Mead for Early: It’s a Challenge Trade!
The Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals kicked off trade deadline season in earnest on Saturday night, when Boston sent left-handed pitcher Connelly Early to the Nats for corner infielder Curtis Mead.
Most consequential trades this time of year involve a contender swapping one or more prospects for an established big leaguer. Not so this one. At the time of the trade, the Red Sox and Nationals were in similar positions in the standings: The Sox were 53-50, seven and a half games out of the division lead, but half a game up in the AL Wild Card race. The Nats were 53-52, eight and a half games out of first place in the NL East, but only two games out of a Wild Card spot. Both teams are playing with house money: Boston on account of being 14 games under .500 less than five weeks ago, and Washington on account of… everything that’s happened since the start of the 2020 season.
And there’s little difference between Early and Mead in terms of age or team control: Mead is 25, and barring substantial changes in the next CBA, he’ll be arbitration-eligible after the 2027 season and under team control through 2030. Early is one year younger and one year behind Mead on the journey to both of those milestones.
Sound the alarm, friends, because what we’ve got here is a bona fide challenge trade.
Last year, the Red Sox gave a cup of coffee to a pair of low-arm-slot left-handed pitching prospects with five-letter last names containing the letters E and L. Payton Tolle is the big one with the mustache; Early is the other guy.
Coming into this season, Tolle was also the better prospect, but Early carries quite a reputation himself. The former fifth-round pick out of Virginia was the no. 38 global prospect on our offseason Top 100, with a 50 Future Value grade.
Early uses that low-three-quarters slot to get big arm-side carry on his four-seam fastball, which sits in the low 90s. Like most starters with six-pitch arsenals, he has one set of tricks for batters on each side of the plate. Lefties get fastballs — both four-seamers and sinkers — whose arm-side movement makes for a piquant contrast with a sweeper that breaks hard in the other direction.
I’d like to call on Austin Wells to demonstrate what a nasty pitch this sweeper is:
Fun fact: That pitch was actually the third sweeper Wells whiffed on in that at-bat alone. It’s nasty work.
It’s a much less extreme version of the Nick Lodolo pitching sideways thing, but lefties have to guard against both fastballs boring in on their hands and that rug-pull sweeper, and it’s tough. The difference in average horizontal movement between Early’s sinker and sweeper is 31.6 inches, which is almost twice the width of home plate.
Righties get fewer sinkers and a mix of curveballs and changeups; the latter mimics the four-seamer’s horizontal movement, but with about 10 mph less velocity and 18 inches more induced vertical break. Early also has a gyro slider that he’ll throw sparingly to any hitter.
The sweeper is the only pitch of Early’s that I’d describe as a real killer, but out of his six offerings, the curveball is the only real dud. Opponents are slugging .613 off Early’s hook this year, though he had much more success with it during his limited action in 2025. Whether he can refine it into something better is an open question; he doesn’t throw anything with an average spin rate outside the low 2,400 rpm range.
But it’s a big arsenal with multiple effective fastballs and weapons for both lefties and righties. Early has a 3.44 ERA in 17 starts this season, and although he’s outpitching his xERA and FIP by a run each (give or take a couple tenths), he could change absolutely nothing about his game and be a solid no. 4 starter for the next eight years. And that’s not his ceiling; Early is only 24 and has less than a full season’s worth of big league reps on his record.
One minor area of concern: Early hasn’t thrown a pitch in the majors in four weeks. He’s been on the IL with elbow inflammation since his start on June 30 — which came against the Nationals, as luck would have it. Mead was one of the last four batters he faced.
Whenever I see “elbow” and “IL” in the same sentence, no matter how minor the injury, my first thought is always to rummage through the cadaver pile to see if there are any spare UCLs available. Obviously, that’s not a rational point of view, but we live in the golden age of elbow injuries, so it’s a hard impulse to kick.
In any event, Early is already throwing in preparation for a return to action, so the Nats should have his services down the stretch.
Whatever Early accomplishes in his career, it’s a near-certainty that he’ll go down as the second-best left-handed pitcher to be traded straight-up for Mead. The 25-year-old infielder was first signed by the Phillies out of Australia in 2018; 18 months later, he was sent to the Rays for minor league swingman Cristopher Sánchez.
For a moment, that trade looked like yet another coup for Tampa Bay, as Mead climbed into the top 50 on both the 2022 and 2023 Top Prospect lists. Suffice it to say that is no longer the case.
As Mead bulked up and slid down the defensive spectrum from second base to third base to first base, he exhibited nothing like the offensive punch required to make up for it. Across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, Mead hit .235/.294/.309, which is a wRC+ of 73. In 396 plate appearances, he posted an ISO of .075 and hit just four home runs. That’s barely going to cut it as a backup catcher, let alone a right-right first baseman.
Red Sox fans are no doubt aware that four months ago, as Early was a top-40 global prospect, Mead couldn’t crack the Opening Day roster for the White Sox. Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow isn’t exactly the most popular guy in New England, 15-game win streak or no, but even by his standards this is a massive gaffe, right?
Well, a lot has changed in the past four months. Breslow addressed reporters before Sunday’s game, on the topic of the Early-Mead trade. Our David Laurila was in attendance, and passed along the following quote:
“We had a lot of information available to us,” Breslow said. “There was the amount of objective information we had. Some live looks from scouts, scouting reports, talking to the coaches here. And it does seem like there were some meaningful changes to his setup, where he was holding his hands, his bat path, his stride, where he is consistently getting to more damage.”
Mead’s production certainly attests to the “doing more damage” part:
| Season | G | PA | HR | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 24 | 92 | 1 | 7.6% | 22.8% | .253 | .326 | .349 | 94 | 0.3 |
| 2024 | 38 | 132 | 1 | 4.5% | 22.7% | .238 | .282 | .287 | 67 | -0.3 |
| 2025 | 90 | 264 | 3 | 5.7% | 23.9% | .233 | .299 | .321 | 76 | 0.1 |
| 2026 | 87 | 327 | 17 | 11.9% | 19.0% | .254 | .352 | .500 | 134 | 1.5 |
I don’t think Breslow’s trade record is anywhere near as bad as his reputation. But Mead was godawful for three seasons and has only been good for a few months; I wouldn’t blame Sox fans who are reluctant to take Breslow’s word for it that this isn’t a fluke.
So take mine:
| Year(s) | PA | BB% | K% | Barrel% | xwOBA | EV90 | Contact% | O-Swing% | Z-Contact% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-2025 | 488 | 5.7% | 23.4% | 4.2% | .286 | 103.4 | 80.5% | 31.1% | 88.0% |
| 2026 | 327 | 11.9% | 19.0% | 10.8% | .358 | 105.3 | 83.9% | 25.0% | 91.9% |
In addition to hitting the ball harder, making more in-zone contact, and doubling his walk rate, Mead has also increased his in-air pull rate by half since last year. That, for those of you who are new here, is the batted ball direction that produces home runs. Sure enough, 16 of Mead’s 17 dingers this year are to left or left center.
That makes sense, given the changes he’s made to his stance.
Breslow went on to praise Mead’s approach, saying his contact skills and plate discipline have “always” been there. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but they’re definitely there now, and Breslow’s comments about Mead’s mechanical changes are spot-on.
Baseball Savant’s tracking data has Mead standing closer to the plate and with a more open stance, but you can tell that even without the tracking data. Here’s a plate appearance from last July:
And here’s one from his last visit to Fenway, a little less than four weeks ago:
You can see he’s standing up straighter, his hands are lower, and his bat is more upright. He looks much more comfortable up there. His average bat speed has actually gone down a tick since 2024 and 2025, but he’s accessing it more consistently, and making more contact.
I don’t want to overstate the impact of these changes; Mead is still only two-thirds of a season into his rebirth, and as a corner infielder, he needs to hit a lot to be a star. But I feel comfortable calling him at least a league-average third baseman with some pop. (According to Breslow, the plan is to start Mead at second and leave Caleb Durbin at third base, but that is not how I’d deploy those two.)
Breslow said something else that interested me: “Our goal wasn’t to win the trade. It was to make the team better.”
That is a very, very dangerous statement to make; if this goes south for Boston, “Our goal wasn’t to win the trade” is going to be above the fold in every tabloid from Connecticut to the Canadian border. But I get where Breslow is coming from.
All of a sudden, the Red Sox want to win now. And even with Durbin finally showing signs of life, Boston’s infield is a total mess. With Trevor Story and Marcelo Mayer both on the IL, there is simply far too much Andruw Monasterio in this lineup. At the same time, Boston’s rotation is an area of strength. Even with Garrett Crochet and Tanner Houck out of action long-term, the Red Sox have Sonny Gray, Ranger Suarez, and Tolle at the head of the rotation and plenty of guys after that who can throw five big league innings without precipitating a crisis of public hygiene.
Even if you take a pessimistic view of both Early’s talents and the state of his elbow, the Red Sox will miss him. But they need a competent infielder way more than they need a starting pitcher. And this is a seller’s market for right-handed power bats; young ones with team control all the more so.
I do think it’s fair to wonder if Breslow might’ve been better served aiming higher, if he were willing to part with Early. There were Zach Neto rumors last week, for instance. (Though with Story and Meyer still hurt, and Mead coming in a 1-for-1 trade for a big leaguer, this deal doesn’t preclude Breslow from going shopping again.)
This trade, as Breslow said, indisputably makes the Red Sox better. But, if we investigate the second half of his sentence, the Nationals come out ahead in the trade.
Washington could afford to trade an infielder; CJ Abrams is having a tremendous season, and the Nats have so many undersized second base types they’re playing them at first base and DH. With Mead off the roster, 2021 first-rounder Brady House is getting his third chance, by my count, to stick in the big leagues. So far, it hasn’t gone well, but he only turned 23, so maybe his time is now.
Washington’s pitching staff, on the other hand, is just as messy as Boston’s infield. The Nats got a gift when Foster Griffin came back from Japan and immediately made the All-Star team. Beyond that, though, things are grim. Even with Griffin in the fold, the Nats’ staff is 26th in the league in FIP- and 27th in ERA-.
As much as I’ve been pounding the mid-rotation starter drum for Early this whole post, if he comes back healthy and the Nats make the playoffs, I’d probably slot him in for Game 2 behind Griffin in a hypothetical Wild Card series.
The Red Sox are also under much more pressure to win now. They’re running a $200 million payroll in a market where you win championships or your car gets keyed. The Nationals are on just the wrong side of the Wild Card line in a very crowded race, but they’re also coming out of a long rebuild, with a payroll that’s half of what Boston is spending. Even finishing .500 and giving the Braves and/or Phillies a bloody nose would be a positive for new baseball ops head Paul Toboni in his first full season at the helm.
So if Early comes back and pitches well for the Nats down the stretch, that’s great, even if they ultimately fall short of the playoffs. Even if Early struggles now, he’ll be around as the Nats continue to build in 2027, 2028, and so on.
And Toboni picked Early up for a guy he plucked out of the roster crunch clearance bin in March. Could Mead have stuck around and hit fifth for the Nationals for the next five years? Maybe. But this trade reminds me of (Red Sox fans, skip over the next part) Milwaukee selling high on both Durbin and Isaac Collins last winter. If you strike gold on a post-hype position player without elite tools, it makes sense to sell high, even if it looks like you’re selling too soon.
But with both players under team control into the 2030s, what Mead and Early are now matters less than what they can be molded into over the next few seasons. Stars-for-prospects trades are won and lost by scouts. Challenge trades, like this one, are won and lost by the entire organization. Washington is ahead now, but there’s no guarantee that won’t change.
David Laurila contributed additional reporting to this article.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
I love this trade…mostly for me and everyone else who wonders why teams sit on a stockpile of players blocking each other while they run out Miles Mikolas or getting an 89 wRC+ out of their DHs.
Front offices are simply so worried about losing a trade and looking bad that they don’t do stuff like this so often. But I love it. These teams want to win and it has the possibility of being a win for both sides, even if it means giving up all those cheap years of team control and getting insulted in the press for a decade afterwards if it goes wrong.
Also the two team front offices know each other, which probably helps smooth the skids!
There are 30 teams in MLB. All the front offices know each other
The two front offices know each other better than a lot of other front offices.
Sure but Tobiani worked for Breslow until ten months ago.
and, iirc, was lined up to be Breslow’s GM until the Nats offered Toboni the POBO job.
I’ve thought a lot about this trade so far. I think Boston is in great position to be able to replace a lot of what Early has done so far–but not all of it–from within. And–bizarrely–the Red Sox are *4th* in the league in OPS against LHP, which still seems like a typo. As does them being 29th against RHP. A lot of this is Wilyer Abreu’s unheard-of switch from being quality against RHP to quality against LHP.
But if Mead hits like he has, he’s a clear offensive upgrade against both, and should relegate Masa back to the bench. Less clear for me is where Mead plays. He’s only had six games at 2B this year. Moving Durbin off 3B and putting Mead there would offset the offensive upgrade to Mead (and be dumb, I hope the team does not do this). So I think Mead splits time at DH and 1B with Contreras (with the positional split decided by how well the arrangement works and how beat up Contreras is, since he’s clearly beat up). With a few starts at 2B.
I also think that if Mead sucks, the team will have time to try something else to help the ML roster before the deadline.
“I also think that if Mead sucks, the team will have time to try something else to help the ML roster before the deadline.” They will find out if Mead sucks in a week?
Yeesh, I thought the deadline was the 9th, Two weeks would have been better than one. Doh.
There is no statement made respectfully that can’t be erased with a good, clear “d’oh” afterward! Tip of the cap to you for that!
I like this trade as well. It’s unusual in a number of different ways – it’s a rare 1-for-1 trade of major leaguers, both players involved have multiple years of control remaining, both players are relatively young, and both of these teams are trying to compete both in the now and in the near future.
It’s the logical “decent team with surplus of hitting trades with decent team with surplus of pitching” move that never seems to actually happen outside of fan theorycasting, but this time, it actually happened!
Breslow is doing his best not to get fired.
I love this trade (and this type of trade). This is the major league version of Jazz for Gallen
Montero for Pineda!
Thome for Rowand!
Brock for Broglio!
.
The 2022 NL CY cohort has aged so poorly. Alcantara, Fried, Urias, Nola, Gallen, Rodon, Burnes, Darvish, Diaz, Wright, Webb, Helsley. Fried the only guy having a good season, and even his is injury-shortened. Alcantara and Webb the only others who have been decent and healthy, and Rodon decent when healthy. Not a single good healthy season 4 years later out of that group. What a mess.
Don’t know how Wheeler didn’t get down-ballot votes w/ a 2.82 ERA and 4.8 bWAR in 153 IP. Scherzer too 2.29 ERA 5.3 bWAR 145.1 IP. Especially when Burnes won the year before at 2.43 ERA 5.3 bWAR in 167 IP.
Oh man, I thought Early had a special something in the way he carried himself, and he was certainly a fun pitcher to watch. Last year’s Laurila article with quotes on him from A’s players is a good read.
I think Breslow deserves some trust – and he’s clearly not afraid to take some swings. Once again, being a GM sounds like very hard work, and there are a zillion mini fields that you need to be good at, and there aren’t many non-gm roles that train them all up. He seems very good at developing some pitchers, and he’s not tied to winning every trade, so he has that to build on and I think he’s going to keep learning and hopefully round out his skills.
I’m going to miss Early though.
This would be the article (one of two I wrote about Early last season) referred to above: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/connelly-early-on-facing-jacob-wilson-and-vice-versa/
That’s the one! When I was down in the dumps earlier this season with the Sox’ performance, I re-read this article for a glimmer of hope on what’s to come. Nats are getting a great player!
As the oldest, and probably longest tenured, Red Sox fan here at Fangraphs I feel an obligation to throw my entire wallet into this conversation. I am one of the New Englanders who MIchael speaks about and am pessimistic about Breslow’s latest in season trade. I am also certain that nobody jumped on the Early duckboat earlier than I did. Just like deGrom in 2014, it was clear from the first start that hitters were very uncomfortable with what he was throwing. Bad swings have always been something that I have used as a measuring point and Early’s low slot and big movement made a lot of hitters look bad. Almost all of his trouble this year, which is still quite limited, has come from poor location of his curve. That has been pointed out by others and he has plenty of other pitches that are plenty good enough. With that said I prefer a good position player for 162 games rather than a starter for 180 innings but where does Mead fit in. Siegler has played very well and I do not see Mead as much of an upgrade and at the cost of pitcher who I value highly makes the trade dubious, not awful yet, and will wait before putting another pin in my Breslow voodoo doll. Much of what I see is because Breslow has completely blown the past two trade deadlines. In 2024 he added the terrible Luis Garcia and equally awful Lucas Sims who combined for a -0.9 bWAR then, even though I would like to forget it, last year Dustin May, who was also a huge negative addition, cost the team James Tibbs, who currently has a .946OPS in AAA. All I can do is watch and hope that Mead is a lot better than I think he is.
I think hindsight is 20/20. I have Sox fans in my sphere who thought that both Harrison and Tibbs were meh at best as a return for Devers. Both guys have thrived since. I know this is a results-based industry, but the sample of results matters (in size, quantity, and how we value what is measured). Prospecting is incredibly hard, and I think midseason trade analysis is subject to a lot more variables than most people consider.
We should lean on the process. If there’s something bad about the process, change it. But it has to be something correctly ID’ed as needing to change.
Given the restocking of the farm, the trade for Crochet, how Breslow has assembled the roster–I think firing him would be a colossal mistake. The biggest problem this team has is the doomsayers of all types that, no matter what is happening, try to throw every baby out with the bathwater. Most of them rely on tiny pieces of questionable evidence and shoddy conclusions. And any that don’t, probably work for the media.
Getting more than a bag of balls for Devers was a bonus. He had become a malignancy and had to go. The return was adequate. It really comes down to his belief that Dustin May was worth anything. May gave no indication that he was anything approaching a major league quality starting pitcher at the time. To give Tibbs, the 13th overall pick away before he even completed one season, for such a questionable pitcher has caused me to lose confidence in Breslow. It was just too egregious a blunder to accept on top of his equally poor moves at the 2024 deadline.
Sheesh brother. This is just good old fashioned fan blinders on. It was a bad deal but May gave no indication he wasn’t a major league quality pitcher either. And May has been worth 2.5 WAR this year. His first two starts of the year were brutal but he has a 3.72 ERA, 3.72 xERA, 3.70 xFIP, and 2.92 FIP in 96 innings since. He ran into some trouble again recently but after those first two starts, his next dozen he had a 2.59 ERA, 3.08 xERA, 3.59 xFIP, and 2.69 FIP over 74.1 IP. I don’t include that to say that’s who he is, but that he literally just showed the upside in performance, stamina, and durability of a #2 for over a third of a season, and the biggest mistake was not extending May after liking him enough to trade Tibbs for him, then letting five starts dissuade him.
But he was a pitcher that scouts and projections always had big expectations for, the Sox had just faced him July 27 and he didn’t throw any fastballs slower than 95 and change, and they had struck it big on another low-mileage-from-injury arm in Crochet. PitchingBot thought he was average or a rounding error better, Stuff+ thought he was average or a rounding error worse. But again, they were the last team to face him, he was throwing smoke, there is a premium on pitchers at the deadline, and the Sox had outfielders coming out of their ears.. Duran/Abreu/Anthony/Rafaela/Jhostynxon/Yoshida/Bleis, fans had been saying all year that he needed to trade from the OF depth, and then they all said he sucked when he traded for Tibbs.
From FG at the time.
And I don’t think the “alternatives existed” as much of a gripe against Breslow. Here is every SP dealt last year. They existed, but there wasn’t quality SP hanging from trees that Tibbs could’ve landed, but moreso, I don’t think the talent dealt shows that Breslow was swimming in the wrong end of the pool.. It was just a shallow pool. Was he not supposed to make a trade and try to make the playoffs? Fans wouldn’t accept an explanation that the prospect premimum was too high to deal their #14 prospect who also had a half dozen OF ahead of him on the depth chart.
You don’t need to give Breslow a break, but holding this trade against him and coloring your whole opinion off of a bad taste that wasn’t as you remembered it being is an over-correction. A lot of fans were going to complain no matter what he did, besides maybe the Beiber deal, but Beiber gave no indication that he was anything approaching a major league quality starting pitcher at the time…
Agreed. The only way in which this trade can be viewed as a good decision for Boston is if you ignore the fact that alternatives existed.
Such as?
So you’re older than me? Nice! Glad at least one person is…
And at least a reasonable trade for both sides, even if I couldn’t make it to the end of the comments… lots of us probably need to get outside more (& I include myself in that group!)
I think the Nationals side of this is obvious. Their pitching staff is one of the worst I have ever seen. They had only three major league caliber starting pitchers in the organization and healthy. The team was overflowing with defensively dubious position players and Mead was “found money.”
And I like Early a lot. He’s had a not-great year but lefties with deception and extension and any velocity at all often outperform expectations. If you take his whole MLB career it averages out to about a 3 win pitcher over a full season. I think some people are disappointed that he didn’t continue his 2025 but that was never going to happen, and with such a small sample size of MLB innings think taking his whole career into account makes sense when judging his future.
I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that he might be the second best starter on the major league roster after Cavalli. And Cavalli has a huge injury history and Griffin is a free agent after the year.
Definitely not crazy. I’ll miss Mead, but adding Early turns the Nats from 2 functional starters into 3, and from 5 functional pitchers (cavalli, griffin, alvarez, ribalta, and half an injured lord and half an injured irvin) into 6.
Typing the above out, it’s pretty stunning the Nats are where they are!
The Nats offense will continue fine without Mead. As to their pitching, I don’t think it’s out of the question that another reliever can cross the threshold of MLB usefulness as overall pitching staff quality innings accrue.
I agree. They had a lopsided batter-pitcher situation and (on paper) just fixed it.
The 2003 Tigers were the worst rotation in my lifetime. When Nate Cornejo and his 1:1 BB:K ratio is your ace, that’s big problem.
Maroth and Bonderman were clearly better than Cornejo and had some hope of eventually being OK. Cornejo was never more than “someone has to pitch today” material.
3? who is the 3rd beyond Cavalli and Griffin? Kent in AAA?
If you try sometimes, you’ll find you get Curtis Mead
that being said-Early we’re talking a 55 FV Prospect-even if you believe in Mead, do you 55 FV believe in Mead? I believe he’s a 50 (sketchy defense baked in)
Defensively he’s passed the eye test, though I know he doesn’t have the range of the guy replacing him (House).
I like Mead, the players all like Mead, and he’s a good story. Still, found money for a 55FV pitcher is a trade you make every time.
Early is probably not a 55 FV. Fangraphs graded him as a 50 and he’s been worse this year than last year. He looks like a mid to back end starter by his peripherals.
Early’s peripherals are better than Kyle Bradish’s, who just received $90 million from the Orioles.
It’s so weird to see Red Sox fans downplay anyone their organization trades the instant they’re gone.
It’s not downplaying anything to say a player Fangraphs had as a 50 less than a year ago is probably a 50. The prospect ratings on here are often suspect, but in this case I agree.
Early is a solid pitcher and had value. Good head on his shoulders, good characters. But he is what he is. He could still be mid-rotation starter if he can improve his command, but until the the lapses where he loses the plate make him more of a back end guy.
Not that Bradish is in any way relevant to this conversation, but the only metric I can find that prefers Early by more than a smidge is SIERA, and even then it’s 4.04 vs 4.29.
Bradish has a 3.85 xERA this year and he’s been a sub 4 guy for the past 4 seasons. Early’s at 4.33 this year. Similar story by FIP (3.95 vs 4.62). Pitch modeling is similar on each this year: 52 vs 53 botOvr, 103 vs 100 Pitching+.
I agree that Early is a 50. You’re the one who doesn’t. A 50 is a #3 starter whereas you’re insisting that he’s a #4 starter, which is a 45.
Bradish has a lower strikeout rate than Early and a higher walk rate than Early this season. You’re only downplaying Early because the Red Sox just traded him. Four weeks ago, you weren’t saying any of this about him.
50 FV players accumulate 1.6-2.4 WAR over a full season. Early is pitching at a 1.1 WAR / 150 IP pace this season and a 2.4 WAR / 150 IP pace for his career. Hope that helps.
I hesitate to even touch the #3 starter thing, because everyone defines it differently. I think of a #3 starter as one of the 61-90 best SPs in the league; if your ace gets injured and your #4 becomes the third guy in your rotation, I still think of him as a #4. There are 81 pitchers in MLB with 10+ IP as a starter at a >2.4 WAR / 150 IP pace this season. If you do the same exercise for 2025 but with a reasonably proportional threshold of 20 IP, you once again get 81 pitchers. You might get a couple long-term openers or flashes in the pan in this sample, but we’re also missing all of the true-talent #1-3 starters who weren’t able to make the innings cutoff due to injury. So, a 50 FV pitcher’s median outcome is not going to be a #3 starter per this definition.
I don’t care about Bradish’s walk rate and K rate. It is entirely irrelevant to this conversation. Would it be satisfying for you if I replied by cherry picking a guy with a higher K rate and lower BB rate than Early who didn’t get extended in arbitration?
You seem to be taking a sober interpretation of who Early is as slander. Four weeks ago I thought the same thing I did now: Early is a good young pitcher. A 50th percentile outcome #4 starter with 5 years of team control is a valuable player.
jdbolick, it might be weirder to pretend that a fan base is one big lump. The vast majority of Red Sox fans had very high confidence in Early, and most of them accepted that, with that confidence, came industry expectations of a 3rd-5th starter (with a very high floor).
To put it another way, baseball fans in general have gotten excited about many a high-upside SPer only to see them not work out – Early is the other side, a guy whose upside we ultimately don’t worry about but whom we appreciate for being so high confidence. Let his ultimate rotation slot reveal itself, but few questioned that he would be in an MLB rotation for a long time.
So it’s quite easy for the narrative from the Red Sox fan perspective to remain unchanged, and that narrative to be that confidence in Early can be about as high as it comes – and that, by taking the word of experts, we understand he might be a 50 FV type.
Talk of the fan base having a habit of downplaying its own guys after the fact smacks of wanting to just demean the fan base on a straw-man basis. Plus, if anything, there is a media habit of talking *up* Red Sox players when they get moved, a la Mookie Betts when he went from “just” an unquestioned star in Boston to immediately talked up as “maybe the second-best player in baseball right now” once he was traded.
It’s not all of you. Some of you are being honest on this post about Early being a very talented young pitcher, but far too many of you are being blatantly dishonest by pretending that a guy with a 15.1% K-BB% and a 3.72 SIERA over 111.0 major league innings is nothing more than a “4th starter.”
You’re just taking your cue from Red Sox management, who has repeatedly trashed players and coaches like Terry Francona, Johnny Damon, Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramirez, Rafael Devers, etc.
That would be a plausible explanation if Early had struggled. He hasn’t. He has been an above average starting pitcher thus far in his career.
You cannot possibly be serious with this nonsense. The 2018 American League MVP was already being talked about as the second best player in baseball behind Trout long before he was traded.
A 50FV is a league average player – and midrotation starter seems a defensible description of Early this season – so, yeah, a 50FV seems about the right grade.
I don’t think a 50th percentile outcome is a mid-rotation starter. I think it’s more like a #4.
probably worth bringing up that these two teams just made another challenge trade a few months ago — Jake Bennett for Luis Perales — and how that one has turned out so far, in and among the cRaIg BrEsLoW iS pOlArIzInG tHiS cOuLd Be LiKe ThE dUrBiN tRaDe conceit
Breslow seems to like trading with former Red Sox people.
I’m guessing it’s because he’s kind of been in a shit negotiating position in recent years. He’s got an unbalanced roster, largely through no fault of his own, and a local media market coming for his head. There’s a lot of pressure to fix things and everyone knows it.
Trading with guys from our FO makes sense because it gives him a stronger negotiating position. They want their guys, and Breslow has a solid idea of what their opinions actually are.
Its not about a negotiating position. Breslow has good players to deal that’s really all that matters unless the owner of a team is compromising the position or some other issue is driving it. The Devers trade is the only one where the negotiation position was terrible and that was a win.
Teams often trade with other teams with leadership from the same tree. They do that because they understand how both sides value players. That makes it much easier to come to an agreement that both teams think is fair. Dealing with a team that values players very differently is difficult. It used to be much easier when prospects were not valued as highly as they are now. Contenders did not shy away from dealing their top prospects for vets. Now it’s much more nuanced.
Don’t think you shoulda been thumbsed-down because you qualified it as a guess. It’s not like you were declaring! Or insulting anyone. Tough crowd today.
Almost all execs have higher rates of trades with other execs they previously worked with or have other connections to. It’s the same as in the business world with C-suite execs and business deals, because it’s common sense
It is a *lot* like the Durbin trade, down to a right handed hitting infielder who pulls the ball in the air for a left handed starter whose stock is down.
The main difference here are the stakes, because Mead is hitting better right now than Durbin ever did and because Early still seemed like he could become a quality pitcher for the Red Sox. Harrison was never going to realize his potential with the Red Sox and Durbin will probably never hit for 130 wRC+.
I also think that people are being too harsh on Durbin. There’s a pretty good chance that trade ends up being a win-win. He’s been one of the Red Sox’s most valuable position players this year!
a chance????? this is my point — caleb durbin is awesome (and seigler and monasterio have been great, too). this article reads like it was written 3 months ago in that regard. the caleb durbin trade is at worst a win-win from the red sox end
since he was rightfully benched for a few games at the end of may, caleb durbin in his last 49 games is:
3rd among all MLB third basemen with 1.9 fWARbatting .299/.354/.523has 9 homers 10 doubles and 7 stealsbehind only nolan arenado in dwarred sox are 28-17
anybody talking about the durbin trade thinks its may 27
Man you might be right but you need to chill.
What do you have August National Sunscreen Day?
“since he was rightfully benched”
Ah, the old picking and choosing the stats
Not sure what you mean by this. He was playing very poorly for two months, was sat for a few games and seemingly “reset,” working with his outside hitting coach, then came back and was immediately one of the best players in baseball and has been for 50 games.
He started working with a private hitting coach. Respect is due to any player who goes to the extra mile. It remains to be seen how he performs over the rest of the season. He was not a highly ranked prospect coming up and he was not expected to perform like he did last season with the Brewers. After the first two -three months I was really down on him(June he was white hot but I was still doubting he was going to keep it up). I’m cautiously optimistic at this point. I want to believe. Mead I want to believe is real as well. Mead is hitting better than Durbin and has done so every month expect for June.
I recognize the Harrison-Durbin trade as a win-win (with the Brewers possibly winning a bit more), but I think it’s a little ridiculous to say that Harrison could never have realized his potential with the Red Sox. He pitched well in the majors for them last year
The Red Sox spent a lot of time reworking Harrison. Yes the Brewers are known for helping pitchers excel but the Sox have a great pitching development program as well. We can not assign all the credit to the Brewers they essentially car that that was at least halfway though being rebuilt by the previous owner.
I’m not completely out on the Bennett-for-Perales trade from Washington’s side. Not sure how many long term good starting pitchers sustain Bennett’s 6.37 K/9, and that’s before most of the league has seen him more than once.
Perales isn’t missing bats in AAA, and that’s not great, but it’s not unheard for guys their first year back from TJ. Washington’s own Cavalli performed just like this in AAA for much of last year before it all clicked back in a year post TJ.
Perales still throws a hundo with a nasty splitter and cutter and is a breakout pick for me for 2027.
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say this was a depth swing for Washington – they didn’t plan on their offensive changes working this well, so they didn’t think they’d need Bennett this year. It was a reasonable, defensible trade.
Same I need to see Bennett over a longer period of time. He’s been phenomenal no question but can he sustain it especially as hitters adjust to him? There are only a handful of pitchers that make what he’s doing work over the long term.
Perales has bigger stuff but his command is bad. At the time it was seen as the exchange of a high variance pitcher for lower variance pitcher.
People look at Bennett’s K-rate but don’t see his miniscule BB-rate. In 4 of his 10 starts he has not walked a batter and has not issued more than 2 in any start. This is more than control, this is command and he has kept the ball away from hitter’s happy zones and this is something that hitters have trouble adjusting to. 93 under the hands or a sweeper at the knees to a lefty will always work. Ranger Suarez doesn’t even touch 92 but has gotten the job done for years. 100+ velo is nice but there are many ways a pitcher can get hitters out. Let’s wait to see him get knocked around before knocking him.
Yes strike outs are important. Considering he’s not a strikeout pitching I’m more looking at other factors. He’s walking fewer than he did in the minors and his BIAP is significantly lower than it was in the minors. He’s been phenomenal inducing weak contact. He struck out more in the.minors then he has in the majors. I want to believe but I need to see if he holds up over a longer time period.
Tbh while I’d prefer Harrison, the Durbin trade isn’t even bad. He’s trending towards a 2-3 war regular.
Ofc depends if Harrison is more of a 3/4 starter or 2/3
Good piece, but assuming health all around Griffin + Cavalli are your Games 1/2 or 2/1 pitchers.
It feels like Baumann forgot about Cavalli
Red Sox Pitcher Trades Recently:
That’s a lot of exciting pitchers going out, and a lot of help coming in, too! I am not sure how to look at this framed against the Tibbs/Erhard -> May trade made last year… Actually, last year they traded for several pitchers at the cost of some position players.
Pswd for Oviedo is another one, but I don’t think we’ll be grading it for another couple years.
The Password was the largest 160 lb player I have ever seen… looks like they finally updated his weight to 224
The Tibbs/Erhard for May trade is the only real stinker. May had pitched his way out of the Dodgers rotation – it should not have been a surprise that he also struggled for the Sox. More importantly, Breslow missed an opportunity to improve the team at the deadline last year. I am very glad he’s being proactive this year and jumping on an opportunity to improve the team.
He really seems like he’s learning! Or at least it seems like things are different each year.
I can be pretty hard on Breslow, but to his credit, he seems to learn from his mistakes.
You forget the Chris Sale trade for Vaughn Grissom. That has some similarities to this.
ughhhhh
Yep. I want to believe in Mead. If he’s for real he solves a number of problems. This trade really took a lot of stones and that I can respect. The safe course of action would have been to not make the trade it’s very risky but if it works out it will be phenomenal.
I’ve felt the same about Kristen Campbell. Vaughn Grissom was a little different considering the season he was coming off. I f we could undo any trade of the Breslow era that would be the one and I’m sure the Red Sox Brass agrees. Middle infield has been the Bermuda triangle for the Sox for a while.
Romy Gonzalez was a savior for the infield in general last year, he might be this year but his return from injury has been rocky so far. It was really unfortunate he got injured in spring training.
I know it seems like Washington “won” the trade, at least today (with the pitchers are obviously riskier caveat), but, I wonder if Boston’s seeming ability to develop starting pitching helps them make this move.
Early looks like a decent 3-4 starter & could be for years, but, if you feel you have another 1-2 guys just like him coming thru the system behind him, parlay him into a decent infielder that we all know is desparately needed.
Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t try to get maximum value for him, but, it does ease the burden of trading him.
Yeah I like early and this he’s going to be a long term starter, but he does have a limited ceiling and BOS has a lot of pitching depth/lefties w control.
Also, feel quite good about them developing arms, both in the minors and getting more out major leaguers (my favorite trade of Breslow was stealing Yhoinker from the Whitesox, then fixing him and flipping for Contreras’s). I think those are the moves they think they can continue to make
That said, they are LIGHT on impact RH bats for the long term… it’s essentially Arias and maybe Justin Gonzalez and that’s it. Mead gives some upside there even if there are risks.
Regarding Mead, the data sure shows that he’s being more selective and that is allowing him to do more damage and take more walks. His walk rate has doubled from last year, and his hard hit and barrel % are up.
I do have some concerns about how sustainable it is because if pitchers just decide to pitch to him differently those walks might evaporate and / or his barrel % might decline. And giving up Early is a lot for him if he’s not running a 120 wRC+ or higher, because there’s a pretty good chance he is a DH only within a year.
But here’s the part of the deal that I haven’t seen as much about, and the part that gives me the most excitement and strangely also worry. The exciting part is that batted ball profile looks *great* for Fenway; lots of balls hit out to left field. Per Statcast he would only lose two and a half homers off his xHR if he played every game in Fenway which is a fantastic number. Fenway takes away a ton of homers but if you’re putting the ball in left field consistently you also get a ton of “warning track” fly balls turned into hits. Finding someone who hits roughly the same number of homers and where a whole bunch of his outs turn into hits is a great find.
The worry part is kind of a bigger picture question. The Red Sox have gone all in on building a team around the weird home field dimensions and I worry it’s too dogmatic to only search for players like that. They have been on a mission to make their team more right-handed, only showing interest in right handed infielders and going to get Sonny Gray because he does not give up fly balls to left field very much. I wonder if maybe they’re going too hard on this and they’re missing warning signs on a guy like Mead. I wonder how much farther you can take this philosophy.
But he played a ton of games away from Fenway this year, and still had a great season!
Also, the Sox have seemed to be lefty-heavy for the last few years, so more righties kind of make sense.
Lefties recently: Duran, Anthony, Yoshida, Abreu, Casas, Mayer, Devers, Lowe.
Righties recently: Story, Rafaela, Durbin, Romy, Narvaez, Wong, Contreras, Bregman, Refsnyder.
I think a little more balance could help
Yeah I see the Fenway thing as some insurance against potential regression. (I also felt the same way about Durbin for the same reason)
I’m thinking more about the balance idea and wondering if Breslow is also thinking about balance from a defensive perspective too. Last year the Sox had awful defense, this year they’re incredible due to Breslow’s targeted acquisitions. Maybe now Craig is accepting the risk of worse defense to get another good bat in the lineup (without putting Rafaela in the infield).
I think two things are true here. One is that Mead’s hitting profile is a fantastic fit for Fenway and the team – reasonably balanced platoon splits, RH flyball pull hitter, high contact and good amount of walks. Two is that they probably didn’t need another RH hitter – the Sox have killed lefties all year. Maybe that’s a blip, maybe it isn’t. But they have had a lot more trouble w/ RH pitchers which, again, Mead can hit.
I guess all that means is if they want to continue to pursue more lineup additions (SS or Catcher, per the GM) they now have the flexibility to go after a strong side platoon players instead of everyday guys who might cost us a top 10 prospect. It’s an interesting turn of events after years of being far too left-handed.
Why do you think he’ll be a DH only? He’s been moved around a lot and hasn’t gotten regular PT, yet his metrics don’t show a guy who’s unplayable in the field. It doesn’t make much sense to DH a 25 y/o who is not a butcher out there, especially when the bat will absolutely play in the infield, even with a below-average glove. He’s apparently going to start off playing 2B, where he has 0 FRV in 320.2 career innings there, and he’d be one of the best offensive 2B in the majors if his breakout is for real.
Air pull doesn’t only help at Fenway, and the entire team certainly isn’t built around that either. There is no chance they traded for Mead based on air pull alone. The more important factor is that they believe the changes he made this year are real; while he is a good fit for Fenway, I’m sure they’d have been interested even if he got to his xwOBA without as much air pull.
Have you watched Mead play defense? His terrible range and terrible arm are extremely noticeable. He’s better at second than third due to the arm, but you don’t really want him to be playing either.
Only a little bit, but to be frank I’ll trust scout evaluations and Statcast data over some person on Fangraphs’ eye test. Other Nats fans were commenting that he made a bunch of errors early in the year but had looked better in the field as the season went on.
oh jeez you just poked the bear, there are going to be a thousand comments on this article right now
But you’re not trusting either one. Scouts say that Mead has below average range and a well below average arm. Statcast data says that Mead has below average range and a well below average arm.
Whether you want to look at DRS, OAA, FRV, or UZR, they all agree that Mead is a poor defender.
Cite your sources. Fangraphs had him as a future 50 defender. BA had him as a 45 with a 40 arm. His defensive stats overall are poor, but his defensive stats at 2B are not (0 OAA/FRV, -1 DRS over 320.2 innings), as I have already stated.
That’s you cherry picking small samples. It’s not possible for someone to have terrible range at third base but average range at second. That doesn’t even begin to make any sense.
Mead is at -9 in OAA for the season, which is 1st percentile. And his arm strength is 10th percentile.
there are absolutely cases of poor defenders at 3B and good defenders at 2B, what are you talking about? Jazz Chisholm Jr. is the first that comes to mind, but it’s a common trait.
Defenders, yes, because the ball comes at you more quickly at third than second, so a player with bad hands may get exposed at third. But that’s not range. It’s literally impossible to have terrible range at first base and third base but somehow have solid range at second base. Range is range. It’s all based on lateral agility and first step quickness, neither of which Mead has.
Arm factors into OAA for infielders and Mead has a noodle arm. 3B punishes a noodle arm and 2B doesn’t.
Okay, but that’s not what you said. You said “terrible range.” That’s certainly up in the air at 2B based on defensive metrics and scout evaluations. Don’t move the goalposts
It is not up in the air at all. Mead is at -9 OAA for the season and OAA is specifically a range measurement. He has very little lateral agility. He is fine on balls hit directly at him, but he has terrible range and a terrible arm.
I just realized I didn’t respond to you about this.
He’s not good out there. Good luck finding anyone who has seen him play out there who thinks he’s better than a 45 at second base, and I’d say almost everyone has him more in the 35/40 range there.
A 40 seems reasonable, and it would be enough for now. I imagine he’d only play there half the time this year anyway with Seigler taking on the other half (and Seigler giving Durbin a break at third now and again). And then he can DH the rest of the time.
I don’t know that he will have to be DH-only. I think it’s possible that with a chance to pick up a decent defensive second baseman this offseason that he will be DH-only in 2027, and if not, almost certainly by 2028*.
(*Assuming that he continues to post a 120 wRC+ or higher, because at that rate I’m pretty sure he’s beating out whatever other random players would play there otherwise)
I mostly agree with you – I could totally see him being a 40 or 45 at 2B from the scouting reports I’ve read and the available stats. That’s not necessarily ideal, but if the bat is real, he’d have one of the best 2B bats in the league and would be an above-average regular despite the glove. It could certainly work out best for the team to DH him, but he doesn’t appear to be the sort of butcher who will force the team’s hand.
“At the time of the trade, the Red Sox and Nationals were in similar positions in the standings: The Sox were 53-50, seven and a half games out of the division lead, but half a game up in the AL Wild Card race.”
This is wrong. The two teams were in very different places. The Red Sox were 2.5 games up in the Wild Card race with a near 70% chance of making the playoffs (per Fgraphs) whereas the Nationals had about a 10% chance of making the playoffs (per Fgraphs)
People have a hard time recognizing how much better the NL is than the AL this year.
AL clubs colluded and came to an agreement that they would all play about .500 ball
And lose every game to the Reds
The Reds can still make the AL playoffs if Rob Manfred has the courage
The wilder wildcard!
Francona is a hall of fame AL manager.
I’ve never been a big fan of Early, as I tend to be biased against control over command pitchers, yet this is clearly a massive win for the Nationals. They turned a guy with no defensive home that the White Sox designated for assignment last March into five and a half years of a solid middle of the rotation pitcher. Four of Early’s five pitches have proven to have significantly positive major league hitters, with the curveball being his only problem spot. That curve is responsible for the elevated HR/FB%, which has not historically been a concern for him.
As for Mead, he has a current ISO of .246, good for fifteenth in the major leagues. This comes after three seasons under .100. If you take the top fifty hitters in ISO and sort by average exit velocity, Curtis Mead is stone dead last. He isn’t hitting the ball any harder than he did before, and anyone who wants to talk about his barrel increase should keep in mind that Jo Adell and Michael Busch did the exact same thing last season before regressing to their established levels in 2026.
I analyzed Mead’s swings with the Rays, White Sox, and Nationals. It has not changed. His exit velocity, launch angle, tilt, and attack angle are all the same as they were when he was so bad. The one thing that has changed is attack direction, suggesting that he’s starting his swing just a fraction of a second earlier and is therefore making contact a bit farther up, which explains the dramatic increase in pull rate.
To me, this looks extremely like the other Breslow trade where he gave up Kyle Harrison for Caleb Durbin, albeit with Mead having a slightly better bat and Durbin being the significantly better defender.
it feels like you didn’t even read the article. he is hitting the ball harder!
Mead’s average exit velocity in 2026 is 88.0 mph. It was 87.5 mph in 2025 and 88.8 mph in 2024. His maximum exit velocity of 110.1 mph in 2026 is also lower than his maximums in 2025 (111.0 mph) and 2024 (112.4 mph).
So, no, he is not hitting the ball harder.
The article references EV90, which is up a couple mph. I would say he is more consistently hitting the ball hard this year.
But I think your point that he’s not doing anything too differently is generally correct. His stance and the swing stats do look pretty similar to me, but he seems to have improved in a lot of small ways – swinging at better pitches and not chasing bad pitches is resulting in more hard contact and more walks.
It doesn’t look fluky to me, but we’ll see if he can sustain the changes.
That’s the first thing I looked for, as a significant drop in O-Swing% is something that makes me believer that a hitter has genuinely improved. In Mead’s case, his O-Swing% is only 2.8% down from 2025 but his Z-Swing% is down 9.6%.
That indicates he’s laying off of pitches he can’t drive while looking for ones that he can, which is a good approach for someone with such a high Z-Contact% that can still put the ball in play consistently with two strikes. My concern is that it’s an approach that pitchers can adjust to simply by throwing more strikes, especially if they can locate on the outside edge.
If you look at Mead’s heat map, he’s doing most of his damage middle up with another red dot low and in. The outer third is blue and he hasn’t made contact with a fastball low and away all season. For whatever reason, pitchers are staying out of the zone with him more this season, which is leading to the higher walk rate. If they challenge him more, his numbers are going to come back down.
Mead’s Zone% this year is 47.3%, almost identical to league average 47.6%. Not sure what you’re seeing here
It was 50.8% last season.
Well, yes, they’re pitching him a little differently now that he’s demonstrated power. Why do you think pitchers will come back into the zone with him so aggressively? And why do you think his production will evaporate if they do so? You’ve basically just claimed those two things without providing any reasoning for why.
Mead’s Zone% this year is 47.3%, almost identical to league average of 47.6%. Not sure what you’re seeing here
I agree with a lot of this, but “starting his swing just a fraction of a second earlier” isn’t the only explanation for Mead’s increase in pull rate. He intentionally opened his stance and that’s almost always a recipe for pulling the ball more often
No, he didn’t. I looked at Mead’s swings with all three teams and his foot placement is exactly the same now as it was in 2025.
This just isn’t true. His feet are six feet closer together than 2025 and his stance is six degrees more open. He’s very clearly changed his stance.
Sorry, six inches, not six feet. Duh.
The other thing that seems to have changed is his timing. His OnTime% and Centered% are much better this season.
I wonder if that connects to the stance changes – the problem wasn’t the swing itself, but executing it on time.
I definitely don’t expect Mead to keep running an 11% barrel rate, but even if it dips closer to league-average, you still have a pretty good hitter.
How much does the pitcher injury penalty factor in? You touched on it a bit, but good plate discipline is more durable than a good arm.
Tracking WAR over the next 4-5 years quickly becomes lop sided if Early blows is UCL.
Of course you maybe factor that into Boston making their own long term pitching more susceptible because thats true of their own pitchers.
Early could miss 18 months and still produce more fWAR, as there is very little to suggest that Mead is genuinely a 130 wRC+ hitter, while we know that his defense is poor.
there is everything to suggest that Mead is a good hitter and very little to suggest that he cannot play 2B
Mead was a terrible hitter in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Even with this season’s performance, his career wRC+ is a league average 100. As for second base, he is less of a liability there than at third, but he is still a defensive liability.
He was bad for 3 seasons but only about 450 plate appearances. There’s a lot of red on his savant page.
He’s only been good for 327 plate appearances.
Sure but if he keeps hitting well for another month he will have been good for just as long as he was bad. I’m just pointing out that his career is young and people may be overindexing on a small sample size in both directions. Like the comment below is framing it as 36 months of terrible performance, which is a bit disingenuous.
Then look at him in both directions and split the difference, which leaves him as a league average 100 wRC+ bat. Add in the below average defense and why would anyone trade Connelly Early for that?
Breslow is banking on the 2026 Mead being real and sustainable, otherwise it is a bad trade.
It doesn’t make sense to look at career numbers for a guy that young, especially given how big the jump is nowadays between AAA and MLB. Mead is 25 years old with prospect pedigree and has not gotten regular playing time until this year. It would not be surprising at all if this were a real breakout; the Red Sox clearly think so, and they have a lot more information than randos on Fangraphs. Mead also has 0 FRV in a career 320.2 innings at 2B and he’s been better closer to the present. He graduated with a future 50 grade on his glove. So, I don’t know what basis you could have for calling him a liability there. Yes, his FRV for the season is terrible, but 1B and 3B require different skill sets. For example, 3B benefits from a good arm way more than 2B, and he happens to have a noodle arm.
It makes more sense to look at the career numbers rather than only look at the small sample that validates what you want to believe while ignoring the larger sample which says something that you do not want to accept.
The Red Sox also gave Kristian Campbell $60 million to be their starting second baseman when this rando on FanGraphs said that he would be a disaster at second base and that his swing wouldn’t work against major league pitching.
Mead’s range and arm are both terrible by eye test and by metrics. His hands are solid, so he can handle balls hit directly at him.
You’re ignoring the fact that he made major swing changes coming into the year, that his success is not luck driven, and that it is less and less common for guys to come up from AAA and immediately rake, even for top prospects. This trade also would not have happened if Boston didn’t think the changes were sticky, and Breslow has confirmed in interviews that they have good reason to believe they are. The irony of claiming that I’m the one misusing statistics to fit a narrative…
Should we look at 2023-2025 for evaluating Jordan Walker going forward too? Or should we acknowledge that a high-pedigree prospect who struggles out of the gate, but eventually makes some adjustments and achieves significant success is more likely to continue being a good player than to revert into the player they were right after promotion?
His range is not terrible by metrics. Drill down into his 2B numbers. Career 0 OAA in 320.2 innings.
Imagine being mad enough about being wrong on the internet that you find and downvote every single comment I’ve made XD go outside lmao, this is why I don’t comment on the internet anymore. Too many angry idiots.
No, he didn’t. I did video analysis of his swing with all three teams specifically to look for changes and there aren’t any. The metrics also do not show any swing change. His Tilt and Attack Angle are roughly identical to last season. His hand placement and foot placement are also the same.
Breslow also believed that Durbin’s offensive breakout was real. Breslow also believed that Kristian Campbell was worth $60 million.
Jordan Walker increased his average exit velocity by 1.2 mph.
Did you even read the article? They specifically mention foot placement differences and have photos showing clear differences in his stance.
Durbin and KC are entirely irrelevant to this conversation. And Durbin’s is having a very similar year to last year and KC was a consensus top 10 prospect in baseball when he was extended, so I still don’t really know what your point is. If the weatherman gives it a 10% chance of rain and you get wet, is your conclusion that the weatherman doesn’t know how to forecast?
Walker’s EVs were elite even when he was struggling. His more important improvements have been in chasing less and making more contact, which is incidentally something we also see with Mead.
The photos show identical foot placement, both times with the left foot slightly more open than the right foot. That’s how his foot placement was in every at-bat that I could find video of for the last three seasons.
And as for his stance, the first photo is from when the pitcher has his glove elevated and is about to begin his throwing motion while the second photo shows the other pitcher still being set and not even looking at home plate. Mead crouches slightly as the pitcher starts to deliver. There is no difference whatsoever in those stances, they were just taken at different points of time.
You brought up Breslow’s judgement. Durbin and Campbell are highly relevant.
Durbin’s wRC+ has dropped from 105 to 90. That is not similar at all.
Look up the 2025 Top 100 Prospects column on FanGraphs and scroll down to see what I wrote about Campbell back then.
And yet he improved them even more. Mead didn’t.
The exact opposite of this is true. Walker’s O-Swing% and Chase% have increased in 2026. If you can’t even be bothered to check basic facts before commenting then do not comment.
Mead’s feet are 2.5 inches farther apart this year. His stance is 3 degrees more open and he’s almost an inch closer to the plate. We have the data; you don’t need to look at random excerpts of broadcast video and then confirmation bias your way into the wrong conclusion.
Those two transactions are not evidence that we should distrust the FO’s judgment. You’re going to have to try a lot harder if you want to play the “I am smart and a major league front office is systematically dumb” card.
wRC+ is a luck-based stat. If you want to look at anything look at xwOBA, which in this case would give you a similar conclusion. But both last year and this year, Durbin started off catastrophically bad, and he has been much better since. If he plays the way he has for the past two months, his season numbers will end up very similar to last year’s.
…and Mead improved just about everything else, but we’re apparently ignoring that because it fits the narrative?
I did misread Walker’s chase rate; yes, it did increase slightly. If you weren’t in such a hurry to disagree you would see that the overall point is valid, though, He’s making more contact (whiff rate: 35.6% -> 30.6%) and swinging at better pitches (Z-Swing% – O-Swing%: 32.8 -> 36.2%). Another interesting feature is doing way more damage on shadow zone pitches, so he could well be going with the pitch more, but the general story is better swing decisions leading to more contact. 1.2 mph of EV is not nothing but that’s not a sea change, and not in itself indicative of much. 2025 Jarren Duran had a similar EV bump over 2024 but he had a worse offensive season, in large part because of worse swing decisions leading to more swing and miss.
This is a hilarious thing to say coming from the person who just claimed that there are “photos showing clear differences in his stance” because you didn’t notice that those screenshots were from completely different points in the pitcher’s process.
Of all the many ridiculous things that you have said in this comments section, this is by far the most absurd. wRC+ is the best offensive statistic that we have. It is a comprehensive valuation of a player’s offensive performance.
I want to see a reason to believe that improvements are sustainable. Mead’s exit velocity hasn’t improved, he’s just getting out in front of pitches more often. I expect pitchers to adjust and pitch him away more frequently, which will counter that, then he will need to adjust to the adjustment. Maybe he can, but you want to believe that his 134 wRC+ is real while ignoring his 94, 67, and 76 marks in his prior three seasons.
You didn’t misread anything. You made an assumption based on what you thought his improvement had come from and when I checked your facts, I proved you wrong.
It’s wild that you keep saying absurd things just to dismiss legitimate points and yet accuse me of being the one who supposedly ignores things that don’t fit my narrative. An increase in EV like that is meaningful and it does validate offensive improvement.
I had the nerve to take the article at face value, yes, and upon doing my own research I think I was quite right in doing so. From the handful of random clips I’ve spot checked, he only starts hunching when the pitcher starts his windup. Neither photo has the pitcher in the windup. He does appear to be standing up straighter in 2026 and his hands are much lower. This all matches what the article originally stated.
wRC+ reflects *outcomes*. Outcomes are luck based. Players can control how they hit the ball, and after that probability takes over. If you’re trying to look at which player’s PAs had better outcomes, by all means, compare wRC+. But if you want to evaluate whether a player is actually *playing* better, not whether their *outcomes* are better, then xwOBA is a much better choice than wRC+. It is not perfect, but it is at least answering the right question.
Oh brother… Yes, I did misread it. I was looking at his Savant page and saw that his his percentile had increased and missed that the actual raw chase rate had slightly increased despite its percentile also improving.
As usual, you are not focusing on my point, and are instead seizing on the first piece of my statement that doesn’t perfectly match your reality and criticizing it. I never said it wasn’t meaningful to improve your EVs. I said it wasn’t a sea change, and not something you can look at in a vacuum when discussing a player’s improvements at the plate. EVs are the *result* of the swing; they are an effect, not a cause. If he’s hitting balls harder, maybe he was swinging harder, or swinging at better pitches, or doing a better job handling certain pitch types. It didn’t just happen. I tried to come up with a theory for what changes he actually made, and it seems plausible.
I think it’s all well and good to point to EVs as a sign that a player may be making some positive changes under the hood, but you brought them up to imply that Walker’s production this year is more predictive of this level of play continuing than Mead’s. EV, when combined with launch angle (as it really always should be, and in this case Walker’s launch angles have also improved!), basically just gives you xwOBA. So, your argument is essentially that Jordan Walker’s production will continue because it’s supported by an increase in xwOBA. I think this is fair, but the same logic should apply to Curtis Mead, as his production is also supported by a jump in xwOBA.
So a top prospect who struggled for parts of 3 seasons (totaling less than 1 full season) can never improve and that his great under the hood metrics this year don’t matter bc he struggled early on?
That doesn’t make sense.
Of course they can improve, but Mead has the same swing with the same exit velocities. Once again, he is dead last in average exit velocity for batters in the top 50 for ISO. This performance is very clearly not sustainable.
Again, his EV90 is up a couple mph this year, so not the same exit velocities. Can his swing metrics be the same and lead to better results? Yes, if he’s swinging at better pitches.
Mead’s Ev90 is excellent, which is much more predicitve than average EV. Not to mention, pulled FB = outpacing your EV’s. This is literally how Neto/Parades are good hitters despite bad underlying data!
His average exit velocity is between his 2025 and 2024 numbers while his maximum exit velocity is lower than either season.
Why do you think average EV is more important than hard-hit rate, EV90, or barrel rate? There’s nothing that indicates that that’s true
And yet his wOBA-xwOBA is .011, so .010 above league average. That suggests a small portion could be luck, but the vast majority is real. Looking deeper, though, air pull tends to improve outcomes for a given bat speed and xwOBA of course doesn’t consider spray angle, so with an xwOBA overperformance this slight, he might not be getting any help from luck.
Whether the batted ball quality will continue, I don’t know, but a good air pull % should generally improve ISO for the same EV. McGonigle and Bleday both have similar average EV and xwOBA. Both are also good at pulling the ball in the air.
When you say “everything”, are you including the 36 previous months of terrible performance by Mead with the 3 good months?
“36 previous months” is an insane way to say fewer than 500 plate appearances.
Dismissing 488 plate appearances when he was terrible while championing the 327 when he’s been very good is the insane part. The reality is that he’s probably somewhere between the two, which is why his current career wRC+ is a league average 100.
Continuing to insist that the 488 previous plate appearances are more meaningful than the 327 more recent ones is absurd. At this point you’re willfully ignoring all of the data we’ve presented in favor of a dogmatic point of view.
There’s a lot to suggest that he can’t play second.
Such as?
Like his career stats there, which are pretty average? I get the sample is somewhat small, but his defensive evals coming up weren’t tragic either. There’s plenty of room between below average and unplayable, especially if the bat is legit.
This reminds me of the Allen Craig acquisition and I hope to god just the team control left / player profiles pre-trade are what these moves have in common and nothing else!
Oh God no. Please no. Lol
One difference is that Allen Craig was on a long term deal with 4 years left. Having someone per-arb/arb is different because a team can non tender them and walk away.. Allen Craig all they could do was DFA him and then have him accept an assignment.
The Craig extension always seemed like a buy-high deal, and I was mad that the Red Sox took it off the Cardinals’ hands, let alone giving them John Lackey with a league-minimum option year.
Craig was 29 and coming off a serious injury, which led to the worst year of his career. His team control was in the form of a guaranteed contract.
In other words, don’t worry.
I don’t want to nitpick, but this is LOCO: “I’d probably slot him in for Game 2 behind Griffin in a hypothetical Wild Card series.” Cavalli is the Nats’ best starter by a wide margin (Cavalli’s FIP is 3.12, substantially better than Griffin or Early). Cavalli’s also had two good starts against the Phillies this year, so there’s no good excuse for this particular writer to write this.
This is a trade that I can only reserve judgement on. For the Nats it’s all house money (and the White Sox are kicking themselves). There is a ton of risk for Breslow and it takes guts. If Mead doesn’t work out and Early is good in Washington it’s not going to look good. I don’t know what other conversations were had but I would have thought if Early was on the table that he would have been a key piece of a larger trade. The defense alignment is going to be an issue unless they trade for Ron Washington with SF. Early was fine this season. He has over performed his underlying but he’s a good pitcher with room to further improve.
It all comes down to Mead. This could be a trade where both sides are happy. The Sox have a ton of pitching though none of their pitching prospects are knocking on the door now that Tolle is up the best right now is Eyanson who’s still probably a year away. Considering that this is a long term trade the Sox are likely figuring that they will get a number of injured starters back next year some of who will likely pitch out of the pen. I don’t know what to think of the 4 starters who have taken up long term residency on the IL. Then there is also the curious case of Brayan Bello.
I like the Bennett for Perales trade for both sides but that could change if Bennett is truly as good as he’s pitched so far for Red Sox. Perales has the bigger stuff by far but his control is poor. It was an exchange of low variance for high variance but if Bennett is for real wow.
I’ve seen so many Sox fans thinking that they can use Duran and Mayer as major trade pieces. Its irrational they are not worth anything until they show something. Teams would be interested in Mayer as a project and he would be a nice bonus in any trade. Duran I don’t see them finding a trade partner at this point. This off-season would have been the time to do it. Either way though the Sox need him for the rest of the season. They will hope that his bat thaws out. He still provides plus defense which has kept him just above water. One of the biggest additions they could get is if he plays like he did last year for the rest of the season. Depending on the deadline I would not be surprised if they call up Arias but we will see. His name keeps floating around as a headliner for a trade but I hope they don’t. Kristen Campbell has had a great July in AAA but is in the outfield now. I don’t think they will risk bringing him up this year unless injuries compel them. If he keeps hitting like he has for July he will be in competition for a mlb roster spot in the spring.
Last thought is that yes Breslow’s trade record is better than it’s portrayed. Crochet trade was fair for both sides it was a big package of players who were mlb ready. I’m sure each team would be willing to do the trade again though the Red Sox might haggle a little harder. The trades with the Cards this off-season have been home runs. I don’t think anyone would expect Contreras to have a career year at 34 and pull an Aaron Judge impersonation for the hot streak. He should get a lot of credit with the Devers trade. Thats still often excoriated by the press because most of the players are no longer with the Sox but in isolation it was a great trade, Durbin ‘s struggles early in the season and Harrison looking great for the Brewers fed into it. The Chris Sale trade was terrible. Breslow’s record for deadline is really poor. Often the Sox have done very little or made a few tweaks on the margins but that was also true under Bloom. The Sox trade a lot of players who are either on the backend of 40 man or who will be rule 5 eligible. The worst trade he’s made at the deadline was the Dusty May trade.
I’m not sure the White Sox are kicking themselves, because the guy they got for Mead is Boston Smith, and he’s hit shockingly well in his first pro season.
As a C, Smith’s closest BB comp is Gene Tenace!
This is all good stuff. I wonder where this will leave Romy Gonzalez. Perhaps he and Mead will swap out at 2B and DH with Masa at DH against righties?
It also leaves SS as a bit of a black hole. Story will be back soon, but can he stay healthy for the rest of the season? And will he play better than he did at the beginning of this year? Monasterio has been very shaky at SS. I don’t want to rush prospects, but I really hope Arias gets the call soon.
I think this is what will happen, yeah. Mead at DH and Romy at 2B against lefties and then Mead at 2B and Yoshida at DH against righties. If Mead can’t field the position then they’ll put Durbin at 2B and Mead at 3B (with Romy and Yoshida platooning at DH). Some combination of Seigler, Mayer, Story, IKF, and Monasterio will cover SS and back up 2B and 3B. If Anthony manages to come back, and Duran starts hitting, then they’ll give less playing time to Yoshida and Romy.
Romy Gonzalez has hit pretty well in the majors but it has been quite a while since he was playing regularly and Mead has sort of taken on his role. He has options, it might make sense to let him figure out how to do things in the minors for a while.
I think that right now there is still a roll for him but a number of players will be fighting over the same roster spots. The Red Sox are typically extremely patient with hitters they believe in but you can only carry so many infielders.
The idea that Craig Breslow is playing with house money is wild. If the Red Sox stumble and end up below .500, there’s a good chance that he’s done.
It’s kind of sad that social media and Boston’s terrible collection of sportswriters and talking heads have whipped people into believing this. Breslow is not on the hot seat.
Not only has Breslow has done a good job so far, but he’s still in his third year as GM. Bloom, DD, etc. all got more time and for all of the good that both did, both also made more errors worthy of dismissal than Breslow.
Terrible collection of sportswriters? Absolutely incorrect.
Who do you like to read? For the most part it’s pandering idiots. They get clicks when the fans are mad about ownership, so they lean in.
Speier knows ball and McCaffrey isn’t bad, but both have doomer streaks too. Maybe there are one or two other exceptions, but most everyone else is a doomer but with little of value to add to the conversation.
I like Mike Lupica. I find him insightful.
I’ve read at least one of his books, but I didn’t know he wrote on the Sox. I’ll check him out!
I think he was just quoting George Costanza, not actually suggesting anyone read Mike Lupica 🙂
Ah. The only TV I watch is baseball lol
No, no, no…authors.
I strongly disagree, as anyone who writes with rose-tinted glasses when it comes to their hometown teams is usually suspect. Any sportswriter that doesn’t make an attempt to be objective about the team they’re writing about are the panderers in my opinion.
I think the writing by Shaughnessy, Gasper, Speier, and Finn is excellent for baseball while Ryan, Volin, Washburn and Dupont are great too for the other sports. I never understood the dislike for any of them, as it usually tends to be people of the “told ya so” ilk that are quick to blame people who put themselves out there and have an opinion.
Shanks is bit of a hack…but he’s a hell of a writer.
He definitely comes across as someone that is writing from home, as aside from conversations with Bob Cousy he’s not really in the clubhouse interviewing people, etc. But his style is amusing and, even if his opinions don’t always turn out to hold water, I think he deserves high praise for his interesting and entertaining columns.
Shaughnessy is such a pessimist that it’s hard to learn from him, and while he’s not the only one, he’s certainly one of the worst. If he was your only lens through which to view the world, you’d think that everything was a disaster all of the time when things are mostly fine. Incidentally, this is how a lot of the fanbase sees the team, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
If someone could wrestle the keyboard away from Dan Shaughnessy they would be doing the world a favor.
There’s a 0% chance he’s fired this offseason. We could lose 90 games and he would still be here, because Henry understands how intelligent he is. The opinions of the plebs, not to mention those of the Dan Shaughnessys of the world, rightly don’t matter to him
The tabloids and Carrabises are going to wreck Breslow unless Mead has a .900 OPS *and* Early sucks from here on out. F the tabloids.
This is an enjoyable trade at the moment that I might be hating in two weeks.
Man idk. Mead has never rated well defensively (1st percentile range by OAA this season, never above 25th percentile arm strength). Seems likely to be a 1B/DH type.
He has deserved his good offensive numbers this year, but that doesn’t mean it’s not just a heater. There’s just no replacement for track record, and he doesn’t have that. He hasn’t even been particularly impressive in AAA the past few years. This definitely could work out, but it’s a big risk by Breslow, and I agree that I would have liked to see him aim higher.
Early’s track record is only 110 ML innings himself.
Also supported by two strong years in the minors, though, making for three consecutive years of good performance.
His bad OAA is mostly because of 1B/3B, and they’re not going to DH a guy this young with this much control unless his defense is really tragic to the point where they have to.
He has a noodle arm, so it’s unsurprising that he’s graded out poorly at 3B. 2B doesn’t have the same requirements, and he’s been fine there in a small-ish sample over his career. Contreras is entrenched at 1B anyway while 2B has been a revolving door, so 2B is the obvious answer.
I’m wondering how Early has a track record and Mead doesn’t?
They are 24/25 years old and Mead had better prospect pedigree and has been much better this year.
IMO they both are in pretty same boats w similar success /age etc
I feel like we get one of these guys who has a big pop year after scuffling a fairly decent number of chances earlier in the career each season now. The last two that come to mind are Stowers and Vientos. Mead even continues the trend by having basically no value otherwise if he isnt ISOing .250
Eventually one of them will be for real but it’s a roulette I would not favor playing.
That said, a team giving up on a young pitcher who has performed in the majors already throws up warning flags for me.
It’s fun for fans of the teams if this ends up win-win, but what if it’s a lose-lose and they’re both lemons?
Vientos/Stowers had much bigger worry w whiffs and contract rate, so I don’t feel that’s a great comp.
Mead feels more Vargas this year, although they gotten their different ways (Vargas bat speed, Mead bat timing)
Huh? Mead is nothing like Stowers and Vientos. It’s like 55 grade quality of contact with 60 contact and a 50-55 approach. Those guys spiked career years by producing 70 quality of contact with 30 contact and a 30 (Vientos) or 50 (Stowers) approach.
Right, those guys were huge power/big whiff/bad approach(Vientos)
Mead is more good power/good contact/good approach. Hes more hit over power if anything
I dont really care how they get there the career lines all come out the same. .240 averages
All three of them have their career year boosted by selective platooning. Mead is a pulled air guy. Frankly I find that more suspicious than raw power types. Any regression in the power for all three and it’s back to useless. Also if we’re staying married to the prospect profiles Stowers’ power was rated lower than Mead’s on this site and Vientos was given 40 hit
Good article, but I don’t understand how this is a challenge trade. Both teams traded from an area of surplus to bolster an area of need; even if one team ends up getting more net value, the trade could well help both teams, and not just year, but going forward. A challenge trade would be trading guys in the same part of their career at same position, like the Bennett for Perales trade between these organizations in the offseason.
I’m also not really sure how this looks like a win for Washington on paper. If you buy stock in a company that suddenly blows up and you sell it for multiple times what you bought it for a short time later, that’s obviously a heck of an investment, but it also doesn’t mean that the person who bought it from you lost the trade. Provided the stock was fairly valued and not inflated by meme interest, or something, it was probably pretty fair. I see this trade similarly.
If Mead and Early are both within spitting distance of their 2026 versions going forward, this is probably a pretty fair trade and will help both teams.
And I should say that the trade calculators like Early more because the projections don’t expect Mead’s bat to continue forward like this. This is at least in part because they’re based on pre-season 3-year ZiPS projections. They’re naturally going to look worse for a guy who is breaking out than a guy who has been more steady.
Yeah if youre comparing this to stocks selling your winners is actually a bad play a lot of the time
Well I sure hope Mead is one of those winners. The point is just that if you buy something at a low price and later sell it at a higher price, that person who bought it at the higher price is not necessarily getting a bad deal. Things change in value. This is independent of the fact that it was a good investment to buy and sell the thing.
It’s funny, I always thought a challenge trade was swapping two players who, for whatever reason, were not currently doing well. But I’ve seen multiple people call this a challenge trade, so I guess I was wrong.
Regarding your stock analogy, even in those terms I think you can consider this a win for Washington. You bought low on a stock, it rose a good amount, but it’s still quite risky. Also, you have a bunch of stocks in the hitting industry and want to diversify your portfolio by adding some assets in the pitching industry.
Oh I totally agree that acquiring Mead for a lesser prospect (albeit one that is currently raking) and then selling Mead for Early was a coup for Washington. The nuance is that when evaluating just this trade, Washington having bought Mead low isn’t relevant to whether Early was a fair return. I took the article as saying that it is relevant.
Or a challenge trade is trading two players who are struggling.
I think that’s also fair, but of course that wouldn’t apply here either.
This is a great deal for Boston. They get someone who can hit at the top of their lineup for years, even if he’s defensively limited (though only OAA thinks he’s a bad defender; DRS and DRP think he’s fine) and might be better served on the bench against elite righties.
Early is a valuable asset, but unless they see something obvious to improve, the Nationals are getting a presently-hurt #4 starter, which isn’t enough to justify moving a hitter who’s performed as well as Mead has.
I like this deal for Boston too, but a #4? An average #4 starter last year would be someone like Dustin May, who threw 132 innings, with a 4.88 FIP and 0.8 WAR. If that is what you mean, you’re selling Early short. In his first 111 IP in the Majors, he’s got a 3.97 FIP and 1.8 WAR.
Yeah but Earlys 19 innings 2025 debut were probably not sticky, kind of like Tanner Houck debut. He had never showed that level of command in minors, So lumping them into his career data probably paints a rosier story
This year he was 4.3 xERA 4.6 FIP 0.7 fWAR in 90 innings and the ks/walks/homers/qoc all backed up
Using 5 WAR = 1, 4 WAR=2, etc…I’d say he’s pitched like a 3.
yep!
Just wanted to say that choosing that picture of Early for this article was diabolical.
Perhaps I am being premature in taking such a negative viewpoint on the deal. Just yesterday a second baseman who was never seen as anything more than an average fielder at best was inducted into the Hall of Fame. I do not expect Curtis Mead to match Jeff Kent but if he manages to hit 20+ home runs a year it would help me gain some confidence in Breslow’s trade deadline moves which couldn’t be any lower at this time.
If Mead hits 15-20 homers, hits .250 and can field a position every year, then that’s a solid return. If he just becomes another Bobby Dalbec then it’ll be a letdown. Time will tell.
In Boston he will hit 25 homers and many more doubles. His swing was made for Boston.
I think there’s a chance Mead can fake second base for a while. Not forever, but I think a year or two might be fine. I’m assuming Arias is going to take over shortstop in either 2027 or 2028, and by 2028 they will have found someone who can play second base better than Mead and can hit well enough to play everyday. Maybe that’s Godbout, maybe it’s a free agent.
And I know we talked about this yesterday, but if he can’t fake second base for more than about 400 innings next year then I think that is okay since the Red Sox’s DH situation has been so bad. A Seigler / Monasterio platoon would not be the worst thing if Mead is hitting at a 120 wRC+ or better because that would move Yoshida back into being a 5th outfielder.
The sox are so desperate for long term RH power, that even if Mead is “only” a DH w some versility, that is fine. Provided, of course, he continues to mash.
If hes like a 110 wRC+ bat, then thats kind of gross. But a 120 wRC+ DH that can fake 3B/2B/1B for 50 or so games, is totally fine.
Uggghh, I do not like this trade for the Sox. I’m not convinced that this is who Mead is. Yes, the numbers this year have been great and the peripherals generally support it but we can’t just ignore the previous three years. He struggled mightily in the majors and was more good than great in the minors. Maybe the Nationals unlocked something but I think regression is coming. That would be fine if he offered any value outside of the bat. If he struggles to hit at all, he’s pretty much unplayable. Steamer projects him for a 108 wRC+. That’s OK, but if he’s just a 1B/DH, that’s more bench bat material than everyday starter. Case in point, Tanaka is projected for a 109 wRC+ by Steamer.
Early on the other hand has significantly more upside. I feel like the median outcome for him is a #3 starter. And he’s a year younger and has an additional year of control. If we look back at this trade 4 years from now, I will be shocked if the National’s didn’t win it by a wide margin.
And by Tanaka, I mean Yoshida.
The previous three years are kind of irrelevant, given almost 40% of his career playing time has come this year. He improved his approach and contact rate this year. He’s not like a Dalbec spiking a career year despite an atrocious plate approach or a low contact rate. There isn’t anything he doesn’t do well at the plate.
The 488 plate appearances that you don’t like are kind of irrelevant while the 327 plate appearances you do like are highly relevant indeed. Sure …
Correct, recent plate appearances with measured improvement in skills are much more important than more distant plate appearances
I will. I watched every at bat Mead had this season and his is legit for sure. he will slug .600 in Boston at some point.
I want to believe
As a Red Sox fan and an Early supporter, my initial reaction to this trade was one of shock and disappointment. I salivated over a rotation that I thought would include both Tolle and Early in it for at least the next 5 years or so. I’ve watched Early in the minors and majors, and he’s always impressed the hell outta me how he misses bats without relying on high velo. He also seems to have a knack for getting out of jams when it matters most. He’s coughing up homers at a rough rate this year though, and the Ks are down, but jeez Louise this kid just plain knows how to pitch. I really like his chances to have a solid MLB career.
However, after learning more about Curtis Mead and taking a macro observation of the current and future status of the Sox infield, the deal makes sense to me and I think over time, it will be viewed as a win for Breslow. Mead is approaching age 26, bit of a late bloomer, but he was a 2-sport athlete as a teenage Aussie football prospect whose dad played in the inaugural Australian Baseball League and way before that his grandfather learned baseball from U.S. WWII troops and became enchanted with the game. Baseball is in Mead’s DNA! There’s something appealing about that.
Mead’s pull-side pop could uncork greatness at Fenway similar to how Contreras has blossomed there. Or maybe that’s what I hope. I dunno. But when I look under the hood, I like what I see. Lots of quality contact, improved walk rate, and holy tanks did Mead impress when he took that high Schlittler fastball deep recently! That swing announced his talent quite loudly. Breslow’s plan is for Mead to play 2B and Durbin to stay at 3B. At least for now (Durbin has been doing infield practice at 2B in recent days). Durbin’s glove has been nothing short of stellar at 3B, and Mead has over 300+ innings at 2B in his career and didn’t embarrass himself out there, so I agree with Breslow’s plan.
I am glad it’s a plan, or more of one than last year
Great breakdown of why there is so much to like about Early!
There are some weird cracks through the rest of this piece, however:
-Framing Early as if he should be seen as a “top 40” overall prospect last offseason, when by consensus he was more “top 60”
-Mead has not “slid down the defensive spectrum”. He was always seen as a fringe-fielding guy with a weak arm and some versatility to offset lack of positive tools anywhere, but at least that meant his 3B was as, err, passable as his 1B and maybe even his 2B. Nothing much has changed with that part of his profile
-Correction: Mead was godawful *over parts* of three seasons, not “for three seasons”. Those partial seasons amounted to one full season of games, which is how they should obviously be treated
-Durbin hasn’t been showing “signs of life”; that isn’t at all what that phrase means. What he’s done is struggle very badly with the bat for two months while still playing valuable defense, and then he’s been a very good bat and terrific overall. We’re talking 164 PAs of a .479 OPS (and a .190 BABIP) followed by 193 PAs of an .877 OPS (and a normal .303 BABIP), which, if I can do math right, means a good bit more than half his season now has been the good (and more as expected bat)
-I think most Red Sox fans would agree that the demand with the franchise is not “championship or cars get keyed” but rather a return to regular/annual contention, championship or not
-Durbin has been worth 5.2 bWAR and 4.1 fWAR over 233 MLB games, with a solid leap forward in defensive value this year. That’s hardly the look of a clear “sell high” player, especially if his rebound with the bat after the slow start ends up being the more true indicator of his offense going forward. Perhaps he’ll be up and down and in the end we will see he was a sell high, but as of now it’s just as likely that he was simply “sold early” and could be Milwaukee’s hitter version of, well, Early, if the former Boston pitcher goes that route
None of these is a big deal alone, but when an article has this many quiet thumbs on one side of the scale…seems we’re trying to make the conclusion appear a bit more obvious than it really is?
This was a great article…some articles overuse statistics, bringing in too much to where you kind of lose the forest for the trees. Used a lot of information from other trades and did an excellent job of bringing in context. OK, it helps that I am a Brewer fan and their trade with Boston was (favorably) brought up too…
“They’re running a $200 million payroll in a market where you win championships or your car gets keyed”
THIS is the writing that brings me to fangraphs.
I totally missed that line lol
I really think Mead is worth far more than a 4th starter. Nationals could easily have lost this trade long term. Meade carried this team in every game Wood and Abrams struggled. Wood and Abrams tend to destroy the same guys giving us some really high scoring games. But, some games they both don’t do much. Mead hits or walks in almost every game. I am very worried our off-the-charts offense will lose a few steps without him. Plus, Early is not going to pitch for weeks. This season is the season to win! Early might go every 5 days next year, but if we don’t win WC3 this season, Mead was not worth a 4th starter. Plus, with him having elbow problems he is just another medical expense like about a dozen guys in our system, until he isn’t.
Mead would not have broken his wrist if we kept him. But I guess we won that trade for now.
Don’t you think it’s a little Early for Mead?
It was right there….
Wrist fracture?!?!? Even if he comes back, will he still have his mojo?!
Mead’s like a boomerang. He always bounces back
He has a very good eye. You don’t lose that.
In season it’s highly unlikely, wrist injuries tend to suppress batters for an extended period of time.
Well that worked out well