Ranked and briefly analyzed below are the prospects who have been traded during the loosely defined “2023 deadline season,” which for simplicity’s sake I consider all of July. Most of the deals these prospects were part of have been analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below, which will take you to the relevant article. I’ve moved all of the 35+ FV and above players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates and read their full scouting reports. Our Farm System Rankings, which update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up following the draft and the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »
Watching the ebbs and flows of Christian Yelich’s career has been very interesting. From 2018 to 2019, he was one of the best players in baseball, winning the NL MVP in 2018 and placing second in the voting the following year. He was sending balls to the moon like he never had before (some of that might have owed to the livelier ball, but Yelich also hit the ball very hard those years, and continues to). Then from 2020 to 2022, he was just an average dude. He had a 108 wRC+ over that span, swatting just 35 home runs and accruing 4.4 total WAR.
Typically, I’d say that a player like Yelich already has a blueprint for success. Faced with a few down seasons, his focus should be on regaining the traits that had served him so well previously. However, a lot of what we know about the Brewers outfielder needs to be thrown out the window. This is a different player from the one we saw during Yelich’s MVP run, and he’s also a different player from the one we’ve watched the last two and a half years. Instead of figuring out how he could get back to his old self, Yelich seems to have decided to blend all of his previous years together to create a new version. And with a 129 wRC+ and 3.6 WAR so far this season, Yelich has shown he can still be a star player — it just looks different. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a true statement: Luis Medina has not been very good this year. You can say that just by looking at his numbers: a 5.35 ERA and a 4.83 FIP. He’s running a so-so 22.8% strikeout rate and walking a worrisome 10.8% of batters. If you looked up replacement level in the dictionary… well, you probably wouldn’t find anything, because that’s not the kind of thing that dictionaries define. But Medina’s performance has been almost exactly replacement level this year.
Here’s another true statement: Medina is great right now. That’s kind of confusing, what with all the bad statistics I just hit you with in the last paragraph, but I was cheating. Those are Medina’s full-season numbers, but he’s been an absolute beast in the last month. I’m not talking about some small-sample ERA mirage, either, though his ERA is a tidy 2.86. He’s running a 2.23 FIP, and he’s doing it by striking out 30% of opposing batters and walking only 5.6%. In other words, he’s an ace — or at least, he was one in July. Sounds like it’s time for an investigation. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, that’s the end of that. The trade deadline has come and gone, and whatever teams have is, well, whatever they’re going to have for the stretch run. My colleague Ben Clemens has already done the traditional look at the winners and losers of the deadline, so now it’s the turn of ZiPS, as I do every year afterwards. This is a very targeted look, in that ZiPS isn’t really looking at whether teams did a good job on a general level, only how the deadline affects their 2023 chances. So a team like the Mets ranking at the bottom isn’t a reflection on their competence, but how the deadline changed their postseason probability.
The methodology is simple. I project the rest of the season (after the games on August 1) both with the current rosters and if I undid every single trade made in the final two weeks of the trade period. I’ve included the projections for playoffs, division, and World Series for each of the 30 teams, with the default sort being playoff probability. Read the rest of this entry »
When anyone but an absolute superstar gets traded at the deadline, we’ve come to expect that the player’s new team sees something they can improve. Thousands of scouts, data analysts, and coaches across the sport, poring over film and charts, looking for the one player they can point to and say, with total confidence, “I can fix him.” Sometimes it’s as simple as one conversation, one adjustment to a pitch grip or a player’s swing timing or his position on the rubber, and it all clicks. Sometimes in the player’s first game in his new environs.
Predicting and identifying these adjustments can make for a fun metagame around the trade deadline, but I’ve learned the hard way not to trust the headline-making debut. In 2019, the Astros made a deadline move for Aaron Sanchez, the onetime Blue Jays standout whose career had stagnated. Sanchez brought an ERA over 6.00 into his Houston debut, and promptly threw six innings of no-hit ball. You could not ask for a clearer example of a player being remade overnight by an organization that knew what to do with him.
After the no-hit bid, Sanchez made just three more starts for Houston, in which his ERA was 7.11. He pitched for three teams in 2021 and 2022, posting an ERA of 5.29. (But just a 4.32 FIP! I can still fix him!) Two weeks ago, he was released from the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate. Now, when you look Sanchez up on the internet, Wikipedia assumes you’re looking for celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez, who is definitely the best MasterChef judge but has never, to my knowledge, no-hit anything.
I lied, though. I haven’t learned a damn thing, because I’m going to get carried away over Lance Lynn’s first start with the Dodgers. I am ready to believe again. Read the rest of this entry »
After the trade-deadline dust settles, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the big deals from deadline eve and deadline day, starting with high-level trade-season takeaways (reunions, top prospects, hitters vs. pitchers, missing star power) and then zooming in on almost every team as they discuss the Justin Verlander trade, the AL West arms race, and Framber Valdez’s no-hitter, the Mets’ sell-off, the Padres’ non-sell-off (and the itinerant Rich Hill), the Mariners’ middle course, the Orioles’ prospect-hugging, a number of contending teams’ lack of activity, and more, plus pedantry, follow-ups, and a Future Blast (1:21:57) from 2041.
The Astros had quite a day on Tuesday, and not just because they reunited with Justin Verlander via a trade with the Mets, nine months after he helped them win a World Series. In another callback to last year’s success, they showcased the quality of their homegrown starting pitching as Framber Valdez no-hit the Guardians. Unlike last year, when Cristian Javier threw combined no-hitters (plural!) against the Yankees on June 25 and the Phillies in Game 4 of the World Series on November 2, Valdez did it solo — making him the first Astro to throw a complete-game no-hitter since Verlander himself, on September 1, 2019.
Prior to Tuesday night, the 29-year-old Valdez had already stepped into the breach to front the Astros’ rotation after Verlander’s offseason departure. He earned All-Star honors for the second year in a row, his 3.19 FIP and 3.2 WAR both led the staff’s starters, and his 3.29 ERA trailed only rookie J.P. France, who had thrown 34.1 fewer innings (91.2 to 126). He had even notched a complete-game shutout already, on May 21 against the A’s. It was the second of his career; he had one against the Tigers last September 12.
Still, on Tuesday night Valdez was even more dominant than in those shutouts. He “only” struck out seven batters, but six of them were from among the first 12 Guardians he faced, as if to make it abundantly clear this wasn’t Cleveland’s night. He only went to a three-ball count twice, and walked just one batter: Oscar Gonzalez, who led off the fifth by winning an eight-pitch battle, a particularly tenacious plate appearance for a hacker who entered the night with a .229 on-base percentage and a 3.6% walk rate. Five pitches and one out later, Gonzalez was erased by a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Will Brennan, meaning Valdez faced the minimum of 27 on the night. Read the rest of this entry »
The trade deadline was yesterday, which means it’s time for a winners and losers post. I don’t really have a clever introduction for you here; you know what these things are, and you know how they go. I consulted a bit with the FanGraphs staff in compiling these, but these are mostly just my opinions. Want a high-level summary of what you should care about following the deadline? Here it goes.
Winner: Teams Trading Pitchers
The market for pitching of all types was scalding hot this week. Most of the best prospects who moved were shipped out in exchange for pitching, including plenty of rentals. Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López have been just okay this year, and they merited a 50 FV prospect plus more. Jordan Montgomery and Chris Stratton fetched a similar return. Noted old men Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer got the Mets both quality and quantity in return. Even rental relievers like Jordan Hicks and David Robertson brought back exciting prospects.
Of course, not every rumored move materialized. If teams were willing to offer this much in return for rental pitchers, it’s perhaps unsurprising that some of the big names rumored to be on the market stayed put. Three months of Montgomery is one thing, but what about two years of Dylan Cease or four years of Logan Gilbert? Given how much teams are willing to dole out for a few years of an aging, paid-down ace, you can imagine the sky-high price tag for young, controllable starters.
I think the activity we saw makes a lot of sense. It’s hard to know how many healthy and effective pitchers you’ll have in July, even if you start the season with a full complement of them. It’s also a position that everyone needs; realistically, every playoff contender could use another excellent reliever and another innings-eating starter. Heck, Lance Lynn has the worst ERA in baseball and the Dodgers still traded for him.
I used to think that if you weren’t sure whether your team was playoff bound, it was more effective to wait until July to build a bullpen. Bring in four or five relievers if you’re in the race; trade some guys if you aren’t. But at current valuations, I think that equation has changed. You can add pitching in July, no doubt, but these days, it’ll cost you.
Winner: Teams Acquiring Hitters
As hot as the market was for pitchers of all varieties, even good hitters didn’t fetch much this deadline. Jeimer Candelario has already racked up 3.1 WAR this season, and yet he got dealt for less than either Robertson or Hicks, two rental relievers who have combined for 1.5 WAR and 86.2 innings pitched this year. Mark Canha was dealt for a long-shot starter prospect. Tommy Pham only brought back a DSL lottery ticket.
I don’t think this crop of rental hitters is particularly weak, but there are no standout options. Perhaps that kept bids down. But Candelario, Pham, and Canha are the kinds of solid major leaguers that most teams can use in some capacity or another, in the same way that a fifth starter can chip in even without being particularly good.
Perhaps it’s just a fluke of the way the standings broke; among playoff contenders, only the Marlins, Brewers, Guardians, and Twins have truly dire offenses. The Twins and Guardians both seem to have been moved by the spirit of their division and decided lousy might work just fine, while the Brewers and Marlins both added. That’s a fairly small crop of needy teams overall, though I think at least four other contending clubs could have improved their fortunes markedly by adding Candelario.
The market has been heading this way in recent years; hitters are getting less and less at the deadline unless they’re true stars. Smart teams are surely taking note. If my team has to go into a given season with a weakness, I’d much prefer it to be at a corner offensive spot rather than in the rotation or bullpen. It’s easier to get competent upgrades at those positions at midseason than to restock a bad bullpen or bulk up a wimpy rotation.
Winner: The Mets Farm System
I’ve long thought that Steve Cohen’s financial might would eventually start helping the Mets’ farm system. It turns out, a surprisingly awful season was all the team needed to get going on that front. The equation is simple. Take a star on a market rate contract, then absorb enough of the money that they’re on a below-rate contract. Presto, changeo! You now have a valuable trade chip.
Four of the team’s top 10 prospects weren’t Mets a week ago. They’ve added across the entire scope of the minors; they acquired three players in the Dominican Summer League and several who are already performing well in Double-A. We have them as the 11th-best farm system now, just behind some vaunted organizations (Orioles, Rays, Diamondbacks), and that’s after Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, and Kodai Senga all graduated from our preseason list. They did most of that by trading pitchers who are 38, 39, and 40. That’s some kind of pivot.
Look, spending a bunch of money is a good way to get good baseball players. That’s hardly a shocking statement. Traditionally, wallet-flexing is mostly about supplementing your roster with star veterans. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m betting that the Mets will keep doing that where appropriate. But real long-term success requires a vibrant farm system that can churn out flexible role players and the occasional star. The Dodgers wouldn’t be such a juggernaut if they weren’t hitting on Will Smith, Bobby Miller, Walker Buehler, Tony Gonsolin, and so on. They wouldn’t have had the prospects to trade for Mookie Betts if they didn’t focus on developing them first.
One move I particularly liked: starting an AL West arms race and then profiting off of it. Sending Scherzer to Texas clearly lit a fire under the Astros. The Rangers already looked like a serious threat for the division title, but Scherzer and Montgomery might have made them the favorites. The Mets turned around and dealt Verlander back to Houston on the back of that, and they got the Astros’ best two prospects for him. That’s clean living.
Winner: Milwaukee Brewers
The Brewers didn’t come into the deadline planning to expend much prospect capital. Their team is hardly a juggernaut, and they could use a minor league talent infusion soon to offset the upcoming losses of Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff. But thanks to the vagaries of the market, they were able to add two meaningful pieces in Canha and Andrew Chafin without doing much to affect their future plans.
That’s not a bad start, but it gets better than that. Luis Urías had turned into a sunk cost; he’s making $4.7 million in arbitration this year, but played poorly enough to get demoted to Triple-A. The budget-conscious Brewers were likely going to DFA him, but they traded him to the Red Sox instead and got Bradley Blalock, a 40+ FV starter who’s been on fire this year. Recouping value when players don’t pan out like you’d hoped is a key part of the Milwaukee strategy, and this is a good example.
And there’s more! The Reds are leading the NL Central, but they essentially sat out the deadline. Their core is made up mostly of rookies, and I’m sure they’re telling themselves that now is too soon to strike, but come on, man. The NL Central probably won’t be this winnable for years to come. The Cubs are on the rise. The Cardinals won’t stay down long. The Pirates… Well, fine, you can’t win them all. But the Reds sat on their hands, which meant the Brewers’ additions went unopposed.
Winner: Miami’s Strategy
Speaking of teams that understand their window, the Marlins were busy this week. They added a closer, a first baseman, a third baseman, and whatever role you want to assign to Ryan Weathers. They badly needed those corner infielders, and their bullpen could use some work too. The plan of “fix all our weaknesses and try to go make the playoffs” makes even more sense when you consider that they’ve only been there once since their 2003 World Series championship, and even that postseason trip was in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. When you’re the Marlins, you need to take your shots where you can.
Loser: Miami’s Tactics
But, uh, maybe not like this. The Marlins gave up some promising youngsters in the trade for Robertson. Marco Vargas in particular is a buzzy name in scouting circles, the kind of hitter who everyone thinks is the best kept secret to the point where the secret isn’t particularly well kept. The public-side prospect watchers I listen to the most all think the Mets got the better of that deal.
And don’t even get me started on the first base situation. No one would disagree that the Marlins need help there; their first basemen have produced an anemic 96 wRC+ on the year, not exactly what you’d hope for from an offense-first position. Just one problem: Josh Bell, who they acquired from the Guardians, has a 95 wRC+.
That’s harsher to Bell than he deserves, which mirrors his batted ball luck this year. He’s making his customary loud contact and putting up good strikeout and walk numbers, but the power just hasn’t appeared. He also has a pretty horrendous .272 BABIP, especially vexing when you consider how many grounders and line drives he hits. Garrett Cooper, who Bell is replacing, had similar numbers but worse raw measurables; I think Bell is a small upgrade.
To make that small upgrade, the Marlins took on roughly $9 million in salary across the next two years. They also sent out post-hype sleeper Kahlil Watson. Neither of those is a huge loss, but the net of the whole thing is baffling to me. Money and a prospect for a hitter who you’re hoping ends up 15% above average? Just trade for Canha or Pham for way less, or something like that.
In a deadline where bats were there for the taking, the Marlins overpaid. I don’t think their Jake Burger/Jake Eder swap was quite so bad, because they’re getting future years of control from Burger and Eder is a phenomenally risky prospect, but it’s a sign of the same thing that bothered me about the other trades. Sure, Burger will be around for longer than a rental, but you could plug a series of veterans into that role, and there’s no guarantee that Burger will be playable for his entire Miami tenure. The Marlins got half of the equation right – it’s time to go out and get some hitters and relievers – but then they went about it in a bizarre way.
Loser: The Theory of Perpetually Increasing Prospect Hugging
Teams have been getting increasingly attached to their own prospects. Last year, only seven prospects we gave a grade of 50 FV or higher got traded, and three of them were part of the Juan Soto deal. With no one that good on the market this year (RIP, dreams of a Shohei Ohtanirental), I thought there was a chance that roughly zero top 100 prospects would get traded.
That didn’t happen. Six FV 50s got traded this deadline, headlined by Kyle Manzardo and Drew Gilbert. Plenty of interesting prospects just outside the fringes of the top 100 moved as well. That’s a big haul considering how quiet the deadline was; the Mets, White Sox, and Cardinals were the only sellers of note this year. If you weren’t interested in what those teams were offering, there wasn’t much to do.
I’m not ready to say that the tide has changed. Teams are still clinging to prospects in general; the Orioles and Reds, two of this year’s biggest surprises, went small at the deadline despite flourishing farm systems and not enough spaces to play their coterie of exciting young hitters. Both teams might regret that move down the road; give or take service time shenanigans, they’re taking a major disadvantage in one sixth of the team control years for their core.
You’re telling me that Heston Kjerstad is more useful in Baltimore as one of a bevy of might-work-out outfielders than as a trade chip to help this year’s team? I’m skeptical. The same goes for third basemen Noelvi Marte and Cam Collier in Cincinnati – you might have heard, but the team isn’t exactly short on infield prospects.
Prospect hugging isn’t defeated, and it probably never will be. But this year’s mix of deals feels a little closer to rational than the past few years, at least in my mind. I still think it’s a good time to be adding at the deadline, but not to quite the extreme that I feared the market would find equilibrium.
Loser: The Orioles
Let’s break that previous thought out a little bit more. The Orioles are a lock to make the playoffs this year, and yet their rotation is one of the worst in baseball. This deadline had a ton of impact rental arms, and while they would have cost a decent amount in terms of prospects, the Orioles were perfectly positioned to do just that. Kjerstad, Colton Cowser (currently on the big league club but scuffling), Joey Ortiz, Jordan Westburg; they have a surfeit of coveted hitting prospects, easily enough to swing a deal for at least a few impact starters. Somehow, they instead ended up with only Jack Flaherty, who looks like more of what their rotation already had.
That hurts! Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson are going to be around for a long time, but it’s not literally forever. The AL East is consistently one of the toughest divisions in baseball. There’s no guarantee that the Yankees and Red Sox will stay down, and no guarantee that the Orioles will lead the division this late in the season in the immediate future. Their Pythagorean and BaseRuns records suggest that they’ve been playing better than their underlying talent, but that shouldn’t be a reason not to add. This is surely the best shot the O’s will have at a playoff bye in the next few years based on divisional competition alone. It’s criminal to let the deadline pass by without leaning into that chance.
My guess is that Baltimore’s front office is held back by the very thinking that has propelled them to this spot in the first place. They sold at the deadline last year despite being fringe contenders, and it paid off. They try to red paperclip every trade, always building towards a perpetually glorious future. They hoard prospects and work reclamation projects. The system works! Houston used that model to become a juggernaut, and the Orioles might follow in their footsteps one day. But that plan has its limits; it’s designed to build up your farm system while the big league club stinks, not to deal with the exigencies of a playoff contender.
The Orioles are run by a sharp group of people; you’ll get no objection from me on that score. They’re surely aware of the perils of constantly looking to the future; it’s not a deep secret. But subconsciously, I think they might be struggling to change mental models. Constantly dreaming about what players might become in three years leads to systematic mis-evaluations of how important the present is at any given time. Concentrating value into windows of contention by adding at some deadlines and restocking at others is the way that teams with good process convert their farm systems into titles. The Orioles will figure it out, but I don’t think they’ve gotten the math right just yet.
Winner: Midwestern Retools
I’ve already covered the Mets; the two other major sellers this year were the White Sox and Cardinals, both of whom had a truckload of pitchers with expiring contracts, the new coin of the realm. Giolito, Lynn, López, Joe Kelly, Kendall Graveman, Montgomery, Jack Flaherty, Hicks, Stratton… the names just kept on coming.
Out of that laundry list of players, only Graveman has a guaranteed contract next year. These teams expected to contend for the playoffs, and they were going to have to work hard in the offseason. They’ll still need to replace that production if they’re planning on reaching the postseason in 2024, but that was always the case; now, at least, they have a bunch of prospects that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
Each team acted according to its expected timeline. I don’t think the White Sox will be great next year, and they seemed to agree; the best prospect they got back in their deals is a 20-year-old catcher. The Cardinals targeted near-majors-ready pitching, which makes sense given their huge need there. It’s win-win to me; a ton of good players who are headed for free agency get to battle for playoff spots down the stretch, and two farm systems in need of rejuvenation got just that.
Loser: Excitement
We can go back and forth about who won and who lost all day, but the bottom line is that the only trades that felt like capital-n News were Verlander and Scherzer decamping to Texas. Big names, big salaries, splashy prospects coming back; those are the kinds of deadline deals that top SportsCenter and get my non-baseball friends buzzing.
No one really went all-in this year, unless you want to count the Rangers. No one did a full teardown. The only sellers who had much to move did so with the intention of competing again soon. The Cardinals and Padres held onto some high impact stars who might have shaken up the deadline, and the White Sox stopped short of trading Dylan Cease. It’s hard to blame any one team for their decision. Taken individually, I can mostly understand the tactics everyone chose, even if I quibble with what the Orioles and Reds did (or didn’t do). But the end result of all those rational decisions was a bit of a snooze.
I’m not sure there’s much of a solution to this. From an entertainment standpoint, it’s dull. From a process standpoint, baseball is big business these days, and risk aversion is on the rise. Taking a risky move or blowing things up on a whim doesn’t sound quite so enticing when you’re making multiple million dollars a year as a GM. It probably doesn’t sound as enticing for an owner, either. The deadline doesn’t have to be exciting, and there are some awesome playoff races to follow down the stretch, but I was hoping all day for some shocking blockbuster, and it never materialized.
Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer were the stars of the trade deadline, along with prospects Drew Gilbert, Kyle Manzardo, and Luisangel Acuña. The Mets, White Sox, and Cardinals were the biggest sellers, and the Rangers were the most active buyers of the season. These were the names and teams that dominated the headlines on the busiest days of the baseball calendar. But as always, some teams stood pat and some stars stayed put, and a few of the trades that did not happen were just as interesting as many that did.
The most surprising non-trade of the deadline was that of Eduardo Rodriguez, who will remain with the Tigers through the end of the season. Detroit had every reason to shop the veteran, who’s in the midst of a career year with a 2.95 ERA and 3.17 FIP in 15 starts. His performance caught the eye of several suitors, including the Dodgers, Rays, Padres, Rangers, Reds, Diamondbacks, and Phillies. The Tigers, meanwhile, are already out of contention, and Rodriguez is certain to exercise his opt-out at the end of the year. And having already received the qualifying offer once, he cannot receive it again; if/when he leaves in free agency, the Tigers will receive no compensation at all. On top of all that, it was clearly a seller’s market for starting pitching, so although the Tigers had little leverage, they could have still secured a sizeable return for their best trade chip.
With the clock ticking on Tuesday, word came out that the Tigers and Dodgers had reached an agreement to trade Rodriguez. But he exercised his partial no-trade clause and vetoed the deal; as per his contract, he has the right to refuse a trade to 10 different teams, and the Dodgers are one of them. Rodriguez reportedly rejected the trade to L.A. to stay closer to family; his wife and children live in Miami. (Editor’s Note: this piece has been updated to reflect reporting on Rodriguez’s reasoning in rejecting a trade.) However, his reasoning for turning down the deal is hardly relevant, nor does it say anything about his value on the field. His no-trade protection is a part of his contract, just like his salary, bonuses, and option years. He has every right to use his no-trade clause however he sees fit, just as he has every right to collect his paycheck and exercise his opt-out.
Still, it’s hard not to view this turn of events as a failure on the part of Scott Harris and the Tigers front office. There are 19 teams that Rodriguez could not have refused a trade to, and there’s a good chance at least one of them would have liked to add a frontline starting pitcher. Yet the Tigers wasted their time crafting a deal that would never come to be; by the time it fell through, it was too late to change their plans.
Harris justified the outcome, explaining, “There were some contractual headwinds that influenced [Rodriguez’s] market. There were a couple of terms in his contract that disqualified a lot of markets from pursuing him. So we were working with the market that we had.” Those vague excuses may well be true, but they still come across as a poor defense. The Tigers blew their best opportunity and came away from the deadline with only a single prospect of note: Hao-Yu Lee, received in exchange forMichael Lorenzen. Impending free agents José Cisnero and Chasen Shreve remain with the Tigers, as do bigger trade chips like Alex Lange, Jason Foley, and Kerry Carpenter, all of whom popped up in rumors ahead of the deadline.
As Harris also mentioned, there are worse fates than having “one of the best left-handed starters in baseball on the mound every five nights.” Be that as it may, one of the very few benefits of being a crappy baseball team is the chance to sell at the deadline. The Tigers couldn’t even manage that.
The White Sox dangled an ace of their own on the trade market, but unlike the Tigers, they faced little pressure to finalize a deal. Dylan Cease is arbitration eligible through 2025; if Rick Hahn wants to trade him, he still has plenty of time to do so. Furthermore, Chicago had several other players to sell, including Lucas Giolito, Jake Burger, Lance Lynn, and a cornucopia of relievers. Still, considering the prospects the Mets got back for Scherzer and Verlander, the White Sox could have fetched a pretty penny for the 2022 Cy Young runner-up. They seemed to pick up on this, because after days of rejecting inquiries about Cease, they suddenly started listening to “more serious offers” hours before the deadline. Ultimately, however, it all came to nothing, and Cease will make his scheduled start this evening against the Rangers at Globe Life Field.
All things considered, Cease never seemed that likely to be traded. The White Sox had higher priorities this summer and no reason to sell low on Cease after his slow start in 2023. Neither his 4.15 ERA nor his 3.57 FIP reflect the ace-level pitcher he can be. Over his last ten starts, he has a 3.34 ERA and a 2.66 FIP; if he pitches more like that down the stretch, his trade value will be even higher in the offseason. What’s more, it’s possible Chicago could be looking to sign him to a long-term extension. Still just 27 years old, there’s little risk that he’ll start to decline before the White Sox next field a competitive team. They play in the AL Central, after all, and with a good offseason, they could be contenders again as soon as next season.
With Rodriguez and Cease staying put, the only frontline arms to change hands at the deadline were Scherzer and Verlander, leaving several contending teams with holes in their rotations high and dry. The Orioles turned to Jack Flaherty, a fine pitcher but hardly the ace they were searching for. The Dodgers struck a last-minute deal for Ryan Yarbrough; the former Royal will provide them with left-handed depth but not much more. Meanwhile, the Rangers, who secured the services of Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, come out looking even better than they did when the trades were first announced.
Neither Hernández nor Duvall made much sense as trade candidates either; they play for contending teams, and they’re both struggling to hit as of late. Given the dearth of right-handed bats on the market, they each came up in their fair share of rumors, but ultimately, the Mariners and Red Sox didn’t receive any offers they liked enough to pull the trigger, and it’s not hard to see why. The potential benefit of a hot-hitting Hernández or Duvall down the stretch far outweighs whatever return they could get for two months of a slumping veteran.
Thomas and his 114 wRC+ could have garnered a stronger return, but Washington never seemed too keen to trade him. He is arbitration eligible through 2025, and if the Nationals think he can prove himself as an everyday corner outfielder, and not just the short side of a platoon, they’d be wise to hold onto him a little longer. The Nats had a quiet deadline this year, trading Jeimer Candelario, the piece they needed to sell, but holding onto other trade chips like Thomas and Kyle Finnegan.
The Cardinals, on the other hand, were anything but quiet. Carlson and O’Neill were never obvious trade chips, but once rumors of the impending fire sale began, their names popped up as young, controllable alternatives to the likes of Hernández, Duvall, Randal Grichuk, and Tommy Pham. St. Louis would have been selling low on both, though, and with each under contract past this season, there was little pressure to make a move. Indeed, the only players the Cardinals dealt were impending free agents: Montgomery, Flaherty, Jordan Hicks, Chris Stratton, and Paul DeJong. Carlson and O’Neill survived the deadline, as did reliever Giovanny Gallegos, who is under contract through 2024. Unsurprisingly, superstars Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt are also staying in St. Louis. In other words, the Cardinals don’t plan to be down in the basement for long. The prospects they got back point to a similar conclusion.
Like the Cardinals, the Mets were supposed contenders who ended up selling big, but it doesn’t look like they will be back in contention in 2024, and they certainly weren’t just trading rentals. That being so, it’s a little surprising they didn’t find a new home for reliever Brooks Raley. The left-hander has a reasonable $6.5 million club option for 2024, and given his 2.37 ERA in 46 games, he seemed like a safe bet to be dealt. Then again, buyers might have been scared by his unsustainable 88.1% strand percentage, declining velocity, and high fly ball rate. He has still done an excellent job limiting hard contact, but his xFIP and SIERA are more than a full run higher than last season. That’s not to say he wouldn’t improve several contending teams’ bullpens, but he may not have been in as high demand as his surface stats would have you believe.
With impact trade candidates at such a premium, the deadline could have gone one of two ways. We could have seen a buying frenzy, where contending teams handed over piles of prospects for any upgrade they could get their hands on. Instead, however, we got one of the more placid deadlines in recent memory. Rodriguez is still on the Tigers. Cease is still on the White Sox. And it’s time for the stretch run to begin.
With their team in last place in the AL East at 55–51 and 3.5 games back of the Blue Jays for the third Wild Card, the Yankees’ front office teetered back and forth between “buyer” and “seller” in advance of the trade deadline. The truth is, the Bombers’ playoff odds had been in a tailspin since the beginning of July; it would have been unthinkable for them to sell on July 4, when they reached their monthly high of 75%, but at 23.1% at the end of the month, their decision should have been just as clear.
Instead, the Yankees did little of anything. Apparently, they were looking to be “bowled over” for their rentals, per The Athletic’s Marc Carig, and they never were, so they largely stood pat. The last team to enter the deadline foray, their “headliner” acquisition was Keynan Middleton; as detailed in our reliever roundup, he cost them 21-year-old lottery ticket Juan Carela. While New York’s bullpen scuffled to the tune of a 4.01 ERA and 4.82 FIP in July, the unit has pitched to solid 3.10/3.93 marks on the season, good for first and tied for sixth, respectively, in the majors. Acquiring a reliever was unlikely to move the needle for a fringe contender in the first place, but it also represented only a marginal improvement compared to the Yankees’ in-house options, especially with Jonathan Loáisiga’s return on the horizon.
That said, even though their acquisition of Spencer Howard from the Rangers for cash can be thought of as a “buy” in the literal sense and another addition of a reliever at that, it’s a different beast than adding Middleton. For starters, all it cost the Yankees was money, which they have oodles of. Howard is also under team control for another four years. The hurler is optionable and poised to begin his tenure in pinstripes at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, but it’s easy to see him getting some play toward the end of the season either in the wake of injuries or if the Yankees fall further in the standings. Read the rest of this entry »
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