James Paxton had a pretty bad June. His season got off to a wonderful start, but then he landed on the DL, and shortly after his return, the calendar flipped and pitching was hard again. Paxton in June ran a 7+ ERA, and opponents blasted him to the tune of a .395 wOBA. Something appeared to be seriously wrong, but Paxton blamed his mechanics, and not his health. He found that he had some straightening out to do.

For me, one of the fundamental markers of greatness is the ability to adjust on the fly. It’s one thing to play well, but it’s quite another to play well, then struggle, then get back to playing well again. We’ve recently seen this with, say, Rich Hill. And, of course, we’ve seen this with Paxton. Paxton started six games in July, and he won each of them. He issued a total of just six walks, and he trimmed that .395 June wOBA almost literally in half. Paxton has gotten himself back on track, and I don’t know what more evidence people might need. James Paxton is extremely good. He is sufficiently proven.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Salina, skateboarding, and Albert Pujols, then break down all the big (and modest) trade-deadline deals and non-deals, paying particular attention to the Dodgers, the Yankees, and the competitive landscape with two months remaining in the regular season.

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Those of us alive and aware today might end up being the last people on Earth to have seen the Dodgers lose a baseball game. Somehow, they’ve lost Clayton Kershaw and played even better, and they have a chance to set the all-time record for wins in a season. They’re playing so well it’s as if they don’t have a flaw, and while every team looks flawless during a winning streak, it’s obvious the Dodgers have officially become a juggernaut. They’ve been building toward this, and I don’t know when it’s going to stop.

Like any good dominant baseball team, the Dodgers have been excellent across the board. I’ll grant they look below-average by our baserunning metric, but the offense has been tremendous, and the defense has been strong. Turn to the pitching staff, and the Dodgers rank first by WAR. Look at things differently, and they still rank first by RA9-WAR. The Dodgers are more than just great — they could become an *all-time* great, which might feel more remarkable if the same couldn’t have just been said of the 2016 Cubs.

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In my previous articles in this series, I have looked at trends in free-agent spending over time, and specifically I have reviewed more recent data to see if market inefficiencies that I discovered in earlier work have disappeared over time. In this piece, I will review the findings on pitchers in my 2013 Hardball Times Annual article. In that piece, I discovered that teams tended to overvalue old-school statistics that did not translate to actual value. This included wins for starting pitchers and saves for relief pitchers. I also noticed that free-agent pitchers with strong peripheral statistics (e.g. those with good FIPs, usually) were often undercompensated, suggesting teams did not all realize the importance of peripheral statistics in projecting future performance. Much of this seems to have been corrected by the market over the years, although a handful of players have created some noise.
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Lots of trades happen in the run up to the non-waiver trade deadline. It can be hard to keep track of everything that’s gone down, so we’re here to help. Below you’ll find a rundown of all the #content that we’ve published in accordance with trades that have actually happened. They’re in chronological order as best as I can tell, and cover trades that were made earlier in the month too, because those are still important. We’ll start with the two prospect rankings from Chris and Eric, which were just published earlier today.

Prospect Rankings

• Ranking the Prospects Traded During Deadline Season, by Eric Longenhagen
• Projecting All of the Prospects Traded at the Deadline, by Chris Mitchell

Now on to the individual trades. Note that the date listed is the date the trade was consummated, not necessarily the date each article listed was published.

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In the table below, you’ll find a treasure trove of information pertaining to the prospects who changed hands this trade deadline. There were 67 of them in all. Since there was a flurry of early trade activity this year, I’m using a liberal definition of “trade deadline” that considers all trades since the July 13th Jose Quintana deal. For reference, I performed a similar exercise last year. Read the rest of this entry »

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Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
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