Last Friday, the Mariners placed Ty France on the Injured List with a flexor strain in his left arm, the result of a collision at first base the day before. This was just the latest blow to a Seattle lineup that’s been wracked by injuries, with France joining Mitch Haniger, Kyle Lewis, Tom Murphy, and Evan White on the IL. With very little minor league depth to turn to at first base, the Mariners turned to the trade market to address their sudden need. On Monday morning, they acquired Carlos Santana and cash considerations from the Royals for a pair of pitching prospects, Wyatt Mills and William Fleming.

In the four games since France’s injury, the Mariners used Dylan Moore and Kevin Padlo at first base twice apiece. Neither can replicate France’s critical offensive contributions (a 157 wRC+), and Moore is better suited to fill a super utility role anyway. Enter Santana, who gives the Mariners some insurance in case France’s recovery takes longer than expected. This is actually the second time Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto has acquired Santana; the first was back in 2018, when he was part of the return for Jean Segura along with J.P. Crawford. He was flipped to Cleveland just 10 days later in a three-way trade that included Edwin Encarnación and Yandy Díaz.

The switch-hitting first baseman signed a two-year deal with the Royals last year but has been unable to stop a late-career decline that began in 2020. Over the last three seasons, he’s posted a .211/.331/.343 slash line, good for a 90 wRC+, with his 104 wRC+ this year standing as a high water mark. His excellent plate discipline is still intact — he’s one of nine batters with at least 200 plate appearances this season to have walked more than they’ve struck out — but he’s struggled when putting the ball in play.

Last September, Ben Clemens looked into Santana’s issues on contact and found that a lot of it could be explained by his poor results when swinging at fastballs.

Over the course of Santana’s career, he’s been a fearsome fastball hitter. That’s partially because he does an excellent job making pitchers throw him strikes, but it’s also because he knows what to do with them: swing frequently, rarely whiff, and do damage when he connects. He still saw a good number of heaters, because he does a great job of getting into favorable counts, but pitchers were simply choosing their poison. Better to meet him in the zone and take your chances with a ball in play than miss and give him a walk.

That trend no longer holds. He’s having his worst season against fastballs since 2015, one of his worst pre-decline seasons. What’s gone wrong? Pretty simply, everything. His swinging strike rate on fastballs is the highest of his career (excluding a partial 2010 rookie season). His whiff rate when he does swing is a ghastly 17.5%, even with his 2011 season and worse than any effort since. We only have barrel data since 2015, but his barrels per swing mark is quite poor too: 3.4%, ahead of only his 2018 season and in the bottom third of the league.

Santana started this season with the same problem. In April and May, he posted a .220 wOBA against fastballs and looked like he was on track to finish his time with the Royals at a supreme low point. Something clicked in June, however, and suddenly his bat came alive again. He’s slashed .357/.478/.554 (198 wRC+) this month and looked a lot more like his old self again. And as you’d expect, his performance against hard stuff has been the key. Read the rest of this entry »

With the 2021-22 offseason in the books, it’s clear we’ll remember it, at least in part, for how the Twins of all teams took the reins and strengthened their roster. They flipped Mitch Garver for Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who then went to the Yankees along with Josh Donaldson in exchange for Gio Urshela and Gary Sánchez. It wasn’t much of a downgrade, and the move gave Minnesota the opportunity to sign Carlos Correa, the biggest free agent of the offseason.

And now, here’s the cherry on top. In an attempt to address the fragility of their rotation, the Twins had already traded for Sonny Gray. But one good pitcher can’t lift an entire staff, so they went ahead and acquired another starter. And as we’ll discuss later, there were several other intriguing players involved in the deal. A fairly complex trade on the morning of Opening Day? Don’t mind if I do. Here’s the basic breakdown:

Padres Get

• Taylor Rogers
• Brent Rooker
• Salary Relief ($6.6 million)

Twins Get

• Chris Paddack
• Emilio Pagán
• PTBNL

This started off as a discussion about the Twins, but let’s actually begin with the Padres’ return. Now, the bullpen down in San Diego was never projected to be an issue. If anything, it’s one of the league’s better ones, as evidenced by an 11th-place spot on this year’s positional power rankings. But it did lack a clear ninth inning stalwart after the departure of Mark Melancon, a problem made more obvious by last week’s Opening Day fiasco. With Rogers not yet with the team, Craig Stammen allowed a walk-off three-run bomb to Seth Beer (on National Beer Day, no less). Read the rest of this entry »

The Diamondbacks and Rangers made a minor deal on Opening Day, with Texas sending upper-level infielder Yonny Hernandez to Arizona for low-level center field speedster Jeferson Espinal. Arizona desperately needs big league infield help with Nick Ahmed (shoulder) and Josh Rojas (oblique) starting the year on the injured list. They traded cash to Chicago for upper-level infielder Sergio Alcántara a few days ago and now add the plucky Hernandez, who was squeezed out of Texas by the additions of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien from above, and by the bevy of prospects (among them Ezequiel Duran, Josh Smith, and Davis Wendzel) who are either on, or are soon-to-be-on, the 40-man from below. Read the rest of this entry »

Just before Opening Day, the Brewers played musical chairs with their catching corps in a pair of moves perhaps triggered by losing Pedro Severino to a PED suspension. They made two trades, adding two backstops and subtracting another, and shipping a couple of lower-ranked prospects out as part of the deals. They are:

From Miami: C Alex Jackson
To Miami: 2B Hayden Cantrelle and RHP Alexis Ramirez

From San Diego: C Victor Caratini
To San Diego: C Brett Sullivan and UTIL Korry Howell Read the rest of this entry »

In a normal baseball offseason, all the trades would have already happened. Front offices have all season to call each other up with a million permutations of deals, and the deals they make spawn other deals, and player injuries spawn other deals, and free-agent signings lead to surpluses or needs, and… well, you get the idea. Trading flurries happen in December, and during spring training, and teams work out their rosters that way.

With a compressed offseason thanks to the lockout, the timeline has gotten all mixed up. Now, trades are happening three days before opening day. It’s madness! And speaking of:

Tigers Get

• Austin Meadows

Rays Get

• Isaac Paredes
• Competitive Balance Round B Pick

This trade was announced last night, and I’m writing about it this morning, and so rather than write a block of text about one side’s return and then a block of text about the other, I’m going to try a slightly different framing tool: I’ll walk you through a few levels of how I’ve thought about this deal. It’s an interesting one, no doubt, as trades involving the Rays so often are. Let’s get started!
Read the rest of this entry »

If I told you that two contending teams swapped major leaguers, you’d probably have an idea of what that looks like. Maybe a reliever and a fourth outfielder changed hands, or something like that. The Blue Jays and the White Sox didn’t do that, though; they swapped catchers, as Jeff Passan first reported:

The Chicago White Sox and Toronto Blue Jays are in agreement on a trade that will send catcher Zack Collins to the Blue Jays in exchange for catcher Reese McGuire, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) April 3, 2022

But even though both Reese McGuire and Zack Collins play catcher, they do so in very different ways. Amusingly, as we at FanGraphs work through our Positional Power Rankings, Collins is essentially positionless power. His home run totals in the minors and batted ball metrics in the majors tell a consistent story; if he can figure out a way to limit his strikeouts, he’ll be a fearsome hitter.

In a previous era, that might have secured him a starting catching role. But our newfound understanding of the value of receiving has exposed Collins as one of the worst defenders at the position — one who was worth a ghastly 14 runs below average in only 506 innings of catching last year. It’s not an easy skill to show with a GIF or two, and that sounds like a ton of runs to surrender in such a short time. But that matches up with the eye test, and the Blue Jays will likely use Collins mainly as a first baseman and DH.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you thought the Padres were done tinkering with the starting rotation, you thought wrong. On Sunday morning, San Diego agreed to a deal with the Athletics, acquiring pitchers Sean Manaea and Aaron Holiday in exchange for pitcher Adrian Martinez and infielder Euribiel Angeles.

In a season in which teams continued to be conservative at stretching out their starting pitchers, the A’s were more aggressive with the injury-prone Manaea last year. Over the short-term, that proved to be successful, as he remained healthy and threw 179 1/3 innings, his most as a professional. The plaudits aren’t just quantity; he set career-highs all over the place, from WAR (3.3) to full-season FIP (3.66) to strikeout rate (25.7%).

How did Manaea do it? The likeliest reason is velocity. No, he didn’t suddenly become Aroldis Chapman or Brusdar Graterol, but every pitcher — with the possible exception of knuckleballers — requires some level of velocity to achieve effectiveness. In Manaea’s career there’s nearly a 100-point delta in batter slugging percentage between his sinkers going 91 mph or slower (.491) and those traveling 92 mph or faster (.397). On a player-to-player comparison, I get in the neighborhood of 40 points of SLG being the norm.

Similarly, Manaea also gets a lot more strikeouts when he’s throwing harder. More than three-quarters of his career strikeouts from sinkers come from the harder ones despite less than half of his sinkers being in the category. It’s not just chicken-and-egg; this pattern existed prior to this season. Sinkers aren’t traditionally used to punch out batters, but for Manaea, they’re an important weapon. Statcast credits him with 114 strikeouts on sinkers in 2021, the third-most of the Statcast era and the most since Chris Sale had 124 in 2015 (David Price has the crown with 125 in 2014).

It’s not even that Manaea’s sinker is a particularly nasty pitch, such as a splitter in fastball’s clothing; he actually gets less break on his than the average pitcher. It’s that his deceptive delivery and his excellent control basically function as a force multiplier to his velocity, effectively reducing the distance between the mound and home plate. Even a 30-mph fastball can strike out Juan Soto if you get to determine the sliver of time he has to make a decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Having lost Kenley Jansen to the Braves via free agency, the Dodgers felt that they needed a closer, and that they had an outfielder to spare. Feeling uncertain about outfield depth in the wake of Andrew Vaughn’s hip injury, the White Sox were willing to part with a pricey setup man. Fittingly, then, the two contenders teamed up on a trade on Friday, with Chicago sending Craig Kimbrel to Los Angeles in exchange for AJ Pollock.

The 33-year-old Kimbrel spent less than half a season with the White Sox after being acquired from the Cubs in a crosstown deal at last year’s trade deadline, in exchange for second baseman Nick Madrigal and righty reliever Codi Heuer. Where Kimbrel had built on a late-2020 rebound and dominated for the Cubs — posting a 0.49 ERA, converting 23 out of 25 save chances, and making his eighth All-Star team — he slotted into a setup role in front of All-Star closer Liam Hendricks with the White Sox, notching just one save and getting hit for a 5.09 ERA. At least on paper, the Sox appeared ready to utilize a similar arrangement this year, though paying Hendriks $13 million and Kimbrel $16 million made for a particularly pricey late-inning combination.

Even with the late-season hiccups, Kimbrel still finished with his best rate stats since 2017 via a 2.26 ERA, 2.43 FIP, 42.6% strikeout rate, 9.8% walk rate, and 32.8% strikeout-walk differential. Among relievers, only Josh Hader had a higher strikeout rate, and only Hendriks, Hader, and Raisel Iglesias had a better strikeout-walk differential.

The 59.2-inning workload was Kimbrel’s largest since 2018; after helping the Red Sox win the World Series in what was a comparatively lackluster season, he didn’t sign with the Cubs until June 6, 2019, after the draft pick compensation that encumbered his free agency had expired. He threw just 36 innings in 2019–20, with a 6.00 ERA and 6.29 FIP, but during the latter season, the Cubs identified a mechanical issue. “Kimbrel was getting too rotational and was flying open early,” as The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma described it in March 2021. “This led to multiple issues, all connected in various ways: his arm slot dropped, he was pulling his fastball, his velocity was dipping and he had no control of his breaking ball.” Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday morning, the Blue Jays and Rockies agreed to a trade sending Randal Grichuk and cash considerations to Colorado, with Raimel Tapia and minor league infielder Adrian Pinto joining Toronto. Rob Gillies of The Associated Press reports that the amount of cash is just over $9.7 million, which accounts for nearly half of the remaining salary on Grichuk’s five-year contract. With this move, the Blue Jays get the left-handed outfielder they had been searching for, and the Rockies get another power hitter to plug into the middle of their lineup.

Grichuk signed that five-year extension (worth $52 million) after putting up 2.1 WAR in 2018, his first season in Toronto. He blasted 31 home runs the next year, but that power was the only positive aspect of his approach at the plate. Over the last three years, his offensive output has been nine percent below league average, and that’s despite an ISO that sits a hair above .200. His biggest issue has been getting on base at a regular clip. His walk rate has been remarkably consistent, sitting around 5.8% over the last six years, though it dipped to its lowest point since his rookie season last year. With a batted-ball profile focused on fly ball contact, his BABIP isn’t much better.

In the field, Grichuk has been a solid defender across all three outfield positions. Splitting his time between center and right field over the last few years, the advanced defensive metrics rate his work in the corner a little higher than up the middle. All three metrics were disappointed in his ability to cover enough ground in the field as the Blue Jays’ full-time center fielder in 2020. But moved over to right in ’21, he graded out as one of the better fielders at the position on a per-inning basis, accumulating 6 DRS and 5.5 UZR in just 330.1 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

After a relatively tame offseason, the Padres finally were able to close the deal on a transaction, picking up 1B/DH Luke Voit from the Yankees for minor league pitcher Justin Lange. The 31-year-old Voit, a Cinderella story just a few years ago after heading to New York for Giovanny Gallegos, had his worst season in pinstripes in 2021, hitting .239/.328/.437 and limited to 68 games due to a partial meniscus tear in his left knee. A fifth-round pick in 2020, Lange made his professional debut in the Florida Complex League in 2021, striking out a healthy 12 batters per nine over 22 innings but also walking a less-than-healthy six batters per game.

San Diego’s front office has been aware of the team’s significant weaknesses at the offense-first positions, expressing interest in Michael Conforto and Kris Bryant and said to be thick in the hunt for Seiya Suzuki and Freddie Freeman. The only problem is that, similar to their experience at the trade deadline, the Padres have come up short for their efforts. This winter’s only significant outfield pickup, Nomar Mazara, is not exactly who you want to see start a season high on the depth chart if you’re a would-be contender. And with first base and the outfield corners already not strengths, it’s hard to imagine the Padres being happy about the designated hitter becoming universal in 2022, leaving them scrambling to fill another offensive position. There’s no realistic contender, at least according to our projections, that had a less enviable 1B/LF/RF/DH situation.

Relative to the Dodgers at these positions, the Friars start off 11 wins in the red. With the team reportedly not feeling all tingly about the possibility of Nick Castellanos and the league’s top trade target here, Matt Olson, already off the board, the Padres were quickly running out of options to chip away at some of this deficit. But the Anthony Rizzo signing provided a new opportunity, as it had the effect of removing any real path for Voit to get playing time in New York. Read the rest of this entry »