For a losing team, the Cincinnati Reds have been busy. It’s not just trading players either, as Cincinnati made one of the biggest deadline moves while many contenders slumbered in near-stasis, picking up Trevor Bauer with an eye towards retooling for the 2020 season. Only three of the eight players in Wednesday’s lineup were also in the lineup on Opening Day: Tucker Barnhart, Eugenio Suárez, and José Iglesias. Chief among the new additions is the recently called-up Aristides Aquino, a big slugger lurking far back from the head of the team prospect lists coming into the season. After a fairly unimpressive minor league career, Aquino has feasted on the major league bouncy ball in 2019, slugging 28 homers in 294 AB in the formerly pitcher-friendly International League and then a shocking 11 homers in just 20 major league games.

Aquino was not some elite prospect finally being called up. The Reds have only received the benefit of getting a look at Aquino because they decided to use their ABs in a now-lost season in a productive way. If the team hadn’t dropped Matt Kemp or traded Yasiel Puig, choosing to go with the known quantity in a mistaken attempt to goose attendance (there’s no evidence this actually works), there wouldn’t have been as many opportunities to assess Aquino or Josh VanMeter or Phil Ervin in the majors. They now have more information on these players — how they’ve played at the big league level — and that information can have a positive effect on the decisions they make on how to win the NL Central or a wild card spot in 2020. Even picking up veteran Freddy Galvis, a 2.0 WAR player, for free has a value to a team like the Reds given his one-year, $5-million option for 2020. Scooter Gennett was always likely to be gone, but Galvis may not be, and now the Reds have another player who they can choose to start in 2020 or trade over the winter.

The Reds have been fortunate in these decisions, but I would have been in favor of this calculus even if Aquino/VanMeter/Ervin had been terrible. My fundamental belief is that among hitters and pitchers, teams have roughly a combined 12,000 plate appearances/batters faced to work with every year, and as many of them should be devoted to trying to win games as possible. Maybe they’re not 2019 wins — maybe they’re wins in 2020 or 2023 or 2026. But even players not working out gives you information; if Aquino came to the majors and hit like Lewis Brinson, it would still give the Reds data they didn’t have before. You don’t acquire that kind of knowledge when you’re a 90-loss team still penciling Billy Hamilton or Chris Davis into the lineup on a daily basis. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the season started, the National League looked like it would feature one of the most exciting and evenly matched regular seasons in recent memory. While the Dodgers were the clear class of the league, every team except the Marlins and Giants had legitimate playoff hopes. FanGraphs thought the Pirates had the third-lowest chances of making the playoffs, and they came in just above 10%. By contrast, seven teams in the American League had a 5% or less chance of reaching postseason play.

With the benefit of hindsight, even the Giants had their shot at a one-game playoff. They’ve faded now, 3 1/2 games out of the Wild Card race, but even that vastly outstrips what was expected of them before the season. Could this year’s NL be the platonic ideal of baseball, a cellar-less (again, other than the Marlins) league with every team at least somewhat in the running for the playoffs until the last month of the year?

Alas, it wasn’t to be. The Giants have outstripped expectations, but they’ve been replaced at the bottom of the table by another team with marginal hopes of contending this year, the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates don’t look like a team built to play for draft position. They made win-now trades as recently as last year, adding Chris Archer in what now looks like one of the most lopsided deals of all time. They came into the season hoping for breakouts from some of their hitters and got them — Josh Bell started the season mashing, and Bryan Reynolds has been a revelation.

Heck, as recently as the All-Star break, the Pirates looked like contenders. They were 44-45, only 2 1/2 games out of first place in the NL Central race, and one of seven teams within 2 1/2 games of the Wild Card. They’d outperformed their Pythagorean record to get there, sure, but what’s past is past, and the Pirates were a month or two of inspired baseball away from a playoff run. Our playoff odds still didn’t like their chances, giving them a 10.3% shot, but stranger things have happened: the Mets, after all, had only a 4.9% chance of reaching the playoffs on that date. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve followed baseball closely this year, you can’t miss the tidal wave of impact rookies. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the two top prospects in baseball, have succeeded in the majors, and they haven’t been alone. Pete Alonso is hitting the stuffing out of baseballs. Mike Soroka and Chris Paddack are pitching like top-tier starters. Tatis is hitting .323 with power and playing a passable shortstop, and he’s not even the clear Rookie of the Year. The competition is just that good.

That’s just the top tier. Go half a level down, and the league is filled with rookies making their presences felt. Keston Hiura has absolutely mashed in his limited plate appearances with the Brewers. Yordan Alvarez has a .353 ISO and a 191 wRC+ over nearly a third of a season. Brandon Lowe is a key cog on the Rays. Oscar Mercado brought the Indians back to life. It’s a good year to be young and in baseball.

Even in this age of constant baseball coverage, though, one rookie has gone overlooked. The best three rookies this season by WAR have been Tatis, Alonso, and Soroka. No one would argue their hegemony. The fourth, though, hasn’t even been named yet in this article. Bryan Reynolds has been the fourth-most-productive rookie, in this year of impact youngsters, and he’s done it in near-complete anonymity.

Reynolds wasn’t supposed to make an impression in the majors this year. He was a good-but-not-great hitter in Double-A in 2018 after being traded from the Giants in the Andrew McCutchen deal, riding BABIP and walks to a 128 wRC+ despite middling power. Prospect evaluators saw him as an average-bat, average-glove regular who could play center in a pinch — in a few years. He ranked ninth in our Pirates’ preseason top prospects list, but didn’t crack Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel’s top 100. As a 23-year-old in Double-A, it seemed reasonable for him to take 2019 adjusting to Triple-A before reaching the majors in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 trade deadline has passed and, with it, dozens of prospects have begun a new journey toward the major leagues with a different organization. We have all of the prospects who have been traded since the Nick Solak/Peter Fairbanks deal ranked below, with brief scouting snippets for each of them. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. Those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “From” column below. We’ve moved all of the players below to their new orgs over on THE BOARD, so you can see where they rank among their new teammates; our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline. Thanks to the scouts, analysts, and executives who helped us compile notes on players we didn’t know about.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies signed Andrew McCutchen in the offseason and he played very well before going down with a knee injury in early June. Right before the injury, the club traded for Jay Bruce in part due to Odubel Herrera being placed on leave under the league’s domestic violence policy. Since that time, Herrera has been suspended for the rest of the season while Bruce has landed on the injured list. Again seeking outfield help, the Phillies have now made a deal with the Pirates for Corey Dickerson. Jeff Passan was first with the news.

Phillies Receive:

• Corey Dickerson

Pirates Receive:

• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After putting up 2.6 WAR and a 115 wRC+ in 2017 for the Rays, the arbitration-eligible Dickerson was traded to the Pirates for Daniel Hudson and his contract. For the Pirates last season, Dickerson put up an identical 115 wRC+ and a 2.7 WAR. He dramatically lowered his strikeouts with the Pirates to make up for a loss of power and only 21 walks all year. A week into this season, Dickerson strained his shoulder and was replaced by rookie Bryan Reynolds, who has been very good for Pittsburgh, though a BABIP over .400 is doing a lot of the work. Dickerson, a free agent at the end of the season, has come back strong from the injury with a 133 wRC+ in 142 plate appearances. He’s kept the gains he made last season on the strikeout front, but he has been a much more patient hitter with a 9% walk rate in limited time. Dan Szymborski recently listed Dickerson as an under-the-radar move this deadline:

Corey Dickerson is unsigned for next season and it’s hard to see the Pirates being gung-ho about bringing him back on a larger, guaranteed contract. Dickerson’s healthy now and is putting up his typical wRC+ around 120. Given that he can actually field his position, I personally think he’s far more interesting a pickup than Nicholas Castellanos would be. The Pirates aren’t technically out of the playoff picture, but as they now have the second-worst record in the National League, the camera can’t see them standing behind the large adult sons.

Dickerson is likely to replace Adam Haseley, who has played fairly well in limited time but doesn’t have the proven bat Dickerson provides. The team went a couple weeks without a Bruce-type hitter, and now they have another one in Dickerson. This is mostly a depth move, but Dickerson provides the Phillies with another solid bat in their lineup and could put Scott Kingery more often in the infield, as Jim Salisbury notes: Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers and Pirates agreed to a minor trade on the Trade Deadline’s Eve-Eve, with Jordan Lyles heading to the Milwaukee Brewers for Double-A starter-turned-reliever Cody Ponce.

There’s little question that the Brewers are sorely in need of an additional starting pitcher for the stretch run. The rotation wasn’t exactly a source of strength for the team even before losing Jhoulys Chacin and Brandon Woodruff to abdominal injuries over the last week. With those two not expected to return quickly — Chacin isn’t expected until mid-August and it may take Woodruff into September — and the trade deadline approaching, the Brewers don’t have much margin for error. It would have been a phenomenal risk for the team to hope that the respective rehab stints of Brent Suter and Jimmy Nelson go extremely well, allowing them to arrive dramatically like Marshal Blücher at Waterloo.

Now, is Jordan Lyles the pitcher you want to bring in as your emergency replacement? That I’m less sure of. But I’m not as instantly dismissive as I normally would be of a pitcher sporting a 5.36 ERA. Lyles was actually quite effective for most of the season, his ERA not rising over four until his first start in July. His pummeling has been largely limited to three atrocious starts in which he allowed a total of 19 runs over 6 1/3 innings. He’s been bitten by both home runs (eight homers in four starts) and by BABIP (.556) and while he’s no doubt pitched poorly, he’s been that combination of lousy and unlucky. I’m not sure batters would have a .556 BABIP off a five-year-old pitching with the wrong hand.

For the season, Lyles has a 4.38 xFIP and ZiPS, which doesn’t just assume high home run totals are a fluke but looks at the detailed hit data, thinks he has allowed five more home runs than he ought to have based on those stats. StatCast’s data agrees with this, giving Lyles an xSLG against of .438, well below his actual .514. Read the rest of this entry »

Below are some changes we made to The BOARD in the past week, with our reasons for doing so. All hail the BOARD.

Moved Up

Ronny Mauricio, SS, New York Mets:
We got some immediate feedback on Monday’s sweeping update, which included more industry interest in Mauricio. The average major league swinging strike rate is 11%. Mauricio has a 12% swinging strike rate, and is a switch-hitting, 6-foot-4 teenager facing full-season pitching. It’s common for lanky teenagers to struggle with contact as they grow into their frames, but Mauricio hasn’t had that issue so far.

Oneil Cruz, SS, Pittsburgh Pirates:
One of us was sent Cruz’s minor league exit velocities and they’re shockingly close to what Yordan Alvarez’s have been in the big leagues. Of course, there remains great uncertainty about where Cruz will end up on defense, and hitters this size (Cruz is listed at 6-foot-7) are swing and miss risks, but this is a freakish, elite power-hitting talent.

Marco Luciano, SS, San Francisco Giants:
This guy has No. 1 overall prospect potential as a shortstop with 70 or better raw power. He belongs up near Bobby Witt, who is older but might also be a plus shortstop while we’re still not sure if Luciano will stay there.

George Valera, OF, Cleveland Indians:
Valera is torching the Penn League at 18 and a half years old, and we’re not sure any high school hitter in this year’s draft class would be able to do it. His defensive instincts give him a shot to stay in center field despite middling raw speed, and his swing should allow him to get to all of his raw power, so it becomes less important that his body is projectable. He would have been fifth on our 2019 draft board were he playing at a high school somewhere in the U.S., so he’s now slotted in the between JJ Bleday and C.J. Abrams on our overall list. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a strange couple of weeks for Francisco Cervelli. The 33-year-old Pirates catcher, who hasn’t played since May 25 due to a concussion, was quoted as saying earlier this month that he was giving up catching due to the toll of multiple concussions, but on Saturday, he refuted that report. Either way, his career appears to be at a crossroads, and his situation serves to remind us just how vulnerable catchers are to such injuries.

Cervelli — whose surname means “brains” in Italian, hence the nickname “Frankie Brains” — began the season in a slump and was hitting just .193/.279/.248 when, in a game against the Dodgers, Joc Pederson’s broken bat struck him in the mask:

He was placed on the seven-day injured list, and after undergoing several rounds of tests, wasn’t cleared to resume baseball activities until late June. It was the sixth documented concussion of the catcher’s 11-year major league career; he suffered one with the Yankees in 2011, two with the Pirates in 2017, and two last year. While he served primarily as a backup during parts of seven seasons (2008-14) with New York — a period that included a near-full season exile to Triple-A and a 50-game Biogenesis-related PED suspension — he’s been the Pirates’ primary backstop since arriving in a November 2014 trade for reliever Justin Wilson, one that rates as quite the heist given that Wilson’s 1.5 WAR in his lone season in the Bronx (though Yankees general manager Brian Cashman did flip him to the Tigers for Chad Green and Luis Cessa, a move that’s still paying dividends). Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Stewart was never supposed to be a catcher.

In 1999, Stewart was slated to be his Moreno Valley, CA high school’s starting shortstop as a junior. But after the starting catcher quit the baseball team to join cheerleading, and the backup missed months with appendicitis, Stewart was thrust into the role.

“The coach, with no catchers left, comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, do you want to catch?’” Stewart recalls. “I tell him, ‘No. Why would I want all the bumps and bruises and bad knees? This sounds like a ridiculous idea.’ He’s like, ‘Well, you’re all we have left, so you’re catching.’” Read the rest of this entry »

Do you remember when Chris Archer was really good at throwing baseballs? You should, because it was very recent! From 2014-17, only 12 pitchers across the majors accumulated more WAR than Archer. He was a strikeout maestro who kept his FIP consistently low with a knack for gobbling up innings and a sweet head of hair to boot, looking like an ace in pretty much every sense of the word.

Those days feel far away now, however, after a disastrous start on Tuesday brought his rough season with the Pittsburgh Pirates to a crescendo — he surrendered five home runs to Braves hitters in six innings, leading to an ugly seven-run outing. He has now allowed 16 homers in just 59.2 innings, giving him the fifth-highest HR/9 rate among all big leaguers with at least 50 innings pitched. His ERA of 5.79 is actually outperforming his 6.15 FIP. The old Archer seems long gone, but what caused him to vanish?

Typically, when a player regresses this swiftly and severely, there can be multiple issues to blame for their struggles. If you squint, you can see a few present with Archer. His four-seamer has lost two miles per hour in velocity over the past two seasons. He’s also throwing fewer strikes than he has in past years — something that is evident in his skyrocketing walk rate, up at 4.53/9 from a career average of 3.03/9 — but just 1.5% less than his career average. We can nitpick and analyze a million different data points to paint a picture of why Archer has lost his groove, but instead, let’s just talk about the issue right in front of us: His sinker has been absolutely dreadful.

I’ll admit his sinker has accounted for just 22% of his pitches this season, and that’s if you go by Baseball Savant’s pitch tracking. Our own Pitch Info data says he’s thrown it less than 15% of the time. How bad can a pitch be to be singled out as possibly the biggest cause of a player’s struggles if he throws it with less than one quarter of his pitches? In this case, extremely bad! In 2019, Archer’s sinker has resulted in a .370/.485/.815 slash line for opposing hitters. The Statcast data for the pitch is equally gruesome: .403 xBA, .761 xSLG, .522 xwOBA. Read the rest of this entry »