Zack Greinke is coming full circle. On Wednesday, the 38-year-old righthander agreed to a one-year contract with the Royals, the team that drafted him in 2002 and stayed with him through low points and high over the course of seven big-league seasons (2004–10), the pinnacle of which was his AL Cy Young award win in ’09. The Greinke deal headlined a busy day for the Royals, who additionally swapped lefties with the Reds, sending 34-year-old starter Mike Minor and cash to Cincinnati in exchange for 29-year-old reliever Amir Garrett.

Via the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, Greinke’s deal guarantees him $13 million, with an additional $2 million in potential bonuses based on innings pitched. Despite the Royals coming off a 74-win season and not looking much stronger for 2022 (though our Playoff Odds give them a 10.7% chance of joining the expanded party), Greinke had this destination in mind. Via MLB.com’s Anne Rogers:

Greinke on the #Royals: "This was a team I singled out that I wanted to play for. It was my No. 1 choice. The only thing that would have made it a little tough is if pitchers were still allowed to hit. That would have opened up a lot of teams I would want to play for in the NL."

— Anne Rogers (@anne__rogers) March 17, 2022

Though he helped the Astros reach the World Series for the second time in less than three full seasons in Houston, Greinke had an uneven 2021 campaign. Prior to landing on the COVID-19 injured list in early September, he led the AL in innings pitched, though he struggled upon returning; his ERA went up more than half a run, and he wound up finishing 11th with 179 innings. His overall 4.16 ERA was his highest mark since 2016, his first year with the Diamondbacks after signing a six-year, $206.5 million deal, but more jarring was his 4.71 FIP, the worst mark of his career.

While Greinke was typically stingy with walks, posting the AL’s second-lowest rate among qualifiers (5.2%), his 1.58 homers per nine allowed was the AL’s second-highest mark and the highest of his career since his 2004 rookie season. Meanwhile, his 17.2% strikeout rate and 12.1% strikeout-walk differential were his worst marks since 2005 (I’m throwing out his three-appearance 2006 for all of these comparisons). Read the rest of this entry »

In the days since the lockout lifted, baseball has seen a flurry of trades and free agent signings. It’s a lot to sort through, so to assist you in finding anything you may have missed, I’ve rounded up all of our post-lockout transaction pieces in one place. You’ll find links to some of our offseason, free agency, and prospect resources listed first, followed by a team-by-team listing of the transaction analysis that involved your favorite squad. In instances where we dissected a move across multiple pieces — hello, Matt Olson — you’ll see those pieces grouped together. This piece will be updated as more players find new homes and we publish new work.

As always, all of the pieces and tools listed here are free to read and use but took time and resources to create. If you enjoy our coverage and are in a position to do so, we hope you’ll sign up for a FanGraphs Ad-free Membership. It’s the best way to both experience the site and help ensure its sustainability. Now, on to the roundup! Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the A’s made the biggest trade of the year when they sent Matt Olson to the Braves. This morning, they kept the momentum going and made the second-biggest trade of the year. Matt Chapman is headed to Canada in exchange for a four-prospect return:

Blue Jays deal for Matt Chapman is done. Kevin Smith, Gunnar Hoglund, Zach Logue and Kirby Snead are headed to Athletics, per source.

— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) March 16, 2022

Oakland doesn’t do anything by half measures, and with Olson and Chris Bassitt out the door, the team was in competitive limbo. Toronto was in search of a new infielder after Marcus Semien left in free agency. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the potential fit here, and the two teams were linked in trade rumors for much of the locked-out offseason.

From the Jays’ perspective, this trade gets them exactly what they wanted. After losing two of their top starting pitchers in free agency, they signed Kevin Gausman and Yusei Kikuchi to fill holes in the rotation. That still left them with a diminished offensive group, and there weren’t any obvious free agent fits to spruce things up. It may have been a coincidence, but as the Jays pursued Freddie Freeman and Kyle Schwarber, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was spotted doing third base drills, a sign of how intent the Jays were on shoehorning another hitter into their lineup, positional fit notwithstanding. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds and Mariners both finished just outside their respective leagues’ playoff pictures last season, but they’re heading in different directions for 2022. Less than 24 hours after trading Sonny Gray to Minnesota, Cincinnati dealt left fielder Jesse Winker and third baseman Eugenio Suárez to Seattle in exchange for a four-player package headlined by 23-year-old lefty Brandon Williamson, who recently landed at no. 61 on our Top 100 Prospects list.

Also heading from the Emerald City to the Queen City are right-hander Justin Dunn, outfielder Jake Fraley, and a player to be named later. Via The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal:

The SEA-CIN deal also includes a player to be named going back to the Reds, source tells @TheAthletic. Reds high on that player, believe it will enhance package

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 14, 2022

This is an aggressive move for the Mariners, who haven’t made the playoffs since 2001 and who last year won 90 games, two fewer than the Red Sox and Yankees, the AL’s Wild Card teams. The gave up a substantial amount of young pitching in an effort to shore up an offense that scored just 4.30 runs per game, the AL’s fifth-lowest total, and managed just a 93 wRC+, tied for the fourth-lowest mark. The Reds… well, they saved some money and got some impressive, controllable pitching, but they also gave up their most impactful hitter over the past two seasons — and a prominent voice in the clubhouse — in order to dump the $35 million owed to Suárez. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the Oakland Athletics traded star first baseman Matt Olson to the defending champion Atlanta Braves (analysis of the Braves’ side of the deal, courtesy of Dan Szymborski, can be found here) for a sizable package of prospects, including two from baseball’s Top 100. Coming back to Oakland is catcher Shea Langeliers, center fielder Cristian Pache, power-armed relief prospect Ryan Cusick, and polished teenage righty Joey Estes. All four new A’s prospects have been added to the team’s prospect list, both in the article and over on The Board.

In our opinion, the best of that group is 24-year-old Shea Langeliers. Ranking 70th overall and eighth among the catching prospects on our recently published Top 100, Langeliers combines plus or better defense with a power-over-hit game when he’s at the plate as opposed to behind it. His raw power blossomed into game power during the 2021 season, and while Langeliers isn’t an especially instinctual hitter (he projects as a sub-50 bat with contact issues), he has the potential to deliver 20-plus home runs per year. He has Gold Glove potential, with great hands and mobility to go with a strong, accurate arm that shuts down the running game. He also earns raves for his catching intangibles in terms of managing the game and working with pitchers. Theoretically, he’s lined up to start the year at Triple-A, be added to the 40-man after the season, and debut in 2023. His future in Oakland is tied closely and directly to that of incumbent star Sean Murphy, who reaches his first year of arbitration in 2023. We think Langeliers’ presence makes it more likely that Murphy is traded in the next 18 months.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball’s second stab at an offseason continues at a brisk pace with the biggest move yet this week, a blockbuster trade that sees the A’s send first baseman Matt Olson to the Braves in a five-player deal. Atlanta didn’t get off lightly, parting with outfielder Cristian Pache, catcher Shea Langeliers (who were Nos. 72 and 70, respectively, on our preseason Top 100 prospects list), and pitchers Ryan Cusick and Joey Estes to whatever the heck they’re calling the stadium in Oakland this year. (We’ll have much more on those four prospects coming later from Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein in a separate post.)

Fresh off a new collective bargaining agreement, the A’s have let it be known that they’re ready for business in no uncertain terms. While there was no obvious requirement to trade Olson quickly — he’s two full seasons away from hitting free agency — Oakland would be hard-pressed to get an even larger package than this. I’d personally like to see the franchise actually keep one of its stars past the point at which the team can get market value, but if you’re determined to trade Olson, I can’t think of a much better situation. Many teams need first base help, and with 15 designated hitter jobs now needing to be filled in the National League, help on the easier end of the defensive spectrum comes at a premium. If you want to add a first baseman in free agency, you basically have one superstar (Freddie Freeman), one good player (Anthony Rizzo), and an interesting slugger that you’re not quite sure is a full-time option at the position (Kyle Schwarber) to choose from before the talent pool becomes a waterfall. Read the rest of this entry »

I like to think of myself as a pretty reasonable baseball thinker. When I see a trade, I can put myself in both teams’ shoes and understand where they’re coming from. I might not agree with their evaluation of each individual player; heck, I might not agree with the direction they’re going overall. Usually, though, I can trace back their steps until I find the key thing driving the trade on both sides. Usually isn’t always, though. Meet the strangest trade I’ve seen in recent memory:

Catcher Ben Rortvedt is headed to the Yankees along with Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, sources tell ESPN. Catcher Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela are going to Minnesota.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 14, 2022

This trade is a Rohrshach test, only more inscrutable. Sometimes I feel like the Yankees won. Sometimes I feel like the Yankees lost. Sometimes I feel like the Twins lost and the Yankees broke even. Sometimes I feel like they both lost, as strange as that may sound. Sometimes I feel like it was actually just Isiah Kiner-Falefa for cash. Sometimes I feel like Josh Donaldson will set the league on fire to get back at the Twins. Let’s look at this trade from as many angles as possible and see if we can figure out what’s going on.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Cincinnati Reds have been rumored to be interested in trading at least one of their top starters for over a year, with bits of buzz centered around Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray. Castillo remains in Cincinnati — at least for the moment — but Saturday, Gray was traded to the Minnesota Twins, one of a few weekend moves the Twins made. Heading to Cincy is Minnesota’s first round pick from last year, right-handed pitcher Chase Petty. A third player, A-ball reliever Francis Peguero also joins the Twins, but landing Gray was the fundamental purpose of this trade.

The reasons for the Twins’ sudden collapse in 2021 are varied, but the most pressing among them is obvious: the rotation. Minnesota’s starting pitchers combined to finish 25th in the league in WAR last season, with a 5.18 ERA and a 4.87 FIP. Even those marks kind of overstate the strength of the rotation given that the team no longer enjoys the services of José Berríos, who they traded to the Blue Jays last summer. Michael Pineda (and his 3.62 ERA over 21 starts) is a free agent, and Kenta Maeda’s September Tommy John surgery means that he won’t be pitching for most, if not all, of the 2022 season. Minnesota’s de facto ace, Dylan Bundy, is a pitcher coming off an ERA north of six; he significant missed time due to shoulder injuries and is taking a pay cut of more than half.

Suffice it to say, Minnesota’s lack of pitching, combined with a rapidly dwindling number of fixes in free agency, left them in a rather unenviable position even in one of baseball’s weakest divisions. Gray isn’t a true ace in the Gerrit Cole/Jacob deGrom vein, but he’s still a well-above-average starting pitcher who gave the Reds three seasons strong enough to largely erase the memory of his stint in New York. His 4.19 ERA and a 3.99 FIP in 2021 were a bit below the previous couple of seasons, but both ZiPS and Statcast’s x-stats think he was unlucky here. zHR is designed to be predictive and saw Gray as allowing three more homers last season than he actually earned from his velocity, angle, and direction data. Subtract those round-trippers out, and Gray’s 2021 looked a lot like his ’19 and ’20, though he did miss time due to injury. A sore back cost him a month of spring training and April games, and he lost another month due to a groin injury. Those maladies combined to limit him to 26 starts, most of the Five-Inning Special variety. Still, I’d take those injuries over a janky elbow or some nasty tear in the shoulder. Read the rest of this entry »

Even given the lockout, the Mets have already had a banner offseason, adding three former All-Stars — Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, and Eduardo Escobar — to the roster via free agency. On Saturday, they traded for a fourth, sending pitching prospects J.T. Ginn and Adam Oller to the Athletics for 33-year-old right-hander Chris Bassitt, who made his first All-Star team in 2021, the best season of his seven-year major league career.

Originally drafted by the White Sox in 2011 and then acquired by the A’s in the December ’14 deal involving Marcus Semien and Jeff Samardzija, Bassitt is something of a late bloomer. He threw just 143.2 major league innings before undergoing Tommy John surgery in May 2016, and didn’t make it back to a major league mound until July ’18, his age-29 season. He’s been very good in parts of four seasons since then, pitching to a 3.23 ERA (76 ERA-) and 3.82 FIP (89 FIP-) in 412 innings. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, his 2.29 ERA ranked third in the American League, his 3.59 FIP 10th, and his 1.3 WAR 14th (his 2.3 bWAR was third).

Though Bassitt pitched to a 3.15 ERA and 3.34 FIP in 157.1 innings last year, his season took a terrifying turn on August 17, when a 100 mph line drive off the bat of the White Sox’s Brian Goodwin hit him on the right side of the face. He suffered facial lacerations and a displaced tripod fracture of his right cheek, the latter of which required surgery, but thankfully, he avoided a concussion or any damage to his vision. He was able to return to the A’s after missing five weeks, making two abbreviated but reassuring starts in late September.

Before the injury, Bassitt led the AL in both innings and starts, but he wound up falling 4.2 frames short of qualifying for the ERA title. Among pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 0.86 homers per nine ranked third, his ERA fourth (Robbie Ray, the only one of those top four to qualify, finished at 2.84), his FIP fifth, and his 18.8% strikeout-to-walk differential 11th. His 3.3 WAR was tied for 11th among all AL pitchers regardless of innings. Read the rest of this entry »

We’d been missing out on those sweet free agent signings during the owner’s lockout, but how about a trade? This one, while not a blockbuster, sends Twins backstop Mitch Garver to the Rangers in exchange for Isiah Kiner-Falefa and prospect Ronny Henriquez per multiple sources, giving both teams extra options at premium positions as they look to become competitive in the near future.

Let’s dive into the headlining players. Garver isn’t a household name, but he has the potential to be one of the league’s best catchers thanks to his identity at the plate: a fly-ball hitter with thunderous bat speed, which is a slam-dunk combination regardless of one’s surroundings. And while I did write about his passive approach in early counts, it’s a minor flaw that doesn’t stop him from putting up top-percentile offensive numbers. Here are the leaders in WAR per 600 plate appearances among catchers since 2019; look who’s near the top:

So what’s holding Garver back? Simply put, injuries. In the midst of a breakout 2019 campaign, he suffered an ankle injury after colliding with Shohei Ohtani at home plate. In ‘20, a right intercostal strain may have contributed to his miserable slump. And just last year, he underwent surgery after a fluke foul tip struck his groin, taking him off the field for nearly two months. The inevitable wear-and-tear at the position has not been kind to Garver, but if he stays healthy, he can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Realmuto and Grandal for most valuable catcher. His bat is just that good.

Meanwhile, Kiner-Falefa is coming off a season that acts as a testament to his durability and value. He proved the projections wrong by excelling at shortstop, a position he had little prior experience with; in addition, he showed that his bat is adequate enough to stick at a starting role. But while Kiner-Falefa seems like the archetypal low-ceiling, high-floor player, the error bars are wider than one might think. Baseball-Reference, which uses DRS in its calculations, pegged him at 3.7 WAR last season. Our site, which uses UZR, had a more pessimistic view: 2.3 WAR. Baseball Savant is outright skeptical of Kiner-Falefa, with his -7 OAA placing him among the worst defenders at short. It’s weird, and we’ll definitely need a much larger sample before deciding one way or the other. Read the rest of this entry »