Noah Schultz remains a work in progress. Fifteen outings and 65 1/3 innings into his major league career, the recently-turned-23-year-old southpaw has a 3-9 record to go with a 6.06 ERA and a 4.86 FIP since debuting in April. Ranked second in the Chicago White Sox system coming into the season, Schultz is currently doing more fine-tuning in Triple-A, having been sent down to Charlotte earlier this month.
Two days before his August 8 demotion, I caught up to the 6-foot-10, high-ceiling hurler to ask how much he has learned about pitching since being drafted 26th overall in 2022 out of an Oswego, Illinois high school.
“A ton,” Schultz replied. “I didn’t know anything when I signed. I didn’t know anything about metrics. I knew that spin rate was good — I knew that I spun the ball well — but that was about it. Velo and spin rate. So, I’ve definitely picked up a ton over the past few years.”
Tommy John spent 26 seasons pitching in the majors from 1963–74 and then 1976–89, more than any player besides Nolan Ryan, but his level of fame – and indeed, his contribution to the game — stems as much from the year that cleaves that span as it does from his work on the mound. As the first recipient of the most famous sports medicine procedure of all time, the elbow ligament replacement surgery performed by Dr. Frank Jobe in late 1974 that now bears his name, John endured an arduous year-long rehab process before returning to pitch as well as ever. His recovery gave hope to generations of injured pitchers whose careers might otherwise have ended.
By the count of analyst Jon Roegele, keeper of the Tommy John Surgery List, over 2,700 professional players have undergone some variant of Jobe’s pioneering surgery on John during either their amateur or professional careers. That list ranges from Brent Strom — who did not make it back to the majors after becoming the second recipient of Jobe’s ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction technique but went on to become a successful pitching coach — to Hunter Greene, who just underwent his second Tommy John last week. So far, only three are in the Hall of Fame, namely Paul Molitor (the first position player to undergo the surgery), John Smoltz, and Billy Wagner, but Justin Verlander, Chris Sale, and Shohei Ohtani will almost certainly follow in their wake, with more to come. By Roegele’s accounting, over 39% of all major league pitchers in 2025 had undergone Tommy John surgery.
On the mound, John was the epitome of the “crafty lefty,” so good at his vocation that he arrived on the major league scene at age 20 and made his final appearance three days after his 46th birthday. His 700 starts and 288 wins are both more than any other 20th- or 21st-century pitcher outside the Hall of Fame except Roger Clemens, but John’s longevity, his more dominant cohorts — including six 300-game winners — and the surgery that bears his name have overshadowed the rest of his on-field accomplishments. Between going 0-for-15 on BBWAA ballots (where he topped out at 31.7%) and 0-for-5 on Era Committee ballots (where he peaked at 43.8% on the 2025 Classic Baseball ballot), he never came particularly close to election, though in 2013, he got a share of the spotlight when the Hall honored Jobe. Read the rest of this entry »
On Saturday, the Detroit Tigers pulled off a truly delightful 1-5-4 double play. A picture’s worth a thousand words, and a video even more, so I’ll save everyone a lot of work and show it to you.
If you’re reading this, and you’re old enough to have lived through the war between small ball and sabermetrics in the early part of this century, you’re probably delighted to see a sacrifice bunt go awry like this. I lived through college baseball in the early-to-mid-2010s — if there was a war over sabermetrics, college ball at this time was its Stalingrad — so that was definitely my first reaction as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Darrin Jackson is 62 years young and in his 26th season as a broadcast analyst for the Chicago White Sox. Currently paired with Len Kasper in the radio booth, the erstwhile MLB outfielder is equally adept at breaking down plays and sharing entertaining anecdotes. Much for the latter reason, he is a fantastic fit for our Challenging Career Quiz series, which now runs 11 deep and most recently featured Baltimore Orioles legend Jim Palmer.
Jackson’s playing career comes nowhere close to rivaling Palmer’s, although he did have his fair share of success. Suiting up for seven clubs — including both of Chicago’s — over a dozen seasons, Jackson was at his best in San Diego. Across the 1991-1992 campaigns, the right-handed swinger swatted 38 home runs as a Friar while logging a 99 wRC+ and 8.5 WAR. Filling a platoon role for much of his big league tenure, Jackson retired with 676 hits, including 80 round-trippers, over 2,816 plate appearances.
Which pitcher did he face the most times? That proved to be an easy question, as Jackson correctly guessed Tom Glavine with little hesitation. When I informed Jackson that the southpaw was also the pitcher against whom he’d garnered the most hits, he offered an unsurprising recollection of Glavine. As most fans know, the Hall of Famer had a well-earned reputation for getting strikes just off the plate.
“Facing him was never a fun practice, mainly because umpires had their own strike zones back then,” said Jackson, who went 11-for-44 with a pair of home runs and one walk versus Glavine. “He knew how to abuse that strike zone by working away, away, down and away, down and away. He would get you diving across the plate, looking in that zone, and the next thing you knew, he’d be throwing a two-seam fastball on the inside corner to freeze you for strike three. I probably got rung up looking by him more than anyone else I faced, because of that exact way of pitching. It drove me crazy. Even though you said I had a bunch of hits, I never liked facing him. He was just too smart and too good.” Read the rest of this entry »
Davis Martin had a first inning to forget on Tuesday. Pitching at Fenway Park, the Chicago White Sox right-hander was torched for six runs by a scorching-hot Red Sox team that went on to prevail 14-2. He settled down after the tumultuous frame — only one more runner crossed the plate before Martin departed in the sixth — but by then the damage was done.
What happened in the fateful first inning? I asked him that question the following day, but before we get to his thoughts, a quick recap:
With two on and one out, Willson Contreras singled home a run. Two batters later, Caleb Durbin launched a grand slam. Jarren Duran then followed with a solo shot on Martin’s 20th pitch of the game.
The hurler’s take?
“First, there is a lot to be said about how good this Red Sox team is, and what they’ve been doing,” said Martin, who is 9-6 with a 4.13 ERA and a 3.48 FIP over 122 innings on the season. “We studied the scouting report, and there weren’t a lot of pitches that I would want to take back. But yeah, I felt that they were one step ahead. They were doing a really good job of keeping me off balance.”
Red Sox hitters had clearly been more aggressive than the White Sox expected. Half a dozen runs coming on 20 pitches thrown to seven batters is notable, especially when you consider that Contreras saw six of them. His at-bat was arguably the key to the inning. After fouling off consecutive two-strike offerings, the slugger got his RBI knock on a breaking ball that was well wide of the plate. Read the rest of this entry »
With apologies to Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers, for my money the most eye-catching deal ahead of Monday’s trade deadline was the Red Sox acquiring Adley Rutschman in a six-player blockbuster with the Orioles. Not only did a switch-hitting All-Star catcher move from one Wild Card contender to another, but he did so within the same division — and he’s more than a rental, with one more year of arbitration eligibility before he reaches free agency. Though he’s currently on the injured list due to inflammation in his left wrist, Rutschman is reportedly nearing a rehab assignment, and once he returns, he should provide a substantial upgrade for a team whose catchers landed on my Replacement-Level Killers list a few weeks ago.
Rustchman wasn’t the only prominent catcher on the move to a contender on Monday, as the Marlins tradedLiam Hicks to the Rays, but he’s a part-time backstop whose hitting makes him a useful DH and first base option as well. While the concurrence of his being dealt illustrates that trading for a catcher on the fly in the midst of a playoff race isn’t unheard of, such moves do stand out. They’re not to be undertaken lightly because of the weighty responsibility that falls on a catcher’s shoulders in terms of quickly having to build relationships with a new pitching staff to understand repertoires, situational preferences, and interpersonal dynamics. Odds are that those newcomers are also expected to provide more offense than the catchers they replaced, because offensive slumps often spur teams to make such changes. Read the rest of this entry »
Look, the Mets should not be the focus of this article. It’s trade deadline day, and we should be talking about the contenders, not the teams disassembling themselves in order to distribute their useful pieces throughout the league. But the Mets are the day’s big sellers. They’ve gotten 3.7 WAR from their bullpen this season, and they’ve traded away Huascar Brazobán and Brooks Raley, who’ve combined to provide 49% of that WAR. They’re sending Ben Rortvedt back to the Dodgers.
And so we have to start with the Mets: The last-place, 19-games-below-.500, 0.1%-playoff-odds-down-from-79.5%-on-Opening-Day Mets. Freddy Peralta is gone. A.J. Minter is gone. Luke Weaver (who provided 30% of that bullpen WAR on his own) is gone. And the Mets are not done selling. The other names being kicked around include Clay Holmes, Luis Robert Jr., and even Francisco Alvarez. It’s not a great year for the Mets, is the point. Let’s get to the trades.
Huascar Brazobán to the White Sox, Gabe Davis and Zach Franklin to the Mets
Brazobán is, at age 36, having the best season of his career. He’ll hit arbitration next year and be under team control until 2030. Since his debut in 2022, Brazobán has always put up good enough numbers. He’s never run an ERA- above 94 or an FIP- above 100. The Mets got him from the Marlins at the deadline in 2024, and he turned into a pumpkin the rest of the way, running a 5.14 ERA and a 4.31 FIP. However, he’s been great for New York for the past two seasons.
Last year, the Mets had Brazobán effectively ditch his four-seamer, cutter, and slider, and rely solely on his sinker and changeup. It’s a great combination. The two pitches have extreme arm-side run, and they come in at 96.1 mph and 90.7 mph, respectively. He does one thing really well – throw hard pitches that bore in on the hands of right-handed batters – so they’re having him do just that one thing. Over the past two years, righties have a .231 wOBA against Brazobán. Among the 219 pitchers who have faced at least 250 righties in the past year, that’s the fourth-lowest wOBA. The White Sox are getting a righty killer, which is great because this season, they’ve allowed a .320 wOBA to righties, tied for the seventh-highest mark in baseball (though we should note that their bullpen is better, running a .309 wOBA against righties, which is 19th highest).
This season, for whatever reason, Brazobán’s stuff is also working against lefties. Their wOBA against him has dropped from .379 in 2025 to .253 this year. As a result, across 46 appearances and 52 2/3 innings, he’s posted a 2.56 ERA and a 3.34 FIP. He’s on pace to set a career record for appearances, innings pitched, ERA, xERA, xFIP, and WAR. There’s definitely some luck involved here. He is running an absurd .206 BABIP and the second-lowest strand and HR/FB rates of his career. He doesn’t have great command. The Mets did not pay much for Brazobán in 2024, and he spent time in the minors in each of the last two years. Now they’re selling high and flipping him for prospects right before he starts to cost money. That may be cold comfort for Mets fans, but it’s a good trick if you can make it work. The White Sox bullpen ranks seventh by ERA and 15th by FIP this season. We should definitely expect some regression from Brazobán, but even so, he really could help them.
Now let’s talk return. The White Sox selected Davis out of Oklahoma State in the fifth round of the 2025 draft. He didn’t put up eye-popping numbers in college, but this year, the 22-year-old had a 2.63 ERA and a 2.67 FIP at High-A while striking out 30% of the batters he faced. That earned him a promotion to Double-A, where his numbers have cratered to the tune of an 8.31 ERA and a FIP to match. He hasn’t yet gotten a writeup here at FanGraphs. James Fegan slotted him in as one of the “Other Prospects of Note” in the 2025 White Sox Top Prospects list. His name was fifth under the label “Relievers Who Have a Little Something.” As such, I’m going to relay notes that Eric Longenhagen sent to me on Davis verbatim:
Coming out of his sophomore year at Oklahoma State, Davis was a big prospect and a potential first-round pick. He was a 6-foot-9 reliever who was expected to move into their rotation and, if things went well, be drafted pretty high. Instead, he struggled to throw strikes and was relegated to the bullpen again pretty quickly; his ERA was up near six for the season, and he went in the fifth round. The White Sox boldly sent him out to High-A as a starter and things went well enough that he was promoted to Double-A at the end of May, where he has struggled. This is definitely an arrow up guy, though. He’s added two ticks to his fastball, sitting 96 mph, and has touched 100 as part of a four-pitch mix. None of his secondary pitches is missing bats at a great rate, whether he’ll actually throw strikes enough to remain a starter is also unclear. But for now it’s good that he’s starting to give his cutter, slider, and changeup reps that they didn’t have in the college bullpen, and we’ll see if those improve. The Mets tend to be pretty good at improving their pitching prospects, so this is an exciting (if older) dev project for them. 35+ FV.
Zach Franklin, as Eric told me, is “more of a fully baked reliever.” He’s a 27-year-old righty with a very short arm action, almost like a catcher’s. James ranked him 20th in the White Sox organization last year. This year, Franklin has a 4.37 ERA and a 5.23 FIP in Triple-A, though we should note that his xERA and xFIP are both much lower. That’s because he’s put up an absurd 22% HR/FB, allowing nearly three homers per nine innings. Franklin is giving up all those homers for a reason: More than half the time, he throws a four-seamer with a bunch of rise. It’s racks up tons of whiffs, but when batters make contact, they hit it in the air (and this year, a long, long way). He also throws a slider and a splitter, and they rack up even more whiffs than the fastball. He’s striking out nearly a third of the batters he’s facing at Triple-A. But, as Eric notes, Franklin’s slider is closer to average, and he struggles to command the splitter. Still, Eric assigned Franklin a 40 FV, saying he “could come up tomorrow and be fine, definitely part of New York’s mix next year.”
I should end by mentioning that Eric told me a similar thing about New York’s return that I said about Brazobán: “It’s a good sign for the White Sox that they developed two lesser draft picks into desirable assets.” I don’t know if this is a trade where everybody wins. I worry that Brazobán could turn into a pumpkin just like he did when the Mets traded for him in 2024, but this is a trade involving a trio of players whose organizations have helped them find a new gear.
Brooks Raley to the Phillies, Luke Gabrysh and John Spikerman to the Mets
After four years with the Mets, Raley is bound for his sixth big league team. It would be hard to overstate just how good he was during his time in New York. After the better part of four years – he missed nearly all of 2023 due to Tommy John surgery – he’ll end his tenure with a 2.31 ERA and a 3.08 FIP. He’s a classic sinker-slider guy, and as a 38-year-old with a fastball that averages just over 90 mph, he is also a classic crafty lefty. This year, Raley is running a 1.96 ERA that’s more than a full run below his 3.10 FIP. He’s probably not going to keep stranding nearly 80% of his baserunners, but he’s outpitched his FIP in each of the past five seasons, so even though he may be out over skis just a bit, he might not be due for a sudden crash.
Raley is just a rental, but he makes all the sense in the world for a win-now Phillies team that has really struggled against left-handed hitters. Their relievers have allowed a .338 wOBA against lefties, the fifth-highest mark in baseball this season. Raley’s .235 wOBA against lefties is now the best in the Philadelphia bullpen. José Alvarado was supposed to be Philadelphia’s premier lefty out of the ‘pen, and he’s putting up the lowest hard-hit rate of his career, but everything else has gone wrong. His overall ERA is 5.71. He’s allowed a .329 BABIP and 1.38 home runs per nine innings. Even if you believe Alvarado is due for things to go his way (and his 3.39 FIP certainly makes that argument eloquently), you probably don’t want to bet your season on it, and Raley can help the Phillies right now.
Before we get into the return, I should note that Eric and I disagree on Luke Gabrysh. Specifically, Eric is only willing to put a 60 grade on his name. That’s alright; I don’t mind being the high man. Gabrysh is a 23-year-old righty whom the Phillies selected out of Saint Joseph’s in the 15th round of the 2024 draft. He’s posted a 5.14 ERA and a 5.22 FIP at High-A this season despite striking out 29% of the batters he’s faced. That’s because he’s also walking 11% of them and allowing homers to 4% of them. Gabrysh hasn’t made one of our Phillies top prospects list yet, so as we haven’t written him up before, here’s everything Eric told me about him:
Gabrysh is sitting 95-97 as a starter but ceding hard contact more than you’d think given how hard he throws. His fastball simply lacks movement often enough that it’s hittable. He currently has a cutter and slider that aren’t all that well demarcated, but he can really spin both of them. Another likely reliever, though there’s a little more variance here than Davis/Franklin because of the spin element, which is just better than either of that more-proximate-to-the-bigs duo two can offer.
John Spikerman – and here Eric and I agree: 70-grade name – came in at no. 28 on last year’s Phillies list but didn’t earn a ranking on this year’s. “Spikerman was once a center field prospect with strikeout issues,” Eric wrote, “and is now a corner outfield prospect with strikeout issues after spending the majority of his 2025 time in right.” The 23-year-old switch-hitter is running a 116 wRC+ in High-A this season, but is doing it in odd fashion. He’s dropped his strikeout rate to just under 23% and raised his walk rate to just under 20%. He has no home runs. He’s also dealt with injuries the last couple years. He played in just 62 games last year and is currently at 32 this year. Maybe the Mets think he’ll show something more when he gets healthy, but Eric has him as a fifth-outfielder type with a hit tool that might not scrape average.
In all, Spikerman seems like a flyer, while Gabrysh is a bit of a project. Maybe the Mets believe in his ability to spin the ball and figure they can help him find a fastball, or maybe they think he can focus on the cutter. Regardless, in Raley, the Phillies are getting a proven rental who can definitely help them down the stretch.
Ben Rortvedt to the Dodgers, Chayce McDermott to the Mets
Technically, this is a trade of minor leaguers, but both of these players have seen the majors often enough. You could be forgiven for not knowing that Rortvedt had ever left the Dodgers. He played well enough down the stretch for them last year, and not only did he appear during their World Series run, he batted .429 in his four postseason games. In fact, he’s had quite a journey, and I’m just going to quote from MLB Trade Rumors’ Steve Adams here because I don’t have the heart to break it down myself:
The Dodgers clearly like Rortvedt as a depth catcher…The Dodgers tried to keep him around as a depth option for 2026. Shortly after the 2025 season ended, they signed Rortvedt to a $1.25MM deal to avoid arbitration and then put him on waivers, hoping he would clear and stick around as non-roster depth.
However, that plan didn’t work, as the Reds claimed him. The Reds put him back on waivers in February and the Dodgers re-claimed him. When they tried again to get him though waivers shortly thereafter, the Mets claimed him. The Mets were then able to get him through the wire unclaimed around Opening Day.
You could argue that few players have ever known with such fine precision exactly how much their club really values them. The Dodgers liked Rortvedt enough to give him more than a million bucks but not enough to put him on the 40-man roster and avoid risking losing him off waivers twice. The Mets clearly found their affection for Rortvedt limited as well. With Alvarez, Luis Torrens, and Hayden Senger in front of him on the depth chart (and the recently claimed Shawn Ross somewhere in the mix), there wasn’t much room for Rortvedt. He’s put up an 86 wRC+ in Triple-A – better than Senger – but this is pretty much found money for the Mets. They pick up a spare catcher off waivers, wait six months, then trade him back to the team that waived him in the first place. It’s not the kind of move you’d expect from a team that started the season with World Series aspirations, but it is the kind of move you’d expect from a team that’s nearly 20 games under .500.
The Dodgers would like Rortvedt back because Will Smith has been out since early June with an inflamed disc in his neck and will need another three or four weeks to get back to Los Angeles. In the meantime, Dalton Rushing has played great, but his backups have been troubling. Chuckie Robinson is back in Triple-A after hitting for an .087 batting average in eight games, and Eliezer Alfonzo is batting a relatively gaudy .167. Steamer may think that Rortvedt can only hack a 70 wRC+ over the remainder of the season, but that’s a lot better than the numbers Robinson and Alfonzo have put up, and he’s got twice as much big league experience as those two combined. Still, there’s no guarantee that he’ll actually make it to Los Angeles, because the Dodgers finally have their dream scenario: They’ve got Rortvedt and they’re not required to put him on the 40-man.
A fourth-round pick by the Astros in 2021, the 27-year-old McDermott was a top 100(ish) prospect as recently as last year. He came in at 109 with a 50 FV on last year’s post-spring training Top 100 list, but his limited time in the majors has been disastrous. He’s made seven appearances over the last three years, and given up at least one earned run in six of them. He now has a career 12.00 ERA and a 8.74 FIP.
The Orioles DFA’d McDermott in April, and the Dodgers picked him up. He’s made two big league appearances, but I’m more interested in his minor league numbers. He has a 4.10 ERA across 32 appearances at Triple-A for the Dodgers this season, and he’s gotten there in wild fashion. He’s striking out 36% of the batters he faces, but he’s walking 18% with a 19% HR/FB. He’s running a 36% whiff rate. He’s throwing six pitches, and five of them have whiff rates over 30% (he’s only thrown six curveballs, and nobody’s swung at one yet). I don’t know how to square that with the fact that in his brief time in the majors, he hardly whiffed or struck out anybody.
McDermott is a lefty who averages 96 mph on his fastball, but the pitch is allowing a .401 wOBA in Triple-A this season. It does not appear to have a great shape. Moreover, he’s definitely not pitching like a reliever yet. Presumably, there’s a version of McDermott that could miss some bats in the majors, but he’d have to refine his pitch mix and start hitting the strike zone. The Dodgers have enough pitching in their system that a project like this isn’t worth their time, at least not when they can get another crack at Rortvedt.
Put it all together, and in these three trades, the Mets have snagged four pitchers and an outfielder. With the exception of Franklin, all of those players represent a project of some sort. Davis touches 100, but he’ll have to refine his command and work on his secondaries. Gabrysh has velocity too, but his fastball lacks shape. Spikerman’s hit tool is suspect, and he might not stay in center. McDermott also lacks control and needs to either figure out his fastball or find a new approach. If there’s a takeaway here, it’s that the Mets are betting on their pitching development machine to keep on humming. Stay tuned for more Mets sales.
The Chicago White Sox are in a position to buy at the deadline for the first time in Chris Getz’s three seasons as GM. And Getz sure is getting his money’s worth. First Luis Castillo, then Huascar Brazobán, and now an outfielder: Brenton Doyle, late of the Colorado Rockies.
Doyle, 28, is not so much a unique player as the most extreme sustainable version of the all-glove/no-bat center field archetype. He’s making $3.1 million this year as a first-year arbitration guy, and he’s under team control through 2029. Getz parted with quite a bit to get him: right-handed pitcher Mason Adams and shortstop prospect Carlos Vielma.
Doyle was a fourth-round pick out of Division II Shepherd University; he’s that school’s only big leaguer in the past 50 years, but the name fits because he plays center field like a border collie. From Doyle’s debut in 2023 to the end of last season, he led all outfielders in FRV with 44. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Jacob Young, and Ceddanne Rafaela have been better on a per-inning basis, but that’s the kind of rarefied air Doyle has been playing in. Read the rest of this entry »
Pre-deadline trades generally follow a template, with contenders filling needs by acquiring players from teams outside of the playoff races. Not every late July or early August deal fits into that pattern, however, and Saturday night brought a less common variety of trade, one between two American League teams striving for spots in the postseason field. The Mariners, who spent most of June atop the AL West but are now trying to claw their way back to the top of the division or at worst into a Wild Card slot, sent right-hander Luis Castillo to the AL Central-leading White Sox in exchange for reliever Seranthony Domínguez, outfielder Nolan Jones, and catching prospect Boston Smith.
While the players switching teams in this deal might fill some clear needs in their new locations, none of them offers a strong guarantee. Domínguez and Castillo both have high ERAs and messy peripherals this season, and Jones has been stashed in Triple-A all year after sub-replacement level performances in 2024 and ’25. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this deal is that the White Sox are absorbing all of the money remaining on Castillo’s contract, which runs through the end of next season. The Mariners not only freed up some cash, which they may very well reallocate in the coming days, but they potentially opened up a spot in their rotation for Kade Anderson, the top pitcher on our recently updated Top 100 Prospects list, and added a prospect to their system. The ability to do so, while leaving behind an all-homegrown rotation that already includes three former first-round picks, speaks well of their vaunted pitching development program.
That said, it’s not hard to understand why Mariners fans might view this deal with some amount of cynicism and disappointment. After coming within one win of the franchise’s first trip to the World Series last October, the Mariners are 54-58, third in the AL West, three games behind the Astros (57-55), a game and a half behind the Rangers (55-56), and two games out of the third AL Wild Card spot, where seven teams — including the Tigers, who tradedTarik Skubal to the Dodgers on Saturday night — are within three and a half games. Our Playoff Odds put them at 47.7% at this writing, but if they don’t repurpose some of the savings from offloading Castillo’s salary, or come away from the deadline without something more exciting than middle relief and a prospect for their trouble, this will be remembered as a salary dump or even a white flag, not to mention an abrupt and bitter finish to a stretch in which the Mariners finally ended their postseason drought. The Mariners acquired Castillo from the Reds in a five-player blockbuster ahead of the 2022 traded deadline, and he not only helped them reach the playoffs after a 21-year absence but signed a a five-year, $108 million extension that was supposed to bring more glory than just one more trip to October. Read the rest of this entry »
In years past, I’ve generally addressed the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in one corner outfield spot or the other within the same post, but this year’s batch of right fielders is disproportionately large, mandating a separate entry that led me to combine the left and center field lists instead. There’s still some crossover between most teams’ pools of right fielders and the positions I covered in the previous post, with a couple teams from this group landing on both lists. As they look to upgrade, there’s some fluidity as well, with teams willing to test the defensive limitations of their outfielders in order to shoehorn better bats into the lineup.
While still focusing on clubs that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included the club here because its performance is worth a look.
As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly within the context of the rest of a team’s roster. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 3 trade deadline, but these are ones to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »
