Below you’ll find a roundup of notable moves from the past few days, as well as future expected moves and a Minor League Report, which includes a list of recent major league debuts, and top prospect promotions. For this column, any lineup regulars, starting pitchers, or late-inning relievers are considered “notable,” meaning that middle relievers, long relievers, and bench players are excluded. You can always find a full list of updated transactions here.
Lineup Regulars
Chicago Cubs 8/4/19: C Willson Contreras (strained hamstring) placed on 10-Day IL, retroactive to August 3.
Contreras will likely be out until early September. Victor Caratini, who has an .803 OPS in 140 plate appearances, will be the starting catcher with Taylor Davis serving as his backup. Nick Hundley and Jonathan Lucroy are free agents who the Cubs could consider signing.
If you’ve followed baseball closely this year, you can’t miss the tidal wave of impact rookies. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the two top prospects in baseball, have succeeded in the majors, and they haven’t been alone. Pete Alonso is hitting the stuffing out of baseballs. Mike Soroka and Chris Paddack are pitching like top-tier starters. Tatis is hitting .323 with power and playing a passable shortstop, and he’s not even the clear Rookie of the Year. The competition is just that good.
That’s just the top tier. Go half a level down, and the league is filled with rookies making their presences felt. Keston Hiura has absolutely mashed in his limited plate appearances with the Brewers. Yordan Alvarez has a .353 ISO and a 191 wRC+ over nearly a third of a season. Brandon Lowe is a key cog on the Rays. Oscar Mercado brought the Indians back to life. It’s a good year to be young and in baseball.
Even in this age of constant baseball coverage, though, one rookie has gone overlooked. The best three rookies this season by WAR have been Tatis, Alonso, and Soroka. No one would argue their hegemony. The fourth, though, hasn’t even been named yet in this article. Bryan Reynolds has been the fourth-most-productive rookie, in this year of impact youngsters, and he’s done it in near-complete anonymity.
Reynolds wasn’t supposed to make an impression in the majors this year. He was a good-but-not-great hitter in Double-A in 2018 after being traded from the Giants in the Andrew McCutchen deal, riding BABIP and walks to a 128 wRC+ despite middling power. Prospect evaluators saw him as an average-bat, average-glove regular who could play center in a pinch — in a few years. He ranked ninth in our Pirates’ preseason top prospects list, but didn’t crack Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel’s top 100. As a 23-year-old in Double-A, it seemed reasonable for him to take 2019 adjusting to Triple-A before reaching the majors in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »
When it was completed, the Tyler White deal didn’t rock many (if any) boats. It was a minor move: The Dodgers acquired White from the Astros in exchange for Andre Scrubb, a 2019 Rule 5 eligible right-handed pitcher who had most recently been throwing in Double-A.
White has been scuffling of late, but a quick look at his offensive performance from the previous two seasons makes clear why the Dodgers find the first baseman intriguing. White’s bat has been significantly above league-average at times, even if his defensive profile limits his overall value:
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the non-running Royals and Terrance Gore, the Diamondbacks’ stolen-base success rate and Zack Godley’s disastrous season, the Phillies’ roster crunch, Sam’s recurring nightmare, a Roman Quinn fun fact, and the outfield exploits of Vince Velasquez, whether the 40-man roster should be bigger, what Velasquez has in common with EW legend Ned Garver, the trials and travails of baseball’s forgotten “bullpen jeep” and the sport’s perpetual efforts to shorten games, lying about Babe Ruth, a new nickname for combined no-hitters, the Astros debut of Aaron Sanchez and Houston’s continued way with pitchers, plus a postscript tribute to the late, great unknown comic, Ted Berkelmann.
Audio intro: T. Rex, "Jeepster" Audio outro: John Entwistle, "Ted End"
You knew it was coming. When Houston acquired Aaron Sanchez from the Blue Jays, changes to his repertoire were bound to follow. By now, the pitching preferences of the Astros organization are well known: throw your best pitch more often and ditch your worst. It’s not as simple as telling pitchers to throw more breaking balls or throw fewer fastballs, though. It’s an individualized pitching strategy based on the strengths and weaknesses of the particular pitcher. Erstwhile FanGraphs author Travis Sawchik describes how these individualized development plans are presented to new Astros in his new book, The MVP Machine, co-authored with Ben Lindbergh:
When you're traded to the Astros, this is what your first meeting with the club is like (via a nonfiction book titled The MVP Machine): pic.twitter.com/EwqD5ZgMBW
We may have expected some tweaks, but I’m not sure anyone could have expected the adjustments to have such an immediate impact for Sanchez. With the Blue Jays, he had posted a league worst 6.07 ERA with a 5.03 FIP across 23 starts. In his first start with his new team, he held the Mariners hitless over six innings, allowing just three base runners and striking out six. Will Harris, Joe Biagini (who came over from the Blue Jays in the same trade), and Chris Devenski completed the combined no-hitter after Sanchez was lifted after the sixth.
Corbin Martin has had an eventful summer. The 23-year-old right-hander made his MLB debut in mid May, underwent Tommy John surgery in early July, and four days ago he was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks as part of the blockbuster Zack Greinke deal. Martin came into the season ranked No. 3 on our Houston Astros Top Prospects list.
He didn’t follow a traditional path to the big leagues. Primarily a centerfielder as a Cypress, Texas prep, he didn’t begin pitching in earnest until his second collegiate season. Moreover, he cemented his conversion under the midnight sun, 4,000-plus miles from home.
“When I got to [Texas] A&M, they were like, ‘Hey, we know you pitched a little in high school; do you want to try it out?,’” Martin told me prior to the second of his five big-league starts. “I was like, ‘Sure.’ At first I was kind of frustrated, because I like hitting, but I ended up running away with it.”
Baseball is said to be a marathon, not a sprint, and immediate success wasn’t in the cards. Martin pitched just 18 innings as a freshman, then struggled to the tune of a 5.47 ERA as a sophomore. It wasn’t until his junior year, which was preceded by a breakout summer in the Cape Cod League, that “all the pieces finally came together.”
As the trade deadline came and went, there seems to have been a feeling of disappointment about its activity, or perceived lack thereof. Too many players stayed put, while too many teams failed to improve. Ken Rosenthal went so far as to say that “life was getting sucked out of the sport.” Rosenthal cited the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Yankees as clubs that failed to do anything of significance, with the Angels, Phillies, and Red Sox as other teams who failed to do much at the deadline. Rosenthal includes a quote from White Sox GM Rick Hahn and floats the idea that the one-game Wild Card doesn’t provide enough incentive for teams to want to win. That statement isn’t really supported by this deadline, though.
Rosenthal correctly identifies that baseball’s economic system, which has fallen behind the times when it comes to rewarding players monetarily for their play on the field, is broken, and he’s hardly alone in suggesting that the second Wild Card helped to cause a trade deadline that lacked movement (or, more specifically, big movement — as Ben Clemens noted, the deadline was incredibly busy). Jayson Stark included a quote from an executive in his piece on the deadline:
“If you do that, you’re putting a lot of your future on playing one game,” said one NL exec. “It doesn’t make sense [to go all in to play one game]. If you made the Wild Card two out of three, I bet you’d see more teams willing to do something. At least that’s a series. But who’s going to make a big trade for a chance to play one game?”
Tonight, 21-year-old Dustin May is set to bring his flaming red hair to Dodger Stadium when he makes his major league debut against the Padres. Every prospect’s journey to the bigs is unique, but they start in similar places, on amateur fields, often under the watchful eye of scouts. May’s path is especially familiar to me; though I was far from the only person in the Dodgers organization involved, I was the scout who signed him.
The funny thing is, I wasn’t especially enamored with May the first time I saw him pitch. It was a little more than four years ago to the day, at the annual Texas Scouts Association showcase game on a characteristically hot July day in San Antonio. May pitched one of the later innings of the day; he worked in the upper-80s with his fastball and threw a sharp upper-70s slurve with good spin. While he pitched well against the high school competition he faced, his stuff didn’t stand out among a crowd of intriguing 2016 high school draft prospects that included players such as Forrest Whitley, Hudson Potts, and Kyle Muller.
Still, May’s prospect status continued to rise at a relatively quick pace following that initial outing. After a solid performance in two separate appearances during the fall of his senior year, he was planted firmly among the list of “must see early” players – a list commonly populated by projectable high schoolers who might make a jump during the springtime. May, who was an ultra-skinny 6-foot-6 with a quick arm, fit the bill well.
By time his senior spring rolled around, May’s velocity had crept up from where it was during my first look. Touching 94 and routinely working in the low-90s with life, he began to morph into a prospect who didn’t seem as far away as he had a few months before. To go along with the increased fastball velocity, the breaking ball, which had always spun well but often got sweepy and had slurvy shape to it, began to develop into more of a true slider.
As an area scout, my responsibility was to gather as much information as I could so the scouting department could make the best decisions possible when choosing among hundreds of options during the draft. It was no different with May. I spent the spring speaking with his coaches, teammates, and teachers, to the college coaches who had recruited him, and advisers who were assisting his family in the process. May was selected in the third round of the 2016 draft as a projectable high school righty with the makings of two pitches that projected to potentially be plus in the future. He was given a $997,500 signing bonus and went straight to work in the AZL.
Between then and now, May has thrown just over 400 innings in the minor leagues, showcasing advanced command and inducing groundballs at an above-average clip. He now works with a four-pitch mix, highlighted by a plus low-90s cutter he added last year. His sinker, which has averaged 95 mph and touched 99, would be among the hardest sinkers major league starters throw. His curveball would be among the highest average spin breaking balls of any major league starter as well. His changeup, still a work in progress, is thrown just over 8% of the time and flashes average.
Beyond being a part of May’s signing process, I also served as one of his coaches – first during Fall Instructional League in 2016, and then again at the end of the 2017 season in his brief but impressive stint in the Cal League. I vividly remember having a conversation with him during instructs after a two-inning outing. He was told to only throw fastballs and changeups during his second inning of work in order to gain reps throwing the changeup, which was developmentally behind his breaking ball. May threw a total of 24 pitches in his two innings – 12 fastballs, 12 changeups. After the outing, he was asked if he intentionally threw the exact same number of each pitch, and if he was aware he could have utilized his breaking ball in his first inning of work. His response was succinct. He explained that he didn’t know it was an exact 50-50 usage split, but that he’d known he could use the breaking ball and decided not to. When asked for his rationale, he said he knew he needed a changeup to get big league hitters out. The coaches who observed this discussion nodded in approval. It’s rare for a teenager to possess the sort of foresight and maturity present in May’s response, one that suggests not only an awareness of what the exercise is intended to achieve in the moment, but also of the purpose it is meant to serve years down the road. It was then that I fully realized that May’s mental makeup would be a strength as his professional career continued.
Coming into the 2019 season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel ranked May second in the Dodgers system and 21st overall, earning a 55 FV and a report that heralded him as a near-complete prospect, only missing a changeup to round out his arsenal. Their report on May detailed the strength of his curveball and his curls:
May’s flamboyant ginger curls and Bronson Arroyo-esque leg kick are maybe the third and fourth most visually captivating aspects of his on-mound presence once you’ve gotten a look at his stuff. His mid-90s fastball plays up due to great extension, and further incorporation of a running two-seamer has given May’s heater enough tail to miss bats in the strike zone. His vertically-breaking slider (May calls it a slider, but it has curveball shape) has one of the better spin rates in the minors and enough vertical depth to miss bats against both left and right-handed hitters. It’s May’s out pitch, but he also has a developing cutter and its movement is a great foil for his two-seamer. After trying several different changeup grips in 2017, it seems like May is still searching for a good cambio, but his fastball and breaking ball command should suffice against lefties for now.
In 79.1 innings in Double-A this year, May produced a 3.18 FIP, a 19.8% K-BB%, and a 50.5% ground-ball rate. He earned a promotion to Triple-A, an invite to the Futures Game in Cleveland, and a 60 FV, moving closer to fulfilling the promise that had Eric and Kiley describe him as, “what was once a prospect with mid-rotation upside has become one with mid-rotation likelihood.” May is now ranked as the No. 1 prospect in the Dodgers system and eighth overall in baseball on THE BOARD.
Now, after a trade deadline that saw Los Angeles decline to make a significant pitching acquisition, May is getting the call. He’s a young pitcher with a unique combination of a high floor and a high ceiling. There’s a strong likelihood that he is a mid-rotation starter – a plus athlete who throws four pitches for strikes and has never had a major arm injury – and the chance that he continues to refine his arsenal and becomes someone featured at or near the top of a major league rotation. He’ll likely contend for a playoff roster spot on the 2019 Dodgers team, and figures to be featured in the rotation beginning in 2020 and moving forward. His path to the bigs might be complete, but his journey is just beginning.
As I was saying before the busiest trade deadline day on record — yes, my timing of this two-part series was impeccable — Monday’s trade of Jason Vargas to the Phillies was noteworthy as the rare intradivisional pre-deadline swap. Some might view in-season deals with direct rivals to be taboo, but they do occur, and as the July 31 trade deadline approached, it seemed like a fun idea to examine their recent history.
To keep this from becoming unruly, I’ve confined my focus to the 2012-19 period, the era of two Wild Cards in each league — a cutoff chosen because it expands not only the number of teams who make the playoffs, but also the group who can at least envision themselves as contenders. For this, I’m using the Baseball-Reference Trade Partners tool and counting only trades that occurred in June, July, or August, which we might more accurately call midsummer deals rather than deadline ones — though some of them were definitely of that variety. I’ve omitted straight purchases, which generally involve waiver bait, though I have counted deals in which cash changed hands instead of a player to be named later.
If you’re looking for a basis of comparison, in the companion piece to this, covering the National League, I found that the NL division with the most deals fitting the description within the period was the NL East, with 12, with five such deals taking place in the NL Central, and just three in the NL West, none of them involving the Dodgers; this year’s deadline didn’t change any of those tallies. The most notable NL deal in this class was a July 27, 2012 one that sent Marco Scutaro from the Rockies to the Giants, whom he not only helped win a World Series but earned NLCS MVP honors along the way. Since I worked from West to East in the NL edition to emphasize some of those points, we’ll take these divisions in the same order.
Midsummer Trades 2012-19: AL West
Team
Astros
Angels
Athletics
Mariners
Rangers
Total
Astros
—
2
1
0 (6/2010)
1
4
Angels
2
—
1
0 (12/2012)
0 (6/2018)
3
Athletics
1
1
—
1
1
4
Mariners
0 (6/2010)
0 (12/2012)
1
—
0 (4/2019)
1
Rangers
1
0 (6/2018)
1
0 (4/2019)
—
2
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
For combinations with no midsummer trades, the dates in parentheses note the last transaction involving the two teams.
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