As reported by Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the Philadelphia Phillies acquired first baseman Justin Bour and cash considerations from the Miami Marlins for a minor-league pitcher who is yet to be named.

That a first baseman who can hit a little bit went in a minor August trade is another data point on just how little first baseman with some offensive pep are valued in baseball in 2018. It kind of makes you wonder about the team’s public stance to not let their players go cheaply; while Bour’s oblique injury came at a bad time for a deadline trade in 2017, I can’t help but think that a hitter coming off a .289/.366/.536 season could have fetched more than this over the winter. Yes, Bour has larger-than-typical platoon splits for a left-handed batter, with a 210-point difference in career OPS vs. RHP and LHP, but in some ways, that actually makes it easier for his new club to find a role for him. Also, he makes practically nothing in baseball terms ($3.4 million in 2018) and has two additional years before free agency.

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We have a new feature on the site: live-updating daily leaderboards! These leaderboards update as games are played without having to reload the page, providing live-updating daily stats for every player along side our existing live scoreboard, win probability graphs, box scores, and play log.

These leaderboards are aimed specifically at showing single-game stats, including ones not available on our traditional leaderboards such as swinging strikes, called strikes, and foul balls for pitchers, and granular batted ball stats for batters.

The live leaderboards also offer the option to filter by different position types, a feature geared toward fantasy owners. They include categories like infielders, middle infielders, and corner infielders.

Finally, these leaderboards allow you to filter by multiple teams. Just click “Filter by Team” and pick the teams you’d like to see. This makes it easy to compare opposing starting pitchers side-by-side, since each team is listed above/below the team they’re playing that day.

Position: Data Engineer, Baseball Strategy Office

Location: Sendai, Japan

Description:
The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of NPB are seeking a data engineer to join the Baseball Strategy Office. This position will assist in building an analytic system to:

• Generate new insights
• Automate existing reports
• Allow wider audience to reach data
• Integrate new data sources

A successful candidate will be an excellent communicator and problem solver who will communicate closely with coaches and players to develop and productize new ideas on a regular basis. The candidate will also have a user-first mindset and will be able to put the team first in a demanding environment.

Responsibilities:

• Assist in expansion of internal analysis and report generation system
• Design and experiment with new ideas and analytical methods
• Generate effective and easy-to-interpret output
• Assist in guaranteeing the quality of data
• Design database to integrate new data sources

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in fields such as statistics, computer science, engineering or mathematics
• 3-5 years experience working in a technology, analytical or product-oriented environment
• Knowledge of Python/R/SQL
• Strong communication skills (knowledge of Japanese language is preferred, but not required)
• Experience living overseas is preferred
• Having previously built, and be able to show, an end-to-end product or analytical output

Employment Status:
Annual renewable contract

To Apply:
Please send your resume and CV to eagles-jobs@mail.rakuten.com.

After arriving in the majors back in 2012 as a relatively unheralded prospect, Twins second baseman Brian Dozier entered the 2018 campaign having produced five consecutive above-average seasons. The All-Star middle infielder’s 2016-17 performance (11.2 WAR) places him second among qualified second basemen during that time, behind none other than Jose Altuve. Even accounting for his 2018 struggles — a relative term, since he is still tracking for league-average performance — Dozier ranks third among all second basemen over the last three calendar years, trailing Altuve by a sizable margin and Robinson Cano by a half-win.

Roughly two-thirds of the way through a season in which the Twins expected to contend — having acquired Lance Lynn, Logan Morrison, Addison Reed (among others) all at market value or less — the Twins haven’t succeeded on that front, having struggled in a very weak AL Central. They find themselves seven games under .500 and trail the Indians by eight full games; as you might expect, they are expected to be less productive than the Indians for the remainder of the season, too.

With that serving as background, the club dealt one of their central pieces today. A combination of ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick and NBC LA’s Michael Duarte reported the deal, as follows.

Dodgers get:

• 2B Brian Dozier

Twins get:

• INF Logan Forsythe
• 1B Luke Raley
• LHP Devin Smeltzer

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The Baltimore Orioles continued their suddenly aggressive rebuild this afternoon, trading Kevin Gausman and an injured Darren O’Day to the Atlanta Braves for a RHP Evan Phillips, INF Jean Carlos Encarnación, C Brett Cumberland, LHP Bruce Zimmermann, and international bonus-slot money. A year ago, the Orioles still thought they were a contender and the Braves were still rebuilding, but with the Braves a half-game out of first in the NL East and Orioles a nearly striking 42 games out in the AL East, those positions have clearly flipped.

Twenty years ago, I’d have been sad to see Kevin Gausman leave Baltimore. But at some point between when I enjoyed baseball as a teenager and enjoyed baseball as someone covering it for a career, my relationship with the game changed. I’m from Baltimore, grew up an Orioles fan, and still identify one, but the truth is, I’m a fan of players before I am a fan of teams. At this point, I’d much rather see Kevin Gausman succeed anywhere else — even with the Yankees — than struggle or even just be a league-average starter as an Oriole, even if someday he were to throw a game for another team that ends an O’s season.

Gausman is not an ace pitcher, though he shows glimpses of it at times, which is why he’s simultaneously maddening and fascinating. He doesn’t throw as hard as he used to, when he’d average 99 mph over full games at times, but he’s also been trying to take a few ticks off his pitches to try and improve his command, which occasionally failed him in 2017. Many, including myself, were hopeful after Gausman’s 9.6 K/9, 3.41 ERA second-half last year (7.7, 5.85 in the first-half), but the same kind of frustrating inconsistency has continued. He still has a mid-90s fastball that can touch something even higher than that, a slider, a splitter that can make hitters look helpless when he’s hitting his locations, and a slider of varying quality.

The FanGraphs Depth Charts have the Braves with the 17th-ranked starting rotation, in terms of rest-of-season projections. While the ZiPS projections are more optimistic, pegging Atlanta at 13th, that’s still a rotation that could use an upgrade. Gausman has the potential to pay off well for Atlanta if the team can figure out what they can do with him that the Orioles never could figure out, similar to the Cubs and Jake Arrieta. With Gausman not set to become a free agent until after the 2020 season, his move to Atlanta could pay off extremely well for the team in the best-case scenario, something you couldn’t say if he were simply a two-month down-the-stretch rental.

More to come from us on the prospects later!

Earlier this afternoon, the Mariners acquired Cameron Maybin from the Marlins for infield prospect Bryson Brigman and international slot money. This isn’t an especially big trade, but it might end up being an important one for Seattle, who, at this very moment, is just two games ahead of the A’s for the second AL wild card spot.

If we were inclined to be charitable, we might say that center field hasn’t been a strength for the Mariners this season. The nastier sorts among us might describe the play there as having been lousy. The collection of players Seattle has run out rank 20th at the position in team WAR, and the defense has been worse, checking in at 24th. Some of that is the result of the short-lived Dee Gordon, Center Fielder experiment, but the trouble hasn’t stopped there. Guillermo Heredia is a useful fourth outfielder, but he has been exposed since being pressed into more regular service with Gordon’s shift back to the infield. He’s mustered a meager .229/.314/.335 slash line and an 85 wRC+, and even that is buoyed by a hot April and May. He is oddly performing better against righties than lefties but not doing well against either. And in what is admittedly a limited 90-game sample, he hasn’t been the sort of defensive standout whose play in the field compensates for his struggles at the plate.

With the trade, the Mariners outfield shifts some. Maybin, who has been a plus defender before and grades well now, will slot into center, with Mitch Haniger shifting back to right field and some combination of Denard Span and Ben Gamel playing in left.

Maybin may not represent a huge offensive upgrade (his season slash line of .251/.338/.343 and wRC+ of 91 aren’t All-Star level, though July has gone better with a 148 wRC+), but the slightly better bat and more-than-slightly better defense constitute a definite improvement. Haniger can play a capable enough center field, and he may still play there on occasion, but acquiring Maybin allows the Mariners to keep Gordon at second base (Robinson Cano is slated to assume first base duties when he returns from his PED suspension) and give Heredia a breather on the bench or in Tacoma.

For that, the Mariners give up slot money and Brigman, who Eric Longenhagen described thusly:

Acquiring Maybin is something of a marginal trade, but the AL postseason picture seems likely to be decided at the margins. In that respect, it might end up mattering quite a bit.

Weeks ago, Wilson Ramos appeared to be the ideal trade target for the catching-deficient Nationals given his previous experience with the team (2010-16) and their current Replacement-Level Killer-esque production, but a funny thing happened on the way to Washington, DC. A left hamstring strain forced Ramos to bow out from the All-Star Game, the Nationals continued their descent into disarray, and now the Rays have traded the nearly 31-year-old backstop to the Phillies in exchange for a player to be named later or cash considerations.

Ramos, who also missed the first 76 games of last season due to a torn ACL, has been doing catching drills and is likely to begin a rehab assignment soon. He’s enjoyed a strong season at the plate, hitting .297/.346/.488 with 14 homers in 315 PA, good for a career-best 130 wRC+. That’s a significant upgrade over what the Phillies have gotten from the 25-year-old Jorge Alfaro (.254/.305/.398, 85 wRC+) or 26-year-old Andrew Knapp (.223/.318/.372, 87 wRC+) on the offensive side, no small matter for a team whose 92 wRC+ ranks 10th in the NL.

Assuming that Ramos replaces Knapp in some kind of pairing with Alfaro, who has started 70 of the Phillies’ 106 games behind the plate, this looks like a defensive upgrade, as well. Via the version of Defensive Runs Saved that doesn’t include pitch framing, Ramos has been average this year, Alfaro two runs below average, and Knapp five below average, while via the framing-inclusive version, the numbers are -1, 0, and -10 runs, respectively. According to Baseball Prospectus’ numbers, Ramos has been 0.9 runs below average overall but dead even on framing, not as good as Alfaro (7.4 runs above average overall, 8.5 above average via framing) but significantly better than Knapp (-5.7 runs overall, -4.3 via framing), who’s gotten about half as much playing time.

As for the return to Tampa Bay, obviously, there’s no scouting report to offer on PTBNL. Ramos’s $10.5 million salary made him the highest-paid Ray, but as with Denard Span earlier this year and Evan Longoria and David Price previously, that title is always a temporary one. Like the mortality rates among those crowned the oldest living human, there’s no mystery about the turnover.

The Arizona Diamondbacks bolstered their bullpen depth today, hours before the 4pm deadline, bringing back submariner Brad Ziegler from the Miami Marlins in return for right-handed reliever Tommy Eveld.

It sometimes feels like Brad Ziegler shouldn’t have a career. He throws 85 mph and doesn’t strike anybody out (at least relative to other pitchers), yet he has a 2.72 ERA over a decade-plus as a major leaguer. Ziegler’s firmly on the back end of his career — he’ll turn 39 during the playoffs — but it’s not like he has a fastball to lose. I’m convinced he could keep doing this until he’s 50 or so. I don’t usually go nuts over short-term season splits, but three runs allowed in his last 29 games is a darn good run, so you can make a good case that he’s found that special sorcery groove he thrives on.

Among relievers between 2008 and -18 (the range of his major-league career), Ziegler ranks second in baseball in terms of earned runs saved over what FIP suggests.

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The Indians’ center-field woes — which is how you describe it when four players combine for a 55 wRC+ and 0.2 WAR — earned them a spot on the center-field edition of my Replacement Level Killers series. On Tuesday afternoon, however, the club did something about that, acquiring 30-year-old flychaser Leonys Martin from the Tigers in exchange for 21-year-old switch-hitting Double-A shortstop Willi Castro, whom our own Eric Longenhagen called “Cleveland’s most realistic trade chip this summer” back in April.

The well-traveled Martin, who joins his fourth team since the end of the 2015 season — he spent 2016 and most of 2017 with the Mariners before being dealt to the Cubs on August 31 and then signing with the Tigers in December — is in the midst of his best offensive season, hitting .251/.321/.409 with nine homers and seven steals. As modest as that line looks, it’s good for a 98 wRC+, 16 points above his career mark and a strong turnaround from last year’s dismal .172/.232/.281 (35 wRC+) line, a performance so bad that he wound up making 388 plate appearances at Triple-A Tacoma. The uptick in production appears to be the result of a newfound ability to elevate the ball: his current ground-ball rate of 35.6 % is nearly 13 points below his pre-2018 mark and his ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio of 0.77 basically half of what it was. According to Statcast, his average launch angle has increased from 9.4 degrees for the 2015-17 seasons to 16.8, with his xwOBA jumping a neat 100 points, from .264 to .364.

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In somewhat of a surprise move, the Cardinals have traded outfielder Tommy Pham this morning. In somewhat of another surprise, the team acquiring Pham hasn’t added him for the purposes of contending this season. While the Tampa Bay Rays haven’t been mathematically eliminated from a place in the playoffs, their chances of earning even a Wild Card berth are effectively zero at this point. Pham has value to the organization beyond 2018, though.

Even as rumors continue to circle around Chris Archer, the Rays have added a much needed outfielder not only for the remainder of the season, but also for the future. In trading away Pham, the Cardinals appear to be receiving multiple minor-league depth pieces.

Rays receive:

• Tommy Pham
• $500K international bonus-pool money

Cardinals receive:

• OF Justin Williams
• LHP Genesis Cabrera
• RHP Roel Ramirez

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