On August 24, 2013, the most popular movie at the box office was Iron Man 3. The troublesome pop song Blurred Lines was all over our radios. The Boston Red Sox had the best record in the American League, and the Atlanta Professional Baseball Club led the National League. Were we ever so young?

Also on that date, Wade Davis had a start against the Washington Nationals. He ended up losing the game, giving up seven earned runs in six innings. He struck out four and gave up a home run. Remember that last part for a minute.

Wade Davis’ start on August 24, 2013 was, as of this writing, the last start he’d ever have. This was not insignificant, as he was the other half of the James Shields trade — a trade that saw a somewhat-significant package of prospects being sent to Tampa Bay. The Royals thought they were getting a top-notch starter and another with some potential. Through most of 2013, they got a top-notch starter and whatever Wade Davis was. Shields would go on to have two productive seasons for Kansas City, as Davis continued to struggle in the starter’s role and be moved to the bullpen.

A “demotion” to the bullpen is rarely a high point for a pitcher, but for Davis, it could not have been more advantageous. After being sent to the pen, Davis would go on to dominate in the relief role (more on that later). As it happens, August 24, 2013 was a positive turning point for Davis. It would also be the beginning of an impressive — if not quirky — streak. August 24, 2013 was the last time Davis would give up a home run for almost two years.

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This breakdown starts with the Scott Kazmir deal on July 23, but there weren’t any trades from the 16th to the 23rd, so this covers the whole second half of the month, trade-wise, up until now. I count 25 total trades with prospects involved in that span that add together to have 58 prospects on the move. Check out the preseason Top 200 List for more details, but I’ve added the range that each Future Value (FV) group fell in last year’s Top 200 to give you an idea of where they will fall in this winter’s list. Also see the preseason team-specific lists to see where the lower-rated prospects may fall within their new organization.

40 FV is the lowest grade that shows up on these numbered team lists, with 35+ and 35 FV prospects mentioned in the “Others of Note” section, so I’ll give blurbs for the 40 FV or better prospects here. I’ve also linked to the post-trade prospect breakdown for the trades I was able to analyze individually, so click there for more information. Alternately, click on the player’s name to see his player page with all his prior articles listed if I didn’t write up his trade.

I opted to not numerically rank these players now, but I will once I’ve made the dozens and dozens of calls necessary this fall and winter to have that level of precision with this many players. Look for the individual team lists to start rolling out in the next month, with the 2016 Top 200 list coming in early 2016. Lastly, the players are not ranked within their tiers, so these aren’t clues for where they will fall on the Top 200.

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Ben and Sam banter about Dave Stewart’s violation of front-office unwritten rules and a bad call on Bryce Harper, then discuss the extra-active deadline, the Padres’ inactivity, and the latest top-prospect promotions.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Washington at New York NL | 20:08 ET
Zimmermann (128.2 IP, 104 xFIP-) vs. Syndergaard (86.2 IP, 80 xFIP-)
As he’s done in each of the two previous editions of this same daily exercise, what the author has done in this edition of it is to alter indiscriminately the NERD score of a game between playoff-contending division rivals to better reflect the consequences of that game’s result — and the opportunity for drama facilitated by those consequences. The division rivals in question are Washington and New York’s National League club, and I’ve taken the liberty of increasing the haphazardly derived score of their game from 7 to 8, thus creating a tie between that particular encounter and the one scheduled between the Angels and Dodgers (itself a promising matchup).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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My first piece for FanGraphs was an interview with Felix Hernandez. That was in May 2011, when Hernandez was 25 years old and coming off a Cy Young season. Four-plus years later, I’m still here and King Felix is better than ever.

Earlier this summer, I asked the Seattle Mariners ace to compare then to now.

“I’m a little different,” Hernandez told me. “I don’t throw as hard anymore. I was 95-96 (mph) back in 2011, and I’m 91-93 now. But I’m a little smarter. I try to throw on the corners and down in the strike zone, and I mix with my breaking balls.”

I reminded Hernandez that he called himself smart in our earlier interview. In retrospect, was that accurate? Read the rest of this entry »

This was a crazy trade deadline. Dozens and dozens of players changed teams, including several stars who were dealt in the final days. I did the best I could to keep up with my KATOH posts for all of the trades, but still let a few smaller deals fell through the cracks.

In this post, I catch up on the guys I missed. There are no blue-chip prospects here, but a few of the players listed below have decent shots of being big-league regulars in the near future. I put together brief write ups on the more notable prospects from these deals, and then merely listed the guys who are unlikely to ever be impact major leaguers. (Note: WAR figures denote WAR through age-28 season.)

Zach Davies, Milwaukee Brewers, 5.8 WAR

Zach Davies has spent the 2015 season in Triple-A, where he’s pitched to an excellent 2.84 ERA and a similarly excellent 3.10 FIP. He doesn’t throw particularly hard, but he’s still managed to post average-ish strikeout and walk numbers in Triple-A, which is no small feat coming from a 22-year-old. Furthermore, he’s managed to induce plenty of ground balls (54% ground-ball rate according to MLBfarm), which helps explain how he’s allowed just four homers in over 100 innings on the year.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Washington at New York NL | 19:10 ET
Ross (32.2 IP, 67 xFIP-) vs. deGrom (127.1 IP, 79 xFIP-)
Were the author better at anything, he would integrate into the haphazardly derived NERD algorithm some manner of variable to account for those games in which division rivals — both possessing some non-negligible chance of winning that same division — face each other. I am not better at anything, however, and so what I’ve done instead is to alter indiscriminately the NERD score for this Washington and New York rencontre. Unaltered, it receives a score of 8 — or actually just one point fewer than the Angels-Dodgers game. For those readers, meanwhile, who count themselves among the nerd orthodoxy and are prepared to abide by whatever game the haphazardly derived algorithm dictates, then observing a couple hours of Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout oughtn’t prove very difficult.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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During the winter meetings this past December, we heard about Dan Haren’s fierce desire to stay in Los Angeles as a member of the Dodgers, with the right-hander even going so far as to say he would retire if he were traded. Dodgers’ GM Andrew Friedman called Haren’s bluff, shipping him to Miami with Dee Gordon in what turned out to be a chain of events resulting in the Dodgers nabbing Howie Kendrick from the Angels. With this trade deadline, there was no such threat of retirement from Haren: he’s now moving to Chicago to add depth to the Cubs’ rotation.

Though the Cubs kicked the tires on some of the better pitching help on the trading block, there was never really the sense that they needed to pull that particular trigger, as their rotation currently sits in the top five in baseball for ERA, FIP, and xFIP. With a starting four of Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, and Kyle Hendricks — each of whom have made at least 20 starts this season while contributing at least 2.0 WAR — the Haren deal represents a depth move to fill innings in that fifth starting slot down the stretch. Given Haren’s impending free agency this winter, the move is also purely about 2015.

Haren should be an upgrade 0ver the Cubs’ current weak options for their fifth starting spot. Even though he’s dealt with a continued velocity decline (his average fastball velocity has fallen 4 MPH since 2011, down to 86 MPH this season), he’s found a way to make it work, relying on his curveball and cutter more to post numbers that, on the surface, look good (namely a 3.42 ERA in 2015).

The ominous news comes when we dig a little deeper: he currently owns the highest strand rate of his career (82.5%), the lowest BABIP (.248) and is showing extreme fly ball tendencies this season (he’s second-highest among qualified starters in fly ball rate, at 49.1%). That final issue could become a problem with the move to Wrigley, as he’s going from a very pitcher-friendly home park in terms of home runs to a more neutral home run setting. Giving up home runs has always been an issue for Haren, and they could pose a serious problem should that high fly ball rate mix poorly with a less forgiving environment.

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Every season, teams play roughly 100 games before the trade deadline. During that time, there are two kinds of teams: buyers and sellers. As sellers, it is their job to give buyers a hard time to trade worthwhile players to the buyers in exchange for players to be used in the future or moving financial obligations that selling teams no longer wish to possess. By all accounts, the San Diego Padres were clearly in the sellers’ camp, yet they held on to all of their players, both potential short-term rentals like Justin Upton, Joaquin Benoit, and Ian Kennedy and longer-term players like Tyson Ross and Craig Kimbrel. The Padres have desirable players on their team, and the decision to hold onto all of their players is curious, although they did make a small move, acquiring lefty reliever Marc Rzepczynski.

After the trade deadline passed, Padres general manager A.J. Preller was said to believe the Padres had a chance to make the playoffs this season:

#Padres largely standing pat because GM A.J. Preller believes the team can reach the postseason, source says.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 31, 2015

The Padres, as presently constituted, do not look like a playoff team. They are 49-53 with a -53 run differential, and BaseRuns, which strips out sequencing, indicates the Padres have actually been pretty lucky, as their BaseRuns record is actually five games worse than their present one. Our projections do not seem to hint at any great improvement moving forward either, as the team is projected to finish with an 80-82 record. They are currently eight games out in their division and 7.5 games out of the wild-card spot. More troubling than the deficit in the standings, they would have to pass four teams that all appear to be as good or better than the Padres to make the postseason. Their current playoff odds are under 4% for this season. Preller is either delusional or he simply could not get the type of return on his players that he expected. Given the huge amount of rumors associated with the Padres over the last few days, it is fair to assume the latter.

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