Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1727: One Trade Deadline to Rule Them All

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley recap the busiest trade deadline ever, first examining why it was so frantic and then going division by division to analyze the actions or inaction of every team that made a trade (which was, well, every team). Audio intro: Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, "Heard You’re Moving" Audio outro: Vanessa Peters, "Moving Day" […]

I got a question that's burning me up Like the mosquitoes that are keeping me up all night Teacher said you never may return She said you're moving When are you gonna tell me go? When are the walls coming down? When are the walls coming down? My avalanche say you go

Just tip it over and play my girl When are the walls coming down? When are the walls coming down? Hello and welcome to episode 1727 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanCrafts presented by our Patreon supporters i am ben lindberg of the ringer joined by i imagine a somewhat tired meg rowley from fan crafts hello meg hello we are speaking on saturday morning or early afternoon for me having wisely anticipated that we might be a bit busy on friday and that turned out to be true so So the trade deadline dust has settled. hourly meditation sessions to get through the day. And I would ask if the fan craft staff did the same. But based on the pace of posting, I don't think you would have had time.

So congrats to you and the other editors and writers who made that all happen. But it must have been pretty frantic. It was at times very frantic. It must have been pretty frantic. It was at times very frantic. I think that I just remain very impressed with the folks that we have on staff at FanGraphs. It is one thing to be able to do good analysis of a trade. It is another thing to be able to write cogently about anything, really. And to do both sort of under the pressure of wanting to get all of our deadline

deal coverage out same day is its own great challenge. So yeah, I feel tired. It has been just a very busy month of baseball work, you know? And so I will admit to being unable to fully distinguish what is new exhaustion and what is the knock-on effects of prior exhaustion. But it was a really good busy day and we appreciate everyone who came to the site and checked out what we wrote to help them better understand what impact this deadline would have on the individual teams and players and playoff races. So it was a really good busy day and I am glad that it is done now. Was that a record either traffic or content day for you or both? I think that it may have been both. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn by sharing that. It's

always challenging because the services that you use to track these things can change over time and sometimes they count things a little bit differently, but it was a very good traffic day for the site. I struggled to think of a day where we might have run more, I guess. There have been a couple of barn burner deadlines in the last decade. So I'm sure that it had its moments. 2015, I guess, is like the only one that I can really think of as coming close. So I did appreciate though that some of the big deals came out over the course of a couple of days. Yes, that was very considered. I guess there were just so many moves to be made that even with team's inclination to procrastinate, they just couldn't cram all of that into one day. So they had to spread it out over two at least.

Well, and I know that it's like drinking from a fire hose for our readers too. So you don't want to give short shrift to a Max Scherzer deal just because Bryant's getting moved, but you don't want to give short shrift to Chris Bryant either. So I think that it makes it a bit more digestible for baseball readers and media consumers, as well as the folks who have to generate analysis. But yeah, it was quite busy. You know, I'm a little sad that we'll never get to read Ben Clemens's version of the Scherzer Turner analysis that involves Scherzer going to San Diego, but there's half a draft sitting somewhere. So, you know, this is how these things can go

sometimes, but very good and exciting deadline. I suppose if you are a Cubs fan, you're, you're, you're in mourning today. So, you know, hope that, hope that things turn around for you guys soon. But, but yeah, it was, it was just wild. It was really, it was really so wild, but. It really was. Yeah. The MLB Twitter account put out a tweet right after the deadline to say like, was that the best trade deadline ever?

And I guess best is a matter of taste. And maybe it was not the best for Nationals fans or Cubs fans. Maybe a few years down the road, it'll look a little bit better. But regardless of whether it was the best, it was definitely the most trade deadline. I mean, that was just the tradiest trade deadline that we've ever seen and probably that we'll ever see. I don't know why it was so busy. And that's kind of one of the big picture questions I wanted to ask you before we dive into each individual trade. But it was the most trades ever made in July, I believe 68.

Most players ever traded in July. I think it was 165. Most all-stars ever traded in a season, 10. That was 2021 all-stars. You also had 23 current or former All-Stars traded in this week, and 15 of them traded on Friday alone. 11 had been the previous record for current or former All-Stars traded in a single day. I'm still trying to confirm this, but I think it was a record for the most year-to-date war traded in July. I believe every single team made a trade on the day of theto-date war traded in July. I believe every single team made a trade

on the day of the deadline or the trade before the deadline, even the Rockies technically, barely, but they did. So you made the Stefan reference the other day when we talked about the Starling Marte trade, but seriously, this deadline had everything. Superstars traded, top prospects traded, division and intra-city trades, multiple fire sales, which may be a good or bad thing, but definitely made it more busy. Very good teams getting great, teams on the bubble that were getting better, Bob Nightingale falling for fake accounts. That was a trade deadline. When I think of the trade deadline, that kind of frantic activity is what I imagine, but the reality rarely matches my imagination. I mean, there's always a flurry of deals, but nothing like that. And it's not that so many surprising players were dealt.

There were a few guys who made me go, wow, that guy got moved. But for the most part, almost everyone who was rumored to be on the block guy got moved. But for the most part, almost everyone who was rumored to be on the block did get traded. That was, I think, what set this apart. It's just like, usually you have guys who might be on the move, and then many teams choose to hold on to them. And this year, unless they were the Rockies, and we'll get to that, teams really did not choose to hold on to them. So we were speculating in the week leading up to this deadline, would this be a big one or not? And it was the biggest one.

So do you have any theories about what happened here? I think that part of the dynamic of this market was that you had teams that were not only in sell-off mode and willing to move their big stars, but they had a lot of big stars to move at once, right? Normally, maybe not normally, but often when a team has a concentration of talent like Scherzer and Turner or a Rizzo, Baez, Bryant trio, they're not really looking to move all those guys at once because when you have all those guys, you tend to be in a better competitive position than those teams have been. And so I think part of it is that you had that dynamic. And I think because there were

guys of that caliber, they were, you know, I didn't anticipate that the prospect return would look quite like it did. Right. Yeah. No, they were blue chip prospects traded even for rentals in some cases. Yeah. And I know that our pal michael bauman wrote about that dynamic and how we just you know teams are so so conditioned at this point to hold on to to future value literal and figurative right that they you know we don't often see top 100 guys moving and so i think that added a dynamic but part of that comes from a team like the Dodgers both being aggressive and being in a competitive division race for the first time in a decade, right? But also being so stacked as an organization that you can move a couple of top 100 guys and not decimate your farm and not be putting yourself at

a competitive disadvantage for the next couple of years. And so having that, I don't want to say inventory, that's such a gross way to refer to them, but having a system as stacked as they do is a sort of interesting and unique thing. Although, man, that deal looks incredible. Now, when you consider what the twins got for Burrios, you're like, wow, that's pretty amazing. But yeah, I think that when you have teams that are willing to be aggressive at the deadline who find themselves in competitive races, and then you have teams that are stacked with stars that have just realized that they really can't do much this year and have decided that it's time for the teardown. You had a really interesting sort of balance of talent that was available and it was really amazing. of talent that was available. And it was really amazing. Yeah. I don't know if it has to be part of a trend. I'm inclined to say it's part of one, but I guess there's the fact that they did do away with the waiver deadline in 2019. And of course, last year, we didn't really see a real trade

deadline because of the strange season. So that's probably part of it. And that if you have to make a trade, then you got to make it before July ends. So that helps. But also, you know, we talked to Neil Payne earlier in the week about how the divisions were sort of stratified or the playoff picture. You know, it seemed like a lot of teams were kind of set already and there weren't that many teams in that middle ground where they're kind of on the periphery of the race and might be motivated to make moves. And Neil was saying that that might actually enhance activity, which I guess it did.

It could have gone either way in that you could say if everyone's clearly a buyer and seller, like maybe the buyers wouldn't be that motivated. But in this case, they were. And as Neil was saying, like counterintuitively, maybe it can be more beneficial to upgrade when you know that you are already in the playoffs as opposed to just fighting for a spot. And I guess that turned out to be the case. And yeah, maybe all it takes is, you know, a confluence of just a couple teams that are in the position that the Nationals and the Cubs were, or at least that they put themselves in, where they were willing to just do a total teardown or reset or jumpstart their rebuild in a single day. Right. And then, yeah, when you have big market teams like the Yankees and the Dodgers who were upgrading and then that forces everyone else to upgrade and then it becomes a domino effect and sort of a self-sustaining thing where, well, if your rival made a move, then we better make a move to keep pace. And here we are with a really record trade deadline in every respect. So there's so much to talk about here. It's hard to even organize our thoughts i'm still trying to keep track of where everyone plays now it's like it's just like the fact that the nationals and the cubs were playing each other this weekend after they both did that it's like

who's gonna be in the lineup i think there were six players not just in that series but across the league who made their major league debuts on Friday, just because there were holes newly opened up. I think a couple of them were from that series, but it's like, really, who's on these teams still? Okay, Jason Hayward, he's still in Chicago, I guess. Juan Soto's still there, but that's about it. So it was wild. But I guess one way to organize this might kind of be going by division, I was thinking. That's just, you know, there are many ways we could do this. But we should probably start with the trait that you just brought up and the NL West, because a lot of the action, a lot of the intriguing action wasani in Major League Baseball this season, which I don't think there is, but if there is, then it's the NL West race, which has been thrilling start to finish. So many classic head-to-head matchups.

We thought it was going to be a two-team race. It's turned into a three-team race. you have to hand it to the Dodgers because they pulled off probably the move that overshadowed all of the other moves that were made when they picked up Max Scherzer and Trey Turner in just a shocking, stunning move. I mean, not stunning that they got Scherzer, I guess, because it was clear that Scherzer was going to go somewhere in the NOS, but because it was reported that the Padres were very close to trading for Scherzer earlier in the day, and then the tables turned and the Dodgers ended up with not just Scherzer, the best pitcher moved at the deadline, but Trey Turner, the best position player moved at the

deadline. And as excited as we get about trades, most trades don't make the difference because you got two months after the deadline and you pick up one or two players, what difference is it going to make? A win? Two? Maybe, if you're lucky? And how often is that going to be the difference between you winning the division and not winning the division? And even with prospects, a lot of them don't pan out, particularly prospects who get traded by their original teams. So often it's flashy, it's attention getting, but it's not necessarily decisive. This is a case where it could be. And it costs them. It costs them four prospects, two of whom are very highly ranked, Kiebert Ruiz and Josiah Gray, who are basically major league ready catchers and starting pitchers respectively. But boy, I mean, what a swoop in by the Dodgers, not just to get really the two best players or best pitcher and position player available, but to steal them or to steal Scherzer at least from their direct competitors who were both trying to land them. Quite a coup.

The Scherzer of it all, which I don't want to underrate, but there's the Scherzer of it all. There's the fact that they're going to have Turner for an additional year, right? He's not just a rental, which is part of why the price was what it was. Although, again, when you see what the Twins got for Burrios, you're like, wow, Dodgers, you could have had to pay more there and you sure didn't have to. I just am struggling to know apart from the variants that can be cruel in baseball as a game, how teams are going to tackle LA now. How do you win against these here Dodgers? Now, I'm pretty sure the Dodgers lost last night against the Diamondbacks. Sometimes baseball is still baseball but when you think about what this team will look like during a playoff series because of course scherzer fortifies them to try to retake the division lead from the giants right that's the

and turner too but that's that's the immediate benefit but one of the big things about trading for max scherzer is that you get max scherzer starts in October yep and I'm sure that they want to avoid the wild card game I mean we really can't overstate like what it does to your playoff odds or your world series odds to have to play in the wild card game like it's it's quite bad for them it it I think it halves them basically even when you advance from there because you use theoretically your best guy to win that game and so you're you know you're you're kind of borked a little bit for the remainder of the of the postseason but this this this rotation is so stupid it's unbelievable yeah stupid this is

this is so it's it's stupid right now right it's stupid right now without Clayton Kershaw back from the injured list. Right now it stands as Scherzer, Buehler. We have it at Roster Resource anyhow. Scherzer, Buehler, David Price, Tony Gonsolin, and Julio Urias. And then they're going to get Clayton Kershaw back. Yep. It's really something. It's really something.

And you sit there and you're like okay their biggest problem as an organization right now from a roster construction perspective is well how do we possibly fit trey turner into this mix right how do we make room for trey turner on an infield that has chris taylor andcy and Justin Turner and a newly returned Corey Seager like uh and then and then you look at their outfield and you're like well you can put him in the outfields but AJ Pollock is having a really good year do you want to take reps away from AJ Pollock Mookie Betts about to be back yeah mean, you look at the lineup and it's like the worst hitter probably is Cody Bellinger, weirdly enough, the 2019 MVP who just hasn't performed

that way and has been hurt this year. It's unbelievable, that team. And yeah, it gives them some insurance if they don't re-sign Seager next year, although there is room for both of them. But yeah, I mean, Turner, like a lot of Dodgers, has positional flexibility. He mostly has played shortstop for the Nationals in recent seasons, but he has experience at second base and in center field. And so he can kind of be like the new Chris Taylor, even though they still have the old Chris Taylor, and they can move him around. I mean, he's probably a better shortstop than Seager, I would think. But because Seager is the incumbent and because Turner has

that flexibility, I imagine that he will not unseat Seager, at least for this season. But it's really ridiculous. It's just unbelievable. We thought coming into the season that they were the best team in baseball and they've had so many injuries and so many other absences and you know the roster that they were projected to have often has not actually been their roster this season but yeah they're getting healthy now and you know they just activated seeker bets is about to be back Kershaw is close too. And then watch out with Scherzer and with the second Turner. It should be a juggernaut. And we've been expecting them to be winning this division all season, and they still are not. So I don't want to disrespect the Giants here.

And the Giants dropped the opener of their series against the Astros, a matchup of the two teams with the best records in their respective leagues this weekend. And so that lead is still at three games. And if the Dodgers had not done anything, if none of these teams had done anything, I still would have expected the Dodgers to overtake the Giants before the end of the season. But it was not a sure thing. And it really is, as you said, a huge advantage to be able to skip that coin flip game. So this was just a major, major move and it put pressure on everyone else in the division. And, you know, it's a testament to both the Dodgers' willingness to spend because unlike some other teams like the Yankees, for instance, who made major moves but gave up prospects rather than take on money and go over the competitive balance tax

threshold, the Dodgers had already blown past that and were the only team to do so this season. And so they just figured, yeah, why not more, I guess, because you're already in the highest tax bracket. You've already got the steepest penalties. Might as well keep going. And as we mentioned in our last episode, Scherzer's contract is sort of strange and they don't actually have to pay him for a while, although it does count against their competitive balance tax number. And then Turner is not making a huge amount of money, obviously, for how great he is. He's one of the, I don't know, five best position players

in the league probably, and they just got him. So not only that, that they were willing to spend to add those guys, but also that they had the prospects to give up. And it's tough to surrender a player like Ruiz, who's been tearing it up in AAA and could step into a lineup right now. And Josiah Gray, who made his Major League debut recently and is very promising too. But if any team didn't need those guys or they were expendable, it's the Dodgers because with the Dodgers, Ruiz was blocked by Will Smith.

They have other good catching prospects in depth there. And Josiah Gray would have come in handy for them. But really, they have so many starting pitchers. And maybe a few years down the road, they start to look a little more vulnerable because they do have a middle of the pack or slightly sub middle of the pack system at this point after all the promotions and trades. But really, I mean, they're just so good and they have the player development skills that they pair with the payroll. And that's a really unbeatable combination. It has been in the NL West going back to 2013. So kudos to them, I guess, for having the talent to give up and also the willingness to spend. That's how you get that kind of deal then. Well, and I think that the competitive balance tax threshold point bears dwelling on for a moment because I think when we were gaming out sort of how they were going to approach the off season, and we talked about this with Ben Clemens a little bit, I think we all came to the same

conclusion, which is that the worst kind of exceeding the CBT threshold is to go over by a dollar, right? Because you're not netting any of the benefit you get by signing good players who push you through the various thresholds, right? That speaks more to bad, I don't want to use the phrase cap management, but that's kind of how they think about it, right? The payroll management there is suboptimal because you're paying the penalty and you're not accruing the benefit. Whereas the Dodgers, I think have looked at this, as you said, smartly, and it's like, well, we've blown through the highest level. We're already in the top tax bracket. We are already incurring a draft penalty. And so, you know, at this point, all it costs us is more money. Now, they are paying a higher rate on their overages because of the threshold that they blew through.

But they also now have, like, they had the best roster in baseball before, and they unequivocally have the best roster in baseball now. And we want teams to spend the money they need to to pay players what they're worth and to feel competitive rosters because so often the obsession with the luxury tax means that teams accept slightly less good roster outcomes than they might if they were willing to spend. But this is just like a smart way to look at it, right? We can still appreciate them having thought about this in a way that makes good sense. So yeah, good job, Dodgers. Yeah, I wrote about this trade and got Kenny Jacklin at Baseball Reference was kind enough to run some numbers for me. And this was the most year to date war ever added by one team in a span of two days. added by one team in a span of two days. And, you know, you could look at that in terms of just war acquired or net war acquired because they didn't really give up any players who would help them to this point this season.

And on the flip side, the Nationals gave up the most war in any two-day span and the Cubs weren't far behind them. So we'll get to that too. But that just goes hand in hand with this division being unprecedented in that you had teams just adding and subtracting really to an unmatched degree and so yeah there are a lot of great starting rotations that are ticketed for the playoffs this year but I don't know that anyone can top the Dodgers I mean maybe the Brewers top three but the Dodgers. I mean, maybe the Brewers top three, but the Dodgers top four, top five, top however deep you want to go, that stacks up with anyone. So I think it's going to

be fun to watch those guys. And Scherzer had never been dealt at a deadline before. We've seen a lot of the great pitchers of this generation dealt at deadlines, Verlander and Granke and Sabathia and Lester and Hamels and on and on, but not Scherzer. Cliff Lee, I forgot. Also David Price, but now Scherzer gets to be that guy in the last year of his deal. And as we talked about last time, just an incredible signing by the Nationals right up till the final day when Scherzer got to make his last start for them and get his ovation. So the Dodgers making that move really put the pressure on the Giants and the Padres. And we talked last time about where would be most fun for Scherzer to go. And I think we were leaning more Padres first and then Giants just because Padres are kind of the underdog in the division race.

And then Giants, like just having another ancient reinforcement to bolster that team would have been fun. But because the Dodgers swooped in and, man, according to reports, like there was a framework for a trade in place with the Padres. I don't know exactly how close it was, but they just sort of swooped in and stole Scherzer. And that really put the pressure on the Padres. And for once, AJ Preller was not the star of a trade deadline. I don't want to say the Padres are a loser of the deadline exactly, but really, you would have expected him to make some splashes. And it's not that they did nothing. They got Adam Frazier, as we discussed. splashes and it's not that they did nothing you know they got adam frazier as we discussed they got daniel hudson am i missing anyone there's so many trades it's tough to keep track they brought on jake marisnyk yes that's right yeah that was a buzzer beater but they didn't

make the big one and you know it seemed like they were going to get scherzer then it seemed like they were pivoting to burrios and that they were going as aggressively after him as anyone. And ultimately that didn't happen. And, you know, they picked up some pieces, some complimentary pieces, but not really a headliner the way that the Dodgers did, or even the Giants with Chris Bryant, which we can talk about too. So, you know, for once, AJ Peller maybe outmaneuvered a little bit of Of course, he's been so busy in the past and has made so many moves already that it's not as if there were so many moves that they absolutely needed to make. But I did sort of expect them, if you semi-busy but not as busy as he can be, we can talk about that too. And then the Padres got some perhaps scary news on Friday when Fernando Tatis Jr. left the game in the first inning, seemingly having re-aggravated his

shoulder and partially dislocated it again. And as we record here on Saturday, we're still waiting for a prognosis there. But that's clearly like a chronic lingering issue. And whenever he's been able to play, he's been his incredible self. But as with Jacob deGrom, who also suffered a setback, whenever I watch those guys, I'm kind of like,

boy, this is fun and they're so great. And I just want them to be safe and healthy and happy. But I'm scared. I'm constantly scared with both of them. And Tatis, I'm sure if he can play through this, he will. And I don't know enough about the situation to know whether he's endangering himself long-term or not. This seems like one of those situations where the day after the Padres stop playing, he will probably have surgery. I don't have the inside info there, but it seems like something this is going to linger until it's corrected. And as he's playing at this level and the Padres are in the stock fight in the division, hard to take him out of

that lineup. But that just makes you think even more. I guess if they had known that, maybe they could have traded for Trey Turner too, but Adam Frazier will work. They have a million infielders as it is. Yeah. I think that it's always useful when we're analyzing deadline behavior to keep in mind the off-season work that came before. Part of why San Diego was in the position that they were, where they clearly wanted to add another top-line starter at the very least, I do wonder, I don't think that Trey Turner was ever part of the theoretical deal that would have gone to San Diego, but do you think it bothers AJ a little bit more that the Dodgers not only swooped in for Scherzer, but that if Turner was going to be returned anywhere

in the West, that he went to LA instead? Yeah. Makes him mad. the West that he went to LA instead. So I think it's not so, so surprising that San Diego would find themselves sort of outgunned a little bit because they, you know, they made such big moves this off season. They really consolidated their prospect depth to go get big guys who, you know, were going to be meaningful to their, their post-season chances. And they didn't, you know, were going to be meaningful to their, their post-season chances. And they didn't, you know, they did that work this off season. They didn't wait until the deadline. And I do think that it put them at a slight disadvantage where they didn't have,

you know, they didn't have the Josiah Gray who they were willing to move. That isn't to say that San Diego doesn't still have really great prospects in their system. They are thinned compared to where they were, you know, this time last year. But I think that they looked at some of the guys who were going to be asked for in trade, some of the like scuttlebutt that I've heard around the ask that they had put to them for say, you know, adding someone like Joey Gallo. And we're just like, this is not for, this is not for me. Like they, they, you know, They weren't going to move CJ Abrams. We have him fourth in the updated top 100. They clearly like Camposano. Mackenzie Gore's whole situation is just kind of weird based on how his value has fluctuated over the last year, and they really like Hassel. I don't think that

they were going to move any of those guys and based on the prospect return we saw that was what would have been required for some of these dudes so i don't think that it's all that surprising when you remember what they did you know in january and february when we spent every day being like how many roster spots you got you seem like you have too many guys for all your spots yeah so we can talk about the giants then who were kind of quiet right up until the closing minutes when they struck a pretty big blow too and answered the Dodgers by acquiring Chris Bryant. Yeah. This is the Giants youth movement.

That's what this qualifies as, bringing in Chris Bryant. So that's a big addition for them. I mean, he fits in so many places on that roster, especially while Evan Longoria is out. But even when Longoria hopefully gets back, you can slot in Bryant anywhere because he is a rarity among players with a bat as big as his in that he can play so many positions competently and just really helps that lineup, you know, which has been surprisingly productive.

Perhaps I knew it was productive last year too, but look, people have been waiting for the giants to stop winning at this clip all season and it hasn't happened, but this is a good hedge against regression getting Chris Bryant. So, you know, nice move for them. And I don't know if you have any thoughts about the package that it took.

Like, I don't know these prospects intimately, obviously, but they needed to do something. I think they were clearly in a position where they needed to answer the Dodgers. They needed to upgrade, and they didn't give up their top, top guys or mortgage the future or anything. So it seems like a strong move for them. I don't know anything more about them than you can't read in Ben Clemens' analysis of the deal. But I will take this as an opportunity to talk just a little bit about what the Cubs did to their farm system because I think it, you know, prospects don't always pan out.

you know, prospects don't always pan out. I realized that the way that this organization has sort of approached payroll and approached what they have done with that core that won the world series. That's like, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to make you feel better about a thing. That's a bummer Cubs fans. Like it's a bummer. And I'm sorry that you're spending your Saturday being like, wow, remember when we won a world Series and it was really cool. But I will say that if you are going to approach sort of a rebuild at this point, that this deadline really did push them toward something like that, right? In a positive way, they were, I think they were the 22nd ranked farm system by our farm system rankings at Fangraphs before the deadline, and they're up to ninth now. So they did really fortify that system and acquire some good prospects. And whether that

group of guys will ever be able to reach sort of the height that you had with the Bryant, Rizzo, Baez core, we're going to have to wait and see. But if one of the stated goals of this deadline was for them to maximize sort of the return that they could get for a couple of guys who were about to hit free agency i think that chicago did really well for itself here although i i don't say that to try to dim sort of the disappointment of of having to say goodbye to this era of cubs baseball because it's a that one hits you hard but i think that given the path that they have chosen to take, they did well for themselves here, not just with Bryant,

but sort of in the approach that they took to the whole deadline. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Giants also picked up Tony Watson, the reliever from the Angels as well. Who I thought was already on the Giants. It seems like he should have been. Yeah.

Right. So he is in his proper place now such a giant c kind of guy for that bullpen he i when dan was putting together his roundup of some of the minor moves i was like he wasn't already he wasn't already on that giants roster dan tried to spare um my reputation and feelings by putting it in his copy that a writer who he would not name already thought he was on the giants and i added an editor's note that it was me, Meg, his editor, because I think it's a reasonable thing to have thought. Alexander Canario and Caleb Killian, those are the two prospects who went back to the Cubs for Bryant. So I guess that takes us to the Rockies. The

Diamondbacks didn't do much either. They traded Joaquin Soria to Toronto. And Eduardo Escobar earlier in the week. Yes, that's true. Escobar to the Brewers. But the Rockies in action was one of the other big stories of the deadline. So they traded Michael Gibbons to Cincinnati and that is about it. Trevor Story

still a Rocky. John Gray, still a Rocky. Daniel Bard, still a Rocky. Everyone's still a rocky john gray still a rocky daniel bard still a rocky everyone's still a rocky and man i i just i don't know what to make of this other than that it's rockies being rockies like it's surprising and yet also not surprising because you just expect the rockies to do the most confounding thing at this point so So, you know, with Gray, like there's been some buzz about him wanting to stay there and possibly sign an extension. With the story, that is clearly not going to happen. He's not going to stay there. He seemingly

is not happy still to be there. He is as confused as everyone that he is still a Rocky. He said he's confused. He said, I don't have really anything good to say about the situation and how it unfolded. All I can say is that obviously it's been a down year for him and whether that has something to do with the trade speculation, whether it's injury related, whether it's largely bad luck, he has a below average batting line and hasn't hit for the kind of power that we are accustomed to seeing from him. And, you know, he has hit for some power. A lot of it is batting average related and base too. But is that related to elbow issues? You know, his throwing velocity has been down. I don't know. I'm just saying maybe there were more concerns about him and his performance than there would have been a year earlier, say. So if the Rockies still had

an inflated sense of who he is or what he is worth to that organization as someone who is about to hit free agency and other teams were in the Rockies' eyes lowballing them, then I guess that's how this happened. But I'm just not inclined to trust the Rockies evaluations of anything really including their own players like they've done a pretty good job at player development but when it comes to major league transactions it's just the pits pretty much so I guess the silver lining would be maybe they like hire a GM over the offseason. And then that GM is the one who gets to like use the competitive balance pick that they get for letting him leave and extending a qualifying offer. Like maybe you just don't want anyone who is with the Rockies right now in charge of getting a return back for Trevor Story.

But who's to say that they will have hired someone competent by this winter either? So really, it's pretty bleak. It's pretty bleak. It's he. Earlier in the week, I went on Chris Crawford's podcast for NBC Sports, and he was like he did the same thing you and I did. Like, where would we like to see these guys go? We had so many potential landing spots for Trevor Story. Even at a time when a lot of the contenders are seemingly fortified at shortstop, I was like,

send him to Chicago, the White Sox, not the Cubs, and slide him over to second base. That'd be fine. and slide him over to second base. That'd be fine. The Yankees are getting bad defensive work out of shortstop. Torres is hitting, but he's clearly overmatched in the field. I was like, he should go to the Yankees. There were just so many places. Send him to the Mets and, again, slide him to second base.

There were just so many places where he seemed like he could be a fit and when you think about the prospect return that some teams were able to extract in exchange for their marquee guys yeah like you said story is having a down year relative to himself but he's still clearly a very valuable and useful player who would make a contending team better both for the stretch run and in the postseason, and he still lives in Denver. Yeah. It makes no sense. Yeah, and here's maybe the most dismaying part, although also the least surprising part. Bill Schmidt, who is the Rockies' acting GM for now, he said,

I truly in my heart believe that this is a very talented team that underperformed the last couple of years. I'm not even going to count last year because it was a difficult year, but I think we underperformed. That's just the party line that you've been hearing out of Denver for how many years now? And often it's coming from ownership, but the Rockies can't improve unless they come to terms with the fact that they are not currently a competitive team. Unless they come to terms with the fact that they are not currently a competitive team. So if you just continue to insist that it is a good team that has been underperforming, like, then you're never going to get better. You're never going to make the moves that have to be made. And I just I don't know what they are seeing in this roster. Like, they look at their players like a parent looks at their children or something where it's just like you're blinded by love.

You know, everything they do is wonderful. And maybe that's nice if you're a parent, but it's not so nice if you're running a baseball team. Like there's something to be said for loyalty to certain players, of course, and keeping players around. into keeping players around. But if you're not going to surround your good players with other good players and you're just going to flail year after year and then insist that, no, actually it was a good team all along.

They just underperformed. Like how many years of underperformance, quote unquote, does it take before you accept that? No, that's just the performance. Like that's who these guys are. Yeah. I just, I don't know what they are seeing. But as long as they're in denial like this, that's like probably the most dismaying part of this. If I were a Rockies fan to read that and see that they don't even understand that we have to rebuild. And so we're never going to. I think that it's another team where you see what they did or didn't do in the offseason manifesting here, which is I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that you maybe want to let a new

regime come in and really forcefully decide the course of the franchise, right? That you're dissatisfied with what you have done to this point and think that you need to move in a new direction, although them saying that they have a good team and they just have been unlucky sort of belies that assumption. But let's imagine for a moment that the idea behind Story and wanting to sort of leave the aftermath of his departure to the next regime to chart a course for, well, you know when he's coming up as a free agent, you know, that Nolan Arenado is unhappy and that there's this friction between him and the front office. Why weren't those front office concerns addressed last off season, right? Why didn't you say, look, this just hasn't worked and we need to bring in a new regime. We're going to let them determine the course of this offseason period. You might end up still trading Nolan Arenado, but at least you have one cohesive vision

for what that move means in relation to story, what it means in relation to John Gray, what it means in terms of the direction that your franchise is going to take. And so it's like the timing of when they decided, oh, we need to move on from our current, you know, front office group is just really bizarre, especially because you had so many people quit. If ever there were a time for you to be like, wow, maybe the leadership at the top isn't what we need since our entire ops group just quit. Like, it's just it's just confounding. And then to get, you know, they will get a competitive balance pick for story but like to get nothing for you don't need daniel bard you're bad like who cares look at the some of the returns that relievers got like go shop that guy what are we doing yeah i just would

like my grandfather to be able to watch good rocky's baseball again in his lifetime well he has been watching good baseball along they just didn't underperform oh okay yes i will i'm sure that that argument will resonate with my grandfather who's like what is ops all right well we spent a long time in that division but there was a lot to get to we can move a little more quickly through the other so we don't have a three-hour episode here but the central you already talked about the cubs and their return again nothing surprising exactly about what happened here but maybe just to see it happen for them to ship out almost the entirety of the remaining core from the 2016 team just in one fell swoop i mean even though it was clear that this was coming for a while that they were not going to try to continue to build around these guys and add to the team or

extend any of these players, as it turns out, just to see it happen one after the other. Bryant, Baez, Rizzo, just gone, gone, gone. Kimbrel, I mean, just really just cutting the heart out of that club and a lot of Cubs fans on one day. And, you know, I guess it had to happen once they had decided that we're just a real estate company, essentially, and we're not going to continue to add to this this and they being the rickets really and the front office to some degree just executing orders, they did a decent job, it seems like, of actually getting all of those guys out the door and then bringing good prospects back. So I don't know what the timeline, the ETA is here.

I was thinking about that in terms of like who will be good sooner the Nationals or the Cubs and it seems to me like probably the Nationals you know I guess maybe just because they have one Soto and because some of the guys they got back are really ready to step onto that team today whereas the Cubs did target some younger guys in some cases so I don't know when they'll be back or how long it'll take but at least they ripped off the band-aid and turned the page which you know they probably didn't have to do but once they decided that they were going to do that then they did it they sure went ahead with it well and you know they got some they got some major league ready and major league pieces back in that process i don't know what my expectation in terms of timing is but

you know nick madrigal is is useful you love nick madrigal he's one of your favorite guys yeah that was one of the most eye-opening ones for me really that uh he was not a player i expected to be traded no me either for the cubs to get him for kimbrel who like obviously is a pretty important player for the white socks now but you know is still just a reliever for a couple months although he does have a team option for 2022 so to to get several seasons of nick matricle yeah as you said one of my favorite players most intriguing players that was quite a move yeah, applaud them for that one. And I know that Cody Hoyer's numbers haven't been great this year.

He hasn't had the kind of season he had at the start of last year, but I really like Cody Hoyer. I think that they, again, like I said, it's disappointing that this is the direction they took and also having taken it, they seem to have done reasonably well for themselves you know one team in central that i would like to to highlight because i feel like with the cubs here we're gonna overshadow you know whose deadline i really liked i like the brewers deadline yeah i was i was into the brewers deadline i feel like they i feel like they located pretty well for themselves here they weren't they did huge moves but i think eduardo

escobar is a people have been like yeah where he will he play well he will allow them to not play keston hero who i think it's just really bad at this point so i like that escobar acquisition i think john curtis is good right i think daniel norris how many times has daniel norris moved at the trade deadline that guy must hate the deadline just dread that time of year yeah and they picked up rowdy telez earlier in the month and of course they struck early for willie Daniel Norris moved at the trade deadline. That guy must hate the deadline. He must just dread that time of year. Yeah. And they picked up Rowdy Tellez earlier in the month. And of course, they struck early for Willie Adamas, who's been just a huge boob to them. Fantastic for them.

So yeah, like, you know, not superstars, not the biggest names. But again, they are a team that had been active in the past. And, you know, we're just kind of filling in and tinkering here and there. yeah it seems like they did a pretty good job of that because like they're set i mean you know they're not running away with the division exactly but they've certainly separated themselves and i think they are clearly the best team in that division and so they're really just retooling for october and i think a lot of the second half for them is about managing the workloads of their starters who mostly have not had heavy workloads in the past and they just have to make sure that they go into October with those guys available which they were not all when they faced the

Dodgers last October so if they can enter October with a healthy and not terribly fatigued Woodruff and Burns and Peralta and that back of the bullpen, like they're going to be a formidable opponent. So really this was just about, you know, adding some depth and papering over some weaknesses. And yeah, I think it was a smart approach. And then the Cardinals took the, give us all your old lefties. Yes, they did. I don't understand their deadline at all. Yeah. John Lester, Jay Hatt. Sure. I guess. Yeah. yes they did i don't understand their deadline at all yeah john lester j hat sure i guess yeah yeah i don't know weird deadline for them that's fine weird they weren't they weren't likely to be

a postseason horse anyhow but it was i was like what are we what are you doing here that's a weird little set of choices but it was and and then uh the reds, they didn't need to do anything because Joey Votto is a superhero now. But man, it just even we talked about him. I gave the Joey Votto update earlier in the week. And since then, he's hit multiple homers in some of those games. So just updating the stats, going back to June 26, which was right after we lamented the fact that Joey Votto is apparently old and less productive now. His slash line since that date now up to 333, 438, 769. That is a 206 WRC+, which trails only Shohei Otani at 213 over that spin. He's tied with Otani for the major league lead in homers over that spin with 13. I don't know what is happening here, but I'm loving it. comes down to it vato said it's simple i'm trying to homer he said that's the difference i've been trying to homer so if only it were that easy for everyone but uh apparently it's that easy for him so he's been like yeah right exactly it's yeah i don't know if like the the old marty brenneman complaints about joey vato not being aggressive enough or taking too many walks or whatever well maybe he was right if it

turns out that Votto actually could have just homered every day if he set his mind to it but yeah this is wild but as for the actual additions that the Reds made it was you know a lot of relievers that they picked up Givens as we mentioned from

the Reds and Justin Wilson yes right and C, from the Reds. Justin Wilson. Yes, right. And Louis Sessa from the Yankees. So, you know, not major moves, but they don't seem to be in a position to make major moves at this point. Maybe in the past it would have been good to have a shortstop maybe, for instance. Yeah, one of the many homes that trevor story could have found yeah that too right and you know then you have the pirates who traded more guys they traded

more guys but you know that that that system is very deep now it's very good yeah it's very good so you know i think that we should approach approach the standard sort of posture we should have with teams that have been rebuilding for a while or bad for a while or cheap for a long time is that we should be Charlie Brown with the memory that Lucy always pulls the football away, right? That's the posture that we should have. And I think that they're doing good work here. Like this, this new group, which is different than the old group is at least seems to have like a vision and a direction. And they seem to be executing on that. And we will have to wait to see if it works. And none of our longstanding criticisms of that ownership group are changed by the fact that they have fortified a

farm system right that stuff all still stands and i think that they are they're doing a thing here and hopefully that thing works because goodness knows that pittsburgh fans deserve to have good winning baseball in the field again so so they traded richard rodriguez to atlanta he's someone who has lost some spin and perhaps some stuff and effectiveness since the sticky stuff ban went into effect. But Braves apparently still a believer to some extent. And they also traded Austin Davis for Michael Chavis, a Ben Charrington draftee in Boston, now back in Charrington's organization.

So that was kind of an interesting little move. But yeah, they had made more moves in the days leading up to that. So that was kind of an interesting little move. But yeah, they had made more moves in the days leading up to that. So that's the central. Now the east, I guess the big move is Javi Baez going from the Cubs to the Mets. So Baez had said earlier in the week that he hopes he would get to play with Francisco Lindor after free agency. Well, he didn't have to wait that long. Now he gets to play with Lindor as soon as Lindor gets back from the injured list. So the Cubs also sent Trevor Williams to the Mets in that move, which is maybe helpful for now as DeGrom is out for a more extended period and the Mets are trying to piece together a rotation until some of their injured guys get back. But

Javi Baez, that's going to be a lot of fun to see him play with Lindor in New York. And what a double play combo that will eventually be for now. He can cover shortstop while Lindor is out. He can slide over to second when Lindor gets back. He has made it work with an approach that probably wouldn't work for really any other player, but he's still a good glove and an above-average bat and, of course, a riveting kinetic kind of player. So that's pretty good for them. And, you know, they have so many guys in theory just getting back now or about to be back that I don't know that they had to make so many more moves than this, but that's a significant one. moves than this but that's a significant one they were already i think the best team in the division the first place team in the division and they made the single biggest trade in the division yeah

what a weird division it's just a profoundly strange division yeah i think that i don't know i'm sure that they knew about de grom's setback before the deadline expired which makes them not acquiring another starter, even beyond Williams, seem a little bit odd. I don't know if they ever really know what is happening with their pitchers. The Mets with their pitchers is like the Rockies with their roster. It's like, yeah, they'll be back any day now, if not a significant setback. But yes, maybe they had some idea. Of course, they had already made the Rich Hill move. Correct. That's true.

But I don't know how much, as we discussed at the time, I don't know how much that really moves the needle for them, although he will eat innings. So there you go. But yeah. Rich Hill is the one who is tasked with stopping Joey Votto's reign of terror, I believe, which is a conflict of interest for me because I like both of those guys.

Maybe Votto can homer after Hill leaves the game. That'd be the ideal outcome. There you go. But yeah, I'm glad that they did something, and it is nice to see the Phillies not do nothing, although I find the fit of their trade to be very strange. Ben, do you find it strange? Yeah, I do.

To wrap up, so the Mets, it cost them their first round pick from last year. Yes, P. Crow Armstrong. P. Crow Armstrong. So that just goes along with what you're saying about the Cubs getting some valuable chips back. So right, the Phillies, they tried to land Tyler Anderson. That fell through and he ended up going to Seattle. And then instead of that, they made some different moves and some semi-surprising moves so Kyle Gibson and Ian Kennedy coming from the Rangers to the Phillies and some pretty big prospect names going back I mean Spencer Howard going back to the Rangers there that's that's that's something I guess the the Phillies they like needed arms guess. And they're in a position where you have Dave Dombrowski, who's always in upgrade mode and trade young guys mode these days to get better. They also brought back Freddie Galvis, which was fun for Phillies fans.

You get your big reunion with Freddie Galvis that everyone wanted. But yeah, I don't know. What do you make of it? reunion with Freddie Galvis that everyone wanted. But yeah, I don't know. What do you make of it? Well, I think that if you're going to acquire a ground ball guy and you're going to make that ground ball guy pitch in front of the Phillies infield defense, which is pretty bad, it's nice to get a Freddie Galvis back because he's better than some of their existing options. Those moves make more sense to me in concert than they necessarily do separately, but it is just surprising that they would,

given the strengths and weaknesses of their existing roster, be like, go get the ground ball guy. Yeah. That seems like an odd fit to me. I will say, again, speaking of teams that seem to have executed on rebuild plans once they really committed to them, if you're the Rangers, part of why you sign guys like Gibson and Kennedy is so that if they are very good, you can flip them for prospects because that in recent years. They couldn't do it with Lynn, I guess, because their hands were kind of tied. situation is I don't see them overtaking the Mets here. And I don't know what their outlook is going forward or how Dombrowski fits in with that. They're just kind of in limbo here where they're not a bad team, but they're just perpetually around 500 or right under 500.

They're a game under 500 as we speak for, what is this, the third consecutive season or something. They're always 500 or a game under 500. I don't know that I see a big leap in them. It just seems like everything has to go right for anything to pan out for them at this point. They got Hans Krauss from the Rangers as part of this deal. like everything has to go right for anything to pan out for them yeah well and you know they like they got hans krauss from the rangers as part of this deal which i think helped it feel a little bit both stranger but also more balanced i was surprised that they were going to give up howard for gibson and kennedy even though i think that howard might be a good like change of scenery candidate but it's just it does seem they feel kind of rudderless and it's surprising for a team that

has you know signed bryce harper and committed to real muto on a on a longer term deal like there are aspects of their organization that suggest a long-term vision and then there are parts of it that just seem very again rudderless and sort of without firm direction which is you know too bad because you like we haven't really talked about the year that Bryce Harper's having but like Harper's having a great year and Real Muto is still Real Muto and there are definitely pieces of this roster that are really compelling and should be part of a core that would be able to launch the Phillies to the postseason but it just seems like very they're sort of half in half out and you know bullpens are fickle like it's you know that I think that we tend to perhaps ascribe

more agency both positive and negative to front offices when it comes to bullpen performance than is perhaps really reasonable like there are guys who are good relievers and are pretty consistent in their, in their goodness, but there is so much volatility in reliever performance that sometimes I think that we were a little mean about it or overly nice, but it's just a very, they're in a weird spot as an organization so i'm glad they i guess i'm glad that they didn't do nothing because i don't think that they're gonna pass the mets but i also do think that the mets are vulnerable and so there is there is a timeline where they you know do kind of overcome in in the next little while but it doesn't seem like the long-term picture

is particularly good there. And so that's a bummer for them. And then Atlanta, they are not conceding this division. They, like the Phillies, are only a few games back. And despite the fact that a lot of things have gone wrong for them this year, they are still trying. So they picked up Rodriguez, as we mentioned, from Pittsburgh, and they basically just traded for an outfield. And they need an outfield, you know, without Acuna, without Ozuna. They picked up Jorge Soler from the Royals, Adam Duvall from the Marlins, and Eddie Rosario from the Guardians, as we are calling them now. So that's, you know, better than what they had, I guess.

them now so that's you know better than what they had i guess like uh those those guys are not going to replace ronald acuna but they are yeah not going to be replacement level either hopefully so that's something you know they're just trying to patch some holes and stay in this thing and i don't see it working out for them but uh but it's nice i guess that they're not throwing in the towel it's not as if they're a team that's at the end of its competitive window or anything they could contend again in the future so if they're close might as well try to stay close i suppose yeah i mean why not i i agree that they are not likely to overtake the guys at the top and this amalgam of outfield options is not going to replace Acuna,

but it's not the sort of situation where the Mets are invulnerable, so why not? Yeah, and then not much more to say about the Marlins. We talked about the Luzardo trade earlier in the week, and they traded John Curtis, and they traded Duvall, but not a huge deadline day for them. So let's go to the American League and maybe we can go east to west this time. So the AL East was quite busy and the Yankees struck first. They got Joey Gallo and then they got Anthony Rizzo. And Gallo was someone who had been connected to the Yankees, but Rizzo really that was sort of surprising so they're picking up

all the big Italian Americans it is really wonderful that they have doubled down on enormous people and I feel for Lindsay Adler who is going to have to be craning her neck up even more than before to do her interviews but really like have a type, and they're not going to be swayed from that type. Even Clay Holmes is a big guy. So it's just, I guess, Andrew Heaney, who they also picked up from the Angels, he is a comparative runt at a mere 6'2", 200. But yeah, Gallo, I love that they're just doubling down

on the high strikeout sluggers, and there is no higher strikeout or sluggery guy than Joey Gallo. And he and Rizzo both left handed hitters. A lot of people have been clamoring for the Yankees to have a left handed hitter. It does seem to make some sense in Yankee Stadium. I think, you know, lefty righty lineup balance, I think, is generally a bit overrated. I think, you know, lefty righty lineup balance, I think is generally a bit overrated. And yeah, if you're in Yankee Stadium, it can be beneficial, obviously, to have some lefties. And it's definitely out of character for the like a few homers maybe over the course of a season just because he hits his homers so far that they leave like every park so it just doesn't matter that much where he is but I love that they just you know they saw all the complaints about like not having a high enough batting average with runners in scoring position or whatever being too reliant on the homer or the walk or whatever and they went and got joey gallo it's like yeah we

we are committing to this type of player although he does not ground into double plays like everyone else on the yankees because he hits so many fly balls and he strikes out so much so that's the nice thing about him but really like that middle of the order is just obscene it's like i mean stanton and judge and gallo and sanchez just like back to back to back to back. And then all of the other large adult sons that they have in that lineup with Rizzo. And I guess they didn't end up dealing Luke Voigt, so he is still technically around. And even DJ LeMayhew is large. Like they have just so many big hitters. And if those guys actually hit the way they're supposed to like it should be a lot of fun maybe frustrating when they strike out 20 times in a game but they also have the potential to just hit a ton of dingers and Rizzo at least he is more of a contact guy yeah so that's I guess a welcome addition to the lineup as well. Although the one who is already dingered. So it's not that fun. Yes, that's right. I think that Rizzo, this is probably in part because he was already wearing pinstripes, although they were on the road, so they were not wearing their pinstripes yesterday.

He just looks like he's been in a Yankees uniform his whole life. He looks like a Yankees guy. And then Joey Gallo, I was like, look at how much of your face I can see. So much more of your face. That's the thing to get used to. I think he should embrace the stash. I think that that would be a good look for Gallo to just go into the stash.

But yeah, I like very much that this team, speaking of teams that sort of honestly reckoned with where they were relative to expectation and then went and did something about it instead of being the rockies like i like that the yankees were like we think we are still a good baseball team and we would like to be in the postseason so we shall go get some boppers yep that's a good it's a good approach i know that amongst judge and gallo and stanton like you don't have a real center fielder in that trio. I think they're all good in the outfield,

but they're not center fielders. I don't care. I want the big boys in the outfield all the time. I know that that won't happen both because of the bad fit in center and also because the Yankees are rightly trying to make sure that Judge and Stanton can stay in the lineup and are sort of managing them by giving Stanton DH duty and what have you to make sure that their health stays good. But I think at least one game a week, we should get the Beef Boy outfields. Give me Beef Boy

outfields. I think so too. We got the big Beef Boy outfield in Miami on Friday and it was glorious. And Jeremy Frank did the research and he found that it was the largestA outfield in Miami on Friday and it was glorious. And Jeremy Frank did the research and he found that it was the largest starting outfield ever in terms of total height, tied with the largest outfield ever, if you count the day that the Mariners played Randy Johnson in the outfield, which actually happened on the last day of the 1993 season. Randy Johnson played outfield and he went out to left. And I think, yeah, if you count that, then this was tied with that. But really, and the thing about it is that these guys are enormous and you see them out there and you think, they can't be great at the whole defense thing, but Gallo and Judge are. They're among the better

outfielders in baseball. And I don't know how long that will continue to be the case. And Gallo, you know, not as big an upgrade in center as he would be in a corner. Although in the Yankees case, because they just did not have a center fielder. It's a sizable upgrade. Literally and figuratively. Yes. I didn't even need to do that. I forgot that they also recently called up Sal Romano.

Oh, yeah. Just adding to their 6'5 Italian contingent. All of my big Italian boys. It's just wonderful. But yeah, as much as I've enjoyed Brett Gardner's career and as productive as he has been and underrated, he looks cooked, I'm sorry to say. And so both at the plate and in the field. And so losing Aaron Hicks to injury and having to play Gardner every day, that's hurt the Yankees. And so now they don't have to do that and they

have the potential to run a ridiculous lineup out there. So that is a big upgrade for them. And I've thought that they were probably the best team that was contending for this second wildcard spot. And whether that will actually show up in the next two months or not i don't know but they're making a legitimate run at it and in doing so they put pressure on the other teams in that race including toronto and toronto made a major move too and they were the ones who landed jose burrios from the twins and you know i i know that uh a lot of bougieays fans really wanted them to do something would have been upset if they didn't and that wasn't the only thing they did

they also traded for Brad Hand right and what else am I missing there was other Blue Jays activity probably it's so hard to keep track of all the trades but that was you know to land Barrios who is under team control through next season. So it's not a rental. He is quite a good pitcher, probably the second best pitcher who was available at this deadline. But it came at a cost. It sure did. They gave up some serious prospects for Brios. Yeah.

Like I said, I think that the return here suggests that the Dodgers did quite well for themselves. I think that the Blue Jays did also because they really could have used a Bria since they went out and got them. And I think that this is why we should have more competitive divisions because it spurs people to try to improve so that they can win. And the necessity of winning the division in AL is a little less important. It's always important to win the division. What I mean to say is that in the NL, if you are not winning your division and you are outside the West, you're probably not going to the playoffs

because they're going to have three, right? The two wild cards are coming out of the West. And there's a bit more variability in the American League, but it's still good to to win your division and i think given the strength of toronto's offense continuing to fortify the rotation and then shoring up the bullpen a little bit it's not as big a move but they also added joaquin soria right so that was the other um move that they made but i i very much like this for them and i think that particularly since they are going to have Burrios for another year,

it's good. Although, yeah, like, wow, it sure did take some prospects. Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson to Minnesota. Yeah, and we'll get to the twins shortly, I guess. But it didn't seem like they needed to trade Burrios, and they could well have hung on to him. But if someone is going to give you those two guys yeah yeah hard to turn that down and i think so eric and kg wrote up the

the prospect side of it um for fan graphs and they noted you know that there is some some risk associated with martin like he is perhaps living up to some of the concerns that teams that did not see him as a top 10 draft guy had, particularly when it comes to his defense. So there's stuff to be sorted out there. I know that they've shaded his future value down from a 55 to a 50, still a top 100 guy, still good. But there is some risk associated there.

This is Woods Richardson's third organization, but I don't think that we should take that as him not being a good prospect. He's still a top 100 guy. It's just that he has moved at a couple of deadlines now. But yeah, like in talking to Kevin, his sense of it was that Minnesota was like listening in the way that you do when you're a team in Minnesota's position, but they weren't actively trying to move him. But then some of the offers started to come in, I think, particularly after Scherzer had moved and

burrios was like the best starter available and they were like well we'd be silly to not do this and so did it they did that's awkward to say but but now you have a rotation of burrios and robbie ray who we should probably talk about at some point yes we should because boy is robbie ray having a year reinvented himself yeah great yeah and then Alec Manoa and yeah like if they could sneak into October yeah they would be dangerous because like obviously they can rake so it was all about the pitching I do wish that they had been able to do a little bit more to fortify that bullpen in a way that I feel more confident in. But Hand is not a bad pitcher.

Certainly, he is not quite the guy he used to be. And Soria has just been hanging around, man. Soria is just going to be a guy for a while, I think. So I wish there had been a bit more there because there have been times when that bullpen has been terrifying but they didn't do nothing so that's good man robbie ray's been like worth almost two two wins he doesn't walk anyone anymore doesn't walk anyone anymore there's a lot of fastballs and it's working for him yeah he walked everyone last year and now he is walking quite a few fewer guys. So good for him.

Elsewhere in that division, Orioles didn't do much as one would expect. They sent Galvis to the Phillies. They sent Sean Armstrong to the Rays. And the Rays, the last team that we have to talk about in this division, they had already made the Nelson Cruz and Rich Hill moves, so didn't have any huge headlines in these last couple days here but really they traded late inning relievers essentially they made a swap with seattle they sent diego castillo to seattle which i didn't particularly see that coming but uh also there's been some news as we have been

recording yeah uh unfortunately tyra glass now is going to have tommy john surgery so he is done for the year and most if if not all of next year so that's a bummer yeah it's it's really a bummer it's a bummer for the rays it's a bummer for all of us who enjoy watching tyler glass now and yeah it's a bummer for him i mean in in a way that is both obvious and you know also he'll he'll be coming off of Tommy John like right when he's ready to hit the market. So that's a bummer for him too. And the Rays also acquired Jordan Luplow and TJ Johnson from the Guardians.

So they were sort of busy, but just kind of shuffling chairs around. I don't know, nothing super exciting post-Hill and Cruz trades for me. I'm going to say a snarky thing, and I don't really mean it. I mean it a little bit, but I don't really mean it. I think that when you're in a position to get outfielders from Cleveland, you just have to do it. That wasn't very nice of me. I'm sorry.

He's been not very good. I was about to say he's been fine. And like, I guess with the bat he has been, but boy, can that guy be an adventure in the outfield. But anyway, blah, blah. All right. So I noticed that we have to just jump back to the other East for a second because we sort of skipped over the Nationals, which we've been talking about the Nationals in every other division because they traded someone to every team. Every division. We didn't really focus on the Nationals specifically. Oh. Always tried to compete and have resisted any kind of teardown and rebuild. But when they finally went ahead with it, they did not do half measures. They just really went for it.

And they traded Scherzer and Turner. As we discussed, they traded Kyle Schwarber to the Red Sox, another team in the East that we didn't really talk about because they didn't do much other than trade for Kyle Schwarber. Just some minor moves there, although Schwarber is a nice upgrade. And Jan Gomes and Daniel Hudson and Brad Hand and Josh Harrison and John Lester. I mean, it's a significant portion of that roster is gone now. And I guess it was time. It's certainly a lot more forgivable than what the Cubs did just in terms of the necessity of doing this. And it's shocking, I guess, to go from 2019 World Series winner to total teardown in mid-2021. But you look at the trajectory and that team that won in 2019, that was not like the Cubs team that won in 2016 with like the young core that could have gone on for years. Like the Nationals were not an overpowering team that way. They didn't have as big and deep a core.

Strasburg is hurt and done for the year. And so, you know, Corbin has taken a downturn. has taken a downturn. So really, I think that there was a pretty good case to be made that they had to do something like this or that it made sense for them to do something like this. And they got a lot of good players back. And one would hope that they will sign Juan Soto to as long a contract and as big a contract

as Juan Soto desires sometime soon because you need to have someone, some recognizable face, and he is about the best player you could possibly build around. So hopefully by acquiring the high-level prospects they did, they can convince him to want to stick around and that they can work something out there. And if they can keep Soto long-term and start to work in the young talent that they acquired here, it might all work out in the end, but it's obviously tough in the short term. Yeah, I do think it's useful to remember. I think I was surprised to see Turner move, although not for the return they got.

I guess that makes it less surprising. But they can still go sign a guy, right? They can still go sign one of these short stops um or they can wait a year and maybe re-sign trey turner right it's not as if moving him forecloses the potential to sign someone good and be on your way again in pretty short order right so i agree that this was a far more defensible set of decisions than the aggregate set of decisions that led the Cubs to go where they went. And this is an organization that,

while they have prioritized paying pitching over paying position players in the past, they are not adverse to paying players. That's hard to say. Both to retain them and to attract them. So I think that they have a reasonably good track record when it comes to that stuff. And they will be in a position to do that again, you know, as soon as next year, I think this stuff can fluctuate, obviously, but our estimate of their

luxury tax payroll for next year is sitting around 84 million. So they have room to add when the when the moment is right. So yeah, I don't know. I thought that they did well for themselves. I'm sure that there are folks who would have liked to see their farm system ranking creep up more than it did, but they did a good job here. They were like second to last. They were like the 29th ranked farm system and now they're all the way up to 23. So they're on their way. Yeah. And last thought on either of the East, we sort of skimmed over the Red Sox. I guess the one disappointment for them is that they didn't really add pitching other than Hansel Robles from the Twins and Austin Davis. I know that they were

in the market for Barrios, in the market for Scherzer, and they didn't get those guys. And, you know, they're tied with the Rays in the loss column now. And you look at their rotation and they're, you know, hopefully going to get Chris Sale back soon, which would be a big addition. Right. But in terms of the pitchers who are there right now, it's not a playoff rotation that would intimidate me. No, definitely not. And in trying to hold off the Rays over the next couple months, you would have liked to see them pick up someone who could have fronted that rotation or significantly bolstered that rotation, and they weren't able to do that. So, you know, Schwarber will mash as soon as he is back from his hamstring injury, and they have that great position player core. And they've been blessed with very good health, really, relative to most teams all season long.

But yeah, would have been nice to see them add a better arm if they could have. Yeah, for sure. But here we are. All right. So the Central, really one or two teams to talk about here. The White Sox, the big one. They are the best team in this division One of the best teams in the league

And they got better at the deadline We talked a little bit about the Kimbrel trade From the Cubs perspective But you've got the IntraCity Kimbrel trade and the IntraCity Ryan Tepera trade So this was already a pretty good Pen with a lot of live arms back there

And now they've added Kimbrel and Tepera. So really, I mean, even if you have some concerns about Tony La Russa as a playoff manager, as a bullpen manager, yeah, your odds of picking right go way up when everyone's down. Yes. And in another intra-division trade, they picked up Cesar Hernandez from the Guardians to replace Nick Madrigal, at least in the short term, maybe also in the long term now, because Madrigal is gone. But they were sort of struggling to find a replacement for Madrigal, and Hernandez is a pretty decent approximation of him in the short term.

So I guess he's a free agent after this season, right? Or there's a team option maybe. But as a stopgap, that's pretty good. And they just got Eloy Jimenez back. And they're going to get Luis Robert back soon. So you're about to see the pretty close to fully operational White Sox for the first time in a while, hopefully Grandal on the comeback trail too. So they're looking good. Like there's not a lot of weaknesses and they're another team that you

can compare their top of the rotation to almost anyone's. And at least with the top three, it stacks up pretty favorably. Yeah. Hernandez does indeed have a team option for 2022. I really like I like so much about this White Sox team. And I think that one of the things that I appreciate about their approach to the deadline, and there are certainly exceptions to what I'm about to say, like there was the year the Cleveland played in the World Series. But I think a frustration that I've had with the team to emerge from the central at times over the last five years is that because that division has been soft and cleveland has often been able to reach the postseason with very obvious like holes on their roster they make the postseason and then they're like pretty early exits because it's like this is

relative to the other teams that are having to perhaps fight a bit harder to win their division like a relatively soft group. And I think that this White Sox team is probably better on average than a lot of those Cleveland teams were. Not all of them, but a lot of those Cleveland teams were. But they were not content with that. They were like, we shall be better because we would like to continue to play in October and not just play in that first round.

So I like their deadline quite a bit. And I think they're like they're just like a good there's just a good baseball team and now they're an even better baseball team and like you said i think hernandez is a pretty good approximation for magical in the short term he is at the very least like an actual second baseman which puts him in a much better spot than poor andrew vaughn who had to play that one day at second and I think would probably prefer to not do that going forward. So yeah, I just really like this White Sox team.

Elsewhere in the division, the Tigers didn't do much other than trade Daniel Norris. Cleveland didn't do a whole lot. They just sort of shipped out some of the players we've already touched on, Johnson, Luplo, Phil Maton to the astros and hernandez to the white socks so you know i guess not surprising that uh they would just be stripping away parts again the royals they hung on to whitmerfield again they just can't quit whitmerfield it's like uh up there with the rockies and trevor story but you know they did make some moves. They traded

Jorge Soler and they traded Danny Duffy to the Dodgers, which did we even mention Danny Duffy before when we were talking about the Dodgers? I don't think we did. Kind of gets lost in the whole Max Scherzer and Trey Turner part. But Danny Duffy, when he gets back, hopefully from his flexor strain, that's a nice bit of depth for

the Dodgers too. It would be like more than depth for most teams for them it's like all right we got a multi-inning lefty we can probably put the bullpen with tony gonzalez and like david price in the playoffs because they're the dodgers but yeah anyway that was the royals so really the other interesting team in this division is the twins who you know wasn't clear that they needed to do anything and it wasn't clear that they wouldn't do even more than they did. So they were one of the teams that, you know, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding.

And ultimately, I guess they kind of took the middle course. They traded Brios because I guess the Bouchers blew them away with that offer. They traded Cruz, as we already talked about. They flipped Jay Happ to the Cardinals for whatever reason and for whatever reason and uh for whatever reason from the cardinals end and they got uh john gant yeah and evan sisk back so i guess that's a nice little move and uh you know they were talking about trading buxton and ultimately that didn't happen i guess it's not shocking that they neither extended him nor

traded him because as we discussed how do you possibly value Byron Buxton but that was the twins day and you know they didn't necessarily need to do much because I think they could come into next year and depending on what they do this winter could have a credible chance to contend again

so they have a little more work to do now without Rios obviously but there's still a nice core here and they were a team that was you know retrenching i guess but certainly not rebuilding yeah i thought that this probably struck the right balance of things this does not compromise them overly much for for 2022 although i'm sure that they will miss burrios like they they got good they got very good return there but it does take advantage of some of their other more movable pieces to try to reinforce them for the future so i don't know i like this trade this twins deadline

just fine i thought it was fine all right so that brings us to our last division, the AL West. Which tried so hard, Ben. Yeah, yeah. So should we start with the Mariners? Sure. We talked about them the other day, and after we talked about them in their Kendall Graveman trade to the Astros, they ended up getting Tyler Anderson, and then they ended up making that trade for Diego Castillo. Yeah. So they got their closer replacement and it didn't take long and they got another arm for the rotation. So now that it's all said and done, what do we make

of what DePoto did? So I had more time to think about it since our last recording. And yet again, I think that the Mariners are a team where what they did or didn't do in the offseason. Is pretty instructive to how we evaluate their deadline. Because I think that. The place where you can feel. The most frustrated. With Seattle. Is not that they swapped.

Graveman for Castillo. Because I quite like that swap. I know it wasn't a direct swap but like that from a roster perspective that's the move they made and I I think that that is a good swap like I think Castillo is a really good pitcher he is just entering his R beers so he will be a good sort of anchor for that bullpen as the rest of the Mariners young core comes up so he is a move both for now and for the future. And they traded away JT Chakwa, right? Which was a player that, you know, anyone could have had.

And they picked him up and they got a good 30 innings out of him and flipped him for Diego Castillo. I mean, I know that wasn't a one for one, but that was a pretty nice little sequence for them to get something out of essentially free talent. Yeah. So I think that that part makes good sense. And I think that Anderson is useful to them from an innings eating perspective because they need some innings to be eaten. But I think that where I've landed on Seattle is that I really wish that they had been more aggressive this offseason because I think it would have

made the case to do more at the deadline a lot clearer. So I think if you are willing to give Colton Wong and Tyjuan Walker another year so that they're part of your team, you know, we have to make the assumption that things would have progressed the same way for the Mariners this season as they did in the timeline that we live through where they don't have those guys. And, you know, that can be something of a fool's exercise. But I think that if you add those guys to this team, you're probably looking at a roster whose underlying sort of performance better matches their record. And then you're sitting in a different spot. Then you're saying like, well, do we want to, do we want to maybe make some moves for some guys who will stick around a little longer

than just be rentals but maybe we can go a year early right like this is an imperfect comparison but you know remember when like the cubs arrived kind of a year earlier than we expected them to and they made a postseason run and that was a lot of fun right like the maybe the maybe seattle would have been in some version of that so i think that the moves themselves perfectly fine especially when you consider the whole deadline i think that they were right to not move any of their really marquee prospects because so many of those guys are close to major league ready and they're going to be part of this next great core right but i also think that the way that this organization sort of talks about itself remains very strange like when you go out there and say well we're going to do more and then this will make sense and then end the deadline by saying well we tried to do more

but the market didn't facilitate that fans are just kind of like is that real or are you full of it a little bit so i think that this team will end up in the near future being very good and by the near future i don't mean like the back half of 2021, but I mean like the next couple of seasons. I think that they're in a position to be a legitimately good roster, a legitimately good baseball team. And I hope that when the time comes that they are, that they have figured out how to talk about that a little bit better. Yeah, right.

To now. Yeah, it's a tough spot because so much has gone right for them this year to get them into this position. And you certainly couldn't have counted on them winning every close game and getting a hit every time they have a runner in scoring position. at the standings. And so I was sort of sympathetic to the idea that, well, maybe it's one more year and then you really blow it out once you get Kellnick established and Rodriguez is ready and all of the young guys are there. And the timeline has kind of moved up a bit just because they have, I would say, probably fluked, perhaps unfairly, I would say that. But that is why they are where they are right now. And so, yeah, the question was like, well, do you go all in now and you've dealt this nice hand and now you just try to make the most of it? Or do you do nothing because you think it's all going to fall apart?

Or do you do something in the middle? And I guess something in the middle is what they did. And if it hadn't happened that they had been playing the Astros right before the deadline and had just had that emotional win over the Astros and then they traded their closer and apparently a clubhouse favorite to that direct rival, you know, then I think it would have caused a lot fewer tears and anonymous quotes to reporters about how angry everyone was. And, you know, maybe that will blow over and Toro will be good for them in the years to come. And Castillo will be a shutdown closer and everyone will get over it. Like sometimes, you know, players, there's a reason why they're not the ones making the moves. Like, you know, sometimes they don't see the big picture or they're attached to their friends in the clubhouse. And sometimes the executive upstairs has to take the long view and zoom out and do something that players won't be happy about. And you'd think DePoto has been in the other part of that situation because he's a player, one of the few GMs who was a player, but seemingly didn't handle that situation or communicate what was happening there particularly well, at the very least. But maybe it works out

in the long run right i mean i think that there are there are parts of their 2021 that make you really optimistic for what is to come there are parts of their 2021 that remind you that like adjusting to the majors is really hard but i do think think that it is not just the part of my brain that was a fan of this franchise that is saying that there are elements of this that seem just really nicely aligned for them to be a good baseball team and one that finally breaks its postseason drought. But it is, again, it's one of those teams where we have to be a skeptical Charlie Brown, right? Because they haven't done it for so long. And we talk a lot about the parts of baseball that are wonderful and enjoyable that aren't

the postseason, and we shouldn't diminish those things. And I think that rooting for a bad team can remind you all that stuff. But it's just been too long. They need to play October baseball now. So not this year. Like I, I did not expect them to play October baseball this year and I still don't. And so it's not disappointing to me that they are, that they didn't like do something wild, but you know, I look at like, you need, you need two to tango, right? And so it's easy to say, well well why couldn't they have just bested that return for this guy but you look at some of the guys who moved and you're like wow top prospects had to

move top 100 guys have to move but like i don't know they couldn't have gotten chris bryant like seems like they maybe could have but also we don't know what deals we don't know what deals were being offered so it is hard to to say with any kind of authority here. I can't believe that they weren't willing to do that. It's like maybe the Cubs weren't willing to do that. Maybe that was never really a conversation that they were open to. Who knows? I think that if you're going to talk about what you are trying to do,

don't do that in the middle of the deadline. And don't do it after either. Like the we tried is such a, it's not satisfying. Even if it's true, and I'm sure it is true, but even when it's true, it's not a satisfying answer. All right. So they traded Graveman to the Astros. Astros traded Toro.

There were other guys in that deal, of course. But the other Astros activity this week, they shored up their pen in multiple other moves as well. They traded for Yemi Garcia, as we mentioned, from the Marlins. And then I didn't see this one coming, but they traded Myles Straw to Cleveland for Phil Maton. And I had a moment there where I was like, wait, do they have

a center fielder now who plays center field I guess Kyle Tucker played center for the Esters on Friday and I guess they also have Chaz McCormick in the picture so they have some guys straw you know hasn't hit particularly well and wasn't expected to but if you believe really any of the defensive metrics he's still been useful for them because he can go get it. So yeah, I guess the bullpen was the area of need there. And depends what you think of Graveman. If you see him as a real, you know, no doubt flamethrower back there, he certainly has been to this point in the season. And they got some other guys there. And I guess there wasn't too much else they really had to do because they've been the best team in the league. So it was just about making some minor moves to shore up some weaknesses. Yep. I think that as we talked about when we talked about the Graveman deal, I think he has outperformed

what you would expect, but also even an outperforming, like the pitcher that he really is still very good. So I think he will be quite useful to them. And they really gave themselves a lot of good options to address what has been their really only weakness. So I think that you don't have to make, if your roster is already in good shape and you make smaller strategic acquisitions to address areas of need, that's still a good deadline. You don't have to acquire a Scherzer to have a good deadline. Although if you acquire a Scherzer, almost assured a good deadline. Controversial take.

Yeah. And then you have the A's who we talked about the Marte trade last time. And on deadline day, they picked up Jan Gomes and Josh Harrison from the Nationals. So a couple of nice players. They're trying. At least the front office is trying. They're getting better, and they have a lot of good teams to fend off to hold on to that wildcard spot they're clinging to. So I don't know whether this will do it,

but they put themselves in a slightly better position. So that's something I don't have a ton to say. I don't have whether this will do it, but they put themselves in a slightly better position. So that's something I don't have a ton to say. I don't have a ton to say either. I think that these were nice little pickups. I think that as this era of Nationals baseball comes to a close, we should pour one out for their ability to provide a home for later career guys to rediscover their stroke. Josh Harrison certainly falls into that category. I think that I quite like Gomes as a better sort of backup option. So I think that that's a nice little pickup,

even if his pitch framing bums me out. So yeah, I thought that this was fine. Nice little acquisition. Gives them some good options against left-handed pitching. So that's nice too. And I don't know. I thought it was fine. Yep yep and then the rangers we talked about the trade they made with the phillies flipping kyle gibson and ian kennedy and then we talked about the gallo trade from the yankees end from the rangers end you know this was a move that i think everyone sort of saw coming

but it's still sort of sad because it's kind of an end of an era for the Rangers. Like Gallo was the longest tenured Ranger, the last link to an earlier incarnation of the team and really like the only prospect that panned out from that group of guys who were kind of supposed to be the core of the next good Rangers team. And a lot of them just sort of stagnated

other than Gallo, who has flourished this season after a rough 2020. And Gallo has always been really interesting to me. I remember writing a feature on him when I was still at Grantland and he was still in the minors because I was just so fascinated by his strikeouts and his homers at that point. And, you know, he's turned into, I guess, the best version of the player he could have been. And so, yeah, it's tough to turn that page. And, you know, they didn't get the Yankees tippy top prospects back. So maybe that would be seen as semi disappointing. They also traded Joely Rodriguez to the Yankees in that deal. So I don't exactly have a sense for how they made out prospect wise in these moves, but they did it and they're still years away, I think. But at least

they have some sort of foundation now where you can, I guess, dream on everything working out and them being back in contention a few years down the road. Yeah. I mean, I think that the assessment of it from Kevin, who wrote about it for us and from Eric also was that, you know, they did take a bulk approach, but these are quality guys too. You know, Ezekiel Duran slotted in third in their system immediately upon coming in. And I think that one thing for folks to keep in mind is that when you're looking at our farm system rankings, like I think our methodology here is sound, it's based on Craig Edwards' research into prospect valuation. But one thing to keep in mind is that it might be set up to sort of undervalue to a certain extent a system like Texas's system,

just because it tends to really like high future value guys and so it can i think at times underrate depth a bit and texas has easily one of the deepest systems in baseball at this point and some of that stuff is you know lower tier future value guys but i think that they're doing good stuff there when it comes to putting together a farm system that is going to help catapult the next Rangers good Rangers team into the future but yeah it is sad for sad for Rangers fans to say goodbye to Gallo because like you said and you know Dan Dan wrote about this at length when he wrote up the deal for us like he really was the only one of those guys who panned out quite the way you were hoping i mean there there were flashes before like we got those couple of good odor seasons but you know he was really the

only one who managed to both develop and perform for them and now and now he is gone so it is truly the end of an era there yep but big boy outfield so and the other thing about this trade that I think is just useful for us is we're trying to look at the macro picture. It's just good to always keep in mind like this was a good example of the Yankees having a lot of 40 man crunch and needing to move some of those guys who would have been ads, but maybe we're on the bubble for them. So we get it as a nice sort of proof of concept on a dynamic that I think that we tend to still underrate a little bit when we're thinking about which prospects are getting ready to

move in any given deal. So yeah. All right. Well, the last team of this marathon deadline and marathon episode is the Angels, who had sort of a sad deadline day, just didn't do much. I don't know that they should have done much, but ultimately they just traded Tony Watson and Andrew Heaney and that was about it, right? And I guess that's probably demoralizing for their players who are probably lucky to be in the position they're in, not having had Trout for so long and Rendon for so long and others. And they've fought and scrapped to get to this point. And Otani has carried them. And then they don't really get any reinforcements externally here, although they should start

to get some internally soon. So that was the Angel's Deadline Day. I don't have too much to say about it other than the fact that Otani was scheduled to start on Sunday and was scratched because he got hit by a pitch and has sort of a sore thumb. It's not serious. to start on Sunday and was scratched because he got hit by a pitch and has sort of a sore thumb. It's not serious. And normally I would be disappointed not to see Shohei Otani, but in this case, he's only getting pushed back a day and we are going to get to see Reed Detmers on Sunday make his major league debut. And I'm pretty excited because watching as many Angels games

as I have this season, they've been hyping up Detmers and showing clips from his minor league performances. And he just got to AAA and now they are promoting him to the majors. And he has just been lights out down there. I mean, 60 innings pitched, 106 strikeouts. So he has maybe the best swing and miss stuff in the minors certainly up there. And the Angels have had such issues developing pitchers that you just have to hope that Detmers will break that streak for them, their first round pick from 2020. And he's already here. So hopefully that can be a boost for them because no one will be a boost for them from the trade deadline directly. No, no, they won't. But yes, I am similarly excited for Detmers. I think if you navigate over

to the mid-season update for the board, he's now second in their system. Brandon Marsh is first and he's obviously already in the big leagues. Detmers is now ranked 39th on the top 100. So like you said, they have not had a great track record of developing pitching

it has obviously been just like this you know monkey they can't get off their back when it comes to their ability to break through with their good position players but detmers is is exciting he's legitimately exciting for them so i look forward to seeing him come up and mash and we can kind of or not mash it would be bad if they mashed what is he a two-way player too that'd be fun no not not to my knowledge but um i think that that's the first like fatigue related error i've made i don't know that's pretty good because we're at the end here so i have to go listen back to the rest but um but yeah i think that that should be great fun and hopefully is something of a bomb for angels fans who maybe hoped for a more active

deadline but perhaps realistically understood that that was unlikely they didn't move some of the guys who they were rumored to and i never know how that hits fans like sometimes you want to see guys move so that you can get good pieces back but maybe you want to keep a glacius because otherwise she's gonna close so yeah all right well we did it we looked through the deadline and what did we learn ben what did we learn about the deadline i think we learned we learned that when there is no real shot of making the nl wild card and you are a team possessed of pending free agents of high quality, sometimes you can exact a fairly high prospect return despite those guys being rentals

if the conditions on the ground are right. I think that's a thing we learned, so that's exciting. We learned that Jared DePoto can only be himself. We learned that AJ Peller can be stymied, which I think is good as just like a proof of concept. I don't know. We learned that with a solid editorial team, you can write over 20 things in a single day

and hopefully with a minimal number of typos. So, yeah. Fangraphs, the real winner of the trade deadline. Anyway, it was fun. I got to say, like, i'm enjoying this season like there have been some uh ugly off the field stories of course and of course every off the field story is to some extent an on-field story but in terms of like the the games themselves and the players and the seasons like it's been fun and i don't know whether it is just coming off of last year and getting so

much more baseball and in semi less fraught circumstances but it really has been fun in this month in particular just like with the all-star week which we talked about with just a joy that that was so much fun and then following that up with this trade deadline which exceeded all expectations or precedents and And Otani continuing to do what he's doing. And Vado's resurgence, like just enjoying baseball right now and feeling good about it. And no matter what team you root for, like there's some new face in your lineup or in your bullpen or in your rotation. So there's something new and novel for everyone in the weeks to come. something new and novel for for everyone in the weeks to come yeah i think that despite the races that we have being kind of concentrated they are just exciting enough on their own to sort of make

up for some of the broader morass that we have in other parts of the league i think that any deadline where you have stars moving and top prospects it's gonna be fun and uh yeah i can't wait to see how the rest of the second half unfolds and i'm very excited that we don't have any more months where you have two major events in the same month we just have one month where every day is a major event yes exactly all right thanks everyone for following along and thanks thanks for reading Fangraphs. Okay, so that will do it for today. We probably didn't touch on every single trade, but we at least talked about every team to some extent. So something for everyone at this deadline and in this episode.

Thanks for following along and listening and reading and all the rest. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. and support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Joe Kovchinsky, PJ Harding, Jason Nassi, Melissa Danielson, and Ryan Thibodeau. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and dot com slash group slash effectively wild you can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and spotify and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments for me and meg

coming via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance both on the site and in this episode and we will be back to talk to you soon. I tried to fit this town. I got mine and you got yours.