It’s Friday, so the podcast returns as I am joined by special guest host and national writer for Fox Sports, Pedro Moura. We begin by discussing the looming trade deadline, how COVID has been the early story of the second half, and Shohei Ohtani’s footprint in southern California. We also try to understand what is going on with the Oakland A’s stadium situation. Then we are joined by a very special guest, as we welcome up-and-coming baseball journalist Ken Rosenthal for a discussion about what it’s like to cover the trade deadline, the value of breaking news, and just how many texts Ken will send on July 30. From there, it’s your emails, Pedro’s upcoming book and recent job change, and the spectacularly trashy (but impossible to stop watching) garbage that is Love Island UK.

As always, we hope you enjoy and thank you for listening.

Music by Sarin.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

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As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those 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 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 2022-2026, 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 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

Below you’ll see commentary from both of us for each player. And now, on to this year’s final group. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 932

On this week’s show, we dive deep on Canada’s team before a chat about the Trade Value series and more.

• At the top of the program, David Laurila is joined by Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet to weigh in on the Toronto Blue Jays, who are contending for a playoff spot in the competitive AL East. David and Ben discuss the big contributions the team has gotten from players like Robbie Ray, Alek Manoah, and Marcus Semien, and how Toronto is still waiting to see more from free agent signing George Springer. Ben feels good about the Blue Jays being buyers at the deadline, in large part thanks to the undeniable Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who continues to lead the club with his meteoric rise. [2:36]
• After that, Ben Clemens and Eric Longenhagen have an extended chat to catch up on what they’ve been working on. Eric is on the East Coast after having just been in Denver for the Futures Game, while Ben has been working hard with Kevin Goldstein to attempt to rank the best players in baseball by their trade value. Ben and Eric discuss this challenge and the nuances involved in compiling the list, including different philosophies for how to approach and consider the rankings. The duo talk about specific players who were ranked as part of the exercise, including Jack Flaherty, Mookie Betts, and Freddy Peralta, before getting into the upcoming trade deadline and what impact 40-man roster crunch could have on the deals made. Finally, the pair reflect on the awkward new timing of the draft and the effects it could have. [27:00]

Read the rest of this entry »

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the return of the debate about batting around and other unending debates they do or don’t care about, whether MLB should borrow the NFL’s plan to make clubs forfeit games that can’t be played because of unvaccinated players, Willians Astudillo being back in the big leagues, and listeners’ suggestions for alternate cycles, then answer listener emails about Zack Greinke and the Expos, turning the zombie runner into a ghost runner, beliefs about baseball that they have changed their minds about or will change their minds about, a baseball equivalent of pulling the goalie, and how long it would take aging former stars’ career WARs to hit zero, plus a Stat Blast about the Mariners and teams with the longest droughts since their last sweep of a homestand or road trip.

Audio intro: Lou Reed, "Endless Cycle"
Audio outro: Death Cab for Cutie, "Debate Exposes Doubt"

Link to WSJ batting around article
Link to Deadspin batting around article
Link to 2019 batting around video
Link to 2021 batting around video
Link to “triple short of cycle” games
Link to “Miggy cycle” games
Link to story about NFL forfeits
Link to post about pulling the goalie
Link to post about civilian WAR
Link to post about potato WAR
Link to Stat Blast data

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For the full introduction to the Replacement-Level Killers series, follow the link above. While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a closer look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. Particularly in this batch of left and right fielders, a few of these situations include midseason turnarounds where returns to normalcy are camouflaged by early-season struggles; MLB’s crackdown on pitchers’ use of foreign substances may be a point of inflection in more than one case. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the July 30 deadline. As with previous entries in this series, won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through yesterday (July 21, in this case), but statistics through the day before (July 20).

Yankees (50-44, 3rd in AL East, 43.9% Playoff Odds)

For the Yankees, this season was supposed to mark a changing of the guard in left field, with Clint Frazier having hit and fielded well enough in late 2020 to take over regular duties from the aging Brett Gardner. Like so much else in the Yankees’ lineup, however, things haven’t worked out. Frazier hit just .186/.317/.317 (83 wRC+) with -0.8 WAR and lost his starting job before being sidelined in early July by what was originally diagnosed as vertigo but is now considered to be a vision problem, possibly related to his previous concussion-related issues. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Across the country and around the world, it’s the Daily Prospect Notes.

Graham Ashcraft, RHP, Cincinnati Reds
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Chattanooga Age: 23 Org Rank: 22 FV: 40

A threat to walk everyone in the ballpark in college, Ashcraft seemed like a surefire reliever after the Reds drafted him in the sixth round of the 2019 draft. But a weird thing happened between then and now: He found a way to throw strikes, started going deeper in games, and did both while still missing bats. Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Dan Szymborski:  Take off every ‘ZIG’!!

12:01

Dan Szymborski: It’s chat time!

12:01

Dan Szymborski: uh oh

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Relievers are always tricky! From my piece today, I think I’m valuing Kimbrel more highly than most of our readers.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I think at the level Kimbrel’s returned to, it does have value.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Plummer was looking like a bust. Drafted 23rd overall by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2015 out of a Detroit-area high school, the left-handed-hitting outfielder had a ho-hum debut summer, then he injured a wrist and missed what would have been his first full professional season. His next three years weren’t particularly fruitful either. Playing at the lower levels of the minors, Plummer put up a .194/.338/.309 slash line while fanning at a 32.3% clip. Add in last year’s lost-to-the-pandemic season, and the 24-year-old former first-round pick came into the current campaign with his stock having plummeted, and with his future very much in doubt.

That doubt is slowly dissipating. Given an opportunity to redeem himself at Double-A Springfield, Plummer has flourished to the tune of .307/.414/.507 line with 10 home runs in 268 plate appearances. Not coincidentally, his strikeout rate has improved to a still-too-high, yet much-more-palatable, 27.1%.

Earlier this season I asked the Brother Rice High School product — DJ LeMahieu is a fellow alumnus — about his previous struggles.

“Everybody’s journey is different,” responded Plummer. “That goes for baseball, just as it does for life. I think the biggest thing that’s helped me turn it around this year is having a mindset of learning from my past — my past failures — and applying the 1,200-1,300 at-bats I’d accumulated so far in the minor leagues. I’m fortunate to be with one of the best organizations in baseball. The Cardinals have continued to invest in me, and I’ve continued to invest in myself.” Read the rest of this entry »

We’re about a week away from the trade deadline, and so far, the stage has been a little quiet. So for a little mid-week action, we need to create our own little mise-en-scène, an activity I try to do around this time every year. These are not predictions of moves that will happen, but an exercise that seeks to make fair trades that benefit both the buying contenders and the selling also-rans. In the best-case scenario, we get some fun discussions of what things are possible.

The Oakland Athletics acquire SS Trevor Story from the Colorado Rockies for OF Brayan Buelvas, C Drew Millas, and 1B Greg Deichmann

I’m starting off with a trade that I don’t think either team would do. For Rockies fans, there may be some disappointment that Story doesn’t fetch a big-name prospect. I don’t think that kind of return is suitable at this point; that boat sailed last winter. And the other team isn’t trading for Story, but for two months of Story having a distinct down year.

The Rockies have offensive problems, but given the size of the outfield, I think that a raw talent with defensive upside like Buelvas has a lot of value in Coors, something they’ve been without quite often. While some would think of Nick Allen going in a trade like this, at this point, he’s too good to trade for a rental. Colorado likes defensive-minded catchers, so Millas makes sense here (and isn’t 32 like the team’s usual backstop of choice).

The A’s would likely balk because of money. Sorry Oakland, there aren’t enough (or good enough) prospects going to Colorado to include Elvis Andrus to “even up” the money involved. Story’s not really that expensive, but he’s still too costly for the A’s to make it up by either releasing minor leaguers or making them into a roguish band of lovable Dickensian pickpockets. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those 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 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 2022-2026, 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 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

As we enter the top 20, you’ll see commentary from both of us for each player. And now, to the next group. Read the rest of this entry »