A week ago, the city of Chicago looked like it had a new boom industry: deadline rentals. The Cubs and White Sox have a ton of players set to depart after 2023, and neither looked like a playoff hopeful. The Cubs have played well enough lately to get out of that realm and into the buyers column, but that’s okay, because the White Sox have leaned into their role as sellers to compensate. After moving Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López earlier in the week, they’re continuing to dismantle their pitching staff. On Friday, they sent Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly to the Dodgers in exchange for two pitching prospects and outfielder Trayce Thompson.

I won’t try to sugarcoat it: Lynn has been awful this year. His 6.47 ERA is the worst in baseball for qualifying starters, and while there’s some encouragement to be found under the hood, it’s still not a lot of encouragement. Also, that linked article was about how he couldn’t possibly keep giving up homers at such an extreme rate, and then he gave up six in his next three starts. Whoops.

Yes, that ERA is gruesome. Yes, Lynn has looked lost on the mound, lobbing pipe shots down the middle and walking more batters than normal anyway. But his body of work before this year suggests his season can be salvaged. The Dodgers know a thing or two about getting the most out of pitchers, and Lynn is missing bats at a career-best rate even while he gets shelled. Our projection systems think he’ll pitch to a roughly 4.25 ERA the rest of the season, but going to Dodger Stadium might even shade that lower. (A countervailing concern is that Lynn hasn’t looked comfortable with the pitch clock, and there’s no accounting for that in our models.) Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets and Marlins making a trade for much-needed bullpen help? If you told April me that was happening, I’d completely believe you. That New York bullpen looks shaky without Edwin Díaz at the top. Past me is in for a surprise, of course. It turns out that the Mets are out of the race this year and the Marlins are making a run at the Wild Card. Yesterday, the Mets sent David Robertson to Miami in exchange for Marco Vargas and Ronald Hernandez, two teenage hitting prospects.

Miami’s greatest need is not in the bullpen. They have one of the worst offenses in baseball – not just among playoff teams, but across the league as a whole. But their bullpen, which started the season on a tear, has been remarkably un-clutch in recent weeks. From the beginning of the season through a month ago, that ‘pen added around 3.5 wins worth of win probability, one of the best units in the game. In the last month, they’ve cost the Marlins around 1.5 wins, one of the worst results. For a team that’s scoring so little, holding on to every last lead is of utmost importance.

The Dylan Floro/Jorge López swap from earlier this week was, to be frank, not much help. It seems to me that the Marlins got the worse of the two players, at least for this year. But adding Robertson is a huge step in the right direction. He’ll slot into the closer role in Miami immediately, with Tanner Scott serving as his high-leverage deputy. A ton of power arms follow, none of whom are without risk, but that’s just how bullpens go these days. Read the rest of this entry »

This might sound familiar, but Carlos Santana has been traded to a playoff contender. After signing a one-year deal with the Pirates in the offseason, he has been sent to the Brewers to help reinforce the second-worst offense in the National League (88 wRC+). In return, the Pirates will get back teenage shortstop Jhonny Severino, an international free agent who signed for $1.2 million last summer and only has 60 professional games under his belt.

At this late point in Santana’s career, he has established himself as a reliable, average player, playing in 94 games, accumulating 393 plate appearances, and posting a 99 wRC+ this season after a 102 mark last season. The production comes through in a slightly different way, but he has a 99 wRC+ from the left side and a 100 wRC+ from the right side. Similarly, he is a reliable defender; so far, he sits at +2 OAA with a 0% success rate added. Across the board, this is an average dude.

We know who Santana is. Santana knows who he is. The Brewers know who he is. That isn’t super sexy, but the Brewers do not need sexy at first base; competence is a good first step for them. In Jay Jaffe’s Replacement Level Killers series, they topped the list at first base; no team has gotten less production at the position. Santana has accumulated 1.0 WAR on the year, so it’s not as if he is a huge difference maker, but he can provide a necessary stability as Milwaukee tries to hold on to first place in the NL Central.

As for the Pirates’ side of things: Severino doesn’t have much professional experience. This year, he has only played 12 games with 52 plate appearances in the complex league thanks to a sprained left wrist. In terms of his profile, he is a big, projectable infielder who most likely fits at third base long-term but is currently at shortstop. Overall, he has a 40 Future Value and slots in at 23rd on the Pirates list in the same tier as prospects like Dariel Lopez and major leaguers such as Nick Gonzales.

There is upside in Severino’s power, which looks like it will work to all fields. At 18 years old, he is already showing legitimate pop. There is also downside in the hit tool, though. From the little that we’ve seen, he is running a 30-grade chase rate, and his 1% walk rate is slightly concerning. But that could improve with more time; for example, he ran a 7% walk rate in 198 plate appearances last year.

To round this out, let’s look some of Severino’s at-bats:

There are a lot of lower body movements happening, and some stepping in the bucket. Maintaining connection to the ground throughout your swing is a very important part of the learning process of hitting. As you grow into strength, your effort levels to produce power become more controlled. That will be a focus for Severino as he develops and eventually moves out of the complex league. There are multiple swings here where his first move is his lead hip drifting toward third base. Sometimes he counters his stepping in the bucket with a scissor kick to even things out, but by then he already lost his hands. On the other hand, there are some swings here with serious thump (2:15 is a great example). The rotational power is clearly there; it will just be a balancing act for Severino as he ages and faces better competition.

Teams like the Pirates bring on players like Santana for a few reasons, but one of them is hoping he plays well enough to garner a return like this at the trade deadline. There is no guarantee that Severino will help the next good Pirates club, but in a deal like this, all you want is an opportunity to have something to work with, and that’s exactly what they got. For the Brewers, it shores up what has been a significant hole as they make a playoff push.

The Twins and Marlins traded veteran right-handed relievers on Wednesday, sending 2020 World Series champ Dylan Floro to Minnesota and 2022 All-Star Jorge López’s talents to South Beach. It’s another big-leaguer-for-big-leaguer trade for a pair of familiar trade partners. In January, Kim Ng and Derek Falvey exchanged 2023 All-Stars Luis Arraez and Pablo López (along with minor leaguers Byron Chourio and Jose Salas). They can only hope this deal goes half as well for both sides.

Neither the Twins nor the Marlins were getting the production they’d hoped for this season from López and Floro, respectively. In Minnesota, the 30-year-old López — acquired from Baltimore at last year’s deadline for four pitchers, including All-Star Yennier Cano — hasn’t had the same stuff he brought to the Twin Cities last year. In 37 outings, he’s posted a 5.09 ERA, 5.94 FIP, and 4.84 xFIP, striking out just 6.88 per nine innings, down from 9.13 last year. He’s fallen to the 14th percentile in average exit velocity and the 17th in xERA, both of which were in the 70s last season. Home runs have been an issue; he’s giving up more contact in the air, and more of that contact is finding the seats, as he’s gone from an 8.3% HR/FB rate to a gaudy and probably unsustainable 21.9%, the ninth-highest mark among pitchers with 30-plus innings. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Angels made the most consequential decision they’ll make all year: they decided to pull Shohei Ohtani off the trade market and attempt to make the playoffs. They followed that decision up almost immediately with a complementary one, acquiring Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López from the White Sox in exchange for prospects Edgar Quero and Ky Bush, kicking the trade deadline off in earnest by landing one of the best starters on the market, plus an interesting relief flier.

If you came here for a tallying up of the relative merits of the four players involved in this deal, you’ll definitely get it, but I’ll be frank: I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing to discuss about this trade. If that’s what you’re after, search for the phrase “get down in the mud and count beans.” You can read the second half of this article and come back up here later. First, though, I want to talk about the bigger picture here for both the Angels and the Sox. For my purposes here, we’ll just ballpark it: Giolito is a solid third starter. López is a high-risk, high-reward setup man. Quero is a 50 FV catcher, a middle-of-the-top-100 prospect. Bush is a future back-of-rotation starter. There’ll be more than that later, but that’s a good starting place.

Deciding whether or not to trade Ohtani is a responsibility I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It goes beyond counting up value and cost, weighing playoff odds against organizational soundness. It’s not about wins and losses, even. Voluntarily sending the best player in baseball out of your city is a legacy question, a fan interest question, the kind of thing disgruntled fans might cite for why they fell out of love with the team. On the flip side, turning a rental into multiple top prospects might be the kind of move that builds a competitive core around the tail end of Mike Trout’s prime. This isn’t your average buy/sell decision; when they write Perry Minasian’s baseball biography, what he did with Ohtani will likely be in the first paragraph. Read the rest of this entry »

Two former Mets are on the move from one playoff contender to another, with the Guardians trading Amed Rosario to the Dodgers in exchange for Noah Syndergaard and $2 million. The Dodgers receive a shortstop who, despite having a down year, adds a much-needed right-handed bat to their lineup. The Guardians receive a pitcher who had a 7.16 ERA before he landed on the IL nearly two months ago. In all, it makes for a seemingly lopsided challenge trade. Imagine going back to the fall of 2018 and explaining to yourself that a straight-up trade of Syndergaard for Rosario would seem a little light for the team receiving the former, but don’t actually do it, because your 2018 self’s head would explode, and you’d alter the space-time continuum.

The deal came into public consciousness on Wednesday evening piecemeal, via a flurry of tweets from several of baseball’s leading bombardiers. Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers reported that a deal for Rosario was approaching, Ken Rosenthal confirmed it, and Pat Ragazzo reported that Syndergaard would be the corresponding piece from Los Angeles. Jon Heyman was the first to indicate that the Dodgers were sending money to the Guardians, and Zack Meisel reported the amount. If you’re a news-breaker who didn’t get to announce the terms of at least one part of this trade, it might be time to get out of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers are getting at least some of the old band back together with Tuesday’s reacquisition of Enrique Hernández. The 32-year-old super-utilityman returns (along with cash considerations) via trade with the Red Sox in exchange for pitchers Nick Robertson and Justin Hagenman. Hernández, who signed a one-year, $10 million pact with Boston during the offseason, is hitting a career-worst .222/.279/.320 (60 wRC+). The Red Sox are picking up roughly $2.5 million of the deal’s remaining money to improve their return, receiving multiple polished, back-of-the-40-man arms in Hagenman and Robertson.

This season is the second consecutive year of declining offensive performance for Hernández, who has been a below-average hitter for most of the last five years. The decline is consistent across a variety of statistical categories, and there are no underlying signs that might indicate a bounce back or positive regression, but Hernández is still a capable defender at second base and (most importantly in this case) in center field. A June injury to Trayce Thompson eventually begat a deal for defensive specialist Jake Marisnick, whose recent hamstring injury again left the Dodgers thin in center. James Outman, whose hit tool has had a violent regression to the mean after a hot start, has seen the lion’s share of reps in center this year, while Jason Heyward and rookie Jonny Deluca have each played there a handful of times. All three are capable center field defenders but none of them is great, and you can make a coherent argument that Hernández is the best healthy center field defender on the Dodgers 40-man right now. Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves made two minor moves on Monday to fill out their bullpen headcount, acquiring right-handed reliever Pierce Johnson from the Rockies and lefty reliever Taylor Hearn from the Rangers. Heading to Colorado are righty relief pitcher Victor Vodnik, our no. 13 Braves prospect a few months ago, and minor league starter Tanner Gordon. The return for Hearn is unknown as of press time, but it’s unlikely the Rangers will be getting a prospect of much significance.

The Rockies have traded RHP Pierce Johnson to the Braves for a pair of minor leaguers, per source.

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) July 24, 2023

If these turn out to be the biggest trades made over the last week of July, it would be a mighty disappointing deadline, but the Braves get what they wanted here. Their bullpen hasn’t exactly struggled this season — it’s second in FIP, WAR, and ERA — but adding a bit of depth while they still can has a lot of appeal to it. Through graduations and trades in recent years, the top of their farm system is kind of shallow at the moment, so internal reinforcements would be a bit trickier. Not helping matters is that they currently have five relievers on injured lists, four of them on the 60-day IL, and basically have no additional relievers on the 40-man roster left to call up in a pinch without shoving a starting pitcher in there.

Johnson is probably the safer bet of the two pickups, and I don’t necessarily mean to damn him with faint praise considering the season he’s had so far. Even in a Coors Field environment, an ERA of six is not what you like to see, and even the FIP in the mid-fours hardly screams “pitcher you’re going to use in high-leverage situations.” Johnson took over the closer role when Daniel Bard had to step away from baseball temporarily earlier this season. He only blew a couple of saves before losing the gig last month, but his walk rate this season — never his strength — led to a lot of adventures like you’d see from Fernando Rodney in a down year. Johnson’s saving grace, and almost certainly the reason the Braves valued him, is that he misses bats and throws hard; if carefully managed, he can be an asset to the ‘pen. Read the rest of this entry »

Génesis Cabrera changed feathers on Friday, as he was traded from St. Louis to Toronto for teenage catching prospect Sammy Hernandez a few days after Cabrera was designated for assignment. The hard-throwing 26-year-old southpaw had spent parts of five volatile seasons with the Cardinals. While he has enjoyed a significant bat-missing rebound in 2023 compared to last season (he’s back into the 26% K% area, up from 16.5% in 2022), Cabrera was in the midst of yet another rocky, homer-prone year before he was DFA’d. He introduced an upper-80s slider/cutter to his repertoire this year and has been using it a ton (36%), while his fastball velocity has slipped a bit. All of Cabrera’s non-fastball pitches generate above-average swinging strike rates, while his mid-90s heater tends to get shelled even though he and the Cardinals made changes to it this year. Perhaps a change of scenery and new outside intervention will lead to another tweak in this area:

Read the rest of this entry »

I am a big fan of trading for reinforcements well ahead of the trade deadline. If you can add a piece that will make even a small difference, then do it early if the deal makes sense. That is exactly what the Orioles have done in acquiring Shintaro Fujinami from the A’s, adding to what was already a league-best bullpen led by Félix Bautista and Yennier Cano. In return, Baltimore sent 26-year-old prospect Easton Lucas to Oakland.

Before jumping into Fujinami’s profile and potential, let’s learn a little about Lucas. He initially came to Baltimore’s system from Miami in a trade for veteran infielder Jonathan Villar in December 2019. Since 2021, he has worked his way from High-A to Triple-A as a reliever, peaking at 56.2 innings last season. But after looking the best he has in his career with a 2.66 FIP and 38.7 K% to start the year in Double-A, he’s struggled after stepping up to Triple-A, with a 7.31 FIP and 4.61 ERA in 13 innings.

Even with these recent struggles, there is reason to believe Lucas can be a legitimate middle reliever in the big leagues. Per Eric Longenhagen, his average fastball velocity has jumped significantly, from 90.7 mph to 94.5. He also utilizes two slow breaking balls: a slider that was in the high-70s, and a curve that was in the mid-70s. But like his fastball, those pitches have seen a velocity jump as well; the curve has turned into a low-80s slider, and the old slider has tightened up to become a high-80s cutter. That is essentially a 10-tick bump in both breaking balls. With these changes, Lucas has also faded his changeup usage. Long story short, he is now a four-seamer/cutter/slider guy with a significant stuff boost, giving him more of a shot to be a big leaguer.

Let’s pivot back to Baltimore’s side of things. On the surface, Fujinami has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball this season. He began the year as a starter and allowed 24 earned runs in under 15 innings, walking virtually everyone he faced. He has been much better since moving to the bullpen, posting a 3.90 FIP in 34.1 innings, but much of that performance is very recent. In May and June, he still had a FIP over 4.00 with a BB% north of 10.

After back-to-back rough performances at the end of June against the Blue Jays and Yankees, Fujinami changed his pitch mix, and it seems as if he has settled in as a four-seamer/splitter pitcher. He used his cutter a few times in a recent appearance, but it’s clear that his plan is to use a two-pitch mix. How has that worked out? Let’s look at the four-seamer swinging-strike leaders in July:

Obviously the sample size here isn’t anything significant, but this bump deserves attention. Despite consistent four-seamer usage — between the high-50s and low-60s — Fujinami’s four-seamer swinging-strike rate hadn’t broken 26% in any month. The pitch wasn’t effective, but it has become a weapon in the last few weeks.

As I already mentioned, Fujinami has used a two-pitch mix of late, but how have the fastball and splitter adapted since his recent surge? (I didn’t include his velocity increase between these two time periods because that is largely due to him no longer starting; his fastball jumped two ticks and his splitter jumped one as a reliever.)

At 93.3 mph, nobody throws a splitter harder than Fujinami other than Jhoan Duran. On top of that, you can see some concrete changes in the pitch’s shape to make it play better with the four-seamer. Most interestingly, the 1:47 tilt on the pitch has moved closer to the four-seamer’s movement. That complicates things for hitters: if Fujinami is throwing both pitches out of similar release points with indistinguishable tilt differences, hitters are going to have trouble either getting their barrel on the splitter or catching up to the heater. The high velocity combination doesn’t give you much wiggle room to figure out where each pitch is headed.

Let’s see what this looks like in practice. Here is an at-bat from last week against Alex Kirilloff:

Pitch 1 (0-0, four-seamer)

Pitch 2 (0-1, splitter)

Pitch 3 (0-2, splitter)

Pitch 4 (0-2, four-seamer)

From Fujinami’s perspective, it doesn’t get any better than this. Kirilloff got his best pitch to hit in the 0–0 count and passed it up. After that, he had no chance. The 0–1 splitter is a nice example of how even a little bit of difference in movement and location can affect a hitter’s swing. The vertical orientation of the splitter was enough for Kirilloff to pull off and chop a foul ball. On the following pitch, Fujinami showed how he can induce a little more horizontal break than a hitter would expect from his release point. It’s not overwhelming, but it’s enough to fool Kirilloff and force an emergency hack. Then, on the final pitch, he blew Kirilloff away with triple digits above the zone. This is perfect execution and sequencing, and it’s exactly what the Orioles will be looking for.

Baltimore has developed a great reputation when it comes to helping relievers get the most out of their stuff and body. If anybody is equipped to help a high-octane reliever with a four-seamer/splitter combination, it’s the Orioles. I wouldn’t be surprised if Fujinami ends up making a slight tweak or two upon his arrival, but I’m confident that would be focused on propping up the two-pitch mix that he has effectively established in the last couple of weeks.