Hunter Renfroe was probably getting tired of Milwaukee anyway. After spending the first four years of his career in San Diego, he will join his fifth team in five years as the Brewers sent the 30-year-old outfielder to the Angels in exchange for pitchers Janson Junk, Elvis Peguero, and Adam Seminaris.
Starting with the Los Angeles side of the deal: the Angels know what they’re getting in Renfroe. He’s a bat-first corner outfielder who relies on power to make up for what he lacks in on-base ability. After a poor showing in 2020, he bounced back with a 113 wRC+ in ’21 and posted a nearly identical season in ’22, good for a 124 wRC+ in the tougher offensive environment. He hit 60 home runs between the two seasons and posted a .315 on base percentage in both. He’s projected to make $11.2 million in arbitration this year, then move on to yet another team in 2024 as a free agent.
Renfroe owns a career wRC+ of 136 against lefties versus 97 against righties and has often been viewed as a platoon candidate. He improved his wRC+ to 120 against righties in 2022, however, after putting up 101 wRC+ in 2021. And while his defense isn’t to OAA’s liking, DRS and UZR both tend to rate him right around average, and his excellent arm helps to make up for what he lacks in range. He’ll slot into the outfield next to Mike Trout and Taylor Ward. Steamer projects the trio for 10.3 WAR — a big improvement after Los Angeles got just 0.3 WAR from its left fielders last year, good for 27th in the league. Even though Steamer expects Renfroe to take a step back next year, his projection of 2.0 WAR would patch a significant hole. Read the rest of this entry »
While the top of the celebrated free agent shortstop market has yet to roll into motion, the end of last week saw a flurry of action a little lower on the positional power rankings. The Yankees agreed to a one-year, $6 million deal with Isiah Kiner-Falefa, locking up his final season of team control. And as Friday afternoon progressed, four other teams linked up for an exchange of shortstops. A shortswap, if you will.
Mini trade alert! Yesterday, the Seattle Mariners sent outfielder Kyle Lewis to the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for outfielder/catcher Cooper Hummel. That’s the entire exchange – no other players, no cash, just a one-for-one swap. It’s not terribly exciting, but its simplicity makes it easier to break down. Shall we?
Two years ago isn’t a lot, but considering all the ruckus that has occurred between then and now – and I’ll spare you the loathsome, often non-baseball-related details – it might as well be forever. That’s also when Lewis won American League Rookie of the Year. After a lengthy detour caused by persistent knee injuries, Lewis seemed on a sure path to becoming an integral part of an up-and-coming Mariners core. But the hardship continued into his sophomore season due to another tear to the same knee that had been bothering him for years; he played just 36 games in 2021. And if that wasn’t enough, the already battered Lewis, who began his 2022 on the injured list, was hit by a pitch a mere week after being called up in May. He recovered, but struggled immensely at the plate. Eventually, the Mariners sent him back down to Triple-A Tacoma, where he wrapped up a grueling season.
Laid in front of us are four fragmented seasons, including a cup of coffee in 2019, from which to evaluate Lewis. The truth is, it’s a tricky task. When samples are small and distant from one another, distinguishing the effects of injury from random variance and a possible decline in skill is about as productive as imagining “what could have been.” But from a projection system’s perspective, a short resume actually paints Lewis in a positive light. Steamer, for example, forecasts a .240/.323/.426 slashline and a 110 wRC+ for 2023, likely because of his recent minor league output and the fact that most of his major league experience comes from an award-winning rookie season. The ceiling of an everyday center fielder still exists, and a 116 wRC+ in Triple-A last season that wasn’t BABIP-driven is reason for optimism. Read the rest of this entry »
The Blue Jays and Mariners have swung the biggest trade of the young offseason so far, as Seattle has acquired Teoscar Hernández from Toronto in exchange for reliever Erik Swanson and pitching prospect, Adam Macko.
For the Mariners, the calculus for this trade is simple: immediate improvement on the offensive side of things by adding one of the 30 best hitters in baseball. The table below shows hitters with at least 1,000 plate appearances since the start of the 2020 season, ranked by wRC+:
That 132 wRC+ comes with a 26.7% strikeout rate and 6.3% walk rate. That shaky plate discipline and a BABIP that ran well above average (.345) made it unclear whether Hernández could sustain this success. But changes to his stance and leg lift unlocked a part of his swing that allowed him to make hard contact in the air more consistently. Once a hitter figures out how to do that and has a 96th percentile average exit velocity like he does, the odds are in their favor.
This trade signals a few things from the Mariners. The first is that long-time outfielder Mitch Haniger is unlikely to return. That’s not shocking, given that he wasn’t extended a qualifying offer and that he seems to have already hit his offensive peak. The second is that they are going all in to try to catch the defending World Series champion Astros. Hernández is not a long-term addition; he’s under contract for just the 2023 season. This is, essentially, a one-year rental to goose the offense.
Shipping Swanson away isn’t ideal for Seattle, given his fantastic performance this season: a 1.85 FIP in 53.2 innings. But the team’s usage of him in the postseason — he only threw one inning in five games of play — suggests that he’s seen as expendable, making him an easy choice to include in a trade for a top-30 hitter. After all, even if the Mariners love Swanson’s pedigree and stuff, it’s always worth trading middle relievers for productive hitters, even if they have only one more year of team control.
That said, I’m a firm believer in Swanson. His whiff rates on his four-seamer and splitter are both well above average, and he seems to have perfected how to use them to go with his above-average extension and straight over the top delivery. The Jays’ most glaring weakness was their bullpen, so if their goal was to improve it, then they have succeeded.
The bigger question mark in the deal is Macko. He topped out this year with 38.1 innings in High A, striking out just under 36% of the hitters he faced, but he also walked 12% of them. He was solid with a 3.77 FIP and 3.21 xFIP as well. That’s all well and good, but with minor league pitchers, it’s always important to get to the good stuff — literally. So I asked Eric Longenhagen, who is constantly sourced for information, for the goods on Macko, and lucky for us, Eric got a few looks at him in the Arizona Fall League. Check out the video below to get a better look of Macko’s stuff and mechanics.
Per Eric, Macko had some Jekyll and Hyde characteristics in Arizona, with his secondaries and command coming and going depending on the outing. That makes sense, given his walk rates. When he was on, his stuff was interesting. He has two breaking balls: a curve of the loopy ilk that comes in at the low-70s, and a slider that’s more of a mid-80s gyro spin-dominant kind. Macko tended to pitch backwards in the AFL with those two pitches, adding a running four-seamer at 93–94 mph and topping at 96 to finish hitters off in the top of the zone.
To me, the most interesting tidbit was that Macko has rather short arms and as a result can get down the mound to a low release point. That’s ideal for getting whiffs and popups on fastballs at the top of the zone. By the looks of it, the spin is pretty true as well. It might not be perfect, but Macko’s fingers stay over the ball very well, which goes right in line with the pitch playing up the zone. The curveball might not have great specs on its own, but when paired with this deceptive fastball, hitters struggle to hit it. It’s the classic pairing of high four-seamers and big depth curveballs below the zone.
When Macko has command of the slider, it flashes plus. During the regular season, he used that pitch nearly a quarter of the time, and the fastball just about half the time. The curve had about a 15% usage; he also featured a changeup sparingly. Per Eric, that pitch also flashed plus when he used it. I know this all sounds exciting, but it’s always important to remind yourself that the saying of “if the command is there” needs to be at the forefront of your mind. This big “if” is enough to put Macko in the 45+ FV tier, rather than at 50 or above. But given that the Jays’ system isn’t too deep anymore, that will put him easily in their top 10 when Eric updates it.
To recap, the Mariners get a fantastic hitter to slot right into the middle of their lineup, and the Jays get a quality reliever and intriguing pitching prospect. This trade is likely only a prelude to more moves from the Jays, though; there are rumblings all around suggesting that George Springer’s time in center field will soon come to a close, and it seems like there is another play to be made there. After all, you can’t move a 130 wRC+ hitter for only a middle reliever and expect your team to improve. This is all speculation, but there is almost certainly more to come.
In a slightly unexpected but not at all shocking move, the Tampa Bay Rays sent first baseman Ji-Man Choi to the Pittsburgh Pirates last Thursday in exchange for low-minors pitching prospect Jack Hartman. The move was a little surprising, at least to those not familiar with Tampa Bay’s 40-man picture. Choi is a talented, inexpensive player who played a clear role for the Rays. He established himself as a fan favorite at Tropicana Field over the past five years, and there was a brief time this offseason (for about four or five hours) when he was the longest-tenured position player in Tampa. He has no clear successor in the Rays organization. Even Choi himself seemed to be caught off guard by the move. The swap was rather unexpected from a Pirates perspective, too. I can’t say I thought we’d see a rebuilding team send away a prospect for a veteran in one of the first noteworthy trades of the offseason.
Upon closer inspection, however, it’s easy to see why both teams swung this deal. The Rays have a surplus of young players in the majors who need playing time and a surplus of young players in the minors who will be eligible for the Rule 5 Draft this December if they aren’t added to the 40-man roster. Choi is a known quantity on the wrong side of 30 who doesn’t offer much in the way of positional flexibility – aside from the occasional full split at first base, that is. This is more than a simple salary dump on Tampa’s part; they have better ways to use Choi’s roster spot, an unfortunate reality for fans who grew to love his joyful attitude and impassioned bat flips. As for Pittsburgh, they finished the 2022 season without a regular first baseman and needed to find someone to fill that hole. They may not be contenders, but they still have to play 162 games, and adding another good bat to the middle of the lineup will make those games far more watchable. As an added bonus, if everything goes right, the Pirates could find themselves sneaking into contention in a weak NL Central division. Adding Choi would look like a brilliant move in retrospect. More likely, the Pirates will fall out of contention by the trade deadline and flip Choi for a lottery ticket or two. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rangers spent more than half a billion dollars in new free-agent contracts last year — by far the largest outlay in baseball — and wound up losing 94 games anyway. But while it was not a successful year by any stretch of the imagination, many of those long-term deals set the foundation for the roster as Texas attempts to exit a long rebuilding cycle. And with a solid, if expensive, core to build the lineup around, it isn’t hard to see where the major holes on the roster are: the pitching staff. Last year, the Rangers allowed 4.59 runs per game, 23rd in the majors, and their starters put up ERA- and FIP- marks of 119 and 111, respectively. With Jon Gray essentially the only established option written in pen for the rotation, they have a lot of work to do this offseason.
To that end, the Rangers acquired Jake Odorizzi from the Braves in exchange for Kolby Allard on Wednesday. Atlanta will be covering $10 million of Odorizzi’s $12.5 million salary in 2023 after he exercised his player option prior to being dealt. The unique two-year deal that he signed with Houston in 2021 included a number of performance bonuses and escalating clauses that pushed his player option from a base of $6.5 million to the current $12.5 million salary the Rangers will pay. Those escalators also increased the size of the buyout on his option from $3.25 million to $6.25 million. By meeting all of the thresholds and maxing out his potential salary, his decision to exercise his option became an easy decision. To make things even sweeter, his player option for ‘23 also includes a number of performance bonuses that could increase his total salary to a maximum of $15.5 million.
Odorizzi will be joining his sixth organization in his 12th season as a big leaguer. Over the last two years, he’s posted a league- and park-adjusted ERA (104) and FIP (107) just a hair over league average across 45 starts and 211 innings. These past couple of seasons have been a bit of a disappointment after what seemed like a breakout season back in 2019, when he put up career-bests in FIP, strikeout rate, and WAR. Unfortunately, a host of minor injuries cost him most of the shortened 2020 season and have prevented him from pitching a full season since then. Last season, with a healthy starting rotation full of better options, the Astros traded him straight up for Will Smith (the reliever) at the trade deadline. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rockies and Braves wasted little time in kicking off the offseason trade market. On Sunday, just one day after the World Series came to a thrilling conclusion, the clubs made a one-for-one swap: Sam Hilliard for Dylan Spain. And while the move’s significance paled in comparison to the the major transaction of the day, Edwin Díaz’s extension with the Mets, there is more to it than meets the eye.
For many Braves fans, their biggest concern might be how the team chooses to fill the Dansby Swanson-shaped hole at shortstop. Currently, our depth charts have rookie standout Vaughn Grissom soaking up 74% of the innings at short. But though he fared quite well with the bat in his major league audition, to the tune of a 121 wRC+, the 21-year-old graded out as a net negative at second base this year. His mark of -5 Outs Above Average (OAA) at the position, typically thought to be the easier of the middle infield spots to defend, does not portend success at short.
The larger question mark for the Braves might be in left field, though. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Michael Harris II are locked into right and center, but there is no clear choice for the club in left. As Marcell Ozuna and Eddie Rosario floundered, Atlanta’s left fielders this year cost the team 0.8 WAR, tied with the lowly Rangers for the worst mark in the league. Hilliard can play all three outfield spots but has played the most in left and grades out best there in terms of OAA, Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), and Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR). He provides the Braves with meaningful depth at their weakest position, well worth the cost of a 24-year-old relief prospect in Spain, who spent the year amassing a 5.30 ERA in High-A. Read the rest of this entry »
A lot happened on a frantic deadline day, so you wouldn’t be blamed for missing out on this trade between the Dodgers and Blue Jays that came together down the stretch. But we at FanGraphs are dedicated to covering every deadline transaction, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. This is a four-player deal, with each team involved receiving two of them. Here’s the basic breakdown:
First, let’s break down the Jays’ return. As expected, a great scramble occurred at the deadline for the limited amount of starting pitching available. Some teams, like the Yankees and Twins, emerged as clear winners. Others, like the Phillies, had to settle for the second-best but nonetheless decent options. Then we have the Blue Jays, who ended up with White. It’s understandable if this feels like a disappointing pickup, and while it’s better than nothing at all, with the right maneuvers, they could have done much better.
At the very least, White has experience starting in the majors. Prior to the trade, he served as the Dodgers’ five-and-dive starter and put up admirable results, with a 3.47 ERA and 4.06 FIP in 46.2 innings. That’s partially because his team seldom lets him face the order for a third time, but it’s also the point: For four or five innings, White does his job on the mound and then heads back to the dugout. With José Berríos and Yusei Kikuchi still in search of consistency and Hyun Jin Ryu out for the season, White’s presence provides some respite for the Blue Jays.
Repertoire-wise, White throws up to five pitches, though only three of them are noteworthy. The four-seam fastball, his primary offering, has about league-average velocity (93–95 mph) and is characterized by poor shape. He’s weirdly gotten a ton of outs with it this season despite the lack of movement, though whether that’s due to luck remains to be seen. The slider, his secondary offering, is genuinely great, featuring two-plane break and solid velocity for a breaking ball (84–86 mph). Opposing hitters agree; when swinging at it, they’ve whiffed 33.8% of the time so far. White will sometimes remind us of his low-80s curveball, but he often lacks proper feel for the pitch. Read the rest of this entry »
Squeezing in once last deal before the looming deadline, the Braves acquired right-handed reliever Raisel Iglesias from the Angels in exchange for Tucker Davidson and Jesse Chavez. In doing so, they obtained one of the best bullpen arms of the past few years, filling a gap created by the departure of Will Smith (who was traded forJake Odorizzi) and more. The Angels, meanwhile, shed a long-term contract and take on two pitchers who should keep their bullpen in a tolerable state this year and beyond.
Traded to Anaheim before the 2021 season, Iglesias hit the free-agent market that winter but quickly signed a hefty four-year, $58 million deal to return to the Angels. It made sense: If you have a lights-out closer, as he was in ’21, and see a window of contention, it’s a darn good idea to keep him around for as long as possible. And though his on-field results have been a tad disappointing — a 4.04 ERA, the third-highest mark of his career — his peripherals suggest he’s no pitcher on the decline. His 3.17 FIP is much better, and so is his 3.05 xFIP; he’s striking out fewer batters and walking slightly more, but he’s also giving up fewer home runs. And though the velocity is down a tick, the swinging-strike rate on his fastball hasn’t wavered.
I’m only human, but it’s clear that the computers also agree Iglesias is in no imminent danger of falling off a cliff. Check out his ZiPS projection for the remainder of his contract, courtesy of Dan Syzmborski:
ZiPS Projection – Raisel Iglesias
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2023
9
3
2.67
58
0
57.3
43
17
6
13
85
169
1.6
2024
8
3
2.61
52
0
51.7
38
15
6
12
76
173
1.5
2025
7
3
2.66
52
0
50.7
38
15
6
12
74
169
1.4
That is… very good. So much so that, surprisingly, the Braves have agreed to take on the entirety of Iglesias’ contract. The righty reliever is owed $10 million this season, followed by $16 million annually from 2023 to ‘25, and while that’s not an insignificant sum, a reliever of his caliber is hard to come by. Outside of Edwin Díaz, the market for an A-list reliever should be thin this offseason, and what the Braves need to do as they nip at the heels of the Mets is improve at the margins. It’s not unreasonable they’re going all-in on with Iglesias. Read the rest of this entry »
True to his word, Chaim Bloom bought as well as sold at this year’s deadline. Filling one of his team’s biggest needs on the heels of Eric Hosmer’s no-trade-clause refusal to go to the nation’s capital as part of the Juan Sotomega–deal, Bloom acquired the veteran first baseman, along with a pair of speedy outfield prospects, from the San Diego Padres in exchange for 2016 first-rounder Jay Groome. Still holding out hope for October baseball — Boston’s postseason odds currently sit at 33.4% — it was a move that improves their chances.
Hosmer isn’t the type of player who will lift a team on his shoulders and carry them to the promised land. A career .277/.336/.429 (107 wRC+) hitter whose present-season slash line dwells in that same neighborhood, he’s by no means a savior. After a blazing start to the season that saw him hit .382/.447/.579 through May 1, he’s cooled considerably, hitting just .235/.295/.309 since. Still, he’s a capable fielder and if he can recapture something of his early-season form, he represents an upgrade at his position. Red Sox first basemen have combined to slash a putrid .203/.278/.349 this year, and they’ve been even worse on the defensive side of the ball. At -10, they have the worst DRS in either league, and OAA doesn’t like them much better (-9).
Hosmer isn’t exactly Keith Hernandez with the glove, nor is he the same adroit defender who won four Gold Gloves in his glory days with the Kansas City Royals. But again, he represents an upgrade. While Bobby Dalbec, a converted third baseman, has at least been credible at the opposite corner of the infield, converted outfielder Franchy Cordero has been nothing short of cringeworthy. Acquired from Kansas City as part of last year’s Andrew Benintendi trade, Cordero has committed eight errors in just 316 first-base innings this year. Conversely, Hosmer has been charged with 14 errors over his last 2,122 innings. As much as they’ve needed a better bat, Boston needed someone capable of catching the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »
