Late Wednesday night, the Red Sox and Brewers consummated a trade that sent rightfielder Hunter Renfroe to Milwaukee in exchange for centerfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. and two prospects, shortstop David Hamilton and first baseman Alex Binelas. It was the last agreed-upon trade prior to MLB owners locking out the players at midnight.

While Bradley has had an excellent big league career, the center of this trade is Renfroe, who heads to his fourth team in four years and is coming off a 2021 in which he slashed .259/.315/.501 and cleared the 30-homer benchmark for the second time in his career. He becomes the fourth right-handed hitter acquired by Milwaukee over the last couple of weeks, after corner infielder Mike Brosseau, catcher Pedro Severino, and non-roster invite centerfielder Jonathan Davis. By wRC+, Milwaukee was 26th in baseball against left-handed pitching (96) in 2021; Renfroe is a career .263/.346/.557 hitter against southpaws and should help in this area immediately. And while there’s not a clear platoon partner for him in Milwaukee right now, perhaps Jace Peterson or Rowdy Tellez will take key late-game at-bats against righties in his stead or make the occasional start. Renfroe’s defense — especially his incredible arm, which is one of the best in pro baseball — gives him a little extra utility on days when he’s starting against a righty.

Renfroe has two years of team control remaining, as 2022 will be his second arbitration year and ’23 will be his last before hitting free agency after the season. Milwaukee has some similarly-skilled outfield prospects on the way in Joe Gray Jr. and Joey Wiemer, but unless they ascend more quickly than expected, it’s a safer bet that Renfroe wraps his pre-free agency days as a key cog in Milwaukee.

Conversely, this trade leaves Boston without a powerful, right-handed hitting outfielder on their roster. Obviously the Red Sox can continue to shape their roster after the lockout ends, but its current composition is heavy on lefty sticks in the outfield (Bradley, Jarren Duran, Alex Verdugo). The on-roster solution is for Christian Arroyo to get infield starts against lefties with Enrique Hernández moving to the outfield on those days. Another path may be for Jeter Downs (who had a terrible summer, rebounded in the Fall League, and was added to the 40-man last month) to push for at-bats in a fashion similar to Arroyo or be present depth behind him, as Arroyo gets hurt a lot. Or Triston Casas could kick down the door and claim the everyday first base job at some point, which would open up a lefty-mashing four corners role for Bobby Dalbec. There are clear, on-roster avenues for Boston’s pieces to compliment one another, though the front office probably is not done shaping the fringes of the roster.
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The Rays and Marlins love making trades. They’ve now combined for four trades this year, though this one is the most consequential. The terms are simple: Miami gets Joey Wendle and Tampa Bay gets Kameron Misner. That’s it!

Normally at FanGraphs, we try to tell you why the trade might make sense for both sides, and which way we would lean if we had to choose a winner. If we’re feeling feisty, we might throw in a joke or two, perhaps a Dick Monfort burn if Dan Szymborski is in the driver’s seat. Today, though, the two of us had wildly different views of who won this trade. So without further ado, here are Brendan’s (Marlins) and Ben’s (Rays) thoughts on which side got the best of the other in this very Floridian trade.

Brendan’s Take

Ben probably isn’t the first analyst to pan a deal where Miami sought to improve the big league club, but I can’t find much recent precedent. That the Fighting Jeters beefed up at all seems sufficient cause for celebration. MLB is at its best when teams put their top product on the field, and the Marlins often fail to clear that low threshold. But between the Avisaíl García signing, the Sandy Alcantara extension, the Jacob Stallings trade, and now the Wendle deal, the Marlins have the swagger of… well, not a contender exactly, but at least an upright major league team. Read the rest of this entry »

The Marlins have one of the most intriguing starting rotations in baseball. They just signed Sandy Alcantara to a five-year extension after his phenomenal 2021 season. Trevor Rogers just finished second behind Jonathan India in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. Behind those two, Pablo López, Jesús Luzardo, Sixto Sánchez, Elieser Hernandez, Edward Cabrera, and Max Meyer provide tons more talent to dream on. The only thing missing was a catcher to help guide and maximize those young arms.

Ever since J.T. Realmuto was traded away after the 2018 season, the Marlins had been rather aimless behind the plate. In the three seasons since, their catchers have accumulated just 1.3 WAR, the sixth worst mark in baseball over that stretch. In 2021, Jorge Alfaro, Sandy León, and a few other backup catchers combined for -0.1 WAR. Things got so bad with Alfaro that they tried playing him at first base and in the outfield after Miami acquired Alex Jackson at the trade deadline.

On Monday, though, the Marlins got their man: Miami acquired catcher Jacob Stallings from the Pirates in exchange for right-handed pitcher Zach Thompson and two prospects, Kyle Nicolas and Connor Scott. (Alfaro was traded to the Padres a day later for a player to be named later or cash considerations.) Read the rest of this entry »

In an accord between familiar and frenetic trading partners, the San Diego Padres sent Adam Frazier to the Seattle Mariners on Saturday in exchange for prospects Ray Kerr and Corey Rosier. It’s a bit of an odd move. The Padres, nominally in win-now mode, just shipped off a 3.5-win player for prospects. Meanwhile, the Mariners beefed up their thin infield, but at the risk of incurring a considerable opportunity cost in a free agent market that seemed tailor made for their needs.

Let’s touch on San Diego’s side first, since it’s the more perplexing one at a glance. Frazier is the big name in the deal. The National League’s starting second baseman in last summer’s All-Star Game, the 29-year-old hit .305/.368/.411 last season while accruing the aforementioned 3.5 WAR, though his production dipped following the trade. Always a good contact hitter, Frazier joined the game’s elite in 2021 with a 10.8% strikeout rate — only Michael Brantley, David Fletcher, and Kevin Newman whiffed less often. While 2021 may well have been his peak, Frazier’s been a pretty good player for a long time: Since debuting in 2016, he’s notched a 103 wRC+ and has averaged 2.4 WAR per 162 games. Contending teams looking to gain ground don’t usually trade away this kind of production, particularly from a player they just acquired last July.

Despite that, you can understand why the Padres considered him surplus to requirements. With no path to a starting job in the infield, and Ha-Seong Kim around to fill a multi-positional utility role, Frazier was a bit of a square peg on a roster of round holes. Yes, the Friars could have used him in the outfield — as they sometimes did last summer — but it’s not the best use of his skills. In theory, exchanging him for players who could offer the Pads more stick in the outfield or depth in the bullpen makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’re a diehard fan, you’d be hard pressed to name a single member of the Marlins bullpen. Given that they traded away a bunch of their relievers in July and still look like they’re a few years away from building a true contender, that’s not surprising. Building a lockdown relief corps isn’t the top priority based on where they are in their rebuild. But GM Kim Ng mentioned during last week’s General Manager Meetings that adding depth to the bullpen was part of the offseason to-do list — a bit of surprise given the context above. They started to address that depth right away, too, acquiring right-handed pitcher Louis Head on Sunday from the Rays for a player to be named later or cash considerations.

Miami’s relief corps was pretty solid in 2021, with the third best park- and league-adjusted FIP in the National League, 8% better than league average. But Marlins relievers weren’t exactly flamethrowers; collectively, they posted a 22.0% strikeout rate, the fourth-worst mark in baseball. Instead, the team employed a bunch of pitchers who ran above-average ground-ball rates, helping them successfully manage the contact they did allow. As a group, they had the fifth-highest ground-ball rate and second-lowest barrel rate in baseball.

Bass was signed to a two-year deal last offseason, making him the highest paid member of this group. A surprising number of minor league free agents ended up making a solid contribution in the majors, and the rest were acquired via the same kind of under-the-radar trade that brought Head into the fold. Despite all their success this year, the average age of these relievers is 30.3 years old. It’s a competent collection of relievers assembled from the castoffs of other organizations, and Head fits in perfectly.
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If you’ve been able to keep pace with our trade deadline articles, you’ve probably noticed a lot of articles about the Braves. They’ve brought in an entirely new outfield just today: Jorge Soler from the Royals and Eddie Rosario and Adam Duvall from Cleveland and Miami, respectively. That’s after acquiring Joc Pederson a few weeks ago when they lost Ronald Acuña Jr. to injury. It’s a flurry of moves for a team in a precarious playoff position: below .500 and with playoff odds under 10%. At the same time, Atlanta is only four games back of the Mets in the NL East.

With both the stretch run and a potential postseason stay in mind, the Braves decided to keep churning, acquiring reliever Richard Rodríguez from the Pirates for a pair of prospects: right-handers Bryse Wilson and Ricky DeVito. Rodríguez is no playoffs-or-bust rental, though; he has the most team control left of any of the players Atlanta added at the deadline, as he won’t reach free agency until after the 2023 season.

Rodríguez, 31, will go from being the Pirates’ closer to a high-leverage role with the Braves, perhaps even getting some save opportunities if manager Brian Snitker wants to platoon the righty with primary closer Will Smith, a lefty. Rodríguez’s 2.82 ERA and 2.58 FIP are excellent, but there are some red flags in his profile. His strikeout rate has dropped precipitously, going from 36.6% in 2020 to 22.8 this year — from the 96th percentile to the 40th. He’s also sporting an unsustainably low HR/FB rate of 3.3%.
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This deadline had its share of earthquakes, but it also featured smaller aftershocks, as teams improved their depth or addressed smaller, specific needs. So let’s run down some of the deals that might get buried by the higher-Richter scale shakes of the likes of Max Scherzer and Kris Bryant.

The Houston Astros acquired pitcher Phil Maton and catcher Yainer Diaz from the Cleveland Guardians for center fielder Myles Straw

This trade is actually a slightly unusual one, as the team in the playoff shot — it’s not Cleveland — is the one giving up the best player. Straw’s offensive profile will likely prevent him from being an actual star at any point, but he’s fast, plays enough defense, and gets on-base at a respectable enough level to be an average or even better starter in center; he’s already hit the 2-WAR threshold, after all. UZR, our defensive input for WAR, has him at +6.6 runs, while OAA has him at +5 runs and DRS has him at +2. I don’t think I’d ever play him except in a pinch, but Straw’s theoretical ability to at least stand at second or short in an emergency has some additional value, too. Read the rest of this entry »

With a 51-51 record and 2.1% playoff odds entering Friday, the Cardinals didn’t have much reason to approach the trade deadline in aggressive fashion, but they did busy themselves with incremental upgrades of their rotation. In a move that Ben Clemens broke down here, they traded righty John Gant and lefty prospect Evan Sisk to the Twins for lefty J.A. Happ, and in a separate move, they got in on the Nationals’ fire sale by adding southpaw Jon Lester in exchange for center fielder Lane Thomas.

It would be an understatement to say that the 37-year-old Lester ain’t what he used to be. After pitching to a 5.16 ERA, 5.14 FIP, and 5.85 xERA — the last of which was the majors’ worst among qualifiers — in the final season of his six-year, $155 million deal with the Cubs in 2020, the team quite understandably turned down its end of a $25 million mutual option and sent him on his merry way with a $10 million buyout, all of it deferred. He signed a one-year, $5 million deal with the Nationals, but before he could make his regular season debut, he missed time during spring training to undergo a parathyroidectomy and then tested positive for COVID-19 amid the Nationals’ first outbreak of the season. He finally took the mound for the Nats on April 30, and over the course of 16 starts, posted a 5.02 ERA, 5.41 FIP, and 4.90 xERA in 75.1 innings.

The indicators, as you’d imagine, aren’t good. Via Statcast, Lester’s fastball velocity has dropped from an average of 89.4 mph last year to 89.0 this year. Of the 113 pitchers with at least 70 innings as starters, his 14.9% strikeout rate and 6.4% strikeout-walk differential are the fourth-lowest and his 5.41 FIP the sixth-highest. This may not be the end of the line for the five-time All-Star with a pair of World Series rings, but we can probably see it from here. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres made big moves in the offseason in an attempt to chase down the Dodgers. They traded Luis Patiño, Blake Hunt, Cole Wilcox and Francisco Mejía to acquire 2018 AL Cy Young award winner Blake Snell from the Tampa Bay Rays. Less than 24 hours later, they traded Zach Davies, Reginald Preciado, Owen Caissie, Ismael Mena, and Yeison Santana to the Cubs for 2020 NL Cy Young runner-up Yu Darvish and his personal catcher Victor Caratini. They turned Hudson Head, David Bednar, Omar Cruz, Drake Fellows into Joe Musgrove in a three-way trade with the Mets and Pirates. Earlier this week they kicked off trade deadline season trading Tucupita Marcano, Jack Suwinski and Michell Miliano to the Pirates for All-Star second baseman Adam Frazier. That flurry of deals alone has seen the Padres part with their second, seventh, eighth, 13th, 15th, 21st, 26th, 28th and 52nd ranked prospects, and send their 2020 second and third round draft picks to other teams for major-league ready talent.

When laid out like that, it seems less surprising that the Padres were outgunned when it came to the deadline’s blockbusters, like the “super-ultra-mega-juggernaut deal” that sent Max Scherzer and Trea Turner from the Nationals to the Dodgers. But the Padres were not done dealing just because they missed out on the starter they craved. With three minutes before the deadline, they made a smaller move, adding center fielder Jake Marisnick from the Cubs. Anderson Espinoza, a 40+ FV prospect who slots in at No. 29 in the Cubs’ system, is headed back to Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies’ team defense, specifically their infield defense, has been bad. As a team they’ve allowed a .302 BABIP, which is sixth-highest in baseball, and while that’s not a catch-all metric for team defense, it is a fair shorthand. They are also in the bottom third of baseball in most advanced defensive metrics on the site and second to last in Defensive Runs Saved. The scouty, visual evaluation of their infielders reinforces this. Didi Gregorius will still make the occasional slick play, but he’s lost a step-and-a-half due to age, and so has Jean Segura. Rhys Hoskins and Alec Bohm have never been good defenders; they should probably be playing at DH and first base, respectively.

Freddy Galvis, who debuted as a Phillie, can’t change all of that on his own, but he will bring his leather wizardry back to Citizens Bank Park and help in this specific area. He has been the platonic ideal of a 45 FV player throughout his career: a flawed hitter with a one-note offensive skillset (in his case, empty power) who can play the heck out of shortstop or second base. His trademark pirouette and ability to make strong, accurate throws from his knees have led to a long highlight reel of defensive plays spanning nearly a decade in the big leagues. He and José Iglesias were both briefly part of the same middle infield in relative obscurity with the 2019 Reds, comprising what I believe is the best defensive middle infield tandem of this century.

The 31-year-old Galvis is currently out with a quad injury, but before being sidelined, he was producing on par with his career norms, which is to say he remains swing-happy, is going to run an OBP close to .300, and will smack a few doubles and homers here and there. It makes sense for him to spell Gregorious and Segura once in a while, especially when Zack Wheeler (50.4% ground ball rate) or the newly acquired Kyle Gibson (50.8%) start.

In exchange for Galvis, the Phillies sent Tyler Burch to the Orioles. A 23-year-old undrafted free agent from Lewis-Clark State, Burch was leading the org in swinging-strike rate at the time of the trade, whiffing 49 hitters in 30 innings (mostly at Low-A) at the time of the trade, though all of that has come in relief. Twenty-three-year-old relievers in A-ball aren’t exciting if you look at them like that, but Burch has real arm strength (93–96 mph, up three ticks from 2019) and a plus breaking ball, and he’s performing at a superlative level on paper. And because of when he signed (2019), there’s still time for him to be seasoned in the minors without occupying a 40-man roster spot.

The Phillies have a habit of trading pitching prospects away (I count eight in the last year) while struggling to maintain competitive pitching depth at the big league level. Netting Galvis fills a small need, one Philadelphia has also tried to address several times in the last year (remember Kyle Holder?). But Burch is the sort of piece recent Phillies clubs have been missing: a young, homegrown reliever who at the very least projects to provide depth and resiliency to injury without forcing the team to turn to reclamation projects or cost them real assets to acquire.

Phillies fans will, and should, be stoked to see Galvis back in the uniform. News of this deal made me feel like someone who quit smoking years ago catching a whiff of an early-morning cigarette on the walk to work. But they also gave up the pitcher missing bats at the highest rate in the org for a glove-first bench infielder who has been freely available on the open market several times in the last few years. It’s logical, but short-sighted.