The Tampa Bay Rays are in the thick of a playoff hunt. The Miami Marlins are not. Both teams behaved accordingly today, with the Rays sending Ryne Stanek and Jesús Sánchez to the Marlins in exchange for Nick Anderson and Trevor Richards. This trade, as many trades do, seems to favor the Rays, though all four players changing sides are interesting in one way or another. I wouldn’t fault you for thinking the Marlins might come out ahead in the end.

To my eyes, the gem of the trade is Nick Anderson. An out-of-nowhere success this season, Anderson is the kind of high-octane pitcher modern bullpens covet. He also won’t reach free agency until 2025, which means that he’s doubly attractive to the cost-conscious Rays. A rate monster, he boasts an eye-popping 37.1% strikeout rate, ninth-best among relievers this season, courtesy of a spinny four-seam fastball and devastating breaking ball.

While his results have been inconsistent this year, it’s not for lack of underlying numbers. He surrenders hard contact, with a 6th-percentile exit velocity allowed and 4th-percentile hard contact rate, but makes up for it with the aforementioned heaps and bales of strikeouts. It’s too early in his career to know how much of a problem the contact will be, but if his underlying talent there is close to league average, he’s immediately one of the best relievers in baseball.

Want a best-case comparison for Anderson? Think of Ken Giles. His fastball doesn’t boast quite the same top end as Giles, but they’re both four-seam/breaking ball pitchers who mix the two pitches almost equally and post ludicrous swinging strike rates. Anderson is at 17.4% for the year, while Giles is at 17.1% over his career. Giles has also had intermittent struggles with hard contact, though he seems to have worked through them en route to a 1.6 FIP this year. Anderson’s upside might not be quite that high, but his stuff is tremendous. Read the rest of this entry »

Having already bolstered their bench with super-utilityman Tony Kemp, the Cubs have added a more substantial bat in the form of right fielder Nicholas Castellanos, a pending free agent who has spent his entire career with the Tigers. The 27-year-old righty swinger heads from the Motor City to the Windy City in exchange for a pair of right-handed pitching prospects.

Cubs get:

OF Nicholas Castellanos

Tigers get:

RHP Alex Lange
RHP Paul Richan

A supplemental first-round pick in the 2010 draft out of a Florida high school, Castellanos spent the bulk of his first four full major league seasons (2014-17) playing third base — and badly at that (-25.8 UZR, -64 DRS). During that time, he hit for a modest 104 wRC+ in 2,304 plate appearances, good for just 4.8 WAR. The bulk of that value arrived in the last two of those years, as he began to hit for more power and trimmed his strikeout rate. He bopped a career-high 26 homers in 2017, the same year that he took up playing right field in September, two months after J.D. Martinez was traded to the Diamondbacks. Though he hit only 23 homers last year, he set across-the-board career highs in all three slash stats (.298/.354/.500) as well as wRC+ (130) and WAR (3.0).

Castellanos has been unable to match that performance this year, hitting .273/.328/.462 for a 106 wRC+ with just 11 homers in 439 PA. His average exit velocity has dropped from 89.6 mph to 88.3, and his xwOBA, too, from .377 to .335. He has chased pitches out of the zone like never before (a career-high 41.2% O-Swing%), and while he continues to crush fastballs (as Devan Fink noted last week), he has been vulnerable to changeups outside the zone and has experienced a spike in popups on such pitches; where he hit for a career-best 167 wRC+ against changeups last year, he’s back down to 117 this year, though he has cut his swinging strike rate on them by more than half (from 21.8% to 10.2%). He has struggled against sliders, whiffing on them 22.6% of the time, and hitting for just a 74 wRC+ against them. Pitchers have noticed; changeups and sliders have accounted for 36.3% of the pitches he’s seen, up from about 28-32% from 2016-18. Read the rest of this entry »

Just moments before trading away Zack Greinke in the blockbuster move of deadline day, the Arizona Diamondbacks made an addition to their rotation, acquiring Mike Leake from the Seattle Mariners. It is the second time Leake has been traded since he signed a five-year, $80-million contract with the St. Louis Cardinals before the 2016 season, and the third time overall that he has been traded in-season. According to arizonasports.com’s John Gambadoro, the D-Backs will be responsible for just $6 million of the roughly $20 million still owed to Leake on his contract. The Mariners received 22-year-old infielder Jose Caballero in the deal.

Leake, 31, has been good for about league-average production and a lot of innings eaten throughout his career, and the same remains true for his 2019 season. With a 4.40 ERA in 22 starts, his ERA- sits at 101, which just so happens to line up perfectly with his career mark. His FIP, however, has jumped to 4.74, thanks to a career-worst HR/9 mark of 1.71.

The Leake deal was one of several the Diamondbacks made on Wednesday, though it was the only one that involved the organization actually taking on an established big leaguer. Greinke — along with $24 million of the $77 million owed to him on his contract — was sent to Houston in exchange for a mighty haul of prospects just before 4 p.m. On a much smaller scale, Arizona also traded backup catcher John Ryan Murphy to the Atlanta Braves, and in a rare flip of notable prospects, sent shortstop Jazz Chisholm — ranked the D-backs’ No. 1 prospect by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel — to the Miami Marlins for right-handed pitching prospect Zac Gallen. Arizona was heavily rumored to be shopping left-handed starter Robbie Ray throughout the week, but no deal ever came to fruition. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers have acquired Jedd Gyorko from the Cardinals, adding a versatile player who can handle any position on the infield in a pinch to their mix of positionally-flexible infielders. He’s still on the IL at the moment with a wrist injury he sustained in early June, though he was expected to begin a rehab assignment today before the Cardinals traded him. Given his placement on the 60-day IL, he’ll be eligible to return to the majors in seven days, though his rehab assignment will likely last longer than that. In exchange for Gyorko, a smattering of cash to cover his contract, and international bonus money, the Cardinals received Tony Cingrani and Jeffry Abreu from the Dodgers.

If he’s healthy, Gyorko is the embodiment of the way the Dodgers build their roster. He’s an average-to-plus defender at second and third base, with sneaky range and steady hands. He’s also manned first for the Cardinals at times, and has performed adequately there. Need him to line up in the outfield? Okay, fine, he can’t do that — he’s only played two innings of left field in his professional career. Still, he’s a very Dodgers infielder, capable of standing wherever necessary and platooning at second base with Max Muncy.

Why platooning? Gyorko is a fearsome hitter against left-handers. He’s compiled a career .349 wOBA against lefties over 766 career PA, good for a 122 wRC+. He’s far less potent against righties — his .237/.298/.410 line works out to a .307 wOBA and 94 wRC+. The Dodgers as a team stack up poorly against lefties — Joc Pederson, Max Muncy, Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager, and Alex Verdugo are all left-handed, and all are starter-level talents.

The main right-handed bats the team uses to spell the starters are all injured. David Freese, Enrique Hernández, and Chris Taylor are all on the IL. Freese, in particular, is the kind of player Gyorko can emulate. He crushes lefties while playing a passable corner infield. His hamstring strain makes his return uncertain. Taylor isn’t exactly the kind of player Gyorko is, but with him on the shelf, the team can’t leave Seager in and slide Taylor to second against lefties, so Gyorko helps there too. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds’ ongoing quest to trade away every player whose rights they do not control past 2019 continued Wednesday as Cincinnati sent Scooter Gennett, 29, to the Giants for cash considerations. The Giants, for their part, get a second baseman who has lost most of 2019 to a groin injury but has been one of the better second basemen in the National League since 2017, at least while healthy.

The immediate causus tradeus here is the nexus between Joe Panik’s poor performance for the Giants to date (his .231/.305/.312 triple-slash gives him a -0.3 WAR that’s better only than Starlin Castro among NL qualifiers at any position) and San Francisco’s aspirations for the future. The division is lost to the Dodgers, of course, but San Francisco clearly thinks they still have a shot at the Wild Card (we agree, giving them a 5.4% chance). Acquiring Gennett nods towards that chance while still not putting any real money or commitment on the line.

That’s because Gennett has been quite simply terrible when on the field in 2019. His contact rate is down five points, his strikeout rate is up nearly 10, and he has yet to hit a home run in 2019 after slugging 50 between the previous two seasons. That underperformance is almost entirely ascribable to the groin injury, to be sure, and that’s probably nothing that an offseason of rest and relaxation couldn’t fix, but the fact is the Giants have acquired Gennett for 2019 and he has been extremely bad so far this year. For San Francisco, then, there might still be time for Panik. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers came within one win of a trip to the World Series last year thanks in part to their stellar bullpen. The unit hasn’t been nearly so dominant this year, but with the team again battling for a playoff spot — at 56-52, they entered Wednesday in third place in the NL Central (two games out of first), and fourth in the Wild Card race (one game behind the Cubs and Phillies, who are tied for the second spot) — they’ve bulked up their relief corps by taking a flyer on a pair of Giants, Drew Pomeranz and Ray Black, albeit at the cost of middle infield prospect Mauricio Dubon.

Brewers get:

LHP Drew Pomeranz
RHP Ray Black

Giants get:

SS Mauricio Dubon

Back in 2010, the 6-foot-6, 240-pound Pomeranz was the fifth overall pick by the Indians. A variety of injuries, most notably recurrent biceps tendinitis, has dogged a nine-year major league career as he’s worn the threads (and sometimes frayed the nerves) of the Rockies, A’s, Padres, and Red Sox as well as the Giants. He enjoyed an impressive two-year run of success as a starter in 2016-17, making the NL All-Star team as a Padre in the former year before being dealt to the Red Sox (for righty Anderson Espinoza) just two days later, then serving as the second-best starter on Boston’s 2017 AL East champion squad. During that stretch, Pomeranz pitched to a 3.32 ERA and 3.82 FIP in 334.1 innings, with a 25.0% strikeout rate and 5.9 WAR.

Pomeranz has been unable to replicate that success as a starter, however, in part because he lost a couple ticks of velocity last year while missing time due to both a flexor mass strain and biceps tendinitis; in 26 appearances (11 starts) totaling 74 innings, he was torched for a 6.08 ERA and 5.43 FIP. After signing with the Giants as a free agent in January, the 30-year-old southpaw pitched acceptably in April but subsequently delivered diminishing returns; after carrying a 6.10 ERA and 5.58 FIP through the All-Star break, he was moved to the bullpen earlier this month. He’s made just four appearances there, totaling 5.1 innings, but in that time, he’s opened some eyes by allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out eight of the 16 batters he’s faced. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tigers are rebuilding as the Braves have tried to build a bullpen on the fly all season long. The match between the two teams is an easy one to make, and Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Tigers are close to trading away closer Shane Greene to the Braves. Robert Murray has added the return for the Tigers. Here’s the deal:
Braves Receive:

• RHP Shane Greene

Tigers Receive:

• LHP Joey Wentz
• OF Travis Demeritte

A season ago, Greene racked up 32 saves for the Tigers, but he generally wasn’t a very good reliever. His ground-ball rate at 40% was lower than in previous seasons, and too many fly balls meant too many homers and a 4.61 FIP and an ERA over 5. This season, Greene was able to get back to his ground-balling ways with a sinker/cutter/slider arsenal, and he’s been a pretty good pitcher as a result. Looking at Greene’s ERA might lead one to believe he is a great pitcher, but the underlying numbers don’t completely support that greatness.

Greene has a 1.18 ERA, which is certainly really good. Only Kirby Yates‘ 1.02 mark bests Greene among relievers this season. Expecting Greene to continue to post a 1.18 ERA is folly. He has struck out 29% of batters, which is good, while walking 8% of batters, which is roughly average. His ground-ball rate on the season is 54%, and that’s going to keep the ball in the park and limit damage, but those things alone aren’t enough to take a 3.80 FIP, which is about 20% better than average in these heightened run environments, and move it to a 1.18 ERA.

Greene’s BABIP is .181 and his left-on-base rate is 85%, and neither number is sustainable going forward. He’s also given up six runs on the season which weren’t earned, more than double his total of five earned runs. This isn’t to say Greene isn’t good, but it is enough to say Greene isn’t great. Over at Statcast, his xwOBA is a solid .282, but his actual wOBA is about 60 points lower. Greene is a solid addition to the Braves pen, and 15 years ago, the ERA and saves might have netted the Tigers a top-50 prospect. Today, Greene is another solid reliever among many available at the trade deadline. The Braves are likely to pay a premium for that need, but their top prospects were always going to be off limits. Read the rest of this entry »