Archive for Reds

While there was only one Instructional League game in the Valley on Monday, Tuesday had three options: Los Naranjeros de Hermosillo (a Mexican Pacific League team from Sonora, the Mexican State immediately south of Arizona) was at the Athletics’ facility in Mesa, while the Royals (hosting the Reds) and the Rangers (hosting the Padres) would have simultaneous games at their shared complex in Surprise. I carpooled with Baseball America contributor and photographer, Bill Mitchell, to the northwest end of the metro for those games, with two cameras in tow.

Within minutes of getting to Surprise, I learned that Joe Musgrove and Lucas Giolito were making rehab appearances for the Padres, and that the Royals-Reds game was slated for 11 innings. About 10 minutes before first pitch, I set up a camera at the Royals’ field and began to make my way over to the Rangers’ side to watch Giolito and Musgrove in real time. While anxiously daydreaming about arriving just a tad late to the other field, I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings and was nearly hit by an errant Steven Zobac long-toss throw, which whizzed past my shins. Halfway across the parking lot, I was relieved when I heard music coming from the Rangers’ field — they were still getting loose. I made it in time. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of baseball’s awards races are formalities this year. The favorites are clear, and deservedly so. Pete Crow-Armstrong is having one of the greatest seasons of the 21st century. Jacob Misiorowski is a closer throwing starter innings. Bobby Witt Jr. has been terrific, but Yordan Alvarez is unsolvable. Cam Schlittler has more fastballs than batters have answers. Kevin McGonigle is a phenom. But I’m most interested in the sixth major race: National League Rookie of the Year. The gambling odds would tell you that it too is settled, with Sal Stewart the prohibitive favorite. But if I had a vote this year, I’d cast it for JJ Wetherholt, and I want to explain myself because I think this race provides a fascinating look into old school versus new school baseball statistics, and how both have blind spots.

Before we get into my argument, let’s get a few disclaimers out of the way. I am not voting for NL Rookie of the Year. I’m not a member of the BBWAA, even. I haven’t placed any wagers on NL ROY, or on any awards, or on anything even peripherally related to this. I was a Cardinals fan before I started working in baseball, but that has faded away. I have a lot of fond memories of Ozzie Smith, but I’m a fan of the sport now, not a team, and I’ve watched more Reds games than Cardinals games this year because I love watching Elly De La Cruz play. No one in the world is truly unbiased, but I don’t have a horse in this race in any meaningful way.

With that out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks. The two leading candidates for the award are Stewart and Wetherholt, with Carson Benge a distant-enough third according to the odds that I’m largely leaving him out of the discussion, though he’ll make some cameos. Stewart’s résumé revolves around his thunderous bat. He’s batting .266/.333/.465, with 32 homers and a gaudy 110 RBI. Even in an offense-friendly home park, that’s good for a 115 wRC+, 15th-best among qualifying first basemen, and of course the RBI total is better than that. He’s played so-so defense at first – not that I care much about that in award voting – and has accrued 2.2 WAR per our calculation of the statistic. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds dropped six out of seven games to the Dodgers this season, all within the last two weeks, but Elly De La Cruz no doubt left an impression both on them and the rest of baseball. The 24-year-old shortstop homered in five of those seven games while lighting up Statcast and assembling some eye-opening highlight clips. Although the Reds have regressed after making the playoffs last year, De La Cruz is putting the finishing touches on his best offensive campaign — and he still has a reasonable chance at his first 30-homer, 30-steal season.

Coming as they have while the Reds play out the string of a disappointing season, De La Cruz’s recent feats at the plate and in the field admittedly have a bit of a Tungsten Arm O’Doyle feel. After claiming the third NL Wild Card spot last year with an 83-79 record — the Reds’ first postseason berth in a full season since 2013 — they’ve slipped to 71-82, including 12-20 since August 15, the second-worst record in the NL during that span. But it’s hardly De La Cruz’s fault that Hunter Greene made just five starts before undergoing Tommy John surgery, that starters Nick Lodolo, Rhett Lowder, and Brady Singer are all sporting ERAs well over 5.00, or that TJ Friedl, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Noelvi Marte, and Matt McLain have combined for nearly 1,200 plate appearances and a 49 wRC+.

Against that dismal backdrop, De La Cruz has still kept the Reds worth watching, if only to see what the switch-hitting 6-foot-6 marvel might do next. From September 5–9, he homered in five straight games, the first two coming against the Brewers at Great American Ballpark and the last three at Dodger Stadium. The Brewers broke De La Cruz’s streak, holding him homerless during last weekend’s three-game series in Milwaukee, but he was back at it with homers against the Dodgers in Cincinnati on Monday and Wednesday. Unfortunately, twice during that stretch (September 9 and 14, both against the Dodgers), his homer provided the Reds with their only run of the game. Here are the dingers from the five-game streak:

That streak placed De La Cruz in the company of White Sox rookies Munetaka Murakami (April 17–22) and Tristan Peters (August 22–26), Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson (April 22–26), and Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber (May 7-12), all of whom homered in five straight games this season as well, with the Rays’ Junior Caminero going yard in six straight games (June 25–July 1). De La Cruz’s streak tied one by Eugenio Suárez from 2018 (July 23–27) as the second longest by a Red in the last 10 seasons, with the longest a seven-gamer belonging to Joey Votto in 2021 (July 24–31), one short of the major league record shared by Dale Long, Don Mattingly, and Ken Griffey Jr.

Beyond the volume of De La Cruz’s homers was their emphatic nature. Six of them had exit velocities of 106 mph or higher, with his solo shot off Evan Phillips of the Dodgers on Monday leading the pack at 114.1 mph, followed by a 112.1-mph solo home run off the Brewers’ Dustin May on September 5. His two-run homer off Tarik Skubal on September 8 had an estimated distance of 444 feet, making it both this season’s longest at Dodger Stadium and also the longest surrendered by the two-time reigning Cy Young winner. The clout off Phillips was estimated at 457 feet, making it the longest hit at Great American this year — it actually left the ballpark after bouncing on the concourse — as well as De La Cruz’s longest since September 26, 2023 (a career-best 467-footer).

De La Cruz’s recent hot streak has been about more than just home runs. Before going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts against the Dodgers on Thursday afternoon, he had reached base in 23 consecutive games dating back to August 22, matching the longest streak of his career, from April 9 to May 4 of last season. Over the course of this year’s streak, he hit .424/.480/.793 with eight home runs, four stolen bases, a 242 wRC+ (tops in the majors over that span, two points higher than that of Rafael Devers), and 2.4 WAR (also tops, 0.3 WAR ahead of an MVP-bound Pete Crow-Armstrong). During that stretch, De La Cruz’s batted balls averaged a sizzling 99.6 mph in exit velocity, with a 29.7% barrel rate and a 67.2% hard-hit rate.

On the other side of the ball, De La Cruz also uncorked the hardest throw for an assist by an infielder in the Statcast era, a 102-mph relay that nabbed the Dodgers’ Teoscar Hernández at the plate as he tried for an inside-the-park home run on September 9. That was the same night De La Cruz homered off Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Though the velocity on that throw was revised downward upon review, from an initial report of 105.3 mph, it was still 2.2 mph faster than the previous high — which was set by De La Cruz on July 20, 2023 (a relay throw to catch the Giants’ Wilmer Flores at the plate), and matched on August 8 of this season (yet another relay, this one to nail the Nationals’ Nasim Nuñez trying to score). In fact, according to MLB.com’s David Adler, De La Cruz owns the five fastest infielder assists in the Statcast era. The others are also on relays to the plate, with this 99.7-mph one from August 27, 2023 (cutting down the Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll trying to complete an inside-the-park homer) and this 99.2-mph one from August 19 this season (extinguishing a none-too-swift Blaze Jordan trying to score) rounding out the top five.

Overall, including Thursday’s 0-fer, De La Cruz is hitting .284/.362/.517 for a 138 wRC+. All of those numbers represent career highs, with his slugging percentage ranking sixth in the league and his wRC+ seventh. Thanks in large part to his on-base streak, his 6.0 WAR ranks second among NL position players behind PCA; he’s still 0.7 behind the combined pitching and offense total for Shohei Ohtani, but could close the gap during the two-way superstar’s stint on the injured list. De La Cruz also remains 0.8 WAR shy of his own career high, set in 2024, but he played 160 games that year, whereas he’s totaled 134 this year, having missed three weeks in June due to a right hamstring strain. He would max out at 143 games if he plays all nine remaining on the Reds’ schedule.

De La Cruz has reason to do just that. While his 28 homers already represents a career high, he’s just two away from reaching 30, and needs four stolen bases to get to 30 in that category as well. He’s not running as often — or as fast — as he used to. In 2024, De La Cruz led the NL with 67 steals (in 83 attempts) with 100th-percentile sprint speed, but this year he’s stolen just 26 in 34 attempts, including only four in August and two in September, with 80th-percentile sprint speed; it’s understandable if he’s not as willing to test his hamstring. If he does reach 30 in both categories, he would join PCA (44 homers, 37 steals) and likely CJ Abrams, who currently has 30 homers and 29 steals, in this year’s club.

The switch-hitting De La Cruz’s big step forward has been driven by significant improvement in his production against left-handed pitching. He’s made adjustments to his right-handed swing that have brought it more in line with his left-handed one, and gained substantial bat speed from both sides of the plate that have resulted in much better contact. Some of this was documented earlier this season, here by Ryan Blake, at MLB.com by Jared Greenspan, and elsewhere, though not everything that was true when they checked in still holds.

Though he’s a natural right-hander based upon both his throws and his self-description, De La Cruz’s production against lefties lagged before this season, as both Blake and Greenspan pointed out. Updating the numbers:

From 2023–25, De La Cruz hit .271/.351/.497 for a 128 wRC+ against righties, placing him the 83rd percentile among lefties with at least 300 plate appearances in that context. Meanwhile, he hit just .220/.278/.329 for a 66 wRC+ against lefties, landing him in the third percentile among righties with at least 300 plate appearances in that context. With more than twice as many plate appearances against righties, he was still above average overall, with a 109 wRC+ during that span, but the split was jarring; that’s the kind of production that gets lefties benched against same-side pitching.

This year is a different story, as De La Cruz has has improved his wRC+ by 112 points against lefties. If that sounds like a lot, it is. Our Splits Leaderboard data only goes back to 2002, but of the 2,615 player-seasons in which a right-handed batter took at least 100 plate appearances against lefties in back-to-back seasons, it’s the 16th-largest gain, placing him well inside the 99th percentile. The largest gain was made by switch-hitting Orioles catcher Matt Wieters, who jumped from a 44 wRC+ in 127 plate appearances against lefties in 2010 to a 201 wRC+ in 142 plate appearances against them in ’11. The median wRC+ within the top 20 was 58 in year one and 172 in year two; qualitatively, that looks like a turn from total incompetence to total mastery, but a lot of fluky things can happen from year to year over the course of 100 or 150 plate appearances, and figuring out the whys of all those big gains, and the extent to which they were maintained, is outside the scope of this piece. For De La Cruz, at least, the improvement is founded in much better contact:

De La Cruz’s average exit velocity against lefties has jumped 7.4 mph from 2025, with his barrel rate nearly tripling, his hard-hit rate increasing by almost 20 percentage points, and his expected slugging percentage surging by almost 130 points. What’s more, his actual production from that side has exceeded his expected numbers by a fair bit. He’s not only producing his highest pulled-air rate of his career from that side (though a comparatively low one in the grand scheme), he’s also poked five homers to right (opposite field) from among 24 batted balls, for a 1.435 slugging and an .806 xSLG; in three previous seasons, he had just one such home run.

Meanwhile, De Le Cruz’s average exit velo against righties has improved by 2.3 mph, with his barrel and hard-hit rates and xSLG jumping as well, but not by as much as from the other side. He’s underperforming those numbers, in part because of that very low pulled-air rate, but it’s still very good production from that side.

Underlying those higher exit velocities are better swing decisions and improved bat speed from both sides. On the former front, he’s cut his chase rate from 28.5% to a career-low 25.8%, with his swing rate falling from a career-high 45.6% to a career-low 40.9%. As for the latter front:

I ditched the small-sample 2023 data, when he was swinging even faster, but here you can see that relative to the last season, De La Cruz’s bat speed against lefties has improved by 2.3 mph, with his fast-swing rate against them increasing by 21 points and his squared-up and blast rates really jumping. Earlier in the season, he had shortened his right-handed swing relative to last year, but that no longer holds. From both sides of the plate, the position of his feet has varied so widely from month to month over that three-season stretch that I didn’t even try to get more granular, but he has closed up his stance on both sides relative to last season, and increased the distance between his feet. During this current tear, in September he’s averaged a 13-degree open stance with his feet 34.9 inches apart from the right side of the plate (versus lefties) and a 19-degree open stance with his feet 35.7 inches apart from the left side (versus righties).

The increased distance between his feet, or the season-to-season variation, owes to De La Cruz’s moving from a leg kick (2024) to a toe tap (2025), and back to an even bigger leg kick this year, with refined mechanics helping him to be more explosive and produce greater power. On MLB Network on Thursday, Yonder Alonso and Mark DeRosa broke down the slugger’s progression and the changes with video examples better than I can muster. This is four minutes from a segment that’s over nine minutes long.

The two former major leaguers disagree on some points, but as Alonso explains it, with the toe tap, De La Cruz’s swing was “two-step” and he was “a hair late” to the ball. The leg kick creates “a much better angle to the baseball and better bat speed,” and as shown near the end of this excerpt, his swings from both sides of the plate are much more similar than they were before.

As you can see from the table presented near the end of that excerpt, De La Cruz’s overall year-to-year increases in barrel rate and hard-hit rate are the largest in the majors, with his increased exit velocity the second largest. Including updated stats from Thursday, here are the top 10s for each of those:

In that context, De La Cruz’s improvements in those two rate stats particularly stand out. The distance between him and the second-ranked hitter is about the same as those between the second- and 10th-ranked hitters. The same is more or less true in terms of exit velocity, in that the distance between him and the third-ranked hitter is even greater than that between no. 3 and no. 10.

With his huge frame and exceptional speed, power, and arm, De La Cruz has always been one of the majors’ most compelling players to watch. As he’s refined his game, that’s become even more true — and to think, he’s just 24 years old. I can’t wait to see where these improvements take him.

Back in August, the baseball savants at Baseball Savant bestowed upon us nerds yet another helping of Statcast data, this time in the form of a first base receiving leaderboard. Mike Petriello and Tom Tango wrote explainers describing how the new metric works and what exactly it means. Want to know who’s the best at scooping the ball, or corralling bouncers, or jumping up and snaring high throws and then landing on the bag before the runner? Now you can learn that information without having to watch all that bothersome baseball.

In the simplest terms, receiving works like other Statcast metrics. Each throw to the first baseman has a catch probability, which then maps onto out expectancy. Say a throw has a catch probability of 75%. A first baseman who makes the play earns 25% of an out, while the first baseman who muffs it loses 75%. With this data, I can tell you that this season, Alec Burleson has been the best at this skill by a wide margin, while Bryce Harper has been the worst by the same amount. That last part’s not necessarily a surprise, considering that six weeks before the new metric dropped, I wrote an entire article detailing ways in which Harper needed to improve at the cold corner, and that four weeks after that, the Phillies moved Harper off the position altogether (maybe they should’ve tried some of my fixes).

Within his explainer, Petriello noted that, as is so often the case in the game we love, the numbers tell us that receiving is not quite as important as we might want it to be. In our hearts, scooping the ball is the soul of the first base position. If you can’t pick it, you don’t belong there. But in reality, opportunities to scoop the ball come so infrequently that its value is in no way commensurate with the premium we place upon it. Spencer Torkelson and Jonathan Aranda sit atop the scooportunity leaderboard with 18 apiece, which means that they don’t even see one per week. The next time you attend your Saturday night Moneyball singalong and you shout along with Ron Washington that first base is incredibly hard, feel free to voice your own addendum: “But it doesn’t matter much anyway.”

Nevertheless, I haven’t been able to keep away from this leaderboard. Tango and Petriello explained a whole lot, but I still found myself overflowing with questions that this new data can finally help us answer. Scoops and bouncers and wide throws may not be as important as I want them to be, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting. I have a bunch of article ideas about this topic, but today, we’re starting small. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that starting pitchers throw fewer innings than they once did. Not only have complete games become a rarity (there have only been 20 so far this season), it is all too common to see starters limited to just five frames. The proof is in the pudding. Going by 10-year increments, the average number of innings per start has dropped steadily, going from 6.53 in 1976 to 5.08 in the current campaign. Moreover, the number of outings with 100 or more pitches this year is just 510, a 560 pace. Turn the calendar back to 2016 and there were 1,737 such outings. A decade earlier, there were 2,095.

How do current major league starters feel about the collective decline in workloads? Comprehensive polling isn’t practical, but I did query nine starters — some older, some younger — to get their thoughts on the subject. Here is what they had to say. Read the rest of this entry »

Sal Stewart is a frontrunner for NL Rookie of the Year honors. A formidable presence in the middle of the Cincinnati Reds lineup, the 22-year-old corner infielder has bashed 31 home runs and put up a 121 wRC+. Moreover, he leads all MLB hitters with 106 RBIs. Per the team’s press notes, Ted Williams (144 in 1939) and Walt Dropo are the only rookies to lead the majors in RBIs since 1920.

Stewart’s ability to square up baseballs far exceeds his wordiness when discussing the art and science of hitting — at least that was the case when I talked to him prior to a recent game at Wrigley Field. Entertainingly demonstrative when interacting with teammates in the clubhouse prior to our conversation, he was far from expansive when responding to questions about his craft.

“I’m kind of always tinkering and trying to find what’s best,” Stewart replied when asked how he’s grown as a hitter since entering pro ball in 2022 out of a Miami high school. “But for the most part, I have the same swing I’ve had since I was 12 years old.”

The burgeoning star told me that he still has the same offseason hitting coaches who helped him hone his right-handed stroke in travel ball. As he explained, “I trust my people and stick with my people.” Ditto training methods. He doesn’t hit off of a Trajekt, preferring instead to follow his established routine of “doing some tee stuff, some flips. Drills that I know work for me, and prepare me for the game.”

His approach when he steps up to the plate? Read the rest of this entry »

Tristan Peters was a 22-year-old San Francisco Giants outfield prospect when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in August 2022. Drafted in the seventh round the previous year out of Southern Illinois University, he had recently been acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers at the trade deadline in exchange for Trevor Rosenthal. His profile was modest. While he possessed potential, Peters was nonetheless unranked, with plenty of raw edges to be smoothed out if he hoped to one day reach The Show.

It took time, but his once-raw tools are now are shining brightly on Chicago’s South Side. Now with his fourth organization — the White Sox purchased his contract from the Tampa Bay Rays over the offseason — Peters is thriving to the tune of a .279/.344/.468 slash line, a dozen home runs, and a 128 wRC+ over 408 plate appearances. Moreover, he went deep for the fifth straight game on Thursday, tying a franchise record held by seven other players. Munetaka Murakami is among them, having turned the trick back in April.

The developmental strides Peters has made since we spoke four years ago this month? Peters told me that there have been “tons,” with defense standing out as an especially meaningful area of improvement. On the offensive end, he has made adjustments to his lower half, putting him “in a better position to swing,” thus allowing him to be “more powerful.”

His future was in doubt as recently as December. Nine days before Christmas, the 26-year-old native of Winkler, Manitoba was designated for assignment. Not surprisingly, he found himself not only wondering where his baseball journey would take him next, but also if a big-league uniform was part of that equation. Read the rest of this entry »

The worst-case scenario for Hunter Greene’s elbow has come to pass. The ace right-hander had Tommy John surgery on Thursday, ending his 2026 season and almost certainly knocking him out for the entire 2027 season, too. This was Greene’s second elbow procedure this season; a previous arthroscopic surgery to remove loose bodies delayed his seasonal debut until Independence Day. Greene’s 2026 season wraps up with a 6.83 ERA, but a better 3.55 FIP over 27 2/3 innings in five starts. This is a full Tommy John revision — Greene previously had Tommy John surgery in 2019 — and not the internal brace procedure that tends to have a quicker recovery.

Suffice it to say, this is a major blow for both Greene and the Cincinnati Reds. For Greene, it’s the latest (and scariest) injury setback in a professional career that has never seen him throw enough innings to qualify for an ERA title. There comes a point at which one starts to wonder if he has crossed the proverbial Rubicon, the point where teams now can’t realistically tell themselves that they can keep him healthy as a starting pitcher. His fastball-splitter-slider repertoire would almost certainly play nicely in relief, though he’ll be hard-pressed to make the same impact as a closer as he could as a legitimate frontline starter. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I’d left this life behind. I thought my We Tried tracking days were behind me. I spent the past week covering trades that happened. Real trades, where one player (or two players, or three players, or a theoretical pile of international bonus pool money) moved from one team to another in exchange for one other player (or two other players, or, well, you get it). But just when I thought I was out, the Brewers pulled me back in. Of all teams, the Brewers! I started tracking We Trieds following the 2024 season, and over two offseasons, Milwaukee put up two goose eggs. The Brewers never gave me a single We Tried to track. Now they’ve had such a dramatic We Tried that they’re dragging me kicking and screaming out of We Tried retirement. What a world. Oh, and the Red Sox roped me back in too, because of course they did. But let’s start in Milwaukee.

As you might have learned from Michael Baumann, the Brewers were considered a real contender to land Tarik Skubal. That alone does not a We Tried make, but on Tuesday, MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy spilled all sorts of beans about their ace chase. McCalvy talked to “multiple club officials” and found the Brewers uncharacteristically forthcoming. He learned that although top overall prospect Jesús Made was off limits, the Brewers offered shortstop Luis Peña, whom we have ranked 26th overall on our updated Top 100 Prospects list, and two other position player prospects. One of those other prospects was also a Top 100 talent, which, depending on whose top 100 you’re talking about, could mean Brady Ebel, Jett Williams, Josh Adamczewski, or Luis Lara (though probably not Lara, as the Brewers signed him to an extension in June). That’s quite a lot of specifics.

A friend sent this article to me within an hour of its publication. It hits all the We Tried hallmarks. It lays out the offer the Brewers made, speculates on the players included and the players the Dodgers would have liked them to include. As I read on, I couldn’t help myself. I knew I’d have to get back in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline was yesterday. Are you tired? I’m tired. But we’re not done yet. We’ve still got to break down the three trades the Reds managed to swing at the bell. Let’s get to it, and then let’s take a nap. First, the Reds sent reliever Caleb Ferguson to the Cardinals in exchange for $250,000 of international bonus pool space. Then the Reds hooked up with the Guardians for two intrastate deals: Cleveland sent Cincinnati pitching prospect Alejandro Rivera in exchange for first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, and, in a separate transaction, traded rookie second baseman Juan Brito in exchange for a pile of money whose size has not yet been revealed. Were I in charge of one of these Ohio franchises, I might have combined those deals into one move, as it likely would have made everyone feel a bit better. Brito would definitely feel a bit better if he thought his contract hadn’t simply been sold outright, and Lowe might have an extra bit of pep in his step if he thought he got traded for not one but two players (plus he could’ve delivered the cash considerations himself, saving the Reds a trip to the post office for a money order). Let’s take these in order, shall we?

Ferguson must be getting used to this. He got traded at the deadline from the Yankees to the Astros in 2024 and the Pirates to the Mariners in 2025. At least Cincinnati to St. Louis is his shortest move yet. The 30-year-old lefty reliever is running a 4.01 ERA and 4.23 FIP this season. That FIP is grumpy, his highest since 2019, because he’s walking 10.1% of the batters he faces and running his worst home run rate since 2020. Although his hard-hit rate is still excellent and he has a great groundball rate, batters seem more comfortable. Their bat speed against him is up more than two ticks from last season, a huge jump that makes it seem like the high home run rate might be more than just bad luck. Still, we should note that we’re talking about a small sample here. Ferguson has only made 26 appearances (24.2 inning) because he missed the first two months of the season with an oblique injury (that is, an injury to his obliques; not some sort of obscure, unparsable injury). He is also running the second-highest BABIP of his career and his expected ERA is 3.49, almost exactly the same as last year, so Statcast isn’t too worried about his contact quality.

However, we do need to note some real changes in Ferguson’s profile. His average fastball velocity has dropped from 93.9 mph last year to 92.4 mph this year. His arm angle has also dropped significantly, from 46 degrees to 39. These are big changes, and as you’d expect when a pitcher’s arm angle drops, Ferguson’s stuff has traded a small amount of vertical movement for some horizontal movement. Now, maybe this is intentional. Maybe it’s a result of the oblique injury, and Ferguson’s velocity, arm angle, or both will jump back up toward the end of the season. I don’t have a way of knowing, but it obviously didn’t scare off St. Louis.

As for why the Cardinals made this move, my only guess is that they weren’t planning on using that bonus pool money. They traded away Dustin May, JoJo Romero, and Lars Nootbaar at the deadline. After beating the Yankees last night, their playoff odds sit at 5.5%. Ferguson can take the left-handed Romero’s spot in a bullpen that ranks 24th in ERA and 21st in FIP.

That brings us to the Reds-Guardians trades. Lowe is the big-ticket item here. After a dismal 2025 season in which he ran a 91 wRC+ and put up -0.3 WAR, he is back where he’s been for most of his career, running a 120 wRC+ and, when he’s not DH’ing, providing first base defense that is better left unmentioned. However, in recent years, Lowe has been going about it in a very different fashion.

Lowe bats left-handed, but his career platoon splits aren’t that extreme. He’s got a 103 wRC+ against lefties and a 123 mark against righties. Last year, that changed. He put up a wRC+ of just 41 against lefties. It’s the main reason his season was such a disaster. This year, the Reds have been shielding Lowe from lefties at all costs. He’s only faced them 10% of the time, and while that’s a tiny sample, you can’t fault them: He’s running a 137 wRC+ against righties and a -52 wRC+ against lefties. Yes, I said negative 52. He’s going to keep on platooning in Cleveland.

To that end, the Guardians made room on the roster for Lowe and fellow trade acquisition Jo Adell by optioning Kyle Manzardo and David Fry to Triple-A. Manzardo had been platooning with Rhys Hoskins at first base, but after running a 113 wRC+ in his first full major league season last year, he’s backslid to a 95 wRC+. His defense, while not Nathaniel Lowe-bad, hasn’t helped much either. Lowe will slide into Manzardo’s spot, serving as the big spoon in the first base platoon with Hoskins.

This isn’t the sexiest move, and the defensive side will cost the Guardians some. Manzardo and Lowe have both put up -4 FRV at first base this season, but Lowe has accrued that negative value in just 30% of the innings (and to be fair to Manzardo, DRS actually thinks he’s actually been a good defender). Still, the offensive bump will more than offset that, and – stop me if you’ve heard this before – the Guards need some help at the plate. With a 93 wRC+, they rank 25th in baseball. This isn’t exactly a new problem, but Lowe should be able to provide some real help.

Cincinnati’s return for Lowe is intriguing, though the player is a ways off from the majors. The Guardians signed the 19-year-old Rivera out of Venezuela, and he’s spent the past two seasons dominating the DSL to the tune of a 1.60 ERA and a 3.97 FIP. (I know the FIP doesn’t sound that impressive, but in the DSL, that still works out to an impressive FIP- of 78.) Rivera ran a 2.44 ERA with a 3.59 FIP and a huge 36% strikeout rate in the complex this year, and made one start at Low-A before the deadline. Eric Longenhagen likes Rivera’s athleticism, noting that although the righty is just 5-foot-10, he generates six-and-a-half feet of extension. He’s got a plus changeup, and a low release gives his fastball, which sits 90-94 mph, an uphill angle. Eric put a 35+ FV on Rivera, noting that the “lack of size makes it tough to comfortably project him as a starter.”

That brings us to our last move: Juan Brito for a mystery amount of cash. You don’t need me to break down the present or future value of cash. That’s helpfully printed on the corners, so we can get right to Brito, whom the Guardians DFA’d a few hours before the trade. The 24-year-old infielder made his major league debut in April, and in 15 games, he’s put up a wRC+ of 45 and struck out more than 30% of the time. He’s mostly hit in the minors. In 2022, he ran a 131 wRC+ as a Colorado farmhand in Low-A. In 2023, he ran a 128 wRC+ across three levels for the Guardians. In 2024, he ran a 114 wRC+ at Triple-A, and in 2025, that number was 110. But you might have noticed that those numbers have trended downward over time, and Brito has been worse this year, running a 98 wRC+ at Triple-A to go with the short, ugly debut.

Even worse, as Eric and Brendan Gawlowski noted back in January, Brito’s defense has been trending downward too. While he once looked like he’d play a passable second base, “Brito has tumbled down the defensive spectrum, and after experimentation at third base and in the outfield, it’s starting to look like his best position is first base. He’ll still play second, but not particularly well.” Eric and Brendan put a 40 FV on Brito, noting that “he hits righties well enough to play a small role.” With Matt McLain struggling for the second year in a row, maybe Brito will get a chance to show the Reds what he can do at some point in the next couple months.

So those are our trades. The Cardinals bought a lefty to replace the lefty they didn’t need anymore because they were giving up on the season. The Guardians gave up an interesting young pitcher to make a small upgrade at first base, and the Reds are giving a look to an infielder whose arrow is pointing down. We did it, you guys. Let’s take that nap.