Every baseball season, we see something unexpected. “You can’t predict baseball,” in the words of an axiom from a decade ago. And it’s true. But because baseball occurs in such great volume, over such a long period of time, unexpected things can happen in different ways, and at different rates. Sometimes, an overachieving team picks up one extra game every two weeks, gently floating to the top of the standings with minimal fuss. We get drip-fed this surprise gradually, like an irrigation system designed not to drown your basil plants.

And sometimes you fall into a lake.

On either side of the All-Star break, the Milwaukee Brewers won 11 games in a row. Even after that streak ended with a paper-thin 1-0 loss in Seattle on Tuesday, they are the hottest team in baseball right now. They’re red hot. No, white hot. They are, to quote the poet, so hot it’s hurting everyone’s feelings. Read the rest of this entry »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2026-2030, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2030 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2024 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

A note on the rankings: As we ascend towards the top of the list, the tiers matter more and more. There are clear gaps in value. Don’t get too caught up on what number a player is, because who they’re grouped with is a more important indicator. The biggest split so far in the rankings is between 20-29 and 31-50, the Ketel Marte pivot. I think that all the players I’m discussing today fall in a relatively narrow band, though with meaningfully different risks and upsides. I’ll note places where I disagreed meaningfully with people I spoke with in calibrating this list, and I’ll also note players whose value was the subject of disagreement among my contacts. As I mentioned in the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, I’ll indicate tier breaks between players where appropriate, both in their capsules and bolded in the table at the end of the piece.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the next batch of players. Read the rest of this entry »

The midseason is a good point to catch up on one’s mistakes, to see where reality has crushed your predictions. We’re nearly half a year from the most recent iteration of the ZiPS Top 100 Prospects, and with a flurry of trades likely to happen in the next week, it seems to be time to check in on how the algorithms which have seized my life and crushed all traces of humanity ZiPS projection system is doing in the prospnostications for 2025.

For each of the top 100 prospects, I’m including a chart of their 2025 minor league translations and how their 2026-2030 WAR has changed since February. Last year was my first midseason review of the prospect list, and some of my charts just made things confusing, so I’m making them less dense/opaque this time around, in the hopes of communicating the data better. The translations and projections are through Monday’s games. As a quick reminder, ZiPS ranks prospects by the average of their 20th-percentile and 80th-percentile career WAR projections, and explicitly leaves out players for which it has nothing to bring to the table, so no high school hitters or pitchers without professional experience.

ZiPS is naturally a bit down on Carson Williams given his struggles offensively this year, but he still has the glove, and a 102 wRC+ in Triple-A for an excellent defensive shortstop isn’t so bad that it would send him tumbling down the ranks. If February ZiPS had known about the first half of the 2025 season, it would have had Roman Anthony hurdle over Williams, Roki Sasaki, and Samuel Basallo to be the no. 1 prospect in baseball. Unlike Williams, Basallo has been very good, it’s just that Anthony has been even better. Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Rowley and guest co-host Michael Baumann discuss the Brewers’ recent win streak, what’s contributing to their success, and the general state of the National League playoff field and what it might mean for the trade deadline. Then they consider the worst ways to lose (and win) a baseball game on the back of the Phillies’ walk-off no-swing catcher’s interference versus the Red Sox and discuss the merits of various sauces. Lastly, in response to a listener email, they contemplating what, if anything, they could see the players asking for in exchange for a salary cap in the next CBA negotiation, leading Michael to offer a bold proposal. Lastly, with the Tour de France underway, Michael tells Meg about the effects that PED use had on the world of cycling and its fans.

Audio intro: Alex Glossman and Ali Breneman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Garrett Krohn, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to the Brewers’ BaseRuns and PythagenPat record
Link to the Brewers’ Playoff Odds
Link to Jay Jaffe on why Arizona should sell
Link to Baumann on why the Diamondbacks shouldn’t
Link to the FanGraphs Trade Value Series
Link to Phillies/Red Sox play
Link to Sam on no-swing catcher’s interference
Link to Baumann’s cycling newsletter
Link to listener email database

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Yesterday, I wrote up the news that David Robertson had signed with the Phillies. In my (and, I assume, everyone else’s) favorite paragraph, I mentioned that several teams had reportedly been in on the veteran right-hander. Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman combined to mention interest from the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, and “many others.” Depending on your perspective, this marked either the last We Tried of the 2025 free agency period or the first of the trade deadline period. As a quick refresher, We Tried is a catch-all term for any time we find out, after a player has ended up with one team, that another team also tried to land them. In its purest form, the We Tried is a front office’s bid for partial credit, an attempt to curry favor with the fans by demonstrating that it is trying to build a winner for them. I spent the offseason documenting each and every one in a disturbingly comprehensive spreadsheet.

I didn’t make a meal of this yesterday, mainly because Robertson’s free agency was a real outlier. The offseason ended months ago. He’s a 40-year-old reliever who didn’t get an offer he loved, so he stayed in shape and spent the spring hanging out with his family, then held a workout for teams on Saturday in order to sign before the deadline. Lots of teams were in on him and lots of teams showed up to watch him pitch, so word of who was there was bound to come out at some point. It definitely represented a We Tried, but it didn’t seem earth-shattering, and it was by no means a typical one. Read the rest of this entry »

The Arizona Diamondbacks, like King Solomon confronted with a baby, split their first 100 games straight down the middle. With the trade deadline looming a week from Thursday, the Diamondbacks could use a little wisdom right now, because it’s tough to tell whether they should buy or sell.

As of this writing, Arizona sits in fourth place in the NL West, nine games behind the Dodgers. Even after sweeping the Cardinals, a direct Wild Card rival, over the weekend, the Snakes still need to leapfrog four teams — including St. Louis — in order to slither in to the National League’s final Wild Card position. Five and a half games out of the playoffs with 61 games to go is a substantial hill to climb, especially for a team that’s been devastated by injuries. And the Diamondbacks, with their plethora of impending free agents, could command the market if they chose to sell.

Selling is the pragmatic move, the temperate move, the sustainable move, the move for the guys with the longest view in the room, and all the other business school-informed malarkey that gets spouted by the quarter-zips upstairs.

Poppycock, says I. Don’t listen to them, or my colleague Jay Jaffe. The Diamondbacks should go the other direction, and buy at the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

This was supposed to be the Diamondbacks’ year. After sneaking into the playoffs in 2023 with just 84 wins, then scoring upset after upset to reach the World Series, they improved to 89 wins last year, missing out on October only due to a tiebreaker. The near-miss stung, but the response — signing Corbin Burnes to head their rotation, and keeping the rest of their core intact en route to a club record payroll ($197 million) — made sense. Unfortunately, things haven’t panned out this season, and as the July 31 trade deadline approaches, I believe the Diamondbacks would be best served by selling. (My colleague Michael Baumann feels differently, and will soon make the case on why they should approach the deadline more aggressively.)

Arizona isn’t a bad team. The Diamondbacks have gone just 50-51, but they’ve outscored their opponents by 17 runs; they’re roughly two wins shy of their PythagenPat-projected record and three wins shy of their BaseRuns-projected records. But they’re also running fourth in the NL West, nine games behind the Dodgers (59-42), and they’re 5 1/2 games out of the third NL Wild Card spot, currently occupied by the Padres (55-45), with the Giants, Cardinals, and Reds (all 52-49) between them. It’s not the distance that’s working against them with 61 games to play, it’s the traffic. With so many teams vying for playoff spots, the Diamondbacks have just a 14.9% chance of reaching the postseason — better at least than the Reds (10.8%) — but their odds of winning the World Series are down to 0.7%. It’s tough to envision them making a deep October run not only without Burnes, who underwent Tommy John surgery in June, but with lesser versions of Zac Gallen, Brandon Pfaadt, and Eduardo Rodriguez than they expected. Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

12:01

Jay Jaffe: It’s been a few weeks since my last chat. I missed one because of vacation, another because of the All-Star game, and last week at this time, I was sweating bullets because my Mac Mini, which I bought in late 2018, finally bit the dust to the point that its indicator light was flashing a Morse code S-O-S.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Fortunately, I was prepared for this — had scoped out which model I was buying and was backing up my work like it’s my religion (I use Time Machine for on-site and BackBlaze for off-site). So I was up and running within 27 hours and didn’t miss a day of work. Anyway…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Today is D(backs) Day at FanGraphs, in that Michael Baumann and I have done a point/counterpoint regarding whether Arizona should sell or buy at the July 31 trade deadline. My take just went up https://blogs.fangraphs.com/point-the-diamondbacks-should-sell-at-the-…, Michael’s will be along at 12:30, and David Laurila spoke to Merrill Kelly, one of their big trade targets, for another piece https://blogs.fangraphs.com/merrill-kelly-is-a-trade-target-who-thrive…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday the D-backs popped up in my Worst Defenses Among Contenders roundup https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-worst-team-defenses-among-contenders-2…

12:06

Jay Jaffe: And last week was my Replacement Level Killer series, which begins here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2025-replacement-level-killers-introdu… and covers 6 installments.

Read the rest of this entry »

Merrill Kelly is having a rock-solid season. Over 21 starts comprising 122 innings, the 36-year-old right-hander has a 9-6 record to go with a 3.32 ERA and a 3.48 FIP. Those numbers are pretty much par for the course. Over the past three-plus seasons — all with the Arizona Diamondbacks — Kelly has made 97 starts and gone 39-22 with a 3.42 ERA and a 3.75 FIP. Neither overpowering nor of ace quality, Kelly is nonetheless a good pitcher who adds value to a big league rotation.

He could soon be taking the mound for a different team. Signed by the D-backs in December 2018 following a four-season stint in the KBO, Kelly is now on the doorstep of free agency; should Arizona decide to be sellers at the deadline, he could find himself in another team’s uniform come August 1. If that happens, the club that acquires him would be getting a known commodity. He has put up between 2.2 and 3.2 WAR in four of his last five seasons, with the exception coming last year, when injuries limited him to just 13 starts and 73 2/3 innings. His overall big league ledger reads: 62-49, 161 starts, 946 1/3 innings, 3.76 ERA, 3.97 FIP, 13.9 WAR.

With free agency looming, I spoke with the veteran hurler earlier this year about his approach to pitching, his evolution on the mound, and his steady performance since returning stateside.

“That’s an interesting question,” Kelly replied when asked how how he gets hitters out. “I would say that I do it in a lot of different ways. Ideally, I would like to get them out on as few pitches as possible. I guess you’d consider that a little bit more old school. Read the rest of this entry »

In the final days before the All-Star break, the Mariners threw 60 pitches to Gleyber Torres. I swear he didn’t make a single incorrect swing decision.

Fastball jammed inside on a 2-2 count? He’ll spoil it.

Slider dropped in the chase zone, low and away? Easy take.

Fastball pinned to the top edge in a full count? That’s a walk.

What’s a pitcher to do? Torres went 5-for-10 in the series with two doubles and two walks. It wasn’t the flashiest series, and it’s not really the flashiest batting line. He’s hitting .282/.390/.421 this year, which scans to me more as “very good” than “great.” But if there were an award for “most annoying at-bat,” I’d submit a nomination for Torres. Read the rest of this entry »