ZiPSing Up the Trade Deadline
The 2024 trade deadline is now in the history books, so it’s time for a post-mortem on how it went. As I do every year, I set the ZiPS projection system the task of seeing which teams moved their division, playoff, and championship probabilities the most. The methodology is relatively simple: I take the ZiPS projected standings the morning after the trade deadline and compare them to a second set of projections in which I undo every trade that was made over the prior three weeks. I always find the results fascinating because people often underestimate the secondary effects of the deadline, such as how a team did relative to their competition, how a team’s strength of schedule can change based on the strength of their opponents, and how the contours of the Wild Card races change when a competitor effectively drops out or suddenly gets better.
With players like Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, Luis Robert Jr., and Blake Snell staying put, there weren’t many impact trades, but it was still a busy deadline. On the whole, ZiPS found this deadline to be considerably more consequential than last year’s. In 2023, ZiPS only projected three teams as having moved their playoff probability by at least five percentage points, while this year, there were eight. In fact, two of the changes were the largest percentage-point shifts that ZiPS has seen as long as I’ve been doing this, one positive (Baltimore), one negative (Tampa Bay).
Note that this is only measuring 2024 impact. A team doing poorly here doesn’t necessarily mean that club had an awful trade deadline, and vice-versa. If the Giants had traded Jorge Soler for, say, Xavier Isaac and Carson Williams, they’d show up as losing here, but I think we’d all agree they’d have absolutely crushed the deadline.
The table below is currently sorted by change in playoff probability, but all of the columns are sortable if you click on the header:
| Team | Div% | Before | Diff | Playoff% | Before | Diff | WS Win% | Before | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kansas City Royals | 6.8% | 4.9% | 1.9% | 51.0% | 42.5% | 8.5% | 1.7% | 1.5% | 0.2% |
| New York Mets | 5.8% | 4.8% | 1.0% | 57.4% | 49.2% | 8.2% | 3.3% | 2.6% | 0.7% |
| Boston Red Sox | 1.3% | 2.1% | -0.8% | 43.6% | 36.7% | 6.8% | 1.9% | 1.8% | 0.1% |
| Atlanta Braves | 9.2% | 8.5% | 0.7% | 68.6% | 63.3% | 5.4% | 4.9% | 4.5% | 0.4% |
| San Diego Padres | 12.0% | 14.0% | -2.0% | 62.9% | 59.7% | 3.2% | 4.4% | 4.5% | -0.1% |
| Baltimore Orioles | 56.8% | 47.3% | 9.5% | 98.8% | 95.7% | 3.2% | 16.0% | 10.7% | 5.3% |
| Chicago Cubs | 3.9% | 2.2% | 1.7% | 8.4% | 5.6% | 2.8% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 76.8% | 69.5% | 7.3% | 96.3% | 93.6% | 2.7% | 12.6% | 10.2% | 2.4% |
| Seattle Mariners | 45.7% | 44.7% | 1.0% | 53.9% | 51.2% | 2.7% | 2.6% | 2.8% | -0.2% |
| Houston Astros | 36.8% | 36.0% | 0.8% | 45.0% | 42.5% | 2.5% | 2.3% | 2.4% | -0.2% |
| New York Yankees | 41.8% | 49.0% | -7.2% | 97.8% | 95.9% | 1.8% | 12.9% | 12.6% | 0.2% |
| Minnesota Twins | 16.9% | 16.8% | 0.1% | 72.7% | 71.6% | 1.1% | 5.1% | 6.3% | -1.2% |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 67.3% | 64.2% | 3.1% | 76.3% | 75.7% | 0.6% | 2.4% | 3.1% | -0.7% |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 85.0% | 86.7% | -1.7% | 98.9% | 98.7% | 0.2% | 12.5% | 13.6% | -1.1% |
| Washington Nationals | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.7% | 0.5% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Chicago White Sox | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Colorado Rockies | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Miami Marlins | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Oakland A’s | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Cleveland Guardians | 76.2% | 78.1% | -1.9% | 97.0% | 97.0% | 0.0% | 8.6% | 8.1% | 0.5% |
| Los Angeles Angels | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1% | 0.2% | 0.4% | -0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Texas Rangers | 17.4% | 19.0% | -1.6% | 23.4% | 24.1% | -0.6% | 1.5% | 1.9% | -0.4% |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 10.2% | 13.8% | -3.6% | 59.5% | 60.7% | -1.2% | 4.2% | 5.3% | -1.1% |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.8% | 5.1% | -3.3% | 0.1% | 0.3% | -0.3% |
| Detroit Tigers | 0.0% | 0.2% | -0.2% | 1.8% | 5.1% | -3.3% | 0.0% | 0.2% | -0.2% |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 14.0% | 15.0% | -0.9% | 26.2% | 29.5% | -3.3% | 0.8% | 1.3% | -0.5% |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 9.3% | 11.2% | -1.9% | 18.4% | 23.3% | -5.0% | 0.4% | 0.8% | -0.4% |
| Cincinnati Reds | 5.5% | 7.5% | -1.9% | 11.7% | 16.7% | -5.1% | 0.4% | 1.0% | -0.6% |
| San Francisco Giants | 1.0% | 2.7% | -1.7% | 14.8% | 23.6% | -8.7% | 0.8% | 2.0% | -1.3% |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 0.1% | 1.6% | -1.5% | 13.1% | 32.3% | -19.2% | 0.3% | 2.0% | -1.8% |
In terms of playoff probability, the Kansas City Royals head the list, though they remain long-shots to catch Cleveland and their World Series winning percentage didn’t budge that much. They didn’t make any huge additions, but Michael Lorenzen, Paul DeJong, Lucas Erceg, and Hunter Harvey are all generally replacing below-replacement talent. What benefitted Kansas City the most, however, is what happened elsewhere. Two teams in their division got noticeably weaker, and while that benefits the Guardians as well, ZiPS already saw Cleveland’s fate as being less up in the air. ZiPS also doesn’t expect Cleveland to need to make the playoffs via the Wild Card, but the Royals, like the other AL Wild Card teams, got the extra benefit of the Rays killing off their playoff shot.
The Mets didn’t land a star either, but ZiPS is a big fan of their remade bullpen, especially Huascar Brazoban, and it’s optimistic about the impact of Paul Blackburn and Jesse Winker. The team also had the advantage of being right on the edge of a knife entering the deadline, so extra wins here are incredibly high leverage. It also helps that, apart from the Padres, several NL Wild Card contenders treaded water.
The Red Sox don’t really feel like a winner to me — though the computer really likes Danny Jansen and the full-fat ZiPS is far more optimistic about James Paxton than the in-season model — but ZiPS has them benefitting the most from the Rays and Blue Jays getting a good bit worse.
Atlanta didn’t bolster their rotation, but getting a corner outfield bat in Soler was absolutely crucial to help slow the team’s fall given the other choices available.
In terms of wins added, ZiPS sees the Orioles and Dodgers as the big winners, though you see the change more in their championship probability rather than the playoff numbers, given that both teams were already overwhelmingly likely to make the postseason. ZiPS was really worried about the back of Baltimore’s rotation come playoff time, and as a result, adding Zach Eflin was a big Eflin deal, so much so that the O’s got a larger World Series boost than any other team at the deadline, and they did it without trading away any of their best talent. Also helpful was the trade with the Phillies; while Austin Hays has value, he didn’t have much value to the Orioles given their roster, making Seranthony Domínguez and Cristian Pache, for all intents and purposes, free additions. ZiPS also still likes Trevor Rogers, as it doesn’t take my constant disappointment that he’s not a triplet with Taylor and Tyler into account.
Turning to the Dodgers, Jack Flaherty has been terrific. ZiPS thinks that Los Angeles did the best in the White Sox/Cardinals/Dodgers three-way trade, with Flaherty instantly the member of the Dodgers’ projected playoff rotation with the best recent track record of health (ZiPS obviously doesn’t know whether the Yankees’ reported worries about his back have any merit).
The Guardians also see a World Series benefit from their quiet moves for Alex Cobb and Lane Thomas.
Remember when the Cubs were going to be sellers? They did trade Mark Leiter Jr., but the addition of Isaac Paredes added a crucial win to the team’s bottom line, and ZiPS wasn’t a fan of the moves made by the Pirates, Reds, or Cardinals. The system being down on St. Louis might raise some eyebrows, but the computer didn’t really see a net gain in getting Erick Fedde because of the loss of Tommy Edman.
I also have to address the Rays. With the roster as it was, ZiPS projected Tampa Bay with a nearly one-in-three chance of making the playoffs. But after losing approximately 2.8 wins following their deadline moves, that probability drops from 32.3% to 13.2%, almost a fifth of a playoff spot gone in just a few days of trades. Remember the notorious White Flag Trade of 1997, when the White Sox traded their best pitcher (Wilson Alvarez) and their closer (Roberto Hernandez) to the Giants despite only being 3 1/2 games back in the AL Central? Well, I did a rough ZiPS in-season projection for the effect of that trade, and ZiPS estimates the White Sox went from a 14% chance to make the playoffs to a 4% chance, barely half the drop in percentage points the Rays experienced.
The Marlins lost the most estimated wins at the deadline (3.4), more than the Rays did, but Miami had the “benefit” of already being dead in the water.
Well, that wraps up the deadline — enjoy the playoff races to come!
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Woof. Pirates. At least they only traded their best hitting prospect AA or above and a good pitching prospect and a defensive tweener in Forester and their former No 1 pick Quinn Priester and a low level LH reliever who’s probably better than the MLB reliever they got in Beeks to reduce their playoff odds by 5%.
Fhrbw
You may have missed something.
Pittsburgh’s probabilities went down, but, likely, because Chicago’s and Milwaukee’s went up.
If they hadn’t made those moves, they’d be even less likely to make the playoffs now
According to Dan, the Cubs added a win and are still very likely to finish below the Pirates. Brewers additions hurt and are in the picture but how much did they add?
As a Brewers fan, I’m also curious how adding a pitcher with a 5.01 ERA “helps” our playoff chances.
Yeah I don’t get it unless ZiPS hates the players the Pirates added.
I think part of that is also the return of the terrifying Devin Williams to your bullpen. The unit has already been amazing, but with that guy back? Yikes.
Also Montas is bad, but that’s still better than the zero or negative that they were getting before because they were running out of viable starters.
Good point on Williams.
We’re running short of guys, sure, but that’s partially because we traded a decent pitcher (Junis) away. I’d rather have Junis starting games than Montas.
Junis was only actually good for that start before he got injured early in the year. Since then, his pitches have played down and he hasn’t looked good at all outside of throwing strikes. At least Montas’ power arsenal theoretically plays up in relief and he can actually give the Brewers 5+.
It doesn’t matter that the Cubs are projected to finish a game back, projections are just statistical predictions and cover a range of outcomes. Playoff probability is a zero sum stat, if one team has made moves that make them more likely to make the playoffs it comes at the expense of another team. So in relative terms Pittsburgh was hurt by other teams in their division making moves that improved their teams to a greater degree relative to Pit as well as other NL wild card contenders making moves of there own.
I’m not going to argue that the Pirates had a good deadline, since they added some average bats but no one thats really good. But you are vastly overstating how much they gave up to get those returns. McAdoo, Forrester, Shim, etc were not high-value prospects. “Former No.1 pick” describes both Priester (2019, 18th overall pick) and Yorke, they guy they traded him to get (2020, 17th overall pick). And we’re really at the point where we’re pearl-clutching reliever prospects with 9 innings in AA? Peralta slots in at 35th in the Rockies system.
The Pirates didn’t get a haul back to help the MLB team, but let’s not pretend that they gave up a haul either.
With McAdoo, the Pirates turned a 13th-round college draftee who signed for slot into a desirable trade asset within a year. Hard not to see that as a success. And they can really use a backup shortstop, because Cruz maybe needs to sit for a day sometime to get his mental focus back.
The real issue is that they’d be far better off now if they’d shoved more chips in in the offseason instead of planning to tread water for another year. If instead of Perez they’d signed Lugo or Fedde or even Wacha, they could be in a playoff spot now. Though honestly it seems like they could’ve got Winker instead of de la Cruz without giving up much, and that would’ve moved the needle some.
Yeah I don’t get De la Cruz at all. Way too much blue on his xstats lines. They’re already 27th in OBP before him. Bad move and Cherington fails quite slowly, typically, so he’ll sit on BDLC’s control for a looong long time now instead of actually improving RF.
I’m not saying they gave up a haul. The comment on McAdoo illustrates how bereft of hitting talent their system is.
That was my reaction as well. The Pirates probably aren’t going to miss any of those guys.
They may not but they might really regret Bryan de la Cruz.
Dammit, Dan
“a big Eflin deal”
As a fellow Dan, I appreciated this way too much.
Damn, Daniel. Back at it again with those Eflin puns.
OK, I have to ask. How many estimated wins did the White Sox lose? Are they flopping toward history?
If you’re on a 17-game losing streak and you trade away a starting pitcher, it may not cause you to lose many more games. You can only lose once per game.
I was very disappointed with them keeping Crochet and Robert because it doesn’t seem like it alters their in-season trajectory as much. I am really hoping to see history but it’s really hard to lose 75% of your games or whatever it is to finish worse than the 2003 Tigers.
What the White Sox are doing is impressive. It’s not easy to be this bad. I watched those 2003 Tigers. They had already stripped the shelves bare before the season started. They were so bad they couldn’t get rid of anyone at the trade deadline. They were so bad they couldn’t field a lineup with QuadA types— that would have been an upgrade. Everyone remembers poor Mike Maroth losing 21 games but check out Nate Cornejo’s numbers especially the K%. And they still finished with a higher win% than Sox have now.
The White Sox’s lineup at Depth Charts is amazing on this score.
Nicky Lopez: 0.2 fWAR
Miguel Vargas: -0.1 fWAR (who, I kid you not, has -0.3 fWAR for the White Sox with eight PAs)
Luis Robert Jr: 1.1 fWAR
Gavin Sheets: -0.7 fWAR
Andrew Vaughn: -0.5 fWAR
Andrew Benintendi: -1.6 fWAR (how is it possible that he still has a job?)
Brooks Baldwin: -0.1 fWAR
Dominic Fletcher: -0.4 fWAR
Korey Lee: 0.1 fWAR
If they had traded Robert this lineup would be epic, in a bad way.
Cornejo was a top pitching prospect that they allowed to pitch 200+ innings as a 21 year old, including over 40 in a September call up to Detroit.
Why? In 2001, he went 16-3 in the minors & they wanted to get him a shot at 20 wins for the year across all levels. Yes, this happened, I remember it well. & he was never the same after that year.
If this happened today, I think the internet would break..or at least Fangraphs servers would.
Great stuff, Dan. I already thought the Mets had a fantastic deadline but this was good affirmation.
I think it wouldn’t have been a bad idea for the Mets to push a little harder (their offense is quietly awesome – 4th in MLB by wRC+) and get Fedde or Eflin since it turns out both were cheap to acquire and would stick around for next year when they definitely need more pitching.
I wouldn’t call giving up Edman “cheap”.
If 15 teams have better odds of making the playoffs should you be selling high on players with dwindling control or raiding the farm for present impact? Does a soft buy like what Boston or St. Louis did be enough to forego the opportunity to feast in a seller’s market? I think Tampa Bay did really well to cash in some chips getting back enough current replacements to mesh with internal returnees and adding a lot of potential for future seasons. I would have liked more for Zach Eflin or maybe a more consolidated return, and others will have their own quibbles.
A middle of the pack team clearly defining their future should not be as interesting to talk about as a top-end team failing to go the extra mile, but this is where the focus centers across the landscape of observers. We see nearly a 17 percentage point swing in the ALE divisional race, because one team was interested in improving and the other cared more about tanking a player’s market with whispers about medicals. It’s a five point bump in WS odds, as well. If we’re talking about missed opportunities due to financial limitations or prospect-hugging or whatever that seems much more interesting.
I think there is a much better argument that boston/stl should have been more aggressive buyers than sellers. STL in particular is a older core, the goal is to win in the playoffs. Not collect a bunch of 45 FV types.
And is the “sellers” market just correcting itself to make it neutral? We’ve seen studies (check BA) to say that prospects traded on average underperform their grades.
Well sure. All 50 FV prospects can’t possibly be average major leaguers.
I think they’re in that same middle zone so I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had moved in either direction, but they should have been a bit more aggressive down that path. Small bumps in talent are most useful when the incoming player is replacing a black hole. Red Sox pen can be that. Cards needed another arm to stop leaning on their pen so much, though I think a lefty would have made more sense. The bigger issue for each club is that they could really use a guy or two who can hit lefties. Jansen and Pham help, but not a ton of amps.
I do think we’re seeing teams feel they have more of a good read on prospects as we get further from the lost 2020 season. They’re happy to flip the middle tier guys where, perhaps, the greatest value lies. Each individual has a range of outcomes, and we can think we know the most likely outcome or the most frequently to occur, but that’s vanity. Meh prospect to good player is a career path for many, and while the premium prospects come with a premium cost, you can take multiple shots at those mixed up in the wash. In the aggregate, higher end prospects perform better than lesser thought prospects, but we aren’t living in the aggregate. It’s one team, one player, and if you get an everyday guy or someone who can excel within a role, that’s a great outcome.
The Rays are much more concerned about who is on the next prospect list than going after the guys on the last one. If they feel they have identified an undervalued player who they can work into the machine in some capacity later then I believe them. They aren’t always right, far from it, and sometimes disastrously, but you don’t need to be right everytime. You just have to keep identifying enough of those players to keep the wave machine pumping.
I think scout grades get unfairly pinned down as a single number. It’s kind of unfair when the person assigning the grade knows there is a range of outcomes, but you can give people a great report and they’ll still want it boiled down to a single number. It wouldn’t surprise if grades are consistently inflated to a small degree since players often flame out not for talent, but from injury. Personal biases always come into play, as does groupthink, but I don’t think those things are as large as the inherent variance of projecting years down the road based on the performance someone you saw a handful of times in a variety of environments provided. Some it’s obvious and those are the highest picks or prospects, others it isn’t so clear, yet they go on to achieve, anyway.
Yankees’ playoffs and WS odds went up, but their division chances went down. Makes sense, I suppose?
The Orioles improved more than they did but they got a little taste of the Rays’ playoff chances.
As a padres fan not a big fan of what they did. They got better and are now built for the playoffs better IF they get in but that’s a big if. Snelling/lesko have had disappointing years but i’m still optimistic on both, especially lesko. They needed to get another starter, even someone like Blackburn would have helped and was obviously gettable.
Not excited about Martin Perez?
Not even Martin Perez is excited about Martin Perez.
“Look, I will buy that autographed card of my son, but I ain’t paying a lot, he’s terrible!”
— Martin’s mum
With that bullpen you’re now playing 6 and 5 inning games. And your situational baseball is top notch. I love their chances in the playoffs. They have a 2015 Royals makeup.
It’s not as though the Rays improved their 2025 chances either. They were just bad.
They got a bunch of pitching in A ball and high A. Best case scenario is that this starts to help them in 2026. Worst case scenario is that it doesn’t.
I guess you have to be willing to take on a lot of risk trading for pitching prospects because guys like Chase Dollander and Rhett Lowder who are a little safer are almost impossible to trade for. Hard to get anyone with 4-win upside by the time they’re in AA. So they’re trading for them lower, which also means they are more likely to get hurt.
Hmm. They traded for Glasnow, and I guess Chris Archer and Scott Kazmir. They signed Eflin and Morton as FA. They drafted McClanahan and Snell. Trading Paredes and Arozarena and Eflin for low minors guys seems a much riskier way to go about this.
Let the record show, the Sox didn’t do too badly on the White Flag Trade! Gave up their closer and got back an excellent closer in Keith Foulke. Bobby Howry was a top shelf reliever for a period of time also. Mike Caruso had a surprising rookie year before falling off the map. Lorenzo Barcelo was a top 100 prospect until he caught the labrum bug that struck at least 5 White Sox over the course of a year (and, at that time, nobody had ever come back successfully from a labrum tear). Ken Vining…managed to keep his career ERA under 20! Okay he wasn’t so good.
Foulke had 11.2 bWAR as a reliever from 1999-2001, which is pretty dang impressive.
The White Flag trade winds up with a fun long trade tree, going (with other players involved) Foulke-Neal Cotts-David Aardsma-Miguel Socolovitch.
Shoutout to OOTP beast Miguel Socolovitch, who became a setup man for almost every team I ever ran in OOTP 2016 and its mobile counterpart.
There’s something about an owner of a team, 3 1/2 games back, explicitly declaring the team to be unable to catch Cleveland, and selling at the deadline. Even if it was the right move. Cleveland was good. Just… stung. I was 13.
It’s not easier at 33 or 43 or 53
Should’ve got a life-size cutout of the owner and ripped off pieces of their clothes with each win…I’ve seen it work!
How does the math work, if the teams behind MN increased their odds of being a WC team more than MN? Shouldn’t MN have decreased odds?
Like I was saying about the Yankees–the Rays dumped 19.2% worth of playoff odds onto the market. That pushed up the playoff odds for every other AL team that was over .500.
KC managed to be 10 games over .500 and holding down a WC spot with one of the worst bullpens in MLB. In fact its the worst of any team .500 or better in terms of runs allowed and wOBA (and basically every WPA stat)
I’m interested to see what they do with a pen that (hopefully) isn’t consistently giving up runs at a league worst rate in the late innings.
Erceg and Harvey are an improvement over what they had before but neither is all that reliable. But they should at least improve to mediocrity.
They have also stuck Bubic in the bullpen after he came back from TJ and he looks really good so far.
Thos three might not be big additions but they are so much better than what they had.
This although I’m not sure mediocrity is likely. I’d think they’ll be around 20ish rather than 15ish. Although if the Bubic bounceback is real and they give him higher leverage outings maybe higher. Harvey isn’t pitching well.
Royals GM is working circles around AL Central. They were dead last in the division last year winning just 56 Games. 22 Games worse than the Tigers. They crushed the FA signings and now theyre crushing the Trade Deadline. No 5 years plans in that office. They’ve already passed their win total from 2023 and have the 4th best record in the AL. Kudos to that front office.
I still can’t believe the Orioles got Eflin for three FV40+ prospects. Probably the single most impactful deal of the deadline in terms of World Series odds. And most of the same teams who were nervous about his $18M salary in 2025 would do cartwheels to get a pitcher that good for such a low salary in the offseason. What a phenomenal deal for them.
Agree! Cubs got Isaac paredes, proven big leaguer, 3rd base all star with control for minimal. Not sure why some GMs trade for low level minor leaguers in this market when you can get proven big leaguers that help you win for nothing.
Well nobody really got that unless they traded with the Rays
Rays not only helped out by gutting their team, they specifically helped the Orioles with that trade. I’m surprised the Yankees didn’t try to outbid them instead of worrying about Flaherty.
I’m just not all that enamored with Eflin this year. He looks more like a 4 than a 2.
We’re all complaining about the White Sox dealings but at least it doesn’t seem to have hurt their playoff chances.
Generally speaking, I overwhelmingly agree with the data provided on FG. Maybe, as a Cards fan I’m biased here, and I love Edman. Edman has been out all season and Fedde provides 5.0 WAR. Dan, what am I missing here?
Fedde only provides maybe 1-2 WAR based on the ROS projections for the Cards. That, and the rest of the divison except the Reds improved. It’s not that the Cards aren’t better, but that everyone else around them is too.
Sort of the same reason the Guardians don’t look like they improved despite Lane Thomas being a good player and Alex Cobb potentially coming back soon. The Royals improved much more than they did.