If this trade deadline turns out to be a dud, you’re going to see a lot of people blaming the 12-team playoff format, which has flattened the competitive landscape around the edges of the playoff field. As of Saturday morning, 11 of the 15 American League teams have at least a 25% chance of making the playoffs. In the National League, there’s a bit more stratification, but nine of 15 teams have at least a 19% chance of making the playoffs. The few teams that are well and truly out of the race are so positioned for a reason — i.e. they don’t have many good players to sell in the first place.

You could use that as an excuse to sit out the deadline, or you could do what the Brewers and Guardians did: find another contender to trade with. The Great Lakes region’s two great perennial discount contenders hooked up on a four-player trade that sent catcher Bo Naylor and reliever Codi Heuer to Milwaukee in exchange for outfielder Blake Perkins and reliever Craig Yoho.

Credit to baseball ops bigwigs Chris Antonetti and Matt Arnold for finding a trade partner in this treacherous market, but this kind of swap does have its drawbacks. Namely: None of the four big leaguers on the move in this deal has been any good in 2026.

Heuer has thrown 9 2/3 innings this year, allowing five earned runs along with 12 hits and five walks. Somehow, that’s good enough to put him 0.1 wins above replacement level. Naylor, Perkins, and Yoho are all underwater in terms of WAR.

The relievers in this deal are both low arm-slot right-handers. Heuer you might remember as a rookie phenom for the playoff-bound White Sox in 2020. In 2021, he got traded across the city with Nick Madrigal for Craig Kimbrel. Heuer tore his UCL in the spring of 2022, and threw only 12 2/3 innings over the three seasons that followed. He made it back to the majors last year, but he’s now on his fourth organization in 13 months, with only 11 big league appearances to show for it.

Heuer’s been around so long he was Dallas Keuchel’s teammate in a season where Keuchel was a top-five Cy Young vote-getter. Despite that, he only just turned 30 last month and is still optionable. The Brewers would need to work some magic to turn Heuer back into a useable playoff arm; as he is, he’s a Quad-A depth piece.

Yoho is like Heuer, except he’s four years younger, has a better changeup, and throws a sinker instead of a slider. That changeup is something special: Opponents are hitting just .103 off it this season, and it tunnels well with his two fastballs. All three pitches have above-average arm-side movement, thanks to Yoho’s sidearm release angle, and the changeup moves like someone opened a trapdoor underneath it.

The results haven’t quite matched Yoho’s potential; in 23 major league appearances, totaling 28 2/3 innings, he has struck out 25 batters while walking 17 and hitting three others. Nevertheless, the Guardians’ pitching staff is heavy on low-three-quarters righties; Colin Holderman and Franco Aleman are as close as Cleveland gets to a righty with that arm angle. If nothing else, it’s a new look. Yoho is more likely than Heuer to make an impact down the stretch; if not, he’s young, cheap, and optionable in 2027. A reliever with those qualities doesn’t have to be especially good to find major league work.

The two position players are the most interesting part of this trade.

Over most of the past decade, the Brewers have put together great pitching staffs on the cheap. They’ve put the ball in play and they defend well, but their offense goes dark every October because if Christian Yelich and William Contreras don’t come through, they have to wait through seven outs for those two to come up again.

Perkins played quite a bit during that time; from 2023 to 2025, he appeared in 242 regular season games and batted 773 times. Over the course of those three seasons, he hit .232/.314/.339, with a 10.3% walk rate but a strikeout rate (26.0%) that simply isn’t acceptable for an outfielder who hits for so little power.

Perkins can switch hit, which is to say he has a career wRC+ of 95 against lefties and a career wRC+ of 72 against righties. He’s fast, and he can play center field if need be. He’s not a good player, but when you’re running a bottom-half payroll, “not good” is not the worst thing a player can be.

Fortunately for the Brewers, if not for Perkins, they’ve developed a full set of young outfielders with some juice: Jackson Chourio, Garrett Mitchell, Luis Lara, and the currently-injured Sal Frelick. All of a sudden, they don’t have to settle for “not good” anymore, which made Perkins expendable. Especially because he’ll be arbitration-eligible after this season, and therefore a likely non-tender candidate.

The Guardians, however, have not been so successful in their outfielder-growing pursuits:

Sweet Jesus, that’s bleak. Perkins is only hitting .157/.250/.258 this season, but if Angel Martínez and his .257 OBP were my third-best outfielder heading into the playoffs, I’d be willing to try just about anything.

And on the surface, the Guardians gave up a lot to try just about anything. Naylor is by far the most famous person in this deal, thanks to his exploits alongside older brother Josh both in Cleveland and for the Canadian national team. But just 19 months after trading Josh away, the Guardians are now out of the Naylor business altogether.

A quick peek at the stats makes it easy to see why. The younger Naylor was tremendous as a rookie in 2023; he posted a 123 wRC+ and 2.1 WAR in just 67 games. Since then, though, it’s been rough.

Since the start of the 2024 season, Naylor has hit .192/.266/.351 (for a wRC+ of 74), with a 27.1% strikeout rate. To be clear: The Guardians don’t mind a catcher who carries a pool noodle to the plate instead of a bat. In the 2020s, Guardians catchers are hitting .193/.269/.326, for a worst-in-the-league 68 wRC+.

But if you’re going to strap on the tools of ignorance and go 0-for-4 every night, the Guardians do expect elite defense. The team might be dead last in offensive value from catchers this decade, but it’s seventh in defensive value.

Naylor has graded out as fine over his career (he had one great framing season and a couple average ones), but he’s no Patrick Bailey or Austin Hedges, and so he’s now surplus to requirements. And like Perkins, Naylor is set to hit arbitration this coming winter.

The Brewers, in case you were curious, have gotten 28.9 WAR from their catchers in the 2020s, which is the top mark in baseball. They’re first in wOBA and fourth in defensive value, and their incumbent starter, Contreras, is a 28-year-old three-time All-Star. When Contreras is either off or starting at DH, the Brewers have Gary Sánchez, who’s hitting .214/.368/.422 in 193 plate appearances. That’s a heck of a backup.

So what do the Brewers want with Naylor? Here, I have an obvious short-term answer and a long-term theory.

Right now, the Brewers are starting a right-handed bat-first catcher, with a right-handed bat-first backup. Naylor is a left-handed hitter, and while he’s not as good a defender as Hedges or Bailey, he’s basically Johnny Bench compared to Sánchez. It’s a cleaner fit for a partnership with Contreras. From there, the Brewers could offload Sánchez to any of the numerous contenders who could use a catcher with a clue at the plate. Or they could carry all three catchers after rosters expand.

In the longer term, it’s worth noting that Contreras is making $9.4 million this year with a $14.5 million club option for 2027. Exercising that club option will be the easiest decision Arnold makes in his entire career, but after that Contreras is a free agent, and likely in line for the kind of contract Milwaukee doesn’t like to hand out.

Naylor has been pretty hapless at the plate the past three seasons, but he still has above-average bat speed and a pretty good feel for the strike zone. And as much as I’ll continue to rag on the Brewers’ offense until it shows up in the playoffs, Milwaukee has had some success turning post-hype ex-prospects (Andrew Vaughn, Jake Bauers, and Brice Turang, who had a 77 wRC+ over his first two seasons in the majors before he found his power stroke) into good hitters. Bauers, who didn’t hit a lick his first five years in the big leagues, is now toting around a 140 wRC+. Chapeau, Milwaukee. You’ve done the impossible.

You’ve probably figured out where I’m going with this: If the Brewers can work the same magic on Naylor, it greases the skids to trade Contreras this offseason. The Brewers will have picked up their next starting catcher, who’s under team control through 2030, for a low-leverage reliever and an outfielder they were probably going to non-tender anyway. That’d be quite a steal, if it works out.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, this is an exchange of depth relievers and back-of-the-40-man position players, none of whom are likely to make a massive impact on this season’s pennant race. The Guardians got the better end of the swap of pitchers, but if the Brewers can return Naylor to anything like his previous standard of competence, they won’t miss Yoho even a little.

Source

We’re less than three days away from the trade deadline, and aside from a challenge trade here and some minor swaps there, the only action we’re getting is inaction. Both Casey Mize of the Tigers and Freddy Peralta of the Mets were scratched from their scheduled starts Friday night, presumably as a precautionary measure to ensure that neither hurler would get hurt ahead of a likely trade.

Of course, we’ve known for a while that the Mets were going to be sellers this deadline season, giving their last-place standing for most of the year. They fired manager Carlos Mendoza at the end of June, and more recently, they’ve been giving every fan a $10 concessions voucher with their ticket, as both an apology for the poor performance on the field and an incentive to keep fans coming to the park to watch that poor performance — which in a few days could get even worse. In addition to Peralta, the Mets are also likely to at least some of their other pending free agents, such as Luis Robert Jr., Tyrone Taylor, Clay Holmes, and Brooks Raley 레일리, as well as high-leverage reliever Luke Weaver, who’s under contract through the end of next season. Detroit’s decision not to start Mize may have something to do with a groin issue that he’s been dealing with recently, as The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Cody Stavenhagen noted. The team let Tarik Skubal, the top pending free agent on the block, start on Thursday even as it is supposedly shopping him. That’s because the Tigers still have about a 1-in-4 shot to make the playoffs, as of the start of play Friday, according to our Playoff Odds. They reportedly haven’t made a final decision on whether they will trade Skubal and their other players on expiring contracts, among them Mize and second baseman Gleyber Torres. If Detroit ends up selling, closer Kenley Jansen, who has a club option for next season, could also be on the move.

In addition to answering your questions about the trade deadline in this week’s Mailbag, we’ll also cover Jordan Hicks’ resurgence with the White Sox, home runs hit slower than the pitch that was thrown, and odd Hall of Fame cap decisions. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.

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It seems like teams are less willing than ever to swing big deals for rental players. We hear over and over about how it’s not 2016 anymore, when Aroldis Chapman fetched the Yankees Gleyber Torres.

What are the most consequential rental trades to happen since then? (Or: How have rental trades evolved since then?) — Connor G. in San Francisco

Ben Clemens: One great thing about rental trades: There are a ton to analyze. By my count, there have been just over 700 trades that roughly count as “rentals” – players less than a year from free agency dealt at the trade deadline – since 2016. That encompasses everything from Manny Machado to the Dodgers in 2018 (one of the highest-impact trades on the list) to Cleveland trading Ross Detwiler to the A’s for cash in 2016. Machado was indeed the most impactful rental, as measured by rest-of-season WAR. But he moved for a relative pittance: five prospects headlined by a borderline top-100 guy (Yusniel Díaz) and Dean Kremer. A few years later, the Dodgers swung another deadline deal of note: rental Max Scherzer and 1 1/2 years of Trea Turner in exchange for Keibert Ruiz, Josiah Gray, and more. But that wasn’t a pure rental, and I’d assign the lion’s share of value in that deal to Turner rather than Scherzer, hence my giving Machado top billing.

If we look at recent years only to search for a trend in rental deals at the deadline, there are no blockbusters to speak of. The Mariners swapped two 40+ FV prospects for Josh Naylor last summer – our new prospect valuation method thinks that’s worth, at most, a fraction of a Gleyber Torres-level return. The prior year was slightly better; Yusei Kikuchi brought back a haul when the Blue Jays sent him to Houston. That return was Jake Bloss, who straddled the 45+/50 FV line at the time, Will Wagner (45 FV), and rotational outfielder Joey Loperfido.

Another fun recent-deadline fact: Chris Stratton has been involved in two of the most impactful rental trades of the past half decade. First, in 2022, the Pirates attached him and his 1 1/2 years of control to a deal that sent Jose Quintana to the Cardinals for the stretch run (return: Johan Oviedo and Malcom Nuñez). Then, at the next deadline, St. Louis traded Stratton and Jordan Montgomery (a rental as well) to the Astros for Tekoah Roby (50 FV), Thomas Saggese (45+), and reliever John King.

There just haven’t been many big-splash rental deals to speak of since that Chapman-for-Torres trade. That said, there are a few trades that are arguably outside the letter of the exercise, but that I still count in spirit. The Cubs rented Alex Avila and got multiple years of Justin Wilson in 2017, and sent Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes back to the Tigers in the deal, though both turned out better than their pedigree at the time. The Mets sent Pete Crow-Armstrong, then a back-of-the-Top-100 type, to Chicago for Javier Báez plus multiple years of Trevor Williams, and that was seen as a huge return for the Cubs in the moment. The A’s dealt Jesús Luzardo, already a big leaguer but whose value was at a local low, to the Marlins in exchange for Starling Marte’s walk year. The Blue Jays acquired Teoscar Hernández from the Astros for a rental of Francisco Liriano.

I’d say that on the whole, rental trades are in about the same place they were in 2016. If you’ll remember, even at the time, the Chapman-for-Torres trade was considered an outlier, and that’s still about right. Interesting players get traded for rentals all the time. Particularly if a seller is dealing multiple rentals at once, or stapling a controllable reliever to a desirable free-agent-to-be, the return can involve top 100 prospects. But those are the exceptions rather than the rule, just as they were a decade ago.

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Hi FanGraphs team,

Thanks in advance,
MZ

Michael Baumann: Jordan Hicks! The original triple-digit-velo, pitch-to-contact guy. Hicks had everyone in baseball scratching their heads over why he couldn’t strike anyone out — this was before we talked about pitch shape the way we do now — but he had a nice run with the Cardinals and Blue Jays. Lots of groundballs, with a couple decent high-volume, medium-to-high-leverage seasons out of the bullpen.

Then the Giants tried to make him a starter and broke him. Less than halfway into a four-year contract, San Francisco used him as contract ballast in the Rafael Devers trade. When the Red Sox couldn’t fix him either, they flipped him to Chicago, tossing in a promising high-minors relief prospect, David Sandlin, to escape half of Hicks’ contract.

Six months later, Sandlin is back in the minors and Hicks has a 3.19 ERA, a 3.11 xERA, and a 3.43 FIP in 31 innings out of the White Sox bullpen. I don’t know if he’s in the circle of trust for manager Will Venable just yet. Hicks has pitched 11 times in July; on nine of those occasions he was out of the game in the seventh inning or earlier, and one of the two exceptions was a 12th-inning engagement that came after Venable had already used four bullpen arms.

But all of those appearances have been scoreless. Hicks spent a month on the IL with a lat strain earlier this season, and since his return, he hasn’t allowed a run. In 14 appearances, totaling 13 1/3 innings, Hicks has struck out 21 of the 50 batters he’s faced, issuing five walks and four hits, all singles.

Hicks is still running a 16.1% walk rate for the season, and this hot streak is only a month and a half old. So I want to be conservative about throwing around words like “fix.”

But there are a few changes you can see. Hicks has usually been a low-three-quarters arm slot guy, but there’s been quite a bit of variation since Statcast started pumping out arm slot angles.

That graph makes it look like he’s dropped his arm slot in 2026, but if you look at it on a per-game basis, the opposite is true.

What effect has this had on Hicks? Well, there’s a reason I mentioned pitch shape earlier. Generally, how much a pitch breaks in absolute terms isn’t as important as what that break looks like relative to pitches of the same type, velocity, and release point. That’s why you get those Baseball Savant tables that measure a pitch’s movement against comparable or average pitches. If a pitch has normal movement, it won’t fool hitters. If you hear the phrase “dead zone fastball,” that’s what this means, and it’s why Hicks never struck anyone out early in his career. With his hard sinker, he was able to get guys to bang the ball into the ground with some regularity, but he struggled to miss bats altogether.

There are two big changes to Hicks’ game this year. First: He’s throwing more four-seamers than ever. His previous career high for four-seamer usage was 11%, in 2023, his last good season before this one. This season, Hicks is throwing 12.5% four-seamers, and since he came off the IL, that number is up to 25.5%. He’s also getting more relative arm-side run on his four-seamer, which brings it in line with his sinker when it comes to horizontal movement. No doubt that’s helping those two pitches tunnel better.

The other change is his sweeper. Hicks was throwing his sweeper in the low 80s for the past two seasons. This year, it’s up to 87.1 mph, which is the highest average velocity of his career. The last time it was anywhere near this fast was, you guessed it, 2023.

I don’t think Hicks has gone back to his old sweeper as such; the spin rate is down by a couple hundred rpm from 2023, for instance. More to the point, he’s cut six inches of horizontal movement off the sweeper since that year. That sounds bad, but remember: This is about differentiating the pitch from the batter’s expectation. Hicks is now throwing a four-seamer with almost five inches of surplus arm-side movement and a sweeper with five inches less glove-side movement than expected.

Is this sustainable? Will batters adjust? Will Hicks ride this renaissance to a high-leverage role as the White Sox bear down on the playoffs?

No idea. But he’s definitely pitching differently than he was for the past two years.

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Hello Mailbag!

Thanks!
Eric

Davy Andrews: Hello Eric. I am Mailbag and I love this question. I have been chewing on it all week. It is delicious. Allow me to spit out some answers for you. I am Mailbag and this is my purpose.

Before I dig into the numbers, please understand that although I did my best to weed out inside-the-park home runs, I probably missed a handful. I am doing my best here. I am just a bag of mail and I have no hands.

Such home runs are rare, but not as rare as you might suppose. Over the course of the Statcast era, we have seen 531 home runs that left the hand at a greater velocity than the bat. They are slower homers, so we call them slowmers. I am Mailbag and this is the kind of joke that I make. Slowmers make up 0.84% of all home runs. They happen roughly once every 50.5 games. So on a given Saturday in September, with all 30 teams playing and two doubleheaders to make up for rain delays earlier in the season, you’ve got a one-in-three chance of seeing a slowmer (provided you are watching all 17 games, of course; I am Mailbag and I have no eyes).

The softest over-the-fence home run in the Statcast era came off the bat of Harold Ramírez, who in 2022 pulled a 90-mph Nestor Cortes cutter 323 feet down the line at the Trop at a recorded exit velocity of 85.4 mph. You didn’t ask me about that, but I thought you might want to know anyway. It was an amuse-bouche to get your mouth watering and make the answer to your question that much tastier. I am Mailbag and I do have a mouth. It’s where Matt Martell gently deposits my correspondence and then, on Friday afternoon, retrieves my responses.

(Editor’s note: I do what to your mouth?)

The biggest velocity gap belongs to Brandon Belt, who, on August 20, 2023, turned around a 99.4-mph fastball from Hunter Greene for an 87.6-mph home run. That’s a difference of 11.8 mph. It’s the slowmest of slowmers. It bounced off the top of the wall, then off the coconut of a Blue Jays fan in the front row, and landed back in the playing field. Luckily for the fan, the ball must have been traveling slowly indeed by the time it clocked him in the bucket hat.

As you’d expect when dealing with the biggest outlier of the past 12 seasons, it was an odd home run. Greene busted Belt with a high fastball, not just inside, but a good two inches off the plate. With that velocity and in that location, a pitch should be borderline impossible to turn on, but somehow, the 35-year-old Belt did it, mostly. He was just a little bit tied up, catching the ball somewhat closer to the trademark than the barrel. Normally, a ball hit in such a manner ends up snugly in a glove somewhere in right-center field, but a number of factors altered this one’s trajectory.

Because the pitch was so, so far inside, Belt’s bat had to be way, way out in front of him, which allowed him to pull it down the line to the shortest part of the ballpark, even though he didn’t get all the way around on it. (Had he gotten all the way around on it, he surely would have pulled it foul.) Because that ballpark was Great American Ballpark, where the ball really flies and the fences stand approximately nine feet past the infield dirt, it didn’t have to travel more than 344 feet. And because it was an 88-degree day in Cincinnati with a southwesterly wind that pushed the ball not just out, but further into the corner where the fence is shallowest, the ball was flying under optimal conditions.

The weirdest part of the whole play, though, is that Belt knew it was gone all the way. It was the ultimate slowmer, the 20th-slowest home run in recorded history, but he dropped his bat and trotted out of the box like he didn’t have a doubt in the world that he’d just gone yard. Fly balls hit between 87 and 88 mph get caught 97.9% of the time. They turn into home runs 0.1% of the time. I can’t decide whether Belt was delusional or whether he just had a preternatural sense of what it took to get the ball over the wall. I am Mailbag and I cannot see into the hearts of men.

Fun Mail Fact: Belt also homered off a Greene fastball the next time he came up. That homer left the bat going 17.6 mph harder than the first one, but Belt didn’t stop to admire it. It was also a low line drive. It was a fastball at the bottom of the zone, and it left the bat looking for all the world like a sliced five iron. It cleared the left field fence by about three feet, which is to say, three feet more than the first homer.

I am Mailbag and this was a longer answer than I anticipated. I feel weary. I must rest for a week.

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Carlos Beltrán had some really nice remarks about choosing to have the Mets cap on his Hall of Fame plaque during his induction speech. Most cap decisions seem to make sense. Who is the Hall of Famer with the most surprising cap on his plaque? — Justin

Jay Jaffe: That’s a good question. First off, I thought the part about Beltrán’s cap choice was one of the most interesting in his entire speech. Here’s the excerpt from the speech that I included in my Induction Weekend rundown:

“Every organization shapes your career. New York shaped my life. It was here where I experienced my greatest success and some of my greatest challenges. Playing for the Mets made me a better man and a better leader. Many of the most meaningful relationships that I was able to build in my career, I did it wearing a Mets uniform. So the Mets cap, what it represents to me is growth and it represents a place where I became the best version of myself.”

The choice of caps is generally an interesting post-election sidelight even if it’s often obvious; that Beltrán chose the Mets, Andruw Jones the Braves, and Jeff Kent the Giants wasn’t exactly shocking, as each player spent the longest and best stretches of his respective career with those teams. But not every player has such an easy decision, and while honorees do have input over which team they represent on their plaques, the Hall has the final say. The institution clarified its stance in 2001 in the wake of a New York Post report that Dave Winfield negotiated with both the Padres and Yankees and received a financial package of $1 million over his choice of San Diego. Winfield denied such an arrangement, calling it “the worst of tabloid journalism.” That he might have represented the Yankees seems rather incongruous given that owner George Steinbrenner so regretted signing Winfield to a 10-year deal that he paid gambler Howard Spira $40,000 to dig up dirt on the slugger, action that resulted in the Boss receiving a lifetime ban from the game in 1990, though he was later reinstated. At the time of the Winfield cap flap, ESPN’s Darren Rovell reported that Wade Boggs — then a presumptive 2005 first-ballot honoree thanks to his 3,010 hits and five batting titles — had a contractual clause to represent the Devil Rays, but that proved false as well. He wears a Red Sox cap on his plaque.

Reflecting the reality that the advent of free agency has increased player movement among Hall of Famers, in 2014 the institution began giving players and managers the option to choose blank caps if they made significant impacts with multiple franchises. While the Hall had used blank caps for dozens of old-timers who played in the days before cap lettering and logos were common, Johnny Mize, Yogi Berra, and Catfish Hunter were the only post-World War II honorees with blanks up to that point. (Berra’s plaque shows him at such an angle that a logo wouldn’t be visible.) Since then, Tony La Russa (inducted in 2014), Greg Maddux (2014), Roy Halladay (2019), Mike Mussina (2019), Fred McGriff (2023), and Jim Leyland (2024) have gone the blank route, and earlier this year, the Hall updated 2010 inductee Andre Dawson’s plaque to a blank as well. Against his wishes, Dawson previously wore the Montreal Expos’ M on his plaque instead of the Cubs’ C, and while he would have preferred a switch to the latter, the blank proved an acceptable compromise. Not counting executives, there are 68 Hall of Famers with no logos on their caps, far more than for any individual team.

With that prologue, I think I have a pretty good answer to your question: Willie Keeler. In a 19-year playing career during which he racked up 2,932 hits and finished with a lifetime batting average of .341, Keeler played the most games with the New York Highlanders (now the Yankees) — 873 from 1903–09 — but is most famous for his 1894–98 run with the powerhouse Baltimore Orioles (1894-98), with whom he won three pennants and two batting titles while playing alongside fellow Hall of Famers such as Dan Brouthers, Hughie Jennings, Joe Kelley, John McGraw, and Wilbert Robinson.

Keeler had the most hits and bWAR with the Orioles. Yet on his plaque, his likeness is adorned with a cap featuring a Brooklyn Dodgers logo, reflecting the franchise with whom he had his third-highest total of games played, though he did accrue more bWAR with Brooklyn than with the Highlanders.

The choice for Keeler’s cap — which had no input from him, as he died in 1923, 13 years before the first Hall elections and 16 years before the institution’s physical opening — gets a bit stranger when you realize that the logo is that of the 1912 team, with a sans serif B inside a diamond. During Keeler’s Brooklyn days, the team was known as the Superbas, and had either a blank cap or a slab serif B, with a gothic B on the uniform itself. The explanation is that Keeler served as a coach for the Dodgers from 1912–14, and the Hall chose to immortalize him wearing a cap from the first of those seasons. By the last year of that stint, Robinson’s first of 18 as the manager, the team was generally known as the Brooklyn Robins, and adopted the more familiar B with the rounded loops and the triangle cutout, a style that Todd Radom, the game’s foremost graphic designer and branding expert, describes as Tuscan.

While Keeler is my answer for the most surprising choice, I can offer a few others of note. Radom is the author of the recently published book The Ballpark and Beyond: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Rich History, a gorgeous full-color book in which he pulls double duty as both a visual artist and writer. In a chapter on Hall plaques, Radom mentions the idiosyncratic choice for Keeler’s visage, and writes of Jim Thome’s choice:

Slugger Jim Thome’s plaque features the Cleveland Indians’ “block C” logo, which he wore for just a handful of games during his final season in 2011. Thome spent 13 of his 22 seasons in a Cleveland uniform, and his induction took place in the summer of 2018, shortly after the team announced that it was discontinuing the use of its polarizing Chief Wahoo logo, which Thome wanted no part of. “I know my decision would be to wear the ‘C’ because I think it’s the right thing to do,” he told the media after an event in Cleveland that February. “I think I need to have a conversation with the Hall of Fame because of all the history and everything involved. I just think that’s the right thing to do.”

When I reached out to some pals with whom I annually spend time in Cooperstown, The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner chimed in by noting that Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Grove both wear Red Sox caps instead of A’s caps despite their stints in Boston being shorter and less distinctive than those in Philadelphia. Foxx played 11 seasons with the A’s, during which he collected 1,492 hits, 302 home runs, two MVP awards, and 61.2 bWAR while playing for the team’s 1929 and ’30 champions and ’31 pennant winners. By comparison, he played seven seasons in Boston, with 1,051 hits, 222 homers, one MVP award, 31.8 bWAR… and zero pennants. The breakdown is similar for Grove, who went 195-79 with a 2.88 ERA (151 ERA+), an MVP award, and 64.9 bWAR in nine seasons in Philadelphia (including that same 1929–31 postseason run), and 105-62 with a 3.34 ERA (143 ERA+) and 41.9 WAR in eight pennant-free seasons in Boston.

There aren’t any concrete reasons that I could track down as to why they both chose a Red Sox cap. The A’s didn’t have a cap logo for some of the years Foxx and Grove played with them; based on the images in the Dressed to the Nines uniform database, a digitization adaptation of Marc Okkonen’s groundbreaking book, Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century: The Official Major League Baseball Guide, the team’s first year with a logo was 1929. But the choice may have been fueled by resentment that Connie Mack broke up such a juggernaut; Mickey Cochrane, another core member of those 1929-31 A’s, went with a Tigers logo, though to be fair, he managed them to back-to-back pennants in 1934-35 with a championship in the first of those years.

Former mayor of Cooperstown Jeff Katz, my perennial host for Hall of Fame Induction Weekends and the author of Split Season 1981: Fernandomania, the Bronx Zoo, and the Strike That Saved Baseball, offered up Nolan Ryan wearing a Rangers cap. Ryan spent only his final five seasons — out of a record 27 — with the Rangers, compared to nine with the Astros, eight with the Angels (where he racked up by far the most wins, strikeouts, no-hitters, and WAR of his career), and five with the Mets. He’s a Texas native who collected his 300th win and his sixth and seventh no-hitters for the Rangers, and as Rovell noted in 2001, “a consulting contract with the team [at the time of his induction] probably helped eliminate the Astros, Angels and Mets.” Ryan eventually strengthened those ties to the franchise, serving as the team president and CEO from 2008–13.

As with debates over who should be in the Hall itself, it’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole when it comes to the cap choices on plaques. Now, if only we could figure out which one 2027 candidate Buster Posey will wear…

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Ben Lindbergh brings on baseball-loving comic-book experts David Harper (of SKTCHD and Off Panel: A Comics Interview Podcast) and Tiffany Babb (of The Comics Courier, The Comics Staple, The Fan Files, and Interesting Jobs the Podcast) to assemble superpowered baseball teams. First they banter about Harrison Bader’s scooter troubles and David’s and Tiffany’s baseball/comic-book backgrounds, trade-deadline desires, and favorite baseball/comics crossovers. Then (37:20) they take turns filling out rosters from the ranks of Marvel/DC superheroes.

Audio intro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Austin Klewan, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Bader article 1
Link to Bader article 2
Link to Bader article 3
Link to another Bader report
Link to 2014 Bader incident
Link to Bumgarner story
Link to Kent injury story 1
Link to Kent injury story 2
Link to Giants vehicular injuries
Link to Bader suspension article
Link to MLBTR on Bader’s suspension
Link to Shanahan injury article
Link to Midnight Sun Game
Link to Midnight Sons wiki
Link to Brand New Day box office
Link to The Death of Superman wiki
Link to Goldman on power levels
Link to Granillo on baseball and supes 1
Link to Granillo on baseball and supes 2
Link to Granillo on baseball and supes 3
Link to superhero strength scale wiki
Link to Peanuts podcast episode
Link to Joe Shlabotnik wiki
Link to Peanuts baseball analysis
Link to FG on the Angels/Rangers trade
Link to MLBTR on the Minter trade
Link to West Coast Avengers Annual #2
Link to Bullseye bio
Link to David’s Eisner acceptance speech
Link to Eisner Awards wiki
Link to SKTCHD
Link to Off Panel
Link to SKTCHD draft post
Link to SKTCHD HoF post
Link to SKTCHD Avengers post
Link to Tiffany’s website
Link to The Comics Courier
Link to The Comics Staple
Link to Interesting Jobs the Podcast
Link to The Fan Files
Link to The Fan Files Insta videos
Link to The Fan Files TikTok videos
Link to SI on baseball and superheroes 1
Link to SI on baseball and superheroes 2
Link to Clemens home run video
Link to Clemens home run article
Link to Clemens fun facts thread
Link to ultimate grand slam wiki

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Spencer Strider made a big splash entering the majors, finishing second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2022 to his teammate Michael Harris II. In just 131 2/3 innings that season, Strider struck out 202 batters against only seven homers allowed, for a sterling 2.67 ERA, an even better 1.83 FIP, and 4.9 WAR. He showed it wasn’t a fluke the following season, making the NL All-Star team and doing enough to pop up on more than two-thirds of the Cy Young ballots.

But two starts into his 2024 campaign, his velocity was down and he reported elbow pain, and that was that for his year, prematurely ended by an internal brace procedure. Since then, he hasn’t been the same pitcher. Now out again with an elbow ailment, MLB.com’s Mark Bowman gives credence to the talk that Strider won’t return in 2026, at least as a starting pitcher. I’ve heard the same insider buzz myself, but Mark has way better Braves sources than I do.

So what happens for Strider now? What does his projection look like after an injury-shortened 2026, and how would his numbers look if he were converted to the bullpen full time?

Not all of Strider’s missing time this year has been due to his elbow. An oblique injury delayed his season debut until May. But after returning, he clearly still wasn’t back in his early-career form. While he can still whiff batters, he’s done so at a rate nearly 30% off his 2022 peak, and his fastball is down to an average of 95.1 mph. Walking 4.6 batters per nine innings was enough to launch his FIP up to 5.36, nearly identical to his 5.31 ERA, though Statcast’s xERA was more optimistic at 3.49. In his eighth start of the season, against the New York Mets, Strider started off throwing 96-mph heaters to Carson Benge and Bo Bichette, but he quickly lost velocity as the game went on, and by the third inning, he was throwing sub-90. His last one, to MJ Melendez, was clocked at 87.8 mph, which is only really a fastball if you’re Tyler Rogers. Strider was promptly pulled from the game and shut down for four weeks.

Little has been heard about Strider in public since. Given his injury history and the rapidly dwindling time remaining on the calendar, it’s getting harder and harder to see scenarios in which he’s plopped back in the rotation for five-inning outings. I reran the 2027 projections (and beyond) for Strider, with the assumption that he would not return this season. There’s only so much specificity a projection system can have about injuries, but we do have a lot of broadly generalized information about historical injury rates that these algorithms can use.

That’s the projection of a useful pitcher, a league-average starter who you’re not sure you’ll actually get for 160 innings. But it’s a shell of what Strider once was. The names of his top ZiPS comps are significantly less exciting now (Kevin Foster, Melido Perez, Tim Belcher) than they were entering the 2022 season (Don Drysdale, Dizzy Dean, Erik Hanson, though that’s a worrisome trio from an injury standpoint).

There’s always some talk about conversion to the bullpen when you’re discussing an oft-injured starting pitcher, and it’s hard to dismiss it in this case. While the MRI for Strider only showed inflammation rather than structural damage, it does feel like the writing’s on the wall a bit for him. Strider’s 2024 procedure was his second major elbow operation; at Clemson, he missed the 2019 season after undergoing full Tommy John surgery. While the current revival of Jacob deGrom could be a potential comparison for Strider and a reason not to give up hope that he can continue as a starter, deGrom still pitched extremely well in the rare instances he was healthy from 2021 to 2024. Strider has been decidedly more “meh” when he’s taken the ball. Unlike deGrom, who has made a purposeful decision to cut a little heat off the top of his fastball over the last few seasons in order to stay healthy, Strider’s lost velocity doesn’t appear to be intentional.

That lost velocity, though, is part of the reason why I personally feel that Strider would do well as a reliever. The bigger concern with his velo is not that it’s down, but that it tapers off much earlier over the course of his starts. If he knows he’s only going to have to go one or two innings, maybe he can let it rip from the jump and then be done well before his velocity diminishes. Another thing: Strider has always had something of a reliever’s arsenal. He was basically a fastball-slider pitcher at his peak, and even now, his curveball and changeup are mostly used to fight off lefties, so it wouldn’t require a lot of repertoire editing to target shorter appearances. While one can point to his rather poor career first-inning numbers as an argument against a move to the bullpen, I’ve found historically that this specific split isn’t actually predictive of future performance for starter-relief conversions.

ZiPS has a lot of data on moves from the rotation to the bullpen and vice versa, and it believes that Strider would fare well in relief.

Is a solid, but not elite, reliever as valuable as no. 2 or no. 3 starter with a low number of innings? That’s debatable, but if it keeps Strider healthier, it’s a hard thing to resist. That’s what the Braves did with John Smoltz, who suffered from elbow pain in 1998 and 1999 before missing 2000 with Tommy John surgery. Smoltz gave the Braves four excellent years out of the bullpen, and they eventually felt comfortable enough to move him back into the rotation in 2005. He proceeded to pitch like an ace for three more seasons, wrapped up a Hall of Fame career, and then became a frequently infuriating broadcaster.

As Mick Jagger sang in 1969, you can’t always get what you want, but you might find you get what you need. The Atlanta Braves really want to have the 2022-2023 version of Strider at the top of the rotation along with Chris Sale. But what they really need is to get Strider back on the mound somewhere, and if using him in short, high-leverage bursts in coming seasons means less time spent on the IL and less time consulting with orthopedic surgeons, the Braves should be happy with the tradeoff.

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We have some movement in the race between immovable objects.

The Rangers on Monday capped a four-game, wraparound series win over the Mariners to take what feels like a commanding 2 1/2-game lead over them and a two-game lead over the Astros in the AL West. Texas followed that up by dropping a series to the AL-best Rays, while Seattle dropped a series from the NL-best Dodgers and Houston swept the Angels. Entering Friday’s action, the Rangers lead the Astros by a half game and the Mariners by 2 1/2 games. That’s how it’s gone for the league’s most languid division in 2026.

Monday’s win gave the Rangers a 7-3 record against the Mariners on the year, securing Texas the tiebreaker should that become relevant in late September. Meanwhile, the Rangers head to Houston this weekend for a three-game set with the Astros currently holding the tiebreaker, 6-4. A Texas sweep in the road series would give it the head-to-head advantage against both of its AL West rivals. If not, things could get even more interesting come the final week of the season.

Even so, our Playoff Odds aren’t expecting the Texas-Houston tiebreaker to matter too much. That’s because, for the first time in 2026, the 55-54 Rangers look like the favorites to win the division.

I wrote recently about the missing star power in the AL West. The top two players on both the Rangers and Mariners had been bad or hurt, and their missing performance was a big reason the top of the division appeared stuck in a sort of tug of war against .500. “The race will likely be won by whichever team gets something — anything — out of its star tandem the rest of the way,” is what I wrote at the time.

Wyatt Langford seemed to take this literally in the four-game set against the Mariners. He picked up five hits, including two doubles and a home run. Langford has been exceptional when he’s been on the field in 2026, with a 131 wRC+ and solid defense to make him the prorated equivalent of a 5-WAR player. Unfortunately, he’s made two separate trips to the IL, once in May for a forearm strain and once (briefly) in early July with a hamstring strain.

The xStats imply there may be some good fortune for Langford at the moment. His .356 wOBA far outpaces his .309 xwOBA. He isn’t hitting the ball particularly hard, and his popup rate has nearly doubled since last season. He’s also halved his walk rate from 2025. Some of that is an uptick in his chase rate, but there does appear to be a notable change in approach, which hasn’t been all bad. As Ben Clemens recently noted when ranking him 37th in our annual Trade Value series, Langford is attacking earlier in counts this year. He’s especially keen on punishing get-ahead benders. His 2.4 runs per 100 against breaking and offspeed pitches is top 10 in the majors this year. Here’s a great example against Eury Pérez, who starts him off with a hanging slider; Langford is ready, crushing it 437 feet to left-center:

Langford pairs this with solid defense, splitting time between left and center field depending on Evan Carter’s platoon status. Langford’s jump gains him 4.1 feet relative to the average fielder, which is second best in the majors in 2026 behind only Pete Crow-Armstrong. That’s allowed him to make all three of his four-star play opportunities, including this effort to rob Cole Young on Sunday.

Langford is the Rangers’ best position player at the moment, but there is a bit of competition, as they’ve fielded a surprisingly deep lineup in 2026. Their 104 wRC+ is currently seventh in the majors, and since July 1, they have a 115 wRC+ — good for fourth.

One reason is the resurgence of Joc Pederson. After posting a this-is-the-end season in 2025, with a career-worst 76 wRC+ and -0.8 WAR in 306 plate appearances, he has more than bounced back, clubbing 19 homers and putting up a 134 wRC+ as the team’s strong-side DH. I can’t really tell you what’s new for Pederson. His stance is the same. His swing is the same. His strikeout and walk rates are the same — even his groundball rate is identical. But where last year he was popping up everything, this year he’s found the barrels that have kept him in the league for more than a decade. He doesn’t seem to know why, either.

“I just kind of do it. I don’t know how I do it,” he told MLB.com in June. “If I knew that, then I wouldn’t have sucked all last year, or ever.”

Ezequiel Duran has been one of the 20 most valuable players in the majors by WAR this year, with a solid 115 wRC+ propping up elite defense, though I don’t know how much I believe in the bat. He chases and whiffs a ton, and doesn’t hit the ball hard to make up for it, instead spraying low liners to all fields and occasionally finding a barrel. He did have some success with this approach way back in 2023, so this isn’t quite a fluke. But he posted a paltry 67 wRC+ in 504 plate appearances the last two years. Regardless, Duran has played every position (besides pitcher and catcher) in 2026 and played them well. His 12 Outs Above Average make him the fifth-best fielder in the majors this year. Most of that has come at shortstop, where his 7% success rate added is currently the best ever recorded in a season.

Duran is playing shortstop because Corey Seager isn’t. Seager is on the injured list for the third time this season and the second time with lower back inflammation. This is the story of his career, of course, but unlike in the past, Seager has struggled when on the field, with a career-low 87 wRC+ and a career-high 26.9% strikeout rate. Also on the injured list is Josh Jung, who suffered a mild calf strain last week. Jung is having an excellent season otherwise (128 wRC+, 2.5 WAR). He’s always had a nice line drive approach and the ability to hit the ball hard. But this year, he’s finally stopped flailing at pitches out of the zone, more than doubling his BB/K over last year.

There are others, too. Brandon Nimmo has maintained his steady pace at the plate (115 wRC+) after coming over from the Mets for Marcus Semien. Carter has hit fairly well against righties (110 wRC+ vs. RHP, 94 overall); Justin Foscue has crushed lefties (170 wRC+ vs. LHP, 120 overall). And Jake Burger has hit really well or really poorly depending on the month. And so the story of the Rangers’ season has been this deep, well-rounded, more-than-competent lineup. It’s the best their lineup has looked since their 2023 World Series team:

For decades, the offense was something of a given for the Rangers, with balls flying at their previous home ballpark. But since moving to their baseball-themed airport terminal in 2020, they’ve struggled to hit, especially at home. Globe Life Field in 2024 and 2025 played as the second-most suppressive park in the majors, behind only T-Mobile Park in Seattle. Baseball Savant publishes a “variable extra distance” leaderboard on its park factors page. It shows how much distance a park adds or subtracts from batted balls, given its elevation, temperature, and wind patterns. In the first four years of the park, it added about six feet of extra distance to batted balls relative to average, which was typically one of the five largest. In 2024 and 2025, it added approximately zero feet, and performance on batted balls took a dive. In 2026, however, the park is back up to about six feet added. I don’t have an answer for the “why” here, but I can tell you the Rangers’ home wOBA has leapt from .289 in 2025 to .318 this year.

Their pitching has been fine. They’re 11th in starting pitcher WAR, 13th in reliever WAR, and 10th overall — just good enough to be competitive, but not quite a repeat from their best-in-the-AL performance last year.

I wrote recently that Jacob deGrom should have been an All-Star. He’s on pace for 4 WAR, which would be the most he’s posted since 2021. I wouldn’t call this “vintage” deGrom, as he set far too high a bar for himself in the late 2010s, but he’s still getting tons of chases and whiffs on that fastball-slider combo. Nathan Eovaldi has posted the same strikeout and walk numbers that he’s maintained since 2021, now primarily as a splitter-first pitcher. He’s also maintained the pattern of giving up tons of homers every other season — his 1.62 HR/9 is fifth highest in the majors this year. MacKenzie Gore has been fine in his first year in Arlington. If you like ERA estimators, and I do, he’s essentially been the same pitcher, with lots of strikeouts, a reasonable number of homers, and too many walks. His 3.81 FIP is only a skosh higher than the 3.74 mark from last year, even if his 4.77 ERA would be a career worst. It’s a solid top three that would make the Rangers competitive in a postseason series.

Jacob Latz has been the star of the bullpen. Michael Baumann wrote about him last week, if you want more specifics on him. The rest of bullpen has been OK. Peyton Gray and Tyler Alexander have been fine mid-relief options. Jakob Junis has continued to thrive on weak fly balls, though he landed on the IL this week with a right adductor strain. There just isn’t much help beyond, which explains why the Rangers on Wednesday made a trade with the Angels for the perfectly adequate Chase Silseth.

The Rangers enter the final third of the season as a pretty good, well-rounded, borderline playoff contender. And that makes Texas the best positioned team in a poor year for the AL West.

The Mariners haven’t been awful in a literal sense, just relative to expectations. “Who to fire and when” is the talk of the moment, with assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes the first to go. No team has gotten less than expected from its top two players. Cal Raleigh reportedly hurt himself while trying to cram for the season after the World Baseball Classic, and he’s been awful before and after a trip to the IL for an oblique strain. Julio Rodríguez hasn’t been quite so bad, providing a familiar up-and-down performance at the plate. The difference this year is his defense has slumped. Even if I don’t buy it as a long-term concern, the flubs haven’t helped in what’s been the worst team defense in the majors this year.

The Astros… I don’t believe in. I’m sorry. They were terrible to start the year. And they haven’t been much better even as they’ve inched their way back to .500. General manager Dana Brown doesn’t agree with my assessment, and says the team could be buyers at the trade deadline. Maybe that’s the right call given the state of the division and league. This could be a chance for a last gasp before looking to rebuild. But unless Houston is able to trade for an entire rotation — it ranks 29th in starting pitcher WAR right now — I don’t quite see the point.

I’ll leave you with a final plot:

Despite my general impression that Texas is the best team in the AL West at the moment, it clearly isn’t a great team and it isn’t expected to run away with the division. The Rangers are still under water by run differential, and they aren’t clearly trending up. Their record is largely propped up by a 19-11 mark in one-run games, which is second best in the majors. That’s to say, they don’t seem likely to separate from .500 any time soon, and the division should remain tight the rest of the year.

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Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 25
After nearly five hours of sleep, Derek Jr. wakes up a bit past one in the morning. She’s clearly struggling with some gas issues. I try to soothe her without taking her out of the crib, bicycling her little legs to help her through it, but it doesn’t help at all. She displays every sign of ravenous hunger, so I change her and start her on a bottle, but the milk just won’t go down. Something is going on. She’s clamoring for the bottle, she’s pulling milk into her mouth, and she’s riotously upset every time I take the bottle away, but she keeps letting all the milk run right down her chin. She doesn’t need to burp. It’s not her diaper. I’m not sure what else could be wrong, so after awhile, I give up on the bottle and get her into what has become my standard soothing-a-gassy-baby position. It’s basically a human swaddle.

I settle Derek Jr.’s shoulder in the crook of my right arm, my hand reaching down to grab hold of her right thigh and pull her knee up toward her belly. With my left hand, I give her a pacifier and press her right arm across her chest, then I turn my right arm to press her into my body so that her face is buried in my chest, which holds the pacifier in place. When it works, this position soothes her instantly, though she still pulls frantically at the pacifier. It takes a good 20 minutes for her to work through the gas, and then, suddenly, she relaxes. Not only is she hungry, but she wolfs down the entire the bottle and falls promptly to sleep. I settle her on my shoulder to burp her gently, and I pull out my phone to check what happened in baseball today.

Tomorrow — well, today I guess — is my first official day back at work. I spent the morning preparing this journal’s introduction and first installment for editing, then going through my wife’s camera roll looking for images I could use. I found pictures of myself from the day Derek Jr. was born. Parents are strongly encouraged to give the baby as much skin-to-skin contact as soon as possible. It’s good for bonding and it promotes the release of oxytocin, so there I am in the hospital room wearing my FanGraphs hoodie with no shirt underneath, feeling supremely silly, the zipper cold against my chest. It never really worked out, though. Derek Jr. just wasn’t comfortable being against my chest that way, and I felt like I’d failed. I’d forgotten about that until I saw the pictures this morning.

Tonight, my wife and I only had an hour or so of free time between getting Derek Jr. down to sleep and going to bed ourselves. My going back to work will be enough of an adjustment, so I didn’t want to force her to spend her one hour of relaxation time watching baseball. We put something else on the TV while I perused the leaderboards looking for something to write about tomorrow. As a result, I still have no idea what happened during tonight’s games. What I missed was Houston’s Tatsuya Imai, Steven Okert, and Alimber Santa combining to no-hit the Rangers. With Derek Jr. still asleep on my shoulder, I pull up the highlights. They are hilarious.

It’s got to be one of the sillier no-hitters in history. The highlight package starts in the first inning, with no outs and two Rangers already on base, because apparently Imai walked the first two batters of the game. He only strikes out two, and aside from a couple popups, every ball in play seems to fall into one of two categories. Either center fielder Jake Meyers is running down what looks off the bat like a surefire double in the gap, or a middle infielder is standing on his head to corral a hard-hit grounder that appears destined either to fracture Imai’s tibia or end up in center field.

Imai started the season (and his MLB career) in disastrous fashion. He went on the IL with arm fatigue, got shelled in one of his two rehab appearances, then got shellacked in his first start back in Houston. He came into the game with an 8.31 ERA and -0.2 WAR. Tonight, he walked twice as many as he struck out and had a 50% hard-hit rate. The Rangers walked fewer batters and allowed only one more hard-hit ball than Imai did, and they got lit up for nine runs. The Astros didn’t throw a single offspeed pitch or curveball all night. Aside from four sinkers from Imai, every pitch was either a four-seamer or a slider. Somehow, that didn’t help the Rangers much. Maybe this is what I should write about tomorrow.

A minute or so into the highlights, Derek Jr., still asleep, does sort of a reverse bear crawl from my shoulder down to my chest. She settles with her knees on my lap and her torso pressed against mine, her head resting sideways just below my chin. It’s a position both the teachers of a parenting class and the nurses at the hospital encouraged us to use, as it allows for maximal skin-to-skin contact. They made it sound special, and I was excited for it. I’d seen other people hold their babies that way. It’s why we have those dumb pictures of me holding Derek Jr. with no shirt under my hoodie. But I couldn’t make her comfortable that way, and I gave up. All of a sudden, two months later, it’s where she wants to be. After a rough afternoon and night, she’s finally comfortable and happy, her warm little body pressed against me. She gets so tense when she’s upset; sometimes we lift her up from the crib and her whole body is stiff as a board. But she’s relaxed now. The highlight package is long, and as I watch the Rangers smash the ball every which way except into some grass, I’m overwhelmed by gratitude for the chance to have this moment with Derek Jr. melted against me. Maybe it’s the oxytocin.

I shouldn’t be up writing this. I’ve mortgaged two hours of sleep to document this moment, and I have to be up in three-and-a-half more to write about how James Wood can’t seem to figure out which pitches to challenge. If Derek Jr. wakes up right now — which could absolutely happen — I’ll be doing so on very, very little sleep. That’s been the tradeoff of this whole project, though. I can make sure we never forget all of these special moments, but only if I’m willing to lose some sleep in the night and be a bit more of a zombie during the day. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it going now that I’m going to be spending my days writing. It’s certainly felt worth it so far, and I’ve been so lucky to have had this time, to have such an amazing job that lets me write this journal at all.

Here’s one thing that I haven’t been able to document, that I don’t think I’ll be able to document fully. I’ve written a lot about what it feels like to have Derek Jr. asleep in my arms in the rocking chair in the middle of the night. It’s the most special thing I have. It’s my time to be close to her, to share my warmth, and to know that I’m taking care of her as well as I possibly can. I sing to her. I tell her how loved and beautiful she is. I crane my head down to look at her perfect face, and then I tilt my head back until I’m looking at the ceiling (my God, does that hurt, by the way) and try to burn the image into my memory. But I can’t do it. My brain just doesn’t work that way. I can’t hold onto it, and there’s no way to take a picture of it. I know I’m going to forget this image. It is the most precious thing to me, and I’m going to lose it. In some sense, I’ve lost it several times already; too slowly for me to notice, it must have changed so much as Derek Jr. has grown and grown over the past two months. No matter how tightly I hold her, so much slips away. So I stay up late. I put it into words as best I can. I get through the day.

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As August 3 draws closer, we’re continuing to update the farm systems of some of the clubs we expect to be buyers at the trade deadline. These teams are both contending for a playoff berth and in clear need of a significant upgrade, the kind that will likely require parting with a top farmhand or two. Today, we’re evaluating the Milwaukee Brewers.

In tandem with an evaluation of team needs and posture, we’ve also updated Milwaukee’s Top Prospect list. The new list accounts for the graduations of Brandon Sproat, Logan Henderson, and Craig Yoho, and offers a fresh valuation on several notable farmhands. The big news is that Alexander Frias, Brady Ebel, and Tyson Hardin have moved onto our Top 100, while Jett Williams has fallen off. We’ll cover them, and a couple of the other big changes, in more detail below.

The Situation

The Brew Crew is at it again. Milwaukee has the second-best run differential in baseball and a 5.5-game lead in the NL Central. As of Thursday afternoon, our Playoff Odds give them an 83.4% chance to win the division and all but guarantee a spot in the tournament. Enviable pitching depth has helped them weather absences from Quinn Priester, Brandon Woodruff, and Kyle Harrison without missing a beat. The club’s big divisional lead has even afforded them the luxury of letting Sproat work through some kinks in the big league rotation. Offensively, they’ve mostly been healthy this year, and are again working miracles with a modern version of small ball. Last in baseball in homers, the Brewers are nonetheless fifth in runs and sixth in wRC+. They take their walks, don’t strike out much, steal efficiently, and otherwise run the bases well. Potential upgrades to this unique club make most sense viewed through the prism of who can help them win a series against the Dodgers rather than who can help them clinch a playoff spot.

Big League Needs: High-End Pitching, Third Base

You can’t do any better than Jacob Misiorowski for a Game 1 start, and Harrison, assuming he returns healthy, is a perfectly solid choice for Game 2. Plenty of playoff clubs would be content to roll out Henderson and Shane Drohan behind them, and Milwaukee won’t be in bad shape if that’s what the team chooses to do. The prospect of Tarik Skubal here, though, is pretty exciting. The margins in the playoffs are tight. If you’re really going for it, setting up a rotation that allows Skubal to face Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani for two starts in a series instead of, well, anybody else, is the kind of upgrade that justifies parting with real prospect capital.

You can also never have enough quality relief pitching. That applies to the Brewers, even though their bullpen is quite good: The unit is third in WAR, fifth in FIP, and eighth in K/9. Trevor Megill, Aaron Ashby, and Abner Uribe are the kind of electric relievers you want to throw at teams on a cold October night. But if we can again be picky, if you’ve got to beat the Dodgers in a couple of close games, you’d really like to have a monster to throw at them in the ninth. Mason Miller may not be available, but if he is, he’s another guy who tangibly moves the needle in a playoff environment.

Offensively, the Brewers are mostly solid up and down the lineup. A month ago, shortstop looked like a potential weak spot, but Cooper Pratt is off to a strong start in his big league career, and even if the bat regresses down the stretch, Milwaukee will feel good about his defensive ability there. The most obvious spot to upgrade is to Pratt’s right. Joey Ortiz and David Hamilton are serviceable options at third base, especially defensively, and there aren’t a ton of obvious fits on the trade market at the hot corner, but there are a couple creative solutions if the club is again willing to take a big swing. Could the Brewers make the money work on a Bo Bichette deal? Is there a path to acquiring Zach Neto and plugging him in at third? Prices and availability suggest it’ll be difficult to make any of these kinds of upgrades, but if one of them is in the cards, it would help a lot.

State of the Farm

Even with a handful of recent graduations, the Brewers have one of the game’s strongest systems. Our Farm System Rankings have them third in the sport, and they’re flush with potential impact players on both sides of the ball. Like a major college program stacking five star quarterbacks in consecutive classes, the Brewers have good shortstops all over the place: Jesús Made is the top prospect in all of baseball and is currently at Double-A, Luis Peña is a 55 FV at High-A, and as I noted in the intro, Ebel just joined our Top 100 list amidst a strong season in Low-A. Their Top 100 contingent also includes a near-ready starter (Hardin), a catcher who has already made his debut (Jeferson Quero), and arguably the biggest bat on any of the complexes this summer (Frias).

A tier down, you’ll find a couple of guys who could make a move into that space. Josh Knoth has the stuff and delivery of a Top 100 prospect, we just want to see him maintain something resembling this level of stuff over longer outings. All of the good things we wrote about Bishop Letson over the winter — athletic, physically projectable, good release traits — hold up, but his performance doesn’t warrant an FV adjustment just yet. Braylon Payne climbs into the 45 FV tier. He might be the most athletic guy in the system, and he’s learning how to make the most of a pretty ugly swing. There’s a ton of hit risk there, but also uncommon upside if everything clicks. He joins a very long list of 45 FV and better prospects.

Here are the players graded as 40 FVs and above on the updated list:

Updated Milwaukee Brewers Top Prospects

Rank	Name	Position	Age	FV	Trend	Variance	ETA
1	Jesús Made	SS	19.2	65		Med	2027
2	Luis Peña	SS	19.7	55		High	2028
3	Alexander Frias	RF	18.4	50	↑	High	2029
4	Brady Ebel	SS	19	50	↑	Low	2029
5	Tyson Hardin	SP	24.7	50	↑	Low	2027
6	Jeferson Quero	C	23.8	50		High	2026
7	Josh Knoth	SP	21	45+		High	2028
8	Bishop Letson	SP	21.9	45+		High	2028
9	Cooper Pratt	SS	22	45		Low	2026
10	Luis Lara	CF	21.7	45		Low	2026
11	Josh Adamczewski	LF	21.2	45		Med	2028
12	Blake Burke	1B	23.1	45	↑	Med	2027
13	Jett Williams	CF	22.7	45	↓	Med	2026
14	Luke Adams	1B	22.3	45	↑	Med	2027
15	Braylon Payne	CF	20	45	↑	High	2029
16	Andrew Fischer	3B	22.2	40+	↓	High	2027
17	Josiah Ragsdale	CF	22.6	40+	↑	High	2027
18	J.D. Thompson	MIRP	22.8	40+	↓	Med	2028
19	Brett Wichrowski	SIRP	24	40+		High	2027
20	Jayden Dubanewicz	SP	20.4	40+	NEW	High	2028
21	Trey Ebel	SS	17.8	40+	NEW	Med	2030
22	Sawyer Strosnider	RF	21.1	40+	NEW	High	2029
23	Coleman Crow	MIRP	25.6	40	↓	Low	2026
24	Marco Dinges	C	22.9	40		High	2028
25	Frank Cairone	SP	18.9	40		High	2031
26	Jaron DeBerry	SP	23.9	40		Med	2027
27	Carlos Rodriguez	SP	24.7	40		Low	2026
28	Julian Garcia	SP	18.3	40	NEW	Med	2031
29	Daniel Dickinson	2B	22.7	40		High	2029
30	Tate Kuehner	MIRP	25.5	40		Med	2027
31	José Rodríguez	SS	17.5	40	NEW	High	2032
32	Bryce Meccage	SP	20.4	40		High	2029

The team’s full list, complete with scouting reports and tool grades, can be found on The Board.

The Power-Hitting Corner Infielders

We’ve shuffled the deck a bit on the upper-level corner bats with big raw power. Blake Burke rises into the 45 FV tier here. For about a year now, he’s been a 150 wRC+ hitter at Double-A, with 40 homers in 123 games. He has 70 raw power, the kind of impact that will allow him to do plenty of damage even when he’s not squaring pitches up. He’s maintained low, if viable, contact numbers (71% overall, 78% in zone) in Biloxi, and even if he swings and misses plenty against big league stuff, we think there’s enough power for him to contribute meaningfully.

Then there’s Luke Adams. It’s hard to find fault with the numbers he’s posted throughout his minor league career. This year, he’s whacking the ball as a 22-year-old in Triple-A, where he’s hitting .260/.407/.533, good for a 147 wRC+ with 12 bombs in 52 games. He’s grown into plus power: His EV90 is up three ticks from last year, and his max has risen from 109 mph to 113. He’s doing all this while making contact 75% of the time (82% in zone), which is adequate for someone with that kind of power. He has one of the lowest swing rates in the minors, but unlike many for whom that’s true, his chase rate doesn’t explode with two strikes. He’s also quite good at getting to pull-side lift; every one of his homers this year has sailed out to the left of second base.

That said, the stiffness in his swing still scares me, and I’m particularly concerned that he’ll be vulnerable at the top of the zone. The vast majority of his damage comes on pitches down, and while he’s often able to foul off pitches above the belt, there’s a chance big league heaters turn those spoiled pitches into swings and misses. For a righty who profiles at first base, it’s enough of a risk to keep him off our Top 100, but given how well he’s doing with everything else, it felt appropriate to elevate him to the 45 FV tier on this update.

Andrew Fischer trades places with them, slipping into the 40+ tier. We don’t see him as more than a fringy fit at third, and we’re pretty worried about the swing and miss here (63% contact rate overall, 70% in zone), particularly since a lot of those whiffs came against A-ball arms; his power is also closer to plus than elite. Brock Wilken also falls a tier, as Triple-A pitchers have exploited the holes in his swing to the point that we see him as more of an up-down option than a regular bench piece. He finds himself near Eric Bitonti, a left-side masher a couple rungs lower with more athleticism but even scarier swing-and-miss data; both are 35+ FVs.

Pitcher Movement

It’s been a boom and bust kind of season for Milwaukee farmhands on the mound. Henderson and Drohan are pitching like mid-rotation starters, and Hardin could soon join them. He’s a pop-up prospect who has not only maintained the massive control gains he’s made since college, but started throwing harder.

But many of the intriguing arms we liked last winter haven’t performed as we’d hoped. J.D. Thompson falls a rung here. We still like the way his fastball plays, but hitters seem to see his secondaries well out of the hand, and he isn’t running over A-ball competition like we thought an early-round, SEC veteran should. Coleman Crow dipped as well. We’re rounding down on his chances to start, as it increasingly looks like he’s a better fit in a spin-to-win, one-time-through kind of role than as a starter or in high-leverage relief duty. Bryce Meccage was wild early and has been hurt since; he gets the dreaded band aid tag. In a different kind of troubling news, Melvin Hernandez is no longer with the organization; he reportedly decided to step away from the game after being the victim of an alleged bullying incident. Ryan Birchard and Yerlin Rodriguez fall off the list as well, as their control hasn’t progressed any over the course of the year.

New Arrivals

Josiah Ragsdale is Milwaukee’s breakout prospect this year. A seventh-rounder out of Boston College a year ago, the 22-year-old has hit his way to (and soon through) Biloxi. He’s twitchy with wiry strength, and his full-body swing helps him generate more power than you’d expect looking at him, in a way that bears some resemblance to how Dominic Canzone does it. Ragsdale doesn’t have that much juice, but he’s a lot faster. He’s a 70 runner, and while his reads and routes aren’t pristine, he has wheels enough for the job. How much he’s able to grow there, and how well he’s able to handle lefties — he’s making viable contact against them but with no power — will shape his ultimate big league role. For now, we’re projecting him as a fancy fourth outfielder with everyday upside.

On the mound, we’ve added a couple velo climbers. Jayden Dubanewicz went from sitting in the low 90s to living in the mid-90s. The pitch has a lot of carry, and given that he’s still young and lean, there may yet be more in the tank. He’s also flashing a couple of above-average breaking balls. These are sufficiently enticing traits to boost him all the way to the 40+ tier even with a little backsliding in his control. Wande Torres, meanwhile, is a lefty who has gone from touching 95 to touching 98. He’s probably a sinker-slider reliever in the end, but it’s worth exhausting him in the rotation for the reps. Finally, it’s always nice to conjure up a reliever like Brian Fitzpatrick, a lefty with average arm strength and a couple interesting secondaries. He made his debut this spring, but unfortunately he’ll be out until at least midway through next year recovering from UCL surgery.

Young Position Players

First-year pros Diego Frontado, Ricki Moneys, and Leanders Matos all notched 135 wRC+s or better while walking more than they struck out in the DSL; Matos managed to do so at the ripe old age of 16. José Rodríguez fell just a hair short of those numbers, but he’s a great mover and Eric in particular likes him enough to push him into the 40 FV tier. We’ll need the offseason to give this club’s DSL rosters a full look-through, but for now the other three are stacked toward the bottom of the list as 35+ FVs. Moneys has absurd thump for a 17-year-old, already above the big league average. Frontado moves well and has a hitterish look in the box and a chance to stay at short, while Matos’s blend of performance and physical projection warrants putting him on the radar.

We’re also downshifting on a few hitters. Kenny Fenelon and Brailyn Antunez are toolsy outfielders with power, but sub-60% contact rates on the complex put them more in the bucket of projectable long-shots than prospective impact pieces. José Anderson has homered 21 times at Low-A this year, but that’s just about all he’s done, as he’s struck out 40.2% of the time, far too much for a guy we needed to see make more contact, not less. He drops off the list, as does Filippo Di Turi, a solid defensive infielder without enough stick to grade out as more than a late-blooming flier at this point.

Who Makes a Good Secondary or Tertiary Piece in a Trade?

You’re forgiven for thinking “who doesn’t?” at this point. Among the position players, the Brewers are loaded with tool sheds (Payne, Ragsdale), data fliers (Matthew Wood joins a few of the first basemen we touched on above on the hitter side), and catchers who look blocked (Quero, Marco Dinges). For anyone who thinks they can help young guys make more contact, Bitonti, Fenelon, and Antunez are risk/reward plays to add to the end of a deal.

There’s a similar “choose your flavor” element on the pitching side. All of the talented arrow-down guys above are enticing reclamation projects. You could well add someone like Jaron DeBerry, a control pitcher who might’ve been spooked out of the strike zone amidst the homer barrage in the minors this year, to that list. I’d also toss out Brett Wichrowski here. He throws hard and flashes plus breaking stuff. He doesn’t execute consistently, and that might push him to the ‘pen eventually, but for teams that can afford to give the guy a long runway, the pitch mix is good enough to stay patient as he tries to figure out the touch and feel elements of pitching as a starter.

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On Wednesday afternoon, Tarik Skubal threw what looked for all the world to be his last pitch as a member of the Detroit Tigers.

Skubal fanned six Orioles — including his 1,000th career strikeout — and held the Orioles scoreless into the seventh inning. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, wanting his ace to finish on a valedictory note, let Skubal pitch himself into some trouble in the seventh, but lifted him once Leody Taveras singled in Baltimore’s first run.

The Tigers led 7-1 when Skubal left the game, needing just seven more outs to seal the victory. The bullpen let six more Orioles score (with two of those runs charged to Skubal) by the time it recorded three outs. The Tigers ultimately lost 10-9 in 12 innings to drop to six games out of first place in the AL Central and 4.5 games out of the last AL Wild Card spot. They entered Thursday’s action with a 24.4% chance of making the playoffs, and with so many teams to climb over in the standings, I’m shocked their odds are that good.

Skubal is, by an enormous margin, the best player considered to be available at this year’s trade deadline. And in a rare blessing from the gods of microcosm, his last start illustrated perfectly why this is the case.

With all of Monday’s games coming after the 6 p.m. EDT trade deadline (and Detroit idle on Monday anyway), Skubal’s spot in the rotation won’t come up again until that milestone is past. Unless the Tigers reverse their fortunes in a hurry, Skubal won’t have another chance to meaningfully improve their championship odds, as the 29-year-old lefty will hit free agency this offseason. And re-signing him will cost… honestly, I don’t even want to guess. Lots. “Highest-paid pitcher in history” feels like where the bidding starts. And if they were going to pay the however many hundreds of millions of dollars it’ll take to keep him around, they would’ve done it already.

Having made those two assumptions — the Tigers are cooked, and Skubal won’t re-sign — the only rational move left, painful as it may be, is to trade the big lefty. Even so, declaring a preferred destination feels unseemly. If I were a Tigers fan, I would’ve been annoyed as hell at years of headlines declaring Skubal a future Dodger or Met or Phillie.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think the Dodgers or Phillies (or Braves, or Red Sox, or Yankees, or any other big-budget contender) should trade for Skubal.

If Skubal moves this weekend and comes to the park on Tuesday dressed as anything other than a Ray or a Brewer, something will have gone massively wrong.

A team that aims to win the World Series needs to achieve two goals. First, it has to have the depth to get through the regular season and into the playoffs. Second, it has to have the high-end talent to get through the playoffs. Those two categories don’t always overlap; a club that’s shopping on the bottom shelf of the trade deadline package store might have to choose between a high-leverage reliever and a no. 5 starter.

Skubal, a high-volume starting pitcher with some of the best pure stuff in baseball, is one of the few players who can be integral in both pursuits. Over the past two postseasons, he’s started six of Detroit’s 15 playoff games, and thrown 28.7% of its total playoff innings.

He went at least six innings in all six of those starts, and in five of them he also allowed two runs or fewer; in total, he has a career playoff ERA of 2.04. There is no type of player who can exert such a profound influence on one team’s postseason fortunes.

Unfortunately for Skubal, only throwing a quarter of his team’s innings leaves quite a bit to chance. The Tigers have never scored more than three runs in any of his postseason starts, so they’ve gone 3-3 in them.

Both the Brewers and Rays are better now than the Tigers have ever been during Skubal’s tenure; both teams are currently in line for a bye. However, neither is in an unassailable position, and adding Skubal would go a long way toward consolidating a top-two seed.

And in contrast to some big-market contenders — including but not limited to the Dodgers — Skubal represents a step change over the pitchers he’d be replacing for both the Rays and Brewers. That holds true in both a five- or six-man regular-season rotation or a four-man playoff rotation.

As if to drive that point home, McClanahan left his start on Thursday with a back injury while I was writing this.

Trading for Skubal wouldn’t guarantee anything, of course. His own postseason record shows that even great pitchers need run support. And while the difference between Skubal and Gasser or Seymour would be enormous, I’d rather have another bat if I were either of these teams, especially the Brewers. They scored exactly one run in each of their four NLDS losses last year, and that isn’t exactly a new problem.

Since the Brewers got to Game 7 of the NLCS against the Dodgers in 2018, they’ve made the playoffs six times out of seven chances. But once there, Milwaukee is 5-16 in individual games and 1-6 in playoff series, having averaged just 2.52 runs scored per game.

And yet, there is no bat comparable to Skubal on the market. This is, for all intents and purposes, the guy.

Still, why should these two teams outbid the Dodgers (“Dodgers” being understood to mean any high-payroll recidivist contender)?

Two reasons. First: They can.

The Brewers and Rays are considered to be two of the better-run franchises in baseball. Having been to both Milwaukee and St. Petersburg, I can say that I like both cities quite a bit. But my personal ranking of America’s cities seems to prioritize cheap beer and fried fish more than the national consensus does. More’s the pity; suffice it to say neither the Rays, nor the Brewers play in one of the league’s glamor markets.

I’m usually one to make the argument that most owners can spend more than they do. Both Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and Rays owner Patrick Zalupski became billionaires not by the sweat of their own brow, but by managing and brokering stocks and real estate, respectively. And both of their clubs are heavily subsidized by national TV money and revenue sharing.

All the same, even I’ll concede that the Brewers and Rays play the free agent market from a position of disadvantage. Perhaps not as great a disadvantage as Rob Manfred and the owners are claiming in the leadup to the seemingly inevitable lockout, but a meaningful disadvantage nonetheless.

But while the Brewers and Rays could be outbid for Skubal in free agency, money is not an issue here. If Skubal gets traded at the deadline, the team that picks him up will have to pay the last $9.4 million and change of his 2026 salary. Even Attanasio or Zalupski could scare that cash up on short notice.

The currency that matters for a Skubal suitor, right now, is prospects. And both the Brewers and Rays are rich in young talent.

The Brewers have the no. 1 prospect in baseball, Jesús Made, who’s not moving for a rental. But the Brewers also have five other Top 100 Prospects who can be traded without knocking the head off their farm system.

The top of the Rays system has a few awkward fits for a Skubal trade. Top prospect Grady Emerson, this year’s no. 2 overall pick, can’t be traded until after the season. Tampa Bay also has tremendous top-end catching depth: Caden Bodine and Nathan Flewelling are two of the top 12 trade-eligible catching prospects in the entire minors. But that might not be too enticing for the Tigers, who have Dillon Dingler under team control through 2030 and probably won’t follow up a Skubal trade with a teardown.

Nevertheless, the Rays have other Top 100 Prospects to deal with, and more depth than any other system in baseball. There are 24 prospects in the Tampa Bay system with a future value grade of 45 or better. No other team has more than 15 such prospects; only nine other teams have 10. The Tigers aren’t going to trade Skubal for 10 future platoon bats or no. 5 starters, but the Rays could offer Detroit’s scouts their pick of that middle tier rather than trying to force a fit.

The second reason the Rays or Brewers should outbid the Dodgers, or any Dodger-like suitor, is more normative.

If the Brewers stay on their current pace, this will be the ninth consecutive full season in which they’ve won at least 86 games. The Rays are on course to return to the playoffs after a two-year hiatus, but before that they made five straight trips to the postseason. And despite how people talk about this team, the Rays are always competitive. Since 2008, the Rays have had 12 winning seasons and nine playoff appearances in 18 seasons — soon to be 13 and 10, respectively, in 19 seasons. Over that time, they’ve had just one season with more than 85 losses.

From a diehard fan’s standpoint, I actually think that a consistent record of competitiveness is massively underrated. Rays and Brewers fans show up to Opening Day every year with a reasonable expectation of being in the pennant race. Therefore, when they turn on the TV or go through the turnstile six nights a week, they do so knowing their team has a good chance of winning, and that each game will mean something.

Having lived through hopeless slogs of losing seasons across many sports, there’s something to be said for the knowledge that your team is unlikely to embarrass you on a given night. The consistent microdose of joy over a winning regular season sometimes outweighs the peaky highs of the playoffs.

But every so often, you’ve got to make a serious run at a championship. I’ve mentioned the Brewers’ difficulty in getting over the hump; outside of the Rays’ two runs to the World Series, they’ve won a total of two playoff rounds in franchise history, both one-game Wild Card matchups.

Making the playoffs is great, but it starts to get monotonous when you lose quickly every year. An occasional deep run keeps existing fans invested and draws new ones in. And while trading for Skubal guarantees nothing, making the effort often has a similar effect. Since we’re talking about the Brewers: Milwaukee lost in the first round in 2008, and CC Sabathia did not pitch well in his only postseason start. But where does Sabathia’s half-season in Milwaukee place him on a ranking of popular Brewers of the 21st Century?

Don’t believe me? Ask Blue Jays fans about the David Price trade. Or older Astros fans about Randy Johnson. Ask Phillies fans about Roy Halladay, even though they accomplished less in his two prime seasons with the club than they had in the two years prior.

Small market has nothing to do with it. Rental has nothing to do with it. There is only the cost in prospects, the question of whether the team is good enough to make a trade worth it, and the will to capitalize when opportunity presents itself.

Both the Brewers and Rays have those first two criteria in abundance. Whether one of them has the third is the question that could define this season for everyone.

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