Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a few weeks since our last run of the power rankings, and a lot has happened since then. Teams we thought of as contenders are suddenly out of the playoff picture, and the buyers and sellers ahead of this week’s trade deadline are quickly sorting themselves out.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution 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 throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

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 »

The weekend before the trade deadline was light on big names moving — poor Eugenio Suárez has probably had to take his phone charger out of his go bag a dozen times this month — but we did see plenty of preliminary action. The Orioles began their sell-off by shipping hard-throwing left-hander Gregory Soto up to the Mets. Meanwhile, the Royals sought to maintain their spot on the postseason wait list by picking up a right-handed bat from Arizona: not Suárez, but Randal Grichuk.

Finally, the Braves picked up some reinforcements for their injury-riddled rotation, tossing the Cardinals a player to be named later or cash in exchange for the right to jump the waiver line on recently DFA’d right-hander Erick Fedde. Read the rest of this entry »

“All in all, we got good news today,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone told reporters on Saturday. “I think all of us kind of feared the worst.” On Sunday, the good news Boone was referring to became official. The scuffling Yankees placed Aaron Judge on the 10-day injured list with a flexor strain in his right elbow, but not a torn UCL. Judge underwent an MRI on Saturday, and based on reports that the Yankees think Judge has a chance to miss only the minimum 10 days, it seems safe to assume that the imaging revealed only a minor strain. He has received a platelet-rich plasma injection and won’t throw for 10 days to two weeks. Crucially, returning after the minimum would also allow Judge to be back by the time of his bobblehead day on August 13. The Yankees also traded for utility player Amed Rosario on Sunday, but we’ll cover that move after addressing the news about Judge.

Concern about the elbow arose last Tuesday, when Judge was noticed grimacing after throwing the ball in to the infield. The right fielder did his best to tamp down concerns, telling reporters, “I make facial expressions all the time,” in his characteristic deadpan. He also downplayed the injury to the organization, trying to push off calls for an MRI. “You never want to go in the tube,” he said. But he DH’d on Wednesday and exhibited more discomfort on Friday. “Throwing is the main concern,” Judge said on Saturday. “Hitting happens too quick, and it’s not really the motion that I felt anything. I think the muscle that hurts is the muscle used to grip, so there might be some issues with that.” Over his past nine games, he’s batting .143 with a 35 wRC+. That stretch dropped his best-in-baseball 220 wRC+ all the way down to a still-best-in-baseball 208. According to Jon Heyman of the New York Post, the absolute best-case scenario is that Judge returns after 10 days, then needs just 10 days at DH before getting back to right field. Read the rest of this entry »

Reminder: Starting August 4, the price of a FanGraphs Membership is going up. You can find more information on the reason for the increase, as well as how to lock in our existing pricing, in the post below. As I noted when we announced the pricing change on June 10, Membership makes our work at the site possible, allowing us to add new site features and grow our staff, and it comes with a ton of great benefits. Since that announcement, we’ve launched a pitch-type splits leaderboard and a crowdsourced trade value tool, and we’ve added a full-time staff member. We know there is intense competition for your subscription dollars, but we think the breadth and depth of our coverage makes a Membership well worth it and still represents a considerable value in the sports media subscription landscape. I hope you’ll become a Member, and help us continue to build a better FanGraphs. Thank you for your support. – David Appelman

Over the last five years, as we’ve navigated a changing advertising landscape — not to mention the pandemic and a lockout — I’ve endeavored to be transparent about the state of the site, our business model, and our plans for the future. I’ve taken that approach because FanGraphs is a community, and I think our readers deserve to understand what we are doing and why. It’s been four years since we last increased the price of a FanGraphs Membership, and we’ve delayed this increase for as long as possible. We’ve not only seen considerable increases in our stat licensing fees and infrastructure costs, but this year we’ve also seen a steep decline in our advertising rates as well as our organic search traffic, as Google continues to push relevant websites further and further down the page in favor of new AI search results.

Beginning August 4, a yearly FanGraphs Membership will cost $80; a Monthly Membership will cost $15 a month, while a Three-Year Membership will cost $200. Since we won’t be introducing this change until August 4, you still have the opportunity to purchase a $60 Membership for the year, or upgrade your existing Membership to a $150 Three-Year Membership, allowing you to grandfather yourself into our existing pricing for the next three years. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is nearing, and while we’ve had some recent activity — Josh Naylor is a Mariner! Ryan McMahon and Amed Rosario are Yankees! — the general environment can be best described as “peaceful.” If this is anything like past years, however, that’s about to change as teams face up to their Artificially Designed Roster Construction Deadline anxiety. And while we don’t know exactly what will happen — and if you do, you should probably use that time machine for purposes better fit to benefit humanity — it doesn’t mean that we can’t do some fantasy tradecrafting. As usual, I’ve conjured up some possible trade scenarios, trying to construct packages that are at least within the realm of plausibility. So get out your Hugwatch foam finger, read along, and maybe add your own ideas in the comments section!

For each player in the high minors or the major leagues, I’ve included their post-2025 projections while under contract — you can find their rest-of-2025 projections on their player pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Hays is having a productive-when-healthy season with the Cincinnati Reds. The 30-year-old outfielder has missed time with a calf strain, a hamstring strain, and a foot contusion, but he’s also slashed .282/.338/.510 with 10 home runs in 228 plate appearances. Moreover, his 128 wRC+ and .360 wOBA are both second on the team (behind Elly De La Cruz) among those with at least 140 PAs.

His résumé is that of a solid hitter. From 2021-2023— his first full seasons in the majors — Hays had 97 doubles and 54 home runs, as well as a wRC+ ranging between 106 and 111. Those three seasons were spent with the Baltimore Orioles, who subsequently swapped him to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Seranthony Domínguez and Cristian Pache a few days before last July’s trade deadline. Hays’s 2024 campaign was the worst of his career. Hampered by injuries and illness — a kidney infection proved most problematic — he had a 97 wRC+ while playing in just 85 games. The Reds then inked him to a free agent contract over the winter,

Which brings us to the crux of this column’s lead item: the reasons behind the success he’s currently having.

“Consistency is probably the biggest thing,” Hays told me. “There’s not always an adjustment to be made. Sometimes it’s just the game [and] you’re being pitched tough. I don’t want to be altering too much of what I do well. In the past, I would sometimes pay too much attention to what the pitcher was doing and try to adjust to that. Staying strong to my strengths — locking in on those strengths — is going to help me over the course of 162 [games].” Read the rest of this entry »

This time next week, trade season will be over. We’ll know if the surging Brewers added another bat, if the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers did enough to address their injury-depleted pitching staffs, and which uniform Eugenio Suárez will be wearing the rest of the season. We’ll also hopefully have a better idea of where teams stand as we enter the dog days of August and look ahead to the September pennant chases.

For many teams, the games between now and Thursday’s deadline will carry the weight of the next two months, as their performance over that stretch will shape their strategy for the rest of the season. All of this makes for a most exciting week ahead of us. As always, we’ll be covering the chaos here at FanGraphs, analyzing trades big and small for our readers.

Before we get to this week’s mailbag, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Ben Clemens banter about the FanGraphs crowdsourced trade value tool, the Josh Naylor, Ryan McMahon, and Gregory Soto trades, the outlook for Eugenio Suárez, the fascinating Spencer Jones, and the lack of production by MLB rookies this season, then (58:30) discuss Other Ben’s player rankings for the fourth annual trade value series (plus a Nick Kurtz update).

Audio intro: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to crowdsourced tool intro
Link to crowdsourced tool
Link to Twilight EW episode
Link to Naylor trade post
Link to McMahon trade post
Link to Soto trade at MLBTR
Link to Jones at Prospect Savant
Link to Jones 3-HR video
Link to Jones MiLB defense
Link to MiLB batting leaders
Link to Yankees prospect list
Link to Dan’s ZiPS prospects update
Link to MLB EV leaders
Link to MLB Z-Contact% laggards
Link to Ben on Gallo
Link to batting stance move
Link to team defense leaderboard
Link to Yankees WS collapse
Link to rookie batting WAR
Link to rookie pitching WAR
Link to rookie WAR by year
Link to Ben on the MiLB-to-MLB gap
Link to 2024 trade value top 10
Link to 2025 trade value intro
Link to 2025 trade value top 10
Link to Keltner list
Link to Kurtz highlight video
Link to Kurtz single-game WAR
Link to one-game total bases leaders

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