If you’re a baseball fan, the end of July means one thing: Trades. That’s right, we’re less than a week away from this year’s deadline, which is set for Monday at 6 p.m. ET, and there’s plenty of action still to unfold. Even a real snoozer of a deadline tends to have at least a few big deals, and so far, the only real needle mover swap made was the fascinating challenge trade that sent Connelly Early from the Red Sox to the Nationals for Curtis Mead.

While we don’t know precisely what will actually happen, since there are no such things as oracles, we have an idea that something will occur, making the trade deadline the ideal time for wish-casting and imagineering. As I do every year, I whip up some trade scenarios that are plausible and productive. We usually get fun additional trade discussion in the comments, so make sure to check those out and maybe even add your own. I’d also suggest letting me know when I give up too much or too little in a trade. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s daughter’s first MLB game, and Ben briefly interviews the four-year-old Sloan about her spectator experience. Then they discuss the MVP races (with an emphasis on Pete Crow-Armstrong’s status as the NL frontrunner over Shohei Ohtani), the Nationals and Red Sox swapping Curtis Mead and Connelly Early, a Kerry Wood trick pitch, John Kruk’s Sunday Night Baseball attire, teams’ tendency to covet Tarik Skubal vs. their reluctance to trade top prospects for rental players, and the biggest pre-deadline positional strengths for non-contenders and positional weaknesses for contenders.

Audio intro: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Dodgers vs. Mets game
Link to “if baseball were different” wiki
Link to Goodnight Baseball
Link to Decoy Saves Opening Day
Link to Moana box office
Link to Maui’s nipples article 1
Link to Maui’s nipples article 2
Link to Disney nipples history
Link to Mario nipples article
Link to FG WAR leaderboard
Link to B-Ref WAR leaderboard
Link to Roberts on MVP Ohtani
Link to Ohtani pen session news
Link to top baserunners
Link to Paine on PCA
Link to Witt injury article
Link to MLBTR on the Nats-Sox trade
Link to FG on the Nats-Sox trade
Link to Red Sox HR leaders
Link to Breslow quote
Link to Friedman quote
Link to winner’s curse wiki
Link to team SP projections
Link to Mead injury article
Link to Wood Reddit post
Link to Wood tweet
Link to “what kind of move” tweet
Link to Meg’s Kruk post
Link to article on Kruk broadcast
Link to Sheehan on rentals
Link to Cooper on traded prospects
Link to Paine on deadline deals
Link to Dan S. on deadline importance
Link to irresistible force paradox
Link to Juggernaut meme
Link to replacement-level killers series
Link to FG playoff odds
Link to projected positional WAR
Link to Ben’s color-coded spreadsheet

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With the second half of the season well underway, the trade deadline is almost upon us. This week is a critical stretch for a number of teams sitting on the fence between buying and selling. A nice little winning streak could push them to act a little more aggressively on the trade market, while a bout of losing could be decisive enough to add another seller to the mix.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

News out of the Women’s Pro Baseball League has been sparse ever since the league’s draft back in November, but with the inaugural season set to start on August 1, the league recently announced team names and confirmed who will manage each of the four squads that will take the field this year.

I’ll get to a full breakdown of the managerial hires shortly, but first, a quick refresher on the WPBL’s plan for its first season. Teams representing San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston will play all of this year’s games at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois, then take up residence in their home cities next year. Currently, all four teams are owned and operated by the WPBL itself, though that may change in the future. The league will play a six-week, 30-game regular season (15 games per team), followed by a two-week postseason during which each team will play a three-game series in the semifinal round, with winners advancing to a five-game championship series.

This is where I would like to tell you how to watch the games, but that information is nowhere to be found on the league’s website. As a result, fans have taken to the comment section of the league’s official Instagram account to try and get some answers, but all the replies from the account’s admin simply say details will be shared soon. I reached out to the league’s PR contact over the weekend, but have yet to hear back; we will update this piece if I do. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re one week away from the August 3 trade deadline, and yet there’s still very little clarity for a handful of teams. The American League is a jumbled mess, and National League teams like the Nationals and Padres are straddling the buy/sell line, too. But one thing is for sure: The Angels will be sellers. What’s not yet settled is the extent to which they’ll sell.

With interim general manager John Mozeliak running the show after the ouster of Perry Minasian, the Angels suddenly have their most decorated baseball ops head since Bill Stoneman, the architect of the 2002 World Series champions, who briefly returned to handle the 2015 trade deadline. That came after a power struggle with manager Mike Scioscia led to Jerry Dipoto’s departure, and Stoneman went through with a handful of depth moves, bringing in post-prime David DeJesus, David Murphy, and Shane Victorino to bolster a club that was 55-47 at the July 31 deadline. Those Angels were just two games out of first place and had a three-in-four chance at making the playoffs. They finished 30-30, fading to third place and out of the playoff picture with an overall record of 85-77. They haven’t had a winning season since then, and they haven’t made the playoffs since the year before, when they won 98 games but were swept by the Royals in the ALDS. It’s been a miserable stretch for the Halos, one that will continue through the remainder of the season. As of Monday morning, our Playoff Odds projected the Angels to finish with their second-worst record in the last 30 years.

Still, these woes don’t have to drag on in perpetuity. The Angels have options aplenty as the trade deadline nears to try and change the direction of their wayward organization. Here are three paths they could take: Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 23
Today marks my first time leaving the house for more than an hour or two since Derek Jr. was born. I’ve got band practice, and then the band is going out to a bar to watch the game. I don’t tell anyone, but I’m so out of the loop these days that I have no idea what game everyone is talking about. The timing couldn’t be worse, and that turns out to be the theme of the evening.

I feed Derek Jr. and put her down for a nap right before I head out, but she wakes up with horrible stomach trouble as soon as I leave. Band practice is two hours long, and my wife spends the entire time soothing Derek Jr. Band practice is a delight, as always. It’s extraordinarily loose. I haven’t touched a guitar in months, but nobody else has been practicing either, and it’s not like we need to be ready for a show or anything, so nobody minds much when a song goes off the rails. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Three interviews — two with pitchers, another with a hitter — were published here at FanGraphs over the past week. All were the result of lengthy conversations, and in each case, worthwhile snippets landed on the cutting-room floor. This week’s column will lead with those leftovers, which come courtesy of Drew Rasmussen, Cole Sulser, and Pete Alonso.

We’ll start with Rasmussen, who addressed his ability to command his offerings, particularly his four-seam/two-seam/cutter combination.

“Command is kind of a sliding scale,” said the Tampa Bay Rays right-hander, whose 4.3% walked rate ranks lowest among qualified hurlers. “Some days it’s really good and some days it’s not so good. The job is to figure out what you have as quickly as possible. On days when my command is really good… I would say that is situation-driven. If I need a ball on the ground, I can throw it with a little more tail and a little less carry. If I’m just trying to steal strike one, maybe I don’t want the [movement] profile to be as big; that way it has a better chance of staying in the zone.

“Conversely, on days that I’m not overly confident with my command, I simplify to the absolute max,” he continued. “We’re going to try to just throw the same one over and over again. Then, hopefully at some point over the course of the outing, something clicks and I start to get more and more confident, and comfortable, with the command I have that day.” Read the rest of this entry »