With the elimination of the waiver deadline, the last two months of the season (or more accurately now, the last six weeks) can leave front office personnel feeling like little more than helpless observers. Problems at the big league level, whether of the health or performance variety, are going to pop up, but for the most part, the answers to those problems have to come from within. Yes, there’s the occasional player who gets designated for assignment who deserves consideration, but otherwise teams will either lean on the depth they’ve spent much of the year trying to establish or curse the risks they took in terms of depth in order to improve their big league roster. Here are the depth situations for the American League playoff contenders, with the National League to follow tomorrow.

American League East

Tampa Bay Rays
Strengths: The Rays bolt together pitching staffs as well as any team in baseball, and there are plenty more pieces available to them at Triple-A Durham should the need arise. They load up on pitch-data darlings while also developing plenty from within, and the result has been the best record in the International League, with their staff generating a team-wide strikeout rate of over 28%. With five current Durham pitchers already on the 40-man roster, managing innings down the stretch shouldn’t be an issue, be it for need or just for the purposes of keeping players fresh. In terms of position players, Vidal Bruján continues to slot in all over the diamond; his ability to play six positions makes him the most likely hitter to be called up. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last month after being on hiatus due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment focuses on breaking balls and features a big-league reliever, Zack Britton, and a pair of prospects, Tim Cate and Alex Scherff.

———

Zack Britton, New York Yankees

“Originally, I learned [my slider] in the minors, kind of at the same time I was learning the sinker. They taught me a slider grip, more of a four-seam grip, kind of hooking the horseshoe. It was pretty good. It always had a high swing-and-miss compared to my sinker, which had more contact. I threw it a lot as a starter, but then when I went to the bullpen I didn’t throw it as much. I just relied on the sinker.

“I started developing it more in 2018. When I came over here [to the Yankees], David Robertson was talking to me about how he threw his curveball. We were playing catch and I was interested in seeing how he gripped it. He kind of presets, so that he doesn’t really have to think about anything. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ So I started doing it on my slider.

“It actually turned my slider into more of… I guess, a slurve? They don’t really characterize it as anything. It’s 79 or 80 [mph], so it’s kind of slider velocity, but with a curveball break. It’s funky with how it sweeps. 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 »

Over the last few days, the Yankees addressed their surprisingly punchless and right-handed heavy lineup by adding Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo. In the waning minutes before the trade deadline, they struck a deal with the Angels to bring in another southpaw: left-handed pitcher Andrew Heaney. In exchange, New York will send a pair of pitching prospects to Los Angeles: Janson Junk and Elvis Peguero.

Heaney is playing out the last year of team control before he hits free agency this offseason. Over the last four years, he’s posted a strikeout-to-walk ratio a touch under four, the 26th best mark among the 100 qualified starters during that period. Unfortunately, he’s struggled with a gigantic home run problem that has led to some ugly ERAs that far outpace his peripherals.

This year, all those strengths and weaknesses are in full effect. He’s posting fantastic strikeout (28.2%) and walk (7.7%) rates but he’s allowed 16 home runs in 94 innings. Because his batted ball profile skews so heavily towards elevated contact, his home-run-per-fly-ball rate is around league average, but his HR/9 is the 15th highest among all starters with a similar number of innings pitched. That doesn’t bode well for a move to Yankee Stadium, which has boosted home run totals by 7% over the last four years.

Heaney’s pitch repertoire is rather odd. His four-seam fastball was classified as a sinker for much of his career because it moves horizontally like a sinker does but it doesn’t have the telltale vertical movement. He gets that horizontal action on his heater because he throws from an extremely low arm angle. With an odd release point and an uncommon movement profile, his fastball has been a whiff-generating machine. Opposing batters swing and miss nearly 30% of the time against his heater. Read the rest of this entry »

In their quest to jump-start an underperforming offense that ranks second-to-last in the American League in scoring, and to balance a lineup that has gotten virtually no production from its left-handed hitters, the Yankees continued to upgrade on Thursday. After acquiring Joey Gallo in a blockbuster deal with the Rangers, they landed Anthony Rizzo from the Cubs in exchange for two prospects, righty reliever Alexander Vizcaíno and outfielder Kevin Alcantara.

The Cubs are reportedly picking up the remainder of Rizzo’s $16.5 million salary, about $5.5 million. That will help to keep the Yankees below the $210 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold, while improving the return for Chicago. Rizzo will become a free agent at the end of the season.

Rizzo, who will turn 32 on August 8, has fallen off somewhat relative to the form that helped him make three All-Star teams from 2014-16, but even his current performance (.248/.346/.446 with 14 homers and a 115 wRC+) represents a massive upgrade on the wheezing .201/.292/.326 (73 wRC+) production the Yankees have received from their first basemen this season, one that landed them on the position’s list of Replacement Level Killers last week. While Luke Voit led the majors with 22 homers and a 152 wRC+ last season, he’s made three trips to the Injured List this year, first for a torn meniscus in his left knee, then an oblique strain, and most recently a bone bruise in the same knee. He’s played just 29 games while failing to produce his usual power, and in his absence, fill-ins Chris Gittens and Mike Ford were dreadful (the latter was traded to the Rays in mid-June) and even DJ LeMahieu has been far short of his 2020-21 form. Read the rest of this entry »

The much anticipated Joey Gallo deal is now official. You can read my colleague Dan Szymborski’s analysis of the Yankees’ side of the trade here. The Rangers are set to acquire infielders Ezequiel Duran, Josh Smith and Trevor Hauver, as well as right-handed pitcher Glenn Otto, in exchange for Gallo and Joely Rodríguez. Even if what was once a six-player return from the Yankees has fizzled down to four, make no mistake: this is a bulk deal. At the same time, there’s considerable quality to the quantity heading back to Texas; there are no throw-ins here. The Rangers were able to add a pair of players who enter their system’s top 10, while the remaining two both deserve the moniker of “prospect.” Meanwhile, the Yankees don’t just get the best left-handed power source in baseball, they also cleared much of their mild 40-man roster crunch, as Eric Longenhagen detailed on Wednesday.

The best prospect in the deal is Ezequiel Duran, a 22-year-old second baseman who was hitting .290/374/.533 at High-A Hudson Valley. His calling card is plus raw power, with maximum exit velocities pushing the 110 mph range. His plate discipline is solid, but his violent swing mechanics out of a 5-foot-11 frame produce plenty of swing-and-miss to go with the pop. He’s a fringy runner who lacks arm strength, and he’s already been moved to second base, where most scouts put a 40-45 grade on his defense. He projects as an offense-first player at the corner who can hit .250-.275 with 18-24 bombs a year to go with a decent walk rate. A more refined approach would up that projection a bit. He becomes the No. 3 prospect in the Rangers system. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday night, the New York Yankees pulled off a blockbuster trade, grabbing outfielder Joey Gallo from the Texas Rangers in a deal that will also see the Yankees pick up lefty reliever Joely Rodríguez once it is made official. Heading to Texas are pitcher Glenn Otto and infielders Ezequiel Duran, Trevor Hauver, and Josh Smith. In his seventh season in Texas, Gallo has already set a personal best in WAR at 3.4, thanks to a .223/.379/.490, 25 home run effort coupled with continued Gold Glove-caliber defense in right field.

We’re focusing on the major league part of the trade here; for more information on the players moving to Texas, fellow FanGraphiér Kevin Goldstein has published his analysis.

To my eyes, Gallo’s departure brings to an end what has been to this point the most successful epoch in Texas Rangers history. Gallo wasn’t a part of the teams that twice reached the World Series (the first such appearances in franchise history) or won 90 games for four consecutive seasons, but he was a leading part of the vanguard that was supposed to succeed Texas’ core of veteran talent. Many in history have seized a throne, but to build a dynasty, you need to pass it on to the next generation. If the Rangers could transition smoothly from the Adrian Beltre/Josh Hamilton/Michael Young/Ian Kinsler era to one spearheaded by some of the gaggle of talent that included Gallo, Rougned Odor, Jorge Alfaro, Lewis Brinson, Craig Gentry, Michael Choice, Nomar Mazara, and Luis Sardiñas (I could keep going), Texas’ legacy would be complete, potentially allowing them to grab a championship in the process.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The Rangers flopped in 2014 thanks to injury, and most of the above-mentioned prospects were either traded to fill short-term needs or failed to develop into the players Texas hoped they would. Brinson was sent to Milwaukee for a year and a half of Jonathan Lucroy. Alfaro, Nick Williams, and others went to Philly for Cole Hamels. Choice was sold to the Indians; Sardiñas helped bring Yovani Gallardo over from the Brewers. Odor and Mazara developed enough to make the majors, only to regress and fade from the team’s plans. But Gallo stayed and developed, and while he may not have become an MVP candidate, he was approaching the Rangers’ top 20 all-time in position player WAR and likely would have pulled up just behind Mike Hargrove by season’s end. 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 »

It was a hectic day on the trade market. First, news broke that the Pirates had traded Tyler Anderson to the Phillies. Shortly after, the Mariners provided extra heat to the stove by sending relievers Kendall Graveman and Rafael Montero to the Astros in exchange for Abraham Toro and Joe Smith. They didn’t stop there, swooping in to nab Anderson and taking advantage of an issue that surfaced with one of the two Phillies prospects originally headed to Pittsburgh.

The number of tweets dwindled as the night rolled in, signaling an end to the frenzy. We would have to wait until tomorrow for more deadline shenanigans, but I suppose a bonus transaction couldn’t hurt, because out of the blue, the Yankees’ Twitter account dropped this bit of news:

The New York Yankees have announced that following Tuesday’s game they traded RHP Luis Cessa and LHP Justin Wilson to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for a player to be named later.

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) July 28, 2021

A trade announcement at 12:35 AM Eastern Time? Sure, why not. Let’s break this one down.

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 »