Here’s a story that you hear all too often these days. A reliever has a breakout season, perhaps aided by leaning more into throwing his best pitch to the exclusion of everything else. He parlays that into an offseason deal, or maybe a newly-prominent role on his current team. Then the next season starts, and the bloom is off the rose. Whatever ineffable magic powered last season is simply gone.

Here’s another story you hear all too often these days. A reliever has a bad stretch, looks like he might be cooked. The Rays, though, have seen something in him. They trade for him, whisper a few sweet nothings (or, fine, mechanical adjustments) into his ear, and bam! He’s part of their bullpen army.

Here’s the fun part: Matt Wisler personifies both of these stories. He was so bad the Giants designated him for assignment after a horrid start, then agreed to a trade with the Rays. Since heading East, he’s been incredible, one of the best relievers in the game. Seriously, look at these splits:

I had to know what changed. I’ll warn you: there’s a lot of failure in this article, a lot of finding not much, before we get to the good stuff — and I promise there’s good stuff. If you’re not into seeing how a pitcher can get to wildly different results with a substantially similar process, this article might bore you. But if you’re curious like I was, read on, and delve deeply with me into the minutiae of a pitcher who didn’t change very much and yet went from unplayable to great. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below. I’ve moved all of the players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to 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.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

This deadline had its share of earthquakes, but it also featured smaller aftershocks, as teams improved their depth or addressed smaller, specific needs. So let’s run down some of the deals that might get buried by the higher-Richter scale shakes of the likes of Max Scherzer and Kris Bryant.

The Houston Astros acquired pitcher Phil Maton and catcher Yainer Diaz from the Cleveland Guardians for center fielder Myles Straw

This trade is actually a slightly unusual one, as the team in the playoff shot — it’s not Cleveland — is the one giving up the best player. Straw’s offensive profile will likely prevent him from being an actual star at any point, but he’s fast, plays enough defense, and gets on-base at a respectable enough level to be an average or even better starter in center; he’s already hit the 2-WAR threshold, after all. UZR, our defensive input for WAR, has him at +6.6 runs, while OAA has him at +5 runs and DRS has him at +2. I don’t think I’d ever play him except in a pinch, but Straw’s theoretical ability to at least stand at second or short in an emergency has some additional value, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Some teams have an instantly identifiable “type.” You know what I’m talking about: the Cardinals and scrappy-but-under-tooled infielders, the Cubs with pitchers who don’t crack 90 mph, and the Rays with platoon-ish hitters who would be stretched as everyday players. Today, the Rays got their man again — Jordan Luplow, who is exactly the kind of hitter that always seems to be lurking on Tampa Bay’s bench, waiting to ruin some poor lefty reliever’s day.

The Rays are heavier on lefties than they’d probably like this year; Kevin Kiermaier, Austin Meadows, and Brett Phillips have all gotten plenty of run in the outfield, and only Meadows is someone I’d like to run out there against same-handed pitching. In all, Kiermaier and Phillips have 152 plate appearances against lefties, where they’ve put up a combined 27 wRC+. Not great, Bob.

In 334 career plate appearances against lefties, Luplow is hitting .251/.371/.556, good for a 143 wRC+. You can’t take platoon splits at face value with such a small sample, but he truly looks like a lefty masher; he walks nearly twice as often against lefties as compared to righties, strikes out less, and hits for a ton of power, with an enviable 11.5% barrel rate against southpaws (7.9% against righties). He also smashes four-seam fastballs, and there are lefty fastballs worth smashing in the AL playoff chase. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners understandably upset their fan base on Wednesday when, while just one game out of the Wild Card race, they traded away Kendall Graveman, and to the Astros no less. While it’s still a debatable move, Seattle general manager Jerry Dipoto has shown a bit more of his hand since; after trading for Tyler Anderson to stabilize the rotation on Wednesday night, he found a better reliever than Graveman in the form of Rays closer Diego Castillo, who was acquired for righty J.T. Chargois and minor league corner infielder Austin Shenton. For Seattle, mystery solved, at least kind of; for the Rays, on the other hand, it’s a curious decision.

In getting Castillo, the Mariners have upgraded their late-inning options for the stretch run. Armed with one of the more deadly two-pitch combinations in the game, he is throwing more strikes than ever and missing more bats than ever, and given that he’s just 27, there’s still upside beyond what we’ve seen. There’s nothing complicated about what Castillo does or the way he does it; he’s a classic let-it-eat bullpen ace who sits 96–98 mph with the heater and has a slider in the upper-80s. In an era obsessed with revolutions per minute, he is the rare anti-spin guy, with below-average RPMs on both offerings, but he has found a way to add some two-plane break to his breaking ball this year. He’s also using his slider more than ever in 2021, with nearly 70% usage. Compare that to just two years ago, when he went after hitters with a nearly 50/50 mix.

While Castillo has greatly reduced his walks, he still certainly has far more control than command. It’s the same approach against every hitter: he elevates his fastball and throws his slider to the one location he can consistently get to, working the lower outer edge to right-handed hitters and back-footing lefties. It’s the kind of thing you can succeed at with quality pitches, and there’s no reason to think that success won’t continue. The Mariners added an elite high-leverage reliever who should be able to rack up saves in the Emerald City for three more years (Castillo is arbitration eligible for the first time this offseason), and they made their big league roster better, both right now and in the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is upon us, but as I was thinking about the deals that could get done between now and Friday, I kept looking at the Baseball Prospectus Injury Ledger, since quite a few contenders have some very good players waiting in the wings. So today I wanted to take a look at the most impactful players who are currently on, or just off, the injured list for AL contenders as the trade deadline looms; I’ll follow it up with a look at NL contenders later this week.

There are players on these lists who could make or break their teams’ ability to make it to the postseason, and there are players who may not make it off the IL in time to help, which leads me to some important caveats. First, injuries are not all created equal, and players have setbacks all the time. These are projections that can and will shift.

Second, I don’t have a crystal ball; I used our playoff projections and only included teams that had at least a 30% chance of making the playoffs. That means the Blue Jays, who were in the first draft of this piece, ultimately just missed; our odds currently have them at 27.5% chance to make the playoffs. For any Blue Jays fans who are annoyed by this, I get it. That said, they were both borderline in terms of playoff odds and in terms of the most impactful players returning; only Danny Jansen and Alek Manoah would have pinged on this list.

Finally, having a 30% shot at the playoffs doesn’t mean you have players sitting on the IL who can push you over the top. Chad Pinder isn’t going to be the hero of Oakland’s season, which is no shade to either. But if the A’s are going to compete in the second half, they probably need to focus on the trade market, like they did Monday night in adding Andrew Chafin to their bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is nearly here and once again, team behavior will be driven, at least in part, by 40-man roster dynamics. Teams with an especially high number of both rostered players under contract for 2022 and prospects who would need to be added to the 40-man in the offseason have what is often called a “40-man crunch,” “spillover,” or “churn,” meaning that the team has incentive to clear their overflow of players by trading for something they can keep — pool space, comp picks, or, more typically, younger players whose 40-man clocks are further from midnight — rather than do nothing, and later lose players to waivers or in the Rule 5 draft. In an effort to see whose depth might augment trade behavior, I enjoy assessing clubs’ 40-man futures every year. This exercise is done by using the RosterResource Depth Chart pages to examine current 40-man occupancy, subtracting pending free agents (on the Team Payroll tab), and then weighing the December 2021 Rule 5 eligible prospects to see who has the biggest crunch coming and might behave differently in the trade market because of it.

Some quick rules about 40-man rosters. Almost none of them contain exactly 40 players in-season because teams can add a player to the 40 to replace a player who’s on the 60-day Injured List. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra spots for injured players and have to get down to 40, so if they want to keep some of the injury fill-ins, they have to cut someone from the 40-man to make room.

In November, clubs have to add prospects to the 40-man to protect them from the Rule 5 draft. RosterResource is the most accessible resource for tracking the prospect timelines. Most teams add a handful of players every offseason, while some add just one, and others may add as many as 10. Read the rest of this entry »

As of Thursday night, the Mets’ starting rotation featured Marcus Stroman, Taijuan Walker, Tylor Megill, and a sentient ball of string who showed promise in Low-A. Fine, I made up the last one, but if you told the Mets front office about this ball of string, they’d at least ask you for its Trackman data. A seemingly unending string of injuries left the team grasping for pitching — any pitching at all. Enter Rich Hill, in a trade with the Rays:

We’ve acquired left-handed pitcher Rich Hill from Tampa Bay in exchange for right-handed pitcher Tommy Hunter and minor league catcher Matt Dyer. https://t.co/P24Fo2HoYd

— New York Mets (@Mets) July 23, 2021

At a very basic level, the Mets had to make this trade. Jacob deGrom is on the shelf. David Peterson broke his foot walking around. Carlos Carrasco and Noah Syndergaard aren’t ready. Joey Lucchesi tore his UCL. Robert Stock, who was already 10th or so on the depth chart, strained his hamstring. Forget replacement level — Hill represents an upgrade from subterranean level. To some extent, any trade at all would be a win, in that it would leave them able to field a roster.

But Hill isn’t merely roster depth. He’s one of the most interesting pitchers in baseball, a curve-and-fastball machine who has spent years pumping sub-90 mph gas past hitters while bamboozling them with a dazzling array of breaking balls. Heck, earlier this year he was named the AL Pitcher of the Month (it’s not the most prestigious award, but it’s an award) in May, when he posted a 0.78 ERA over 34.2 innings.

Of course, there are other months in the year, and the rest of Hill’s 2021 hasn’t gone nearly so well. In total he sported a 3.87 ERA and 4.55 FIP with the Rays, both of which are the highest marks he’s posted since bursting back onto the scene in 2015. His 9.9% swinging strike rate is better only than his abbreviated 2020 season, and he wasn’t exactly great then either. There’s a strong chance that Hill’s 2021 season will be his last stand. Read the rest of this entry »

With a week to go until the trade deadline, the Rays struck a blow against the other contenders on Thursday night, acquiring designated hitter Nelson Cruz and pitcher Calvin Faucher from the Twins for pitchers Drew Strotman and Joe Ryan. Seemingly immune to changes in offensive environment and the arrow of time, Cruz is having a typical Cruz season at 41, hitting .294/.370/.537 with a 142 wRC+, 19 homers, and a 1.8 WAR, the latter a spicy number for a DH in only 85 games.

Tampa Bay’s lineup has been decent but well below the level of the elite offenses in the American League, ranking eighth in wRC+ and fifth in overall runs scored. The outfield has been a particular work in progress when it comes to offense. Kevin Kiermaier and Brett Phillips have both been excellent defensively, but neither are run producers, and 2020 postseason standout Manuel Margot has been rather pumpkin-ified this year. Adding Cruz to the mix allows the Rays to use Austin Meadows and Randy Arozarena daily in the corners. The primary downside here is that Meadows has a rather long injury history for a player just in his mid-20s, and playing in the field every day could increase the risk of another trip to the IL. I think it’s worth the risk; the Yankees and Jays are slowly drifting out of the divisional race, and the Red Sox are dangerous just as long as their pitching rotation stays healthy.

Adding Cruz was worth about five percentage points of divisional probability for the Rays in the ZiPS projections, shifting the race from a fairly balanced 55/45 race to one tipping a bit in favor of Tampa Bay. Expect many more changes before we flip the calendars!

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Wisler has thrown his slider 89.2% of the time this year, the highest percentage of any pitcher in either league. He’s done so over 32-and-two-thirds innings, the last 12-and-a-third of them with the Tampa Bay Rays, who acquired the 28-year-old right-hander from the San Francisco Giants on June 11 in exchange for minor league southpaw Michael Plassmeyer. Since coming to his new club, Wisler has made a dozen appearances and allowed just one earned run.

Wisler told the story behind his signature pitch over the phone earlier this month.

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Matt Wisler: “I’d say I learned [a slider] in high school. I’d always thrown a curveball growing up — from when I was 11 or 12 — and then around sophomore year I started throwing a slider. It was honestly more like a different variation of a curveball, though. It was just a little bit different spin.

“The slider I have now, I learned in Low-A way. My pitching coach was Willie Blair, and we were trying to get more separation between my curveball and my slider. We went through a bunch of different grips. Finally, the second time I tried his grip, it kind of clicked for me. That was in 2012. I’ve kept that one ever since, and have obviously started throwing it more and more over the last couple of years.

“My original slider was more like a slurve — it was probably high-70s, low-80s — and we were trying to find a pitch that I could get into the low- to mid-80s with a little bit different break. There are still times where it will get a little slurvy and be in the high-70s, and a little bigger and rounder. Read the rest of this entry »