It’s the day after the trade deadline, which always means one thing: baseball writers begrudgingly cleaning up their gross, sparkling-water-can-filled workspaces. Oh, wait, actually it means two things: that, and a flood of “who won the trading deadline” articles.

This year, I’m going to do something slightly different. I won’t claim that I’ve re-invented the wheel, but I’ve always thought that those winner/loser columns are too deterministic and don’t leave enough room for nuance. I thought about listing each team that made a trade as a winner, with a “maybe” appended to indicate that we don’t know what will happen in the future; if you really want to know who won and who lost, check back in October… or maybe in October of 2025. I thought about making each team a “loser (maybe)” for the same reason. In the end, I settled on some broad archetypes. I’ll throw a subjective grade on how much I like the move, and also endeavor to explain the risks around each team’s deadline. You can find all of our deadline coverage here. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »

Another trade deadline has come and gone, and I must say, this one was more exciting than I expected. I didn’t see the Yankees, Astros, or Dodgers making huge splashes, given that all three are in a daunting position both for first place in their divisions and a first-round playoff bye. There were also relatively few short-term rental options available; Juan Soto, Frankie Montas, and Luis Castillo, among others, could always be traded, but with none of them free agents after this season, teams could also pull them back if they didn’t like the offers. Meanwhile, players like Willson Contreras, Ian Happ and Carlos Rodón stayed put, also to my surprise. By and large, though, we had a whirlwind of a 48-hour period leading up to the deadline.

So, who won and who lost? That’s a bit of a loaded question, because the definition of winning and losing varies depending on each franchise’s goals. A contending team improving, a rebuilding team getting worse but acquiring a stable of prospects, or an indolent team only re-signing its 37-year-old closer are all things that can be considered a win in one way or the other. But we’re here to do some hardcore ranking, so let’s look only at who improved themselves the most in 2022.

To keep this all science-y rather than a somewhat arbitrary exercise, I first projected the entire league’s rest of season in ZiPS and then repeated the exercise with all trades since July 19 unwound. Since some teams primarily got overall playoff boosts and some teams saw improvement mainly in terms of World Series gains, I took each team’s rank in both categories and then ranked everyone by the harmonic mean of those two ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

As Tuesday’s deadline approached, the Cardinals made one last move to upgrade their rotation, acquiring starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery from the Yankees for outfielder Harrison Bader. In a day with complex trades and financial arrangements, this was a refreshingly direct swap — a simple one-and-one trade to address each team’s short-term weaknesses, with no money or additional prospects changing hands.

The dream for the Cardinals this deadline was to head into the dog days of summer with Juan Soto in the middle of the lineup, but given the packages Washington was seeking for its franchise player, it was too much of an all-in gamble for a team that makes its improvements in careful, measured fashion. The front office had little time to bemoan falling short in the Soto sweepstakes with the deadline approaching and the very real possibility that neither Steven Matz nor Jack Flaherty would return to contribute this season, and though St. Louis closed a deal with the Pirates for José Quintana and his fancy new changeup on Monday, more was needed.

Montgomery suddenly found himself expendable in New York thanks in part to the Frankie Montas trade, and his profile makes him a good fit for the Cardinals. A lefty sinkerballer, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them strongly encourage him to keep the ball on the ground even more; they have had the best defensive left side of the infield in baseball this year, playing to his strength as a pitcher.

While Quintana is a free agent at the end of the season, the Cardinals get to retain Montgomery for the 2023 season as well. And with Wainwright the team’s only other unsigned pitcher — though he hasn’t officially announced his retirement and would probably be welcomed back automatically — St. Louis looks to have flexibility in the rotation, even if it falls a bit short of excitement. Read the rest of this entry »

It should have worked out for Joey Gallo in the Bronx. A fly ball-launching lefty with the ability to hit the tar out of the ball when he made contact, he seemed primed to thrive at Yankee Stadium, particularly after the mechanical work he did to lower his average launch angle paid off with his second All-Star appearance in 2021. Instead, Gallo struggled mightily to the point that his departure ahead of the 2022 trade deadline became a foregone conclusion. On Tuesday, the Yankees sent the 28-year-old slugger to the Dodgers in exchange for 23-year-old righty prospect Clayton Beeter.

Gallo is hitting just .159/.282/.339 with 12 home runs and an 82 wRC+ in 273 plate appearances. Of the 139 American League hitters with at least 200 PA, his batting average is second-to-last, ahead of only the Rays’ Brett Phillips (.147). Likewise, only Phillips’ 40.9% strikeout rate surpasses Gallo’s 38.8% rate, the highest of his career. Meanwhile, Gallo’s power (.180 ISO) and patience (14.7% walk rate, fifth among the same pool) merely confine his on-base and slugging percentages to the bottom quartile of the group. Since being acquired last July 29 alongside lefty reliever Joely Rodríguez in exchange for pitcher Glenn Otto and infielders Ezequiel Duran, Trevor Hauver, and Josh Smith, he has hit .159/.291/.368 (88 wRC+) with 25 homers in 501 PA as a Yankee, with only solid defense keeping his WAR in the black (0.9).

“I feel bad,” Gallo told The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler recently, having clearly read the handwriting on the wall once the team acquired left fielder Andrew Benintendi from the Royals last week. “It’s something I’m gonna have to really live with for the rest of my life. It’s going to be tough. I didn’t play well, I didn’t live up to expectations. And that’s a tough pill to swallow.” Read the rest of this entry »

Oakland fetched a sizable return in the trade that sent the potent combination of Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the Yankees on Monday afternoon. The deal is headlined by two top 100 prospects, lefty Ken Waldichuk and righty Luis Medina, and is supplemented by near-ready backend starter JP Sears and fleet-footed A-ball second baseman Cooper Bowman. All three pitchers are essentially big league-ready, with Medina and Sears already on the 40-man roster, and Waldichuk a lock to be added after the season and likely to debut next year.

The youngest of that trio is Medina, a 23-year-old flamethrower who has been a prospect of import for over half a decade, walking the starter/reliever balance beam all the while. Now at Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre, he has made 17 starts (he typically works four to five innings at a time and has maxed out at six twice this season) while posting a 3.38 ERA, his third consecutive level where he has posted a sub-4.00 ERA. While he’s historically struggled with walks (he’s been at least a five walks per nine guy his entire career) and overall consistency, Medina’s stuff makes him tough to square up and induces lots of groundballs (50% GB%). His fastball has been in the mid-to-upper-90s his entire career and is parked in the 94-98 mph range again this season, peaking at 102. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the trade deadline. It’s the best time of the year for baseball chaos, rumor-mongering reporting, and of course, the main event: a million trades featuring relievers you’ve heard of but don’t know a ton about. The difference between a blown lead in the seventh inning of a playoff game and an uneventful 4-2 win might be one of these unheralded arms. Heck, they could be a better option but still give up a three-run shot in a crushing loss. Or they could be a worse option! There are no guarantees in baseball. Still, here are some relievers who contending teams think enough of to trade for and plug into their bullpens.

Yankees Acquire Scott Effross
Scott Effross wasn’t supposed to amount to anything in the big leagues. A 15th-round pick in the 2015 draft, he kicked around the Cubs system for years, frequently old for his level and rarely posting knockout numbers. Then in 2019, on the suggestion of pitching coach Ron Villone, he started throwing sidearm. Three years later, he’s carving through hitters in the majors.

“Carving” might undersell it. Since his 2021 debut, Effross has been one of the best relievers in the game. In 57.1 innings, he’s compiled a 2.98 ERA and 2.45 FIP. He’s striking out 29% of opposing batters and hardly walking anyone. With his new low arm slot, he’s adopted what I like to think of as the sidearmer’s basic arsenal: a sinker, a slider, and a break-glass-in-case-of-lefty changeup. Read the rest of this entry »

Frankie Montas needed to be set free. When the A’s began their selloff in earnest this offsesaon, he looked like a lock to end up elsewhere. Sean Manaea and Chris Bassitt, fellow rotation stalwarts, were gone. Matt Chapman and Matt Olson were shipped out. Montas (along with Sean Murphy and Ramón Laureano) seemed likely to be next, but then the season started, and there he was, still atop the Oakland rotation.

He’s done everything Oakland could possibly ask of him this season, to the tune of a 3.18 ERA in 19 starts. Meanwhile, the A’s have the second-worst record in baseball, ahead of only the woeful Nationals. Montas will reach free agency after the 2023 season, another year in which the A’s will likely be far from the playoff conversation. He had a brief injury scare, missing two turns with shoulder inflammation, but he’s returned to the field and made two starts without incident. One way or another, the A’s were going to move him.

The Yankees, for their part, stormed to the best record in baseball but would still like starting pitching help. Gerrit Cole is great and Nestor Cortes has been a revelation this year, but the group of pitchers behind them has been uneven. Jordan Montgomery started strong, but he’s been homer-prone of late. Jameson Taillon is steady but a step below Montas results-wise, and will be a free agent after this year. Luis Severino just hit the 60-day IL, pushing a potential return even deeper into September. The aggregate results have been solid, but you can see why the team wants more certainty given the difficulty of cleanly upgrading their lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Yankees added outfield help on Wednesday night, closing a deal with the Kansas City Royals to acquire outfielder Andrew Benintendi in return for three lower-level pitching prospects. Coming off his first career All-Star appearance, Benintendi is having what is easily his best season since 2018, fortunate timing for him given that he’ll hit free agency for the first time this fall. In 93 games for the Royals, Benintendi has hit .320/.387/.398 for a career-best 126 wRC+, and his 2 WAR already makes 2022 his second-best full season.

It would be hard to argue that much has gone wrong for the Bronx Bombers in 2022 — even after a month of .500 ball, the Yankees remain on a 108-win pace. But I doubt anyone would claim that Joey Gallo’s annus horribilis is what they had in mind when they sent four prospects to the Rangers for him and Joely Rodríguez almost exactly a year ago. Over his time in New York, Gallo has hit .160/.293/.371, good for an 89 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR. While that’s a pretty robust line for a .160 average, secondary skills can only go so far. There was an argument to be made that Gallo’s lousy stint at the end of 2021 was a BABIP-related blip, but this year, his approach at the plate has completely fallen apart. Always a brutally poor contact hitter, Gallo has to be selective to survive, and in what might be him reacting to his poor August/September last year, he’s been aggressive at the plate in a bad way. How bad? He’s been about 80% more likely to swing at an out-of-zone pitch than he was in 2021 — not a great approach when you miss as often as Gallo does. Even his exit velocity numbers have dropped off the charts. Gallo’s not officially gone yet, but I’d be astonished if he’s Benintendi’s teammate for more than a few days. Read the rest of this entry »

When he was first featured here at FanGraphs three years ago, I wrote that Nestor Cortes “barely registers a blip on the national radar.” With his multiple windups in mind, I called the then-24-year-old southpaw “probably the most unique member of the 2019 New York Yankees.”

A lot has changed since that time. Cortes is still unique — the funkiness and deceptive deliveries remain part of his M.O. — but he’s otherwise a much different pitcher. He’s also become a household name. Traded to Seattle in November 2019, Cortes returned to New York in free agency prior to last season and has since been remade into one of the top starters in the American League. A first-time All-Star with a 2.63 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 95-and-two-thirds innings, Cortes attacks hitters with a different arsenal than the one he employed as an obscure reliever.

How has Cortes evolved, and just as importantly, can he continue to thrive if he doesn’t evolve further? Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake addressed those questions when the team visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: You’ve obviously been asked about Nestor Cortes numerous times already this season. That said, why has he been so good?

Matt Blake: “When he first started going last year, the league didn’t really know who he was. I mean, they knew of Nestor, but they hadn’t necessarily seen this version of him, where there’s a little bit more velocity [and] the fastball has kind of a true riding profile, one that’s a little bit closer to cut than run. And then the cutter off of that creates a really tough visual for hitters to identify. He’d also added the sweeper slider to be able to slow guys down and steal some strikes. Read the rest of this entry »

Who has been your most influential teammate? I asked that question to 10 major leaguers — two each from five different teams — and all of the answers came after a moment of thoughtful consideration. Most couldn’t name just one, and there was another common theme that emerged, as well. A combination of appreciation and admiration was genuinely expressed with each and every response.

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Harrison Bader, St. Louis Cardinals

“Paul Goldschmidt. I like to watch just enough video to familiarize myself with the pitcher in terms of his tempo in the stretch, in the windup, his arm slots on different pitches, and maybe his tells on the base paths. Anything past that, I don’t like to watch. Paul has been the most influential, because I trust his assessment of the pitcher and his approach far more than anything I would create on my own. That’s because he keeps it really simple; he keeps it very straightforward. That approach helps him be very successful for his team. Because of that, I’ve learned to understand pitchers — when to open up a little more, when to stay focused on maybe driving the ball back up the middle. Little things like that allow you to be successful over nine innings.”

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Tucker Barnhart, Detroit Tigers

“Four come to mind, and it starts with Skip Schumaker. Skip and I played together in 2014 and 2015, and he was the guy I defaulted to if I had any questions. This was back when I was trying to figure out what the big leagues were like. So, Skip was one of my guys. We still talk. Read the rest of this entry »