games isn’t going to change the team’s season, but a month or two without Harper and Schwarber might.

If I were the Phillies, I’d stick to the more conservative recovery timeline regardless of what happens in the next week. If they’re particularly worried about getting caught by the Braves, though, they could always wait to see the outcome of their series in Atlanta this weekend before making any decisions. If they get swept and neither player experiences any setbacks in their injury recovery, maybe plugging Harper and Schwarber in for those last six pre-break games will become an attractive proposition.

Regardless of exactly how they manage things, though, the Phillies are surely breathing a sigh of relief. Without their two anchor hitters, the team really would look different. The success of their model depends on Harper being a superstar and Schwarber providing valuable offensive backing. For a day, that model got washed away and replaced with the unknown. What if one or even both of these strains were serious? What if something tore? It’s hard to imagine how the team would remake itself without these two, but luckily, it appears that we won’t have to find out for more than a few weeks.

At this time last year, the Phillies faced a good deal of long-term uncertainty about their rotation. Aaron Nola was a free agent after the season, Zack Wheeler would follow a year later, and the only pitcher with a guaranteed contract past the 2024 season was Taijuan Walker. This time around, their rotation once again leads the league in WAR, but much of that future angst has been alleviated. The Phillies re-signed Nola and extended Wheeler during the offseason, and now they’ve locked up left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, a 2023 sensation who has remained one this season, for at least four more years, with two club options that could keep him around the through 2030 season.

The 27-year-old Sánchez, whom the Phillies acquired in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays for Curtis Mead back in 2019, has a 2.67 ERA/2.49 FIP over 15 starts this season. That’s good for 2.6 WAR, fourth best among National League pitchers. Sánchez will receive a guaranteed $22.5 million over the next four seasons, buying out all of his possible years of arbitration, plus a $2 million signing bonus. Not bad for someone who had just one full year of service time entering 2024. The two club options come with a $1 million buyout each for 2029 and ’30, bringing the minimum value of the deal to $22.5 million. If the Phillies pick up those two options, for $14 million and $15 million, respectively, and if Sánchez secures top-10 finishes in the Cy Young voting during those option years, his salaries could increase to $16 million for 2029 and $19 million for ’30. That puts the maximum total value of the extension at $56.5 million over six years.

If you didn’t see Sánchez coming, you’re definitely not alone. Mead went on to become one of Tampa Bay’s top prospects – he was still ranked fourth in the Rays’ system and 32nd overall in our preseason prospects rankings – while Sánchez came back from the COVID layoff struggling against Triple-A hitters. Changeup pitchers with command issues generally aren’t highly regarded, and neither Sánchez’s cup of coffee in 2021 nor his larger carafe in 2022 suggested a pitcher who would become a key part of a top rotation a year later. The Phillies certainly weren’t confident in him entering 2023; he had lost weight over the offseason, and the team intended to give him only a single spot start in April after a White Sox doubleheader messed up the rotation’s rest days. From a story from last August by Matt Gelb of The Athletic:

Rob Thomson was transparent with Sánchez: This was one start, and one start only. Sánchez, who had missed most of spring training with various injuries, later said he appreciated the manager’s honesty. He knew where he stood.

Before the call ended, Brian Kaplan had a question. He is the team’s assistant pitching coach and director of pitching development. The Phillies had outlined an offseason plan for Sánchez, a lanky lefty from the Dominican Republic, and it went haywire. Sánchez was supposed to add bulk. But a long illness sapped him of strength. He lost more than 15 pounds. It compromised him in the spring when he failed to make an impression while the Phillies scrambled to fill the back of their rotation.

In truth, Sánchez didn’t dominate for Lehigh Valley last year, either, but he did accomplish one goal the team set out for him; by the summer, he had gained 25 pounds. That coincided with a small window of opportunity to grab the fifth spot in the rotation. The Phillies had used Matt Strahm in the role early in the season, but they were worried about his innings count. Dylan Covey had gotten a couple starts but was bombed by the Braves in his most recent one, and Bailey Falter, who had been in the rotation earlier, was in the minors and out with a neck injury. So Sánchez got the nod on June 17 against the A’s; he went four scoreless innings and allowed one hit. His tumbling changeup — which looks like the world’s least erratic forkball — clicked, and he never gave the Phillies a reason to boot him from the rotation. Even the acquisition of Michael Lorenzen didn’t cost him his job. The Phillies happily went with a six-man rotation rather than deprive themselves of Sánchez’s services.

Over the first half of this season, Sánchez has proven that his performance last year was no fluke. He’s now been up for a full calendar year, throwing 175 1/3 innings with 157 strikeouts with a 3.08 ERA across 31 starts. He surely won’t continue his rate of home run avoidance (just one allowed this season), but even if his home run rate were to regress heavily toward the mean and cause his ERA to jump to the low 3.00s, he’d still worthy of his rotation spot.

So, what’s the projection look like? Suffice it to say, ZiPS was not very excited about him coming into 2023.

That’s not disastrous; with those numbers, he would’ve been a competent spot starter/long reliever. But it wasn’t even a shadow of what he’s accomplished in the last year. So let’s spin up his current, much sunnier projection. How sunny? Let’s just say Tom Glavine pops up in the top 10 on his comps list and leave it at that.

Most teams would be ecstatic to have this projection from their no. 2 starter. From your no. 4, this is like waking up one morning and finding out that your garden hose somehow makes its own IPA. Based on these numbers, ZiPS projects Sánchez to be worth $27.3 million over the four-year extension, making this a decent value from the point of view of the Phils. The deal becomes even better for Philadelphia when you look at the option years; ZiPS projects Sánchez’s value for 2029 and ’30 to be worth a combined $41 million in free agency, $11 million more than the base value of those years if the Phillies pick up his options.

That leaves Ranger Suárez as the only key member of the rotation who might not be around long term. He’s set to hit free agency after the 2025 season, and considering his excellence this year, he probably won’t come cheap if the Phillies try to extend him; a six-year deal would cost them $135 million, according to ZiPS. Having Sánchez around until the end of the decade at such a generous rate could provide Philadelphia the flexibility to dole out more money to keep Suárez.

Before we go, I’ve been looking for an excuse to project the Phillies rotation, so I’m not letting this opportunity slip away! Using the innings allocation in our depth charts, ZiPS currently projects Phillies starting pitchers to accumulate 8.6 more WAR over the rest of the season, which would give their starters a combined 22.7 WAR for the entire 2024 campaign. Here’s how that compares to the best starting staffs in the five-man rotation era, which I’m somewhat arbitrarily starting in 1980:

That’s quite rarified air. Based on these projections, the Phillies would finish the season with baseball’s best rotation in more than a decade, since the 2013 Tigers. And with the Sánchez extension coming on the heels of the deals for Nola and Wheeler, Philadelphia has the chance to keep this party going for several more years.