The Phillies were in an unenviable spot coming into today. At 55–47, they’re likely out of the NL East race, which leaves them competing with the Cardinals and Padres for the final two playoff spots in the NL. It’s three teams for two spots, and two of the three teams were attempting to add Juan Soto. That’s not a great place to be if you’re Philadelphia.
The Padres have likely separated themselves from that awkward middle by breaking open their prospect vault to secure Soto and Josh Bell. That leaves the Cardinals and Phillies as the two clearest contenders for the last Wild Card, and that’s where the good news starts. The Cardinals, naturally, aren’t getting Soto. They may not be getting anyone, period; they have contributors across the board offensively, which means there are no obvious spots for an upgrade, and there aren’t many marquee pitchers left on the board.
The Phillies, meanwhile, have no shortage of holes. They were the main offender in Jay Jaffe’s Replacement Level Killers series, the major league organization equivalent of Swiss cheese, and they were already trading for middle infielders the Cardinals would have otherwise had to DFA. That sounds bad, but it has its upsides. It’s a lot easier to improve when you start out from a lower point, and the Phillies are doing so today in two separate trades, adding Brandon Marsh from the Angels and David Robertson from the Cubs. Read the rest of this entry »
The Mets and Giants made a minor trade on Tuesday as the deadline approached, with first baseman/designated hitter Darin Ruf heading to New York in exchange for third baseman-ish/designated hitter J.D. Davis. Three minor league pitchers — Thomas Szapucki, Nick Zwack, and Carson Seymour — are joining Davis in San Francisco.
After thriving in a platoon role in 2020 and ’21, Ruf has struggled this year, hitting .216/.328/.378, though still with a robust .886 OPS against lefties. Davis has performed similarly, hitting .238/.324/.359, but without the beneficial platoon split. The two hitters involved in this trade are both right-handed DH-types who have broadly similar value on the surface, but there are differences in their two profiles that matter enough for teams on two very different 2022 trajectories to make this trade.
Ruf is the easier player to utilize, thanks to large platoon splits that Davis has not historically possessed. The Giants attempted to expand his role this season, giving him more starts against righties (34) than he had combined in 2020 and ’21 (24), and while his true platoon split is likely smaller than the 316 points of OPS it is this season, he’s definitely a player who needs to be used carefully when not possessing the handedness advantage. The Mets clearly value Ruf’s ability to be a top-notch accomplice to Daniel Vogelbach at DH, given that they’re sending some minor league extras along as sweetener.
ZiPS Projection – Darin Ruf
Year
BA
OBP
SLG
AB
R
H
2B
3B
HR
RBI
BB
SO
SB
OPS+
DR
WAR
2023
.226
.317
.428
367
50
83
15
1
19
52
44
118
2
103
0
1.0
Zwack is a 2021 draftee having a good first full season in the minors. A low-90s sinker isn’t going to wow anyone these days, but he’s had enough success in A-ball that he’s worth checking in on to see if he can surpass that Double-A wall that can stymie lower-grade pitching prospects. Szapucki is a better-known name, spending the last two seasons in Triple-A and with two unfortunately unforgettable appearances in the majors so far. I’m not convinced that he won’t have a future as a fifth starter in the majors. One has to remember that, unlike in the majors, minor league offense has exploded rather than evaporated, so Szapucki’s decent performance in the high minors makes him worth a flyer. Seymour doesn’t get a lot of press in the scouting world, and while he’s got solid velocity — certainly better than Zwack or Szapucki — he lacks consistent secondary pitches. His debut has been very good, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously; 23-year-olds ought to be pitching quite well against A-ball hitters. Read the rest of this entry »
Currently holding the top spot in the AL Wild Card race and a 12–3 record over the last three weeks, it seems like the Blue Jays are finally playing up to this season’s lofty expectations. But despite their recent hot streak, there were spots on the roster that needed to be addressed in order to bolster their playoff odds — notably their pitching depth. They focused on doing just that at the trade deadline by acquiring relievers Anthony Bass and Zach Pop and a player to be named later in exchange for shortstop prospect Jordan Groshans.
This is Bass’ second stint with the Blue Jays; he spent the shortened 2020 season in Toronto, compiling 0.4 WAR with a 3.51 ERA in 26 appearances that year. He signed a two-year deal with the Marlins in 2021 but struggled in his first season in Miami, with his FIP increasing by more than a run, even though his ERA only saw a slight increase. A 62.3% groundball rate in Toronto dropped to 43.7% with the Marlins, and all that additional contact in the air led to a huge increase in balls flying over the fence.
Surprisingly, despite his groundball rate falling even further this year to a career-low 39.0%, Bass is in the midst of a career-best season. His strikeout rate has increased to 26.0%, a career high, and his walk rate has fallen by more than three points. More encouragingly, he’s only allowed a single home run this year. The result is a 1.41 ERA, a 2.06 FIP, and 1.4 WAR in 45 appearances. Read the rest of this entry »
Players like Juan Soto don’t get traded. Why would they? A 23-year-old with a stat line that stands next to those of the all-time greats of the game is the kind of player you dream about stumbling into. They’re shooting stars, once-in-a-lifetime phenoms. All you have to do is hitch your wagon to their meteoric ascent and enjoy the ride.
The Nationals, though, didn’t feel that way. In the depths of a crushing teardown that has seen them fall from 2019 World Series champion to worst in the majors this season, the Nationals had nothing around Soto to make the team competitive. Soto was a mint Ferrari in the garage of a one-room shack. They offered him a 15-year contract extension worth $440 million this season, but he turned it down, either holding out for more money in free agency or hesitant to sign up for 15 more years with a currently-bad team that has an uncertain future thanks to a pending sale.
Let’s just call it that: thanks to their own rebuilding plans and potential organizational changes, the Nationals decided they could neither compete in the immediate future with Soto nor retain him beyond the 2024 season. I don’t really believe that to be true – I think they could have worked something out if they had truly put their mind to it and committed to making Soto the centerpiece of their next competitive team – but that’s a discussion for another time. If you determine that your options are to trade him or let him walk after 2024, trading him is the lesser of two evils. Read the rest of this entry »
With just hours to go until Tuesday’s trade deadline, the Twins shored up their bullpen, acquiring All-Star closer Jorge López from the TwinsOrioles for four pitching prospects. López, a 2020 waiver claim who was once a big part of a Mike Moustakas trade, has blossomed in 2022 upon being converted to a full-time reliever, saving 19 games for the O’s and putting up a 1.68 ERA and 2.99 FIP. Heading to Baltimore are Cade Povich, Yennier Cano, Juan Nunez, and Juan Rojas.
Not to be outdone, the Brewers made a relief addition of their own, picking up Matt Bush for pitcher Antoine Kelly and second baseman/third baseman Mark Mathias. Finally back after the second Tommy John surgery of his career, Bush has been sterling in his return, striking out 11 batters per game with his fastball returning to the upper 90s. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, the Rays traded C/INF Ford Proctor to the Giants for Triple-A reliever Jeremy Walker. The Rays appear to have been trying to clear 40-man space. The Rays have several players on the 60-day IL who don’t currently occupy a 40-man spot but will need to once they return, including Wander Franco, Manuel Margot, and Harold Ramírez, all of whom are likely to come off of the IL between now and the end of the season. Tampa could also potentially add more big leaguers before the deadline who would require 40-man space. The move was an opportunistic pounce by the Giants, who get a player I happen to like quite a bit.
Proctor was occupying a 40-man spot while hitting .213/.329/.306 at Triple-A Durham, and his strikeout rate has climbed significantly for the second straight year. He was a contact-oriented infielder at Rice and in the lower minors who the Rays moved behind the plate during the early stages of the pandemic. While he’s made huge strides on defense, he still has moments of ineptitude, whiffing on the occasional easy-to-receive pitch, or letting a blockable ball in the dirt get past him. For a convert who has just shy of two years experience wearing the tools of ignorance, Proctor looks pretty good even though he’s 25. Read the rest of this entry »
Are you also furiously following the news ahead of today’s trade deadline? Join me on Twitch this afternoon for a live chat and transaction reactions, with guest appearances from Nick Pollack of Pitcher List and Jason Martinez of our very own RosterResource. You can tune in over on my Twitch channel or right here in this post, starting at 3 PM ET and going until we run out of deals to cover. Happy deadline day!
The Braves made their biggest headlines on Monday with the announcement of Austin Riley’s 10-year, $212 million extension, but they did make a pair of trades to shore up their roster in advance of Tuesday’s deadline. They fortified their rotation by acquiring righty Jake Odorizzi from the Astros, and added outfield depth by getting Robbie Grossman from the Tigers.
Both deals were single-player swaps. For the 32-year-old Odorizzi they sent 33-year-old lefty reliever Will Smith to the Astros, while for the 32-year-old Grossman they sent 20-year-old lefty prospect Kris Anglin to the Tigers.
After a season in which he was about league average in 23 starts and 104 innings for the Astros last year, Odorizzi has improved to a 3.75 ERA and 3.61 FIP in 12 starts this year, averaging exactly five innings per turn, and bouncing back from what initially looked like a season-ending ankle injury suffered while running towards first base against the Red Sox on May 16. At the time, there was concern that he had ruptured his Achilles or fractured his ankle, but he didn’t break anything, and the damage to his tendons and ligaments did not involve his Achilles and wasn’t nearly as serious as initially feared. He missed seven weeks, and since returning on July 4, he’s had rough starts against the Royals and A’s but also two seven-inning scoreless starts against the A’s (whom he’s faced in three of his five post-injury games) and Mariners, including a two-hit effort with a season-high eight strikeouts against Seattle on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »
After months of rumors and loud whispering, the mega-trade for Juan Sotohas finally happened, with the winner being the San Diego Padres. It’s hard to overstate the impact of a trade like this; while stars are always traded, Soto is a very young and already quite accomplished player with generational-type talent, and players in that category do not change uniforms by trade all that often. I’m already tempted to type this piece in all capital letters, damaging the eyes of our esteemed editors; the Padres adding an excellent rental in Josh Bell just makes it an even harder test for my willpower.
The stable of talent sent to Washington is impressive, as it should be. Heading to D.C. are starting pitcher MacKenzie Gore, shortstop C.J. Abrams, outfielder Robert Hassell III, outfielder James Wood, pitcher Jarlin Susana, and first baseman Eric Hosmer. For the Nationals, any lingering concerns that someone would have to take Patrick Corbin, thus reducing the value of the return significantly, have now safely evaporated, and they’ll now have to turn to other options there. The Padres even fulfilled Washington’s desire to include a major leaguer who can help the team win games right now in the form of Gore. There are still issues to iron out with Hosmer’s no-trade clause, but for now, we’re going to look at this trade with the assumption that this works out, one way or the other. One possibility is an effort to get a third team into the mix, one that is interested in Hosmer’s services and not on his no-trade list, or at least a team he’d be more willing to waive the clause to join. Who that would be exactly is a tricky question; maybe the Royals?
UPDATE: Hosmer has officially vetoed his move to Washington, though the trade will still go ahead without his involvement. San Diego now has an interesting contract situation to resolve this afternoon.
UPDATE 2: Hosmer is now heading to Boston, per multiple reports, with fellow first baseman Luke Voitnow part of the Soto trade in his stead.
UPDATE 3: The deal is now official: Soto and Bell for Voit, Gore, Hassell III, Wood, and Susana.
To wet your whistle — my colleague Ben Clemens will be around shortly with a full rundown of the particulars of this trade, and Eric Longenhagen will run through the prospects — here are some projections which I swear aren’t fan service. (Year-by-year projections for Wood and Susana are unfortunately beyond ZiPS’ scope at this stage of their careers.) Some may be disappointed that Soto’s numbers aren’t quite what they were last year, but his defense looks worse and he’s not quite at his normal level of offense. But considering ZiPS has only “downgraded” his top comp to Carl Yastrzemski, it’s still a great projection!
I have a history with Malcom Nunez. I started writing about baseball in 2018. I was a long-time Cardinals fan, but knew basically nothing about the outer reaches of the farm system, like many lifelong but inherently casual fans. And I was drinking from the firehose of second-wave sabermetrics; I’m inherently biased to think statistics can help me make sense of the world, and the language of numbers was a familiar and welcome sight in my baseball analysis.
Nunez set the DSL on fire that summer. He hit .415/.497/.774, which hardly sounds like a real baseball line. He had more extra-base hits than strikeouts. This was the new hitting god the Cardinals deserved, the next heir to the Pujols mantle. Doing that at age 17 when I was just learning the ropes left an indelible impression in my mind. I heard explanations for why he shouldn’t be a top prospect — he was a man among boys, he was bound for first base, there wasn’t much development left in him, he was simply so far away from the majors — but in my heart I didn’t really believe them.
I’ve changed. These days, I understand completely why factors like that are important context, and often more important than the numbers themselves. I know not to trust such a short sample, or at least to discount it heavily in my mind. Nunez has been a perfectly fine prospect — 18th-best on the Cardinals, per The Board — but not the world-beater I dreamed up four years ago. He’s played the entire season at Double-A Springfield, and while he’s put up an above-average batting line at first base, his best highlights have been on the receiving end of some crazy Masyn Winnthrows. Still, when I see Nunez’s name, some small part of my brain still goes “ooh, that guy’s great!” So when the Cardinals traded him yesterday, I had to write about it.
The full deal: St. Louis sent Nunez and swingman Johan Oviedo to the Pirates in exchange for José Quintana and Chris Stratton. It is, in many ways, a standard trade of currently useful pitching for potentially interesting players. It’s also a move that shouldn’t stand on its own. Let’s break down each part. Read the rest of this entry »
