Welcome to “Wait, What?!,” a series in which I’ll take a look at some of the players whose performance has most surprised me this season. These will all be guys I covered as part of this season’s list cycle. It’s important to reflect on previous work, and in cases where the numbers don’t match the scouting report, there’s often a lesson to be learned, or at least something to keep in mind going forward.

While it can be useful to let a report marinate for a couple years before looking back, sometimes a player’s production prompts a quicker postmortem. Such is the case with Blue Jays catcher Brandon Valenzuela, who has accumulated 1.6 WAR in his first 59 career games mere months after I projected him as a glove-first backup on Toronto’s farm system overview. Let’s take a deeper look at how we got from A to B, evaluate whether I should have seen this kind of production coming, and reflect on whether Valenzuela’s breakout warrants a re-evaluation. Perhaps we’ll even learn something, something to think about when it comes time to evaluate the next upper-level catcher who looks like a defense-first reserve. We’ll begin with a look at Valenzuela’s tool grades and scouting report from January, which I’ve reproduced below:

A glove-first catcher, San Diego traded Valenzuela to Toronto last summer in a deadline deal for Will Wagner. The 25-year-old has kicked around the mid-to-upper levels for a couple years now and heads into the 2026 season as the club’s third catcher.

Defensively, Valenzuela is a solid receiver with strong hands and wrists. His framing numbers were just fair last year, possibly due to a little extraneous body movement and a tendency to stay high in his crouch. He has a good arm and a lightning-quick release, but he’s not always synched up and his throws can scatter. The tradeoff has been worth it so far, as Valenzuela has hosed a third of the Triple-A basestealers he’s encountered, but it’s something to monitor. At the plate, he has a backup catcher’s stick. He’s a switch-hitter with enough power that pitchers have to take him seriously, but his grooved, uphill swing and fringy bat speed put a firm lid on his hit tool. It’s more of a useful package of skills than an exciting one, but catchers who can chip in on both sides tend to play for a long time. Valenzuela’s intangibles have drawn rave reviews from Toronto’s staff, and he projects to take over as the Jays’ backup sometime in the next couple of years.

2026 Performance to Date

Toronto fans tried to vote every Blue Jays regular and their cousin into the All-Star lineup, and Valenzuela had a better case than most to actually make the team. He’s ninth in WAR among backstops this year (minimum 190 plate appearances), and has been even better than that on a rate basis. While he’s done plenty with the glove — we’ll get to that — his performance at the plate is the unexpected catalyst behind the re-evaluation here, as he’s significantly out-hitting my preseason expectations.

What looks different? The power department is an obvious place to start, as Valenzuela is hitting for more of it than he has at any point in his career. There isn’t much separating his raw impact between this year and last, as his 90th-percentile exit velocity is exactly the same at 104.3 mph. His max this season is up a couple ticks, but his hard-hit rate is a little lower. These marks are on the line between a 45 and a 50 grade, and I was perhaps a little harsh; in other places this past list cycle, I rounded up on guys with similar data. Still, that’s hair splitting compared to where the real change has occurred: his game power. Valenzuela is posting the highest ISO of his career, and the last time he had a slugging percentage above the .414 figure he’s running now was back in 2023 — in 39 games during his third spin through High-A.

Switch-hitters are often a bear to analyze, but in this case, Valenzuela has a long track record of similar production on both sides of the plate, a pattern that has continued in the big leagues. The swings aren’t exactly the same: While both are lofted, his left handed cut is steeper, which is observable both visually and in the data. His measurable bat speeds are almost identical from both sides and, interestingly, are up a bit this season compared to last.

Taken together, it looks like Valenzuela has gotten a little stronger, and he’s been able to hit the ball in the air at favorable angles more often, even with a steep jump in competition. In light of those changes, the 40 game power grade looks light going forward — a 45 would be more appropriate, at the very least.

A big part of the story is what Valenzuela has done to position himself to tap into that power more regularly. Particularly from the left side, where his bat path is steeper, fastballs upstairs have long been a vulnerability. Since getting into the Jays organization, a couple of adjustments at the plate have helped Valenzuela reach those pitches more consistently. This spring, in an effort to keep his back elbow from drifting too high, he dumped the open stance he’d been using in order to shift his center of gravity a little closer toward the pitcher. Then, in late April, he made a bigger tweak, scrapping the leg kick he’d been using in favor of a smaller move. To learn more about the how and the way, I talked with Toronto’s hitting coordinator Craig Perry, who said that the latter adjustment helped Valenzuela time fastballs better.

“He was missing under stuff, so we were trying to get his hips to just work right underneath him,” Perry said. “The leg kick wasn’t getting enough force in the ground… We wanted him to pull his sequence in tighter and more efficiently to deliver the barrel.” Essentially, the leg kick was making Valenzuela’s bat path too steep to make consistently hard contact on high fastballs.

Valenzuela experimented with a smaller move in a batting practice session in late April and saw results almost immediately. “We turned the machine from the upper 80s to 100, and he was turning on balls like it was nothing,” said Perry.

That real proof came on the field. Valenzuela was a .147/.171/.235 hitter with 14 strikeouts in 35 plate appearances prior to that adjustment. Since debuting his new mechanics on April 30, he’s hit .265/.355/.470 and cut his strikeout rate nearly in half, to just 23%. Not surprisingly, he’s doing much better with fastballs in the aggregate. Per Synergy, his whiff rate on heaters dropped from 29% last year to 20% in 2026. He doesn’t homer, or even reach base, on the pitch below, but this is the kind of pitch he’s now in a much better position to drive:

These are signs that Valenzuela has, at the very least, achieved the future hit tool grade from his offseason report; there might even be another gear in him. Perhaps more importantly, the episode is an indication that Valenzuela is the type of player with the capacity to make improvements.

“He’s got good aptitude,” Perry said. “He can learn something and adjust pretty quickly.”

What looks different defensively? The winter report was directionally correct but may have sold the glove a little short. The arm and running game valuations hold up well. Valenzuela does indeed have a strong arm, and his average pop time (1.89 seconds this year) has been comfortably 60-grade. His throws are still a little scattered, and he short-hops more balls than your average catcher, but if he’s sacrificing a little accuracy in the name of expediency, the tradeoff seems to be a net positive.

For its part, the framing has been better than advertised. He was a little below average in the minors last season per TruMedia, but has been among the very best receivers in the big leagues according to our framing metrics. This isn’t an apples to apples comparison: The strike zone shrunk between last year and this, he’s working in front of different umpires, and the big league arbiters are acclimating to new rules in real time. Still, to the eye test, Valenzuela’s hand movements look quicker and more direct. There’s inevitably an element of cherry picking when seeking representative clips of the thousands of balls and strikes Valenzuela has caught recently. He made some slick plays in Double-A San Antonio last year and has been handcuffed some this year, but in general, there’s been more that look like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Than this (please forgive the graininess; minor league video quality can be hit and miss):

Or this:

Perhaps Valenzuela is running hot this season. But if he’s able to steal strikes at anything resembling this kind of clip, he has not only hit the projected above-average defensive grade but has blossomed into a true plus defender.

Was the Preseason Report Out of Step?

The nature of the list cycle — 30 teams, thousands of players — naturally compresses the amount of time we can spend on any given prospect, and upper-level catchers with a long track record of similar performance don’t generally get a long look. Sitting at a coffee shop this past January, glancing over the data and taking a look at Valenzuela’s swings and pop times, what stood out was how straightforward the report appeared. He was a nearly physically mature, mid-20s catcher with seemingly clear strengths and drawbacks. Of the 40 full blurbs on Toronto’s list, I don’t know if I spent the least amount of time on his report, but his was among the quickest to file.

Before engaging in too much self-flagellation about my approach, I wanted to check with sources on whether I missed something obvious, something that other scouts or analysts may have noticed. Even in a world where abundant data and video has given evaluators similar tools with which to work, players still divide opinion, and it’s worth seeing whether others had drawn significantly different conclusions about Valenzuela.

The short answer? Not really. I asked a few sources to reflect on their views of Valenzuela before his big league breakout. “He was fine,” said one analyst. “Maybe a touch better than a generic backup, but I wouldn’t have pounded the table to get him.” Another mostly dismissed the idea that we should have seen this coming, noting that Valenzuela had a sub-.300 OBP in Triple-A in his mid-20, and that the bat speed growth would’ve been hard to predict in his case.

Scouts were in a similar place, as they generally gave him grades that roughly translate to our 40 FV. Some liked him a bit more, and most had at least something they’d liked about him, whether it was the glove, his approach, or just that he was a gamer. An internal Blue Jays source had expressed a similar sentiment as I composed the list, and noted Valenzuela’s intangibles and work with the pitching staff as a big positive. Another, less bullish source wrote back with an almost weary air: “[Improvement is] just a swing and approach change away for some guys.”

Could I have justified a 40+ grade? Sure. The 40 was reasonable, though, aligned with the majority of sources I spoke with. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that someone projected Valenzuela as a no-doubt regular. But if they’re out there, I haven’t found them.

What Do We Think Now?

When revisiting a report, it’s good to reflect and equally important to not overreact. A useful question to consider is “Would you feel differently about him if his wRC+ was 10-15 points lower?” After all, Valenzuela is just a bad two weeks or a lukewarm month from seeing his numbers drop in that manner. The ebbs and flows of a long season make a slump inevitable, perhaps especially so for a rookie catcher. In other words, if I’m moving off of my offseason report, I want it to be because there’s strong evidence that Valenzuela’s skills and abilities have changed, not because he’s had a couple good months at the plate. There’s no sense making changes to a guy’s report if we’re just going to walk them back the next time he goes 1-for-20.

In Valenzuela’s case, I think a revision would still be warranted even if he wasn’t hitting quite this well. Both the bat and the glove look better than I initially assessed, and while I’m not ready to go nuts on his offensive grades, this looks like a plus defender with at least a fringy bat. That’s a very good backup at a minimum, and the more I think about it, the more I think he’s legitimately an average regular: This is a switch-hitter with power, plus defense, intangibles, and apparently very good aptitude. It sounds an awful lot like Joe Mack, an easy Top 100 guy for us who has accrued 1.4 WAR in his first 57 games even with a slightly below-average wRC+. It’s a little jarring to see Valenzuela’s name next to a grade this big, but it would almost feel stubborn to go any lower.

Going forward, I don’t know how instructive Valenzuela’s breakout is for other players with a similar profile. You can’t just project every average framer with physicality to grow into an elite receiver. It’s never a bad idea to feel out who the “good aptitude guys” are in a given system, but it’s a tough thing to assess in the best of circumstances, and quite difficult to do at scale as a prospect writer. Perhaps the lesson is that there may be more talent lurking under the surface in San Diego’s system than the Padres seem to be able to bring out in their players on their own. To some degree, breakouts are just really hard to see coming, and it’s part of baseball’s charm that even with more tools to help us forecast the future than ever, the sport’s capacity for variance and surprise endures. In any case, I think Valenzuela, who has graduated from prospect eligibility, is just a 50-FV guy now. Of course, I’ve been wrong about him before.

Valenzuela’s revised tool grades are below:

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2:08	Brendan Gawlowski:

2:24	Brendan Gawlowski:

2:45	Brendan Gawlowski:

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NEW YORK — Earlier this season, Shohei Ohtani appeared to have a legitimate shot at adding a Cy Young Award to a trophy case that already includes four MVP honors plus the AL Rookie of the Year. Fully recovered from his late-2023 ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, he consistently pitched deep into games and carried an ERA below 1.00 into June. Yet, after being knocked around a bit last month, he was scratched from his final start before the All-Star break, and bypassed the All-Star Game itself in favor of receiving an injection of lubricant in his left knee. Prior to the opener of Sunday’s doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts revealed that Ohtani — who wasn’t scheduled to pitch during the three-game series in the Bronx — would be scratched from his upcoming start and would take an indefinite break from pitching.

“Where we’re at right now, how we’re proceeding, I would say that it’s going to be some time,” Roberts said. “I’d say that it’s not going to be a day-to-day thing.”

The break from pitching will not affect Ohtani’s availability as a designated hitter. His left knee is his landing leg for pitching, which he does right-handed, but it’s his back leg for hitting, which he does left-handed. “It’s the pitching and the torque on landing on that leg that kind of gets it upset,” the manager said. “The hitting doesn’t do that.”

Though he’s fallen off a bit in recent weeks, Ohtani is batting .287/.396/.534 with 22 home runs (tied for fifth in the National League) and a 150 wRC+ (third). His combined 6.0 WAR (3.1 on the offensive side, 3.0 on the pitching side, with some rounding) leads the majors, a hair ahead of Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Ohtani’s knee problem first came to light during a June 11 game at a PNC Park against the Pirates, when he was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the top of the seventh inning, having already gone 2-for-2 with a homer and a pair of walks. While on base in the fourth, he attempted a stolen base on a pitch Andy Pages fouled off, and felt pain behind his left knee. He sat out a game, but was back in the lineup on June 13 against the White Sox, homering in his third straight game. He took his next start, on June 17 against the Rays, but allowed a season-high four earned runs, and has played 24 of the Dodgers’ 26 games since then, with the two games he missed — on June 19 and July 4 — coming after ones he pitched.

During that span, Ohtani was named to his sixth All-Star team after receiving more votes than any other player in either league. He was voted in as the NL’s starting DH, but was not additionally selected as a pitcher; he has not taken the mound in a Midsummer Classic since starting the 2021 game for the AL while he was with the Angels. The Dodgers then scratched Ohtani from his scheduled July 11 start against the Diamondbacks, citing ongoing left knee irritation and announcing that he would skip the All-Star Game for the first time in his career. Ohtani told Japanese media at the time that the discomfort was “more in the kneecap” — the same kneecap on which he had season-ending surgery in September 2019 to fuse a bipartite patella, a rare congenital condition. “I wonder,” said Ohtani at the time when asked if his current issues were related to that surgery, later adding that after starts, “The degree to which I could straighten or bend my knee is limited” due to inflammation.

Ohtani DH’d in both the July 11 game from which he was scratched as a pitcher and on July 12, after which he received an injection of Orthovisc, a natural lubricant used to relieve knee pain. After resting during the break, he was back in action with the rest of the Dodgers on Friday night at Yankee Stadium. It was the first matchup between the two teams in the Bronx since Game 5 of the 2024 World Series, which proved to be the clincher after the Yankees squandered a 5-0 lead following starter Gerrit Cole’s failure to cover first base on an infield grounder by Mookie Betts. Coincidentally enough, Cole — who missed all of the 2025 season and the start of this one after undergoing Tommy John surgery — was Friday night’s starter. He and reliever Fernando Cruz held Ohtani hitless in four plate appearances, though the slugger did hit two balls hard against the former Cy Young winner, one of them a towering 108-mph drive that right fielder Jasson Domínguez caught with his back against the wall in right-center field.

The Dodgers won that game 2-1 behind a stellar start from Roki Sasaki and a titanic two-run homer by Max Muncy. Cole pitched well, but overstayed his welcome, with Yankees manager Aaron Boone electing to let him face Muncy after issuing a leadoff walk to Betts to start the seventh.

With Saturday night’s game rained out, on Sunday the two teams — which have met in the World Series 12 times — played just their second doubleheader since regular season interleague play began in 1997. Roberts’ announcement regarding Ohtani was initially presented in the context of the need to reshuffle the team’s pitching plans, with Sunday night’s scheduled starter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, moved to the first game in hopes that he could provide enough length to facilitate a bullpen game in the nightcap, and Emmet Sheehan, Saturday’s scheduled starter — and one who has struggled lately — pushed to Monday.

“The elephant in the room is Shohei’s not gonna start on Wednesday. We just want to continue to give him the best chance to kind of get into a good spot,” said Roberts. While Ohtani could continue pitching at less than 100%, even with the Dodgers again having to cobble together a makeshift rotation due to injuries to Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, the team entered Monday with majors’ best record at 63-37. A loss to the Phillies (with Sheehan getting shellacked for six runs in 5 1/3 innings) and a win by the Brewers (63-37) allowed Milwaukee to pull ahead by half a game. Still, the Dodgers own an 11 1/2-game lead in the NL West, while the five other division leaders’ combined margin over their closest competitors is just 12 games. “A lot of it is where we’re at and how we put ourselves in a good spot,” said Roberts about the opportunity to give Ohtani some rest now.

Overall, Ohtani has pitched to a 1.79 ERA and a 2.61 FIP in 85 2/3 innings over 14 starts, an average of 6.12 innings per start. By comparison, while he made 14 starts last year, he totaled just 47 innings (3.36 per start) because his pitch count build-up was done at the major league level, keeping him on a short leash. He pitched six innings just once during the regular season while posting a 2.87 ERA and a 1.90 FIP, though he did go six in three of his four postseason starts.

This season, Ohtani has lasted at least six innings all but once; he went five innings on May 20 against the Padres after back-to-back seven-inning starts. Through June 3, he had a 0.74 ERA in 61 innings, but since then, he’s been hit for a 4.38 ERA in 24 2/3 innings. His fielding-independent peripherals and his contact stats across those two stretches are more similar than those ERAs would lead you to believe. It’s the BABIP, baby — specifically a spike of nearly 150 points:

Both ERA estimators favor the first 10 starts, but not by that much; Ohtani allowed two homers in each span, with his rate in the second one still more than respectable. The hits have been falling in lately, and there’s been a fair bit of regression relative to his expected stats:

Where Ohtani was 57 points below his xSLG and 40 points below his xwOBA through June 3, he’s been 49 points above the former and 32 points above the latter since then. It hasn’t been a matter of diminished velocity or stuff. If anything, his velocity has trended upwards a bit:

That’s an average four-seam velocity of 97.8 mph through June 3, compared to 98.8 since. By PitchingBot, his 61 BotStf score, 53 BotCmd score, and 59 BotOvr score over those last four starts are all one point higher than those of his first 10 turns. Obviously, the results have changed somewhat, but it hasn’t been due to a big drop in the quality of his pitches or his command.

Ohtani has qualified for the ERA title just once, in 2022, when he threw 166 innings and put up a 2.33 ERA, good for fourth in the league. He threw 130 1/3 innings in 2021 and 132 innings in ’23, and thanks to the Dodgers’ six-day rotation, he was on pace to exceed that only slightly before the team hit pause. He’s second in the NL in ERA among pitchers with at least 80 innings, but everybody else in the top 10 except Zack Wheeler has at least 14 2/3 more innings:

Even had Ohtani remained available and similarly effective the rest of the way, winning a Cy Young would have been a tall order if he ended up, say, 50 innings behind Misiorowski. Despite his lack of innings, his 3.0 pitching WAR ties him with Yamamoto for sixth in the league.

Yamamoto pitched brilliantly during Sunday’s doubleheader opener, throwing a 102-pitch complete game in an 8-2 victory. He scattered four hits and allowed two runs while striking out seven without a walk. While he threw two complete games during the 2025 postseason, this was his first in the regular season since coming stateside for the ’24 campaign. It was the first regular season complete game by a Dodger since Gavin Stone spun a four-hit shutout on June 26, 2024 against the White Sox, and the first complete game by a Dodger against the Yankees in New York since Burt Hooton threw one in Game 2 of the 1977 World Series. The Dodgers lost the nightcap of the doubleheader, 2-1, while using six additional relievers behind opener Will Klein. Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s eighth-inning solo shot off the last of them, Evan Phillips, answered Tommy Edman’s pinch homer in the top of the frame, providing the margin of victory.

Yamamoto has made 18 starts for the Dodgers, pitching to a 2.78 ERA and a 3.33 FIP. Both he and Wrobleski, whose breakout has been one of the team’s most pleasant surprises, made the NL All-Star team, but beyond those two and Ohtani, the rotation’s performance has been erratic. A new splitter and some mechanical adjustments that increased his fastball velocity helped the 24-year-old Sasaki take a big step forward in May and early June, but he came into Friday night’s start having allowed nine home runs and 22 runs in his past 23 innings. Friday’s 5 2/3-inning, one-run effort — an unearned run at that, scored on a passed ball — was fueled by a four-seam fastball that averaged a career-best 100.1 mph thank to further lower-body mechanical adjustments. The outing lowered his ERA to 4.98, with a 5.34 FIP. The 26-year-old Sheehan is carrying a 5.13 ERA and a 4.50 FIP; his home run rate has more than doubled since last season, from 0.86 per nine to 1.75, while his strikeout rate has dropped from 30.6% to 26.4%.

As for Snell, shoulder soreness prevented him from making his season debut until May 9, and after pitching just three innings, he exited due to discomfort in his elbow that was diagnosed as loose bodies. He underwent surgery using the same NanoNeedle Scope 2.0 procedure that Dr. Neal ElAttrache had just used on Tarik Skubal. While the use of a smaller needle than the standard one for arthroscopic procedures helped Skubal return to major league action 38 days after surgery, Snell passed the two-month mark on Monday, two days after he threw a 32-pitch, 1 1/3-inning rehab start for Triple-A Oklahoma City. “The stuff was fine, as far as the execution, not great, so we couldn’t get him through two [innings],” Roberts said on Sunday. The Dodgers expect him to make four or five rehab starts to build up his pitch count, putting him on track for a mid-August return.

Glasnow posted a 2.72 ERA and a 3.25 FIP though seven outings before leaving his May 6 start after just one inning due to back spasms, and he’s been slow to recover. Not until the weekend before the All-Star break did he return to throwing bullpen sessions, a timeline that suggests he won’t begin a rehab stint until August, with a return late in the month or in early September. The rotation’s sixth spot has been filled by Eric Lauer, who was acquired from the Blue Jays for cash considerations on May 17, and who has pitched to a 4.81 ERA and a 6.06 FIP in 76 2/3 innings overall, with a 3.12 ERA and a 5.29 FIP in 40 1/3 innings with the Dodgers. Despite still serving up 1.56 homers per nine rate since the trade (down from 2.72 prior), he’s made four quality starts out of six, not counting six innings of no-hit work following an opener against the Twins on June 22.

On Monday in Philadelphia, Roberts said that Ohtani would throw off a mound later this week, but until he’s back in action, the Dodgers will have to fill his spot. Righty Landon Knack, who made 19 starts for the team in 2024–25, has made two relief appearances totaling five innings and five runs allowed since returning from an intercostal strain. Prospect River Ryan, who has made eight starts totaling 36 1/3 innings at Triple-A Oklahoma City in his return from 2024 Tommy John surgery, is on the injured list due to a hamstring strain and won’t be an option in the near future. With Stone and Bobby Miller are currently on the 60-day injured list, the Dodgers probably need to tap a starter from beyond their current 40-man roster unless they stick to bullpen games.

All of which will continue to fuel speculation that they’ll make a run at trading for Skubal, who has put up a 2.97 ERA and a 3.66 FIP in seven starts totaling 39 1/3 innings since returning from surgery, with 1.83 homers per nine offsetting a 30.5% strikeout rate and 3.4% walk rate. If the Tigers (47-53) decide to retain the two-time Cy Young winner and pending free agent, the Dodgers still figure to deal for an additional starter of the August 3 trade deadline.

The Dodgers have built a considerable cushion in order to withstand these injuries, including Ohtani’s latest ailment, and the good news is that they still have one of the best hitters on the planet leading off for them. Still, after a stretch that was about as Peak Ohtani as we’ve seen, the baseball world is back to waiting for the best player on the planet to return to full health.

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12:03

Jay Jaffe: Howdy, folks! Apologies for the late notice on today’s chat. I was wrapping up a piece on Shohei Ohtani’s pause from pitching and had some away-from-keyboard responsibilities that prevented me from putting together the nuts and bolts for this chat.

12:05

Jay Jaffe: It’s been a few weeks since I was able to pull one of these off due to my annual trip to Cape Cod (which was lovely) and then being buried neck-deep in my annual Replacement-Level Killers series spotlighting the most glaring holes on contending teams. That series wrapped up yesterday with the entry on designated hitters (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2026-replacement-level-killers-designa…). You can use the navbar atop the article to find the other five entries of the series.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: I had a lot of fun this past weekend at Yankee Stadium for the biennial Dodgers-Yankees regular season series. I went on Friday night as a fan and saw Roki Sasaki pitch well and Max Muncy ruin the nights of Gerrit Cole and Aaron Boone, then returned on Sunday for the doubleheader after rain washed away Saturday night’s game. It was a split-admission doubleheader; I was at the ballpark for just over 12 hours and watched most of the World Cup final between games while plugging away at those DHs.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, the question queue is still filling up due to the late notice of this chat, but i’ll dive in.

12:08

Jay Jaffe: Oh, i missed this last night as it happened after I wrapped up work and baseball attention. https://www.mlb.com/news/nolan-arenado-reaches-2-000-career-hits

12:09

Jay Jaffe:

12:14

Jay Jaffe: Arenado is 20th in JAWS 4.2 points below the career standard but 0.8 WAR above the peak standard, with the 14th-highest peak score at the position. He’s in the midst of a modest resurgence, with 1.6 bWAR so far compared to 1.3 for all of last season. I viewed him as something of a slam dunk a few years ago thanks to his 10 Gold Gloves, eight All-Star selections,  and three Coors-fueled home run titles, but his 30s have been a grind. I’m not sure if he’ll make it to the JAWS standard — he needs another 8.4 WAR after totaling 7.8 since the start of 2023 — but I think he’ll have the “Fame” to get in

12:14

Jay Jaffe: And I’ll probably vote for him.

12:19

Jay Jaffe: With just 0.5 WAR in 44 games due to injuries, this has been a rough season for Lindor, but he’s still in pretty good shape during his age-32 season:

12:19

Jay Jaffe:

12:20

Jay Jaffe: He’s about two years younger than Arenado, and with far more recent momentum (5.8 bWAR last year)

12:21

Jay Jaffe: If this is the start of a major collapse obviously it doesn’t bode well for him, especially with the outsized expectations that come with a big contract for a New York ballplayer, but i’m not yet ready to downgrade him from a likely future Hall of Famer.

12:24

Jay Jaffe: I think it depends what your purpose is. You always want to be trying to estimate a player’s true talent level, but those estimates can be colored by recent injuries and improved/degraded processes — learning a new pitch, adjusting a swing, adapting to a new ballpark/role, etc. If you’re a fantasy player chasing the hot hand, 30 or 60 days might be a better clue as to where a player is headed, but if you’re a GM trying to build a lineup for 2027, you probably need to consider much more data.

12:27

Jay Jaffe: Not unlike our current political situation, it’s part of a larger culture war with some informational asymmetry. The people with the loudest megaphones — mainstream broadcast and news outlets — aren’t the ones who are doing historical studies; at best maybe a saber- or analytics-friendly broadcaster or reporter might amplify something like that, but may receive strong pushback from the old-school players alongside him (or her).

12:30

Jay Jaffe: I think given their turnaround and the narrative arc of Breslow’s tenure, they have to be buyers, or at least not sellers, at the deadline. You can’t have too much pitching, and with Crochet’s injury — he’s still not throwing — they’re in absolutely no position to be shedding starting pitching. Maybe they could flip Chapman in a deal that opens up payroll and gets them another live arm for the late innings, but that’s the kind of hubris that gets cited in executive postmortems.

12:33

Jay Jaffe: Well, the 1981 Royals were 50-53 (.485) but made it into the playoffs because they won the AL West’s second-half race but assuming you mean full season, I think there will still be at least 6 teams in each league with records above .500, though the AL West bears watching.

12:35

Jay Jaffe: Still with the Red Sox because Anthony won’t be back and because I can’t see the team paying down Yoshida’s contract (~$24 million) enough to move him.

12:38

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think a Hall voter can or should ignore what will likely stand as one of the best postseason resumés of the era — not to mention Schwarber’s sheer entertainment value — but I’m not yet convinced it will be enough to get him to 75% of the vote. I can’t yet see voting for him myself.

12:41

Jay Jaffe: As you note, there’s a bit of a logjam ahead of him — and I’d include Lou Piniella, who’s fallen one vote short twice and will almost certainly remain in consideration, too. I think in time Scioscia will get there,  especially because his period at the helm of the Angels continues to look great in retrospect to the shitshow that has ensued since then.

12:45

Jay Jaffe: Easy Hall of Famer, still. The mid-career conversion to shortstop has been ridiculous, and he’s now been part of four World Series winners, with 77 bWAR and 66.3 JAWS, not to mention six Gold Gloves, an MVP and three runner-up finishes. Nobody with those credentials and a clean sheet as far as PEDs is concerned is eligible for election and outside the Hall.

12:50

Jay Jaffe: 4-WAR seasons won’t cut it. Bregman only has two seasons of 5.0 bWAR or better, both during the high-homer 2018–19 seasons. He’s 31 and has a 37.8 bWAR peak score, and is gonna need to boost that and to maintain significant longevity to play himself into consideration.

12:55

Jay Jaffe: Bumgarner finished his career with just 37.2 bWAR including hitting. But he never came close to winning a Cy Young or leading the league in WAR or a triple-crown category. deGrom has 49.6 bWA, two Cys, two strikeout leads, an ERA lead, a WAR lead, and a solid postseason resumé that isn’t completely overshadowed by Bumgarner’s. I’m lukewarm at best on deGrom’s Hall chances but I like them a whole hell of a lot more than Bumgarner’s (he’ll be on the 2028 ballot).

12:59

Jay Jaffe: Yes. Three championships plus two pennants and 11 straight playoff appearances, with the highest winning percentage (.621) of any non-Negro Leagues manager is Hall material regardless of how great his roster is. I should note additionally that while the winning percentage will likely regress, the highest of any manager whose career extended into the post-1960 expansion era is that of Al Lopez (.584) so Roberts has a considerable cushion for that distinction.

12:59

Jay Jaffe: A 2016 Cubs 2-fer, incoming:

1:01	Jay Jaffe: I tend to agree on that front.

1:05

Jay Jaffe: Via the Hall rules: “Executives retired for at least five years. Active executives 70 years or older are eligible for consideration regardless of the position they hold in an organization, and regardless of whether their body of work has been completed.” Epstein is now six years removed from his last POBO job, but he’s still been peripherally working in baseball, first for the league and now as a minority owner within the Fenway Sports Group. He’s still just 52, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility he could come back to a front office — or, hell, become commissioner, as some have speculated — and with no shortage of other candidates to consider, I don’t see him landing on a ballot for awhile.

1:09

Jay Jaffe: I understand that feeling. it’s not the same thing but a writer for the Denver Post asked me (and Dan Szymborski) to weigh in on the trade outlook for Hunter Goodman. (see https://www.denverpost.com/2026/07/04/rockies-hunter-goodman-trade-yan…) I think it’s a very cynical view of sports fandom to assume that you have to trade your best/fans’ favorite players if you’re not on track for a championship. I think the Tigers (and Rockies) have to listen to offers, and maybe they’ll get one they can’t refuse, but

1:09	Jay Jaffe: (whoops)

1:11

Jay Jaffe: if they don’t trade him, I don’t think that’s a failure. I also think that trading Skubal vs. holding him and letting him hit free agency is a more definitive slamming of the door on a return. The Tigers have gone big before to retain their top stars, and I expect them to be competitive for Skubal assuming the CBA changes enough to make it more costly for, say, the Dodgers or Mets to try to add him.

1:12	Jay Jaffe: pandemic, strike, military service — yes, I try to give the benefit of the doubt for those types of career interruptions.

1:14	Jay Jaffe: obviously “top prospect” is a loose definition but I don’t see the Dodgers giving up that much for a 2-month rental. A 4-5 player sack of prospects is gonna include some live arms in A-ball who don’t score as 50-FVs, for example.

1:17

Jay Jaffe: I think Harper’s probably Hall bound, yes. His is the case Schwarber’s proponents wish their guy had, with 2 MVP awards (plus a ROY), more than double the number of All-Star appearances thus far (9 to 4), some defensive value, and a strong postseason resumé even if he doesn’t have a ring.

1:20	Jay Jaffe: They sure aren’t improving with another mostly-lost season, but last year’s bounceback kept the door ajar (to choose a different metaphor from yours, which was hardly off base).

1:23	Jay Jaffe: I’m pretty sure this is a pitch in the wheelhouses of either Dan Szymborski or Ben Clemens — i don’t know the answer offhand

1:29

Jay Jaffe: I agree, but I don’t think you can completely detach the characterizations of those ownerships from their teams’ financial standing. Not that the Tampa-St. Pete area is a smol bean, either; it’s still 17th in the Metropolitan Statistical Area rankings where Philadelphia is 9th and Detroit 14th, but expansion and the ongoing ballpark situation has long left the Rays on a different footing that has influenced their approach to team-building.

1:33

Jay Jaffe: Acuña is still young enough (28) that I wouldn’t given up hope on him completely yet but from a Hall standpoint he’s now in his 9th season and has a 28.6-bWAR seven-year peak and just two seasons above 5.0 WAR. I think the point when he becomes a regular DH can’t be that far off given his ongoing leg issues.

1:34	Jay Jaffe: Ok folks, my Ohtani piece is live https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-dodgers-have-hit-pause-on-shohei-ohtan…

1:34	Jay Jaffe: And it’s time for me to pack it in for the day. Thanks so much for stopping by. We’ll do this again soon!

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The Basics

• Our minor league statistics go back to 2006, with batted-ball data going back to 2007.
• You can combine multiple seasons, or separate the leaderboards into discrete player-seasons by checking the box next to Split Seasons.
• The Level, League, Minor League Team, and MLB Org drop-downs allow for multiple filters across drop-downs (e.g., selecting Triple-A and then the Pacific Coast League), but not for multiple filters within each drop-down. The leaderboards don’t currently allow for selecting multiple MLB organizations, for example.
• The Stat Filters can be stacked, however. Here’s the leaderboard filtered for a 150 wRC+ or higher and 15 or more steals, sorted by most steals:

You’ll notice that in the above screenshot, wRC+ isn’t actually shown in the resulting leaderboard because it’s not in the Standard tab. Unlike the player pages or our major league leaderboards, the minor league leaderboards don’t have a Dashboard tab, so the default statistics are different. This can be solved using the Custom Report button, which I used to add wRC+. I also restricted my view to qualified hitters only:

Members can add columns to their hearts’ content, while non-Members are limited to 10 total columns in their custom reports.

What’s New

The current minor league leaderboards didn’t get a drastic overhaul from the old version (which will remain live through the World Series), but there were two fantastic additions.

The first is custom date ranges, available only to Members. When a custom date range is selected, the player’s age will show a span of years, as illustrated in this leaderboard of the minor league leaders in strikeouts since July 1, 2023:

The filters section includes a MaxAge option, which works the same as the Age filter would for a single season, but filters on the oldest player-season shown in the range.

Non-Members are limited to the Quick Range options of the last seven, 14, or 30 days, along with the Season Start and Season End selectors.

We’ve also incorporated our new Heat Maps feature, which I went over in detail a couple of weeks ago.

As is the case with all new and updated features at FanGraphs, we don’t view the minor league leaderboards as a fully complete project just because we’ve made a couple of additions. At the top of the new leaderboards, you’ll see a link to submit any feedback you have.

Source

Arsenals that include three variations of a fastball — four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter — are increasingly common in today’s game, and Drew Rasmussen is among the trend’s success stories. Relying heavily on a triad of heaters, the 30-year-old Tampa Bay Rays right-hander boasts a 2.96 ERA and a 3.65 FIP over 249 1/3 innings across the 2025-2026 campaigns. Moreover, he just represented the Rays on the American League All-Star team for a second year running.

How Rasmussen became three-heater reliant (just over 80% combined usage) isn’t itself atypical. The way he tells the story of how it happened is atypical… if not a bit curious. In explaining the advent of his most recent — and most impactful — fastball addition, he pinpointed a hitter against whom he’d struggled far less than his telling would suggest.

Rasmussen sat down to talk fastballs when the Rays visited Fenway Park over the weekend. As his responses were expansive — followup questions were few and far between — what he shared is being presented in monologue form.

———

Drew Rasmussen: “When I got traded here [in May 2021], I was four-seam and gyro slider — that’s basically what I was throwing in Milwaukee — and then I had a curveball that was very low usage, as well as a bad, bad changeup. Over here, when they transitioned me from the bullpen into the rotation, we learned that I can manipulate the gyro slider a little bit to create a little more lift and give it more of a true cutter profile. I can also manipulate it to get some depth and keep a true slider profile, which gives me the opportunity to pick and choose shapes depending on what I’m looking for. Situationally, what do I want to throw?

“They saw the movement profile of my changeup, so we scrapped that pretty quick. From there we started developing a sweeper — I have the ability to supinate through everything — and that worked pretty well for me in 2021. Then, in 2022, I kept running into Bo Bichette. I had nothing to get him out with. Nothing. I mean, he’s good at hitting balls the other way, and staying on everything. But if you missed in with a breaking ball, he could do pull-side damage. I would be out there frustrated, because the only thing I had to go in on him with was a four-seamer. And at the time, I was cutting it anyway.

“We started playing around with things. Because I had nothing that would work [inside] to him, we would take a shot with a four-seam up and away and he would hit a double into the gap. We would take a shot with a gyro slider down and away, and he would hit it through the four hole. We’d go sweeper and he’d shoot something down the line. I’d try to bounce a curveball and he would hit a line drive up the middle. Everything I threw worked right into his comfort zone, basically.

“I talked with Kyle Snyder, our pitching coach, and was like, ‘I’ve got nothing to get this guy out.’ Basically, my best bet is to throw any pitch type middle-middle and hope that he pops it up or hits it straight into the ground. At some point, inevitably, I’m going to have to make a pitch to that man with runners in scoring position, and I don’t have the confidence to get him out with anything.

“That’s when we started developing… the board will tell you it’s a sinker, but it’s really just a two-seam runner. It’s got some depth relative to my four-seamer, but for the most part it’s just straight run. This was toward the end of 2022, going into 2023. We figured out a way. I mean, our guys are so smart. They know so much more about the human body — biomechanics; physics, frankly — than I do. Like I said, I supinate through just about everything, so the only way I can create arm-side [movement] is by finding some way to seam-shift and force the ball to go that way.

“We found a way to put a two-seam grip in my hand and create arm-side run. Essentially, we oriented the seams in a way that the spin is working to where… I actually throw my cutter and my two-seam out of the exact same hand positioning, and exact same wrist positioning at release, but the seam orientation allows for one to cut and the other to have the seams catch with the air resistance forcing it arm side. I have the same thought process, the same finger and wrist positioning, but one goes right and the other goes left.

“Sure enough, the very first time I faced Bichette with it, we got ourselves deep into a count. He had fouled off a four-seamer and a slider, then we ran one in on him. It stayed on the plate, but we were able to lock him up because it was something so different than what he had seen from me. It was a situation where I had a new little toy to use against him. Now I’m comfortable throwing it to both right-handed and left-handed hitters. It’s become a true weapon and a true part of my arsenal, and it all started with the idea of how I could get one man out.

“The sinker, the two-seam runner, that we were able to create with our analytics team and the coaching staff, is one of the first transitions I had to make at the big league level to get guys out consistently. It truly is… I mean, the hardest thing to deal with as a hitter is velocity. That’s why there is such a premium on it at this level. It gives you the least amount of reaction time. Hitting is all about timing, and the least amount of reaction time is the single hardest variable to deal with. It’s no secret as to why if you throw an 84-mph slider and a 90-mph slider with the exact same movement profile, and they’re located the same, the 90-mph slider will produce the better results. Same with a fastball. If you throw a 92-mph four-seamer with good carry, and a 98-mph four-seamer with good carry, the 98 is going to produce better results than the 92. If you shorten reaction time, you have a better chance of getting an out.

“That’s why throwing three fastball variations is so effective. They’re all relatively the same velocity-wise, but they’re moving in different directions. Another thing it has done for me is give me the freedom to… say, if on a certain day I’m not staying through my four-seam well, [and] the carry is down. I still have these other two options that I can lean on. Or, on a day that my cutter command is bad, I have two other options in the same velo range with two different movement profiles. In real time, the hitter has just milliseconds to decipher which movement profile he’s getting, with all of them coming in at about the same velocity. Having all three gives you that advantage.”

Source

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

One note on the rankings: Particularly at the bottom of the list, there isn’t a lot of room between the players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there isn’t much of a gap between, say, the 40th-ranked player and the guy who would have been 58th if the list went that deep. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several of the folks I talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. I think the broad strokes are correct, and this is my opinion of the best order, but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. I’ll note places where I disagreed meaningfully with the people I spoke with in calibrating this list, and I’ll also note players whose value was the subject of disagreement among my contacts. As I mentioned in the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, I’ll also indicate tier breaks between players where appropriate, both in their capsules and in the table at the end of the piece.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the next batch of players.

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You know the joke. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” asks the interviewer. Mitch Hedberg has the perfect answer. “Celebrating the five-year anniversary of you asking me this question.” Mike Elias and the Orioles sure seem to have their own five-year plan, and they fleshed it out on Sunday, signing right-hander Kyle Bradish to a five-year, $90 million extension. The deal buys out the starter’s final two years of arbitration, along with three free agent years, keeping him in orange and black until his age-35 season in 2031. Bradish is making $3.55 million in arbitration this season, and he’ll make $10 million when the new deal kicks in next year. He’ll get a $3 million raise in 2028, then get $1 million added to his annual raise in each subsequent season. So he’ll make $10 million in 2027, then 13, then 17, then 22, then 28 in 2031. It’s a classic example of linear growth rather than exponential, and it should help Bradish stay a step ahead of inflation. According to The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka, it’s also the largest deal for a pitcher in franchise history.

Bradish has a 3.50 ERA and a 3.62 FIP for his career, but there’s still room for some uncertainty in his profile. He debuted in 2022 and put up ugly numbers across 23 starts, running a 4.90 ERA and a 4.46 FIP. He broke out in 2023, going 12-7 with a 2.83 ERA and a 3.27 FIP. The underlying numbers weren’t quite so spectacular, as a big component of his improvement was a drop in home run rate that looked unsustainably large. Although Bradish had made more sustainable improvements to his walk, strikeout, and groundball rates, it still would have been fair to expect some regression. Instead, he came out of the gate even better in 2024. His walk rate did indeed regress, but he suppressed homers even further and ratcheted his strikeout rate all the way up to 33%. It was a huge jump, but it lasted just eight starts before the god of ulnar collateral ligaments demanded its tribute.

Bradish returned from Tommy John surgery at the end of August 2025, and he picked up right where he’d left off before the injury. In fact, over his six starts, he struck out more than 37% of the batters he faced. If you combine the two seasons, Bradish threw 71 1/3 innings across 14 starts, posting a 2.65 ERA and a 2.48 FIP. He put up 2.5 WAR in what was essentially half a season. It was legitimate dominance.

Alas, Bradish hasn’t quite looked like the same guy this season. He’s running a 3.61 ERA and a 4.00 FIP, with peripherals to match. His strikeout rate has dropped to 23%, and his 11% walk rate is a career high. He looks more solid than spectacular. He has one of the steeper arm angles in the game, and that unusual look no doubt helps him keep batters on their toes. This year, however, his arm angle has dropped a couple degrees, which is likely part of the reason his four-seamer has lost half a tick of velocity and a couple inches of rise. On the other hand, he’s still figuring things out. He altered his delivery in early May, and started leaning more on his sinker than his four-seamer in June. If you’ll forgive some arbitrary endpoints that erase a couple of late-April and early-May clunkers, Bradish has a 2.95 ERA and a 3.63 FIP since May 8, thanks to small improvements to both his walk and strikeout rates.

Toward the end of June, over on RotoGraphs, Corbin Young took an excellent look at what has been ailing Bradish this season. Young’s main diagnoses were downturns in both command and the ability to miss bats. He noted that despite a career Location+ of 105, Bradish was at 90 this season. Because of the All-Star break, Bradish has only made three starts since that article came out, but it’s at least worth noting that he has put up a Location+ of 104 in that three-start span, and his whiff rate has jumped six points to 81%. In two of those starts, his four-seamer velocity ticked back up over 95 mph for the first time all season. I’m not saying we should read all that much into such a tiny sample, but it’s reassuring to see that he can get back up there, and it’s allowed us to be at least a little bit more optimistic about him going forward.

As for why the timing is right for Bradish to sign this particular deal, we have no shortage of factors to consider. The expiration of the current league’s collective bargaining agreement hangs over all negotiations, as no one knows quite what the landscape will look like next year and beyond. Bradish is coming off two excellent, but Tommy-John-truncated seasons, and he’s now locked himself into a deal through age 35. That’s got to look reassuring to a pitcher who will, in seven weeks’ time, be cutting his 30th birthday cake with the help of a brand new UCL. Maybe you think he would have been able to find a three-year deal with an AAV of $18 million as a 32-year-old, when he was initially slated for free agency, but that’s definitely not a slam dunk. Dan Szymborski and his friendly ZiPS machine modeled what a 2027 extension might look like back in March. It came out to five years and $61 million, even though ZiPS projected that Bradish would we pitching a bit better this season than he has so far. Bradish has blown that out of the water.

From a management perspective, it’s not hard to imagine that the Orioles see themselves as buying at least a little bit low here, even after you price in some risk. While Bradish isn’t quite pitching up to his previous standard after his first healthy offseason in two years, his stuff doesn’t seem all that far off either. This is his fourth straight season with an ERA that’s at least 13% better than the league average, and they clearly think he’s got a few more in the tank. Even in his brief appearances over the past two years, which add up to something a bit under half a season for a starter, our simple dollars-per-WAR calculations have Bradish worth $20 million.

Moreover, the Orioles are in extension mode. They inked catching phenom Samuel Basallo to an eight-year extension just under a year ago and fellow starter Shane Baz to his own five-year deal in March. Add in the five-year contract that Pete Alonso signed during the Winter Meetings, and you get the sense that the Orioles envision themselves enjoying the cool breeze from this contention window, which opened in 2023, for another five years. If you’re an Orioles fan, you are probably tired of banging your head against the wall hoping for the team to make bigger moves during this window. Neither Gunnar Henderson nor Adley Rutschman has signed an extension. With all due respect to Chris Bassitt, Ryan Helsley, and the re-signed Zach Eflin – who have led distinguished careers but were all at least a year removed from their best form when they signed with Baltimore – Alonso was the team’s only major offseason addition after a fourth year in a row of crushed expectations.

It’s hard to say what this deal might indicate about the team’s plans at the deadline. MLB.com’s Jake Rill wrote on July 15 that the Orioles could end up as either buyers or sellers, depending on where they end up at the end of the month. Over the five days since that article was published, the Orioles have remained two games out of the final Wild Card spot, but because they’ve gone 3-0 while the Twins, Astros, and Blue Jays have all faltered, their Playoff Odds have jumped from 21.6% up to 31.0%. Bradish makes his first start as a big-money pitcher on Tuesday, and he’ll make one more before the trade deadline. There’s a legitimate chance that if he shoves in those two appearances, it’ll be enough to push the team into adding. It would be a pretty good start toward making good on his shiny new contract.

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At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contending clubs. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 10% when this series began), I’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included it here because the team’s performance is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, but for the designated hitters, I’ve limited the list to the teams below zero, both to keep the length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the fifth full season of the universal DH, 0.2 WAR represents the current median, with 11 teams below zero, 12 between zero and 1.0, and just seven with 1.0 or more, with only five reaching 2.0. DHs as a group have hit .244/.325/.422 for a 106 wRC+ this season, down four points from last year’s final mark, the highest since the adoption of the universal DH.

It does appear that an increasing number of teams are investing more playing time in a single DH. From 2022 (the first full-length season with the universal DH) to ’25, the number of players reaching 450 plate appearances in the DH role increased from three to four to seven to nine; this year, they’re on pace for nine, as well. That said, all but one of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances.

Tigers

Colt Keith can’t seem to get the hang of this DH business. In 308 plate appearances in that capacity since reaching the majors in 2024, he’s produced just a 67 wRC+, compared to a 110 wRC+ in 996 plate appearances at other positions. He’s not a great defender, but the Tigers wisely gave up on shoehorning him into second base. His metrics have been within a run of average in limited duty at the infield corners this year, and he’s hit for a 101 wRC+ while playing the field, compared to a 69 wRC+ in a team-high 92 plate appearances while DHing; overall, he’s hit .254/.300/.396 (93 wRC+). None of the other players whom manager A.J. Hinch has used in more than eight games at DH — namely Dillon Dingler, Kerry Carpenter, or Jahmai Jones — has produced higher than a 90 wC+ in that capacity, with the worst of those three (Jones, with a -5 wRC+ in 62 plate appearances) traded to the Red Sox last week for a player to be named later.

The Tigers additionally made the Killers lists at first base, center field and right field. Given first baseman Spencer Torkelson’s additional defensive woes, there’s an argument to be made that the Tigers should park him at DH and play Keith at first; Torkelson’s 102 wRC+ would be a substantial upgrade on this lot. Notably, Torkelson has not taken a plate appearance as a DH this season, but last year, he had a 190 wRC+ across his 43 plate appearances in that role. For his career, he’s put up a 163 wRC+ in 75 plate appearances as a DH. The Tigers also have former first-round pick Jace Jung, a third baseman, stashed at Triple-A; he’s 25 and not getting any younger. As the Tigers (46-53) try to figure out whether to retain Tarik Skubal and compete for a playoff spot, or trade him and reset for next year, a deeper look at those in-house options would be a good first step. If they do sell, Torkelson might be a low-cost option for some other team here.

Diamondbacks

After he raked at a 147 wRC+ clip in 87 plate appearances in late 2024, Adrian Del Castillo placed 30th on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list in ’25 as a 50-FV catcher, with Eric Longenhagen describing him as “a lefty-hitting Ryan Jeffers” capable of providing enough offense to offset concerns about his defense and to justify additional playing time at DH. Yet Castillo hit for just an 87 wRC+ in 131 plate appearances last year, and struggled to an even greater degree through the first two months of this season while serving as a third catcher and platoon DH against righties. Instead of getting sent to Triple-A Reno to regroup, he took just 33 plate appearances in June and early July before finally being optioned, then returned 12 days later. Overall, he’s hit just .195/.256/.325 (59 wRC+), including a 62 wRC+ in 98 plate appearances at DH. For as bad as that is, only two of the five other Diamondbacks with more than 16 plate appearances at DH have topped that wRC+, namely lineup regulars Gabriel Moreno and Ketel Marte. Of the other three, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who contributed to the team’s making my left fielders list, just landed on the injured list due to an adductor strain, while Jose Fernandez and Pavin Smith are both at Reno. Fernandez hit just .255/.289/.352 (75 wRC+) in a utility role, while Smith was outrighted off the 40-man roster after hitting an anemic .141/.236/.192 (23 wRC+).

This is a team that could use a real DH. The Reds’ JJ Bleday, the Rockies’ Mickey Moniak, and the Orioles’ Taylor Ward — if Baltimore is selling — are among those who could help while additionally contributing in left field. The Giants’ Luis Arraez has played his way back to respectability as a second baseman, but with Marte a staple at the keystone, Arraez could contribute at DH or first base — another position of need for Arizona, who also landed on my Killers list there.

Blue Jays

The Blue Jays are the only team on this list with a DH on pace to total at least 450 plate appearances at the spot, namely George Springer, who has started 65 of the team’s 99 games in that capacity. After clubbing 32 homers and setting a career high with a 166 wRC+ (.309/.399/.560) in his age-35 season last year, Springer has slipped to a 93 wRC+ (.219/.302/.381), and once again, he’s been banged up. On April 12, he suffered a fracture after fouling a ball off his left big toe, costing him 15 games, and shortly after returning, he was hit in the left foot by a pitch, costing him a couple more. He had gotten off to a slow start, but he does appear to be trending upward, hitting for a 106 wRC+ since the start of June. Even so, his average exit velocity of 88.5 mph is down 1.4 mph from last year, and his 7.7% barrel rate is slightly less than half of last year’s mark. His xSLG has plummeted from .571 to .376 overall — and .366 amid the aforementioned rebound.

Neither Vladimir Guerrero Jr. nor Eloy Jiménez has done well in a combined 21 starts at DH out of 34 non-Springer ones. Guerrero — who landed on the first base list in this series — is hitting for a microscopic 22 wRC+ in 51 plate appearances as a DH, while Jiménez is running an 82 wRC+ in 32 plate appearances in that capacity. Interestingly enough, while Springer hasn’t played right field at all this season, on Friday he played left field for the first time this year, with catcher Brandon Valenzuela DHing for the first time (and homering) while Alejandro Kirk caught. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see either of those two backstops picking up extra playing time in this spot when they’re not behind the plate.

Padres

While the Padres’ 49-50 record is hardly the worst here, their Playoff Odds have slipped to 9.5%, but I’ve included them anyway because they were above my 10% threshold when this series began. After years of dealing with injuries and address changes, Miguel Andujar had a nice bounceback season in 2025, hitting .318/.352/.470 (125 wRC+) with 10 homers and 1.1 WAR for the A’s and Reds. He was well above his .259 xBA and .383 xSLG — in fact, he had the majors’ largest overperformance in each category — but it was nonetheless his first time reaching double digits in homers since his 2018 rookie season with the Yankees. Sure enough, he’s regressed this season, hitting .259/.303/.423 (100 wRC+) overall, with an 89 wRC+ against lefties and 105 against righties. He has a career 116 wRC+ against lefties, and he was above 100 this season just a few days ago. The Padres have been rotating lefty Gavin Sheets and righties Manny Machado and Nick Castellanos (who’s since been released) through the DH spot at Andujar’s expense — and they’ve been terrible. Each member of that trio has a 44 wRC+ or lower in 28 to 55 plate appearances, combined they netted -1.0 WAR in 110 plate appearances in this spot.

At this point, resting Machado (who’s hitting just .198/.290/.407 for a 92 wRC+) when he needs a breather is probably advisable. Simply leaving well enough alone with Andujar in the DH slot might be more effective than the alternatives, though with the Padres ranking dead last in the majors in scoring at 3.94 runs per game prior to Sunday’s 19-run outburst (which raised their average to 4.09), I’d expect A.J. Preller to do something at the trade deadline in order to give the offense a boost.

Guardians

Kyle Manzardo made a team-high 68 starts at DH last year plus an additional 53 at first base, but this year he’s been used more in the field; he ranks fourth on the team with 14 starts at DH, behind Chase DeLauter (32), Rhys Hoskins (22), and José Ramírez (17), with David Fry (11) also in double digits. Manzardo and Hoskins are both struggling enough that they also popped up on the first base list in this series. Hoskins is the only one of the aforementioned bunch who has hit for a wRC+ above 88 while DHing; he’s produced a 127 wRC+ in 92 plate appearances in that capacity, but is batting just .177/.312/.359 (93 wRC+) overall, with a career-high 32% strikeout rate to boot. DeLauter has hit for just an 89 wRC+ in 145 plate appearances as a DH, but is hitting a respectable .277/.343/.443 (123 wRC+) overall. Manzardo (29 wRC+ in 62 PA) and Fry (53 wRC+ in 38 PA) have been terrible at DH in smaller samples, and Ramírez (89 wRC+ in 70 PA) has been subpar; he’s currently on the IL due to a fractured left hamate bone and could be back later this week to prop up an offense that ranks last in the majors in scoring (3.92 runs per game) and is tied for last in the AL in wRC+ (92).

The Guardians desperately need an infusion of offense. The Reds’ Bleday could also help boost their Killers-level left field production, as could Moniak or Ward. Cincinnati’s Nathaniel Lowe and Spencer Steer could fit into the DH/first base picture. Given Cleveland’s 87 wRC+ against lefties, a righty — Steer and Ward from that group, though there are obviously others — might be preferable, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Red Sox

The glut of quality Red Sox outfielders figured to spill over into the DH column, and while the loss of Roman Anthony — who has been out since May 4 due to a torn ligament in his right ring finger and a torn tendon in his right wrist — has compromised their depth, it has given Masataka Yoshida a clear lane to start at DH against righties. Yoshida has hit for a light 92 wRC+ in 170 plate appearances as a DH, though including his seven games in the outfield, he’s batting a more respectable .267/.343/.401 (107 wRC+) overall. Anthony (65 wRC+ in 59 PA) and Jarren Duran (92 wRC+ in 33 PA) haven’t done much in limited duty out of the DH spot, with the latter hitting an anemic .190/.254/.340 (59 wRC+) overall, demolishing his trade value. Against lefties, the Red Sox have started infielders Andruw Monasterio eight times and Romy Gonzalez four times, with Monasterio’s 113 wRC+ in 34 plate appearances representing the team’s only wRC+ above 100 for a DH with more than 11 times up.

With Anthony not even swinging a bat yet, the resurgent Red Sox could at the very least use a righty complement to Yoshida. Jeffers could provide an upgrade here and at catcher, given that the Carlos Narváez/Connor Wong/Mickey Gasper trio landed on the Killers list, with Gapser additionally “contributing” a 55 wRC+ in 54 plate appearances as a DH. With the team having made the Killers list at second base, Arraez would be another good fit.

Pirates

Marcell Ozuna’s wRC+ dropped from 154 in 2024 to 114 last season, but the Pirates signed him to a one-year, $12 million deal as a free agent this past winter nonetheless. They appear to have caught a falling knife, as the 35-year-old Ozuna’s performance has collapsed. He’s hitting just .206/.287/.333 (71 wRC+) with a strikeout rate that has spiked from 24.3% to a career-high 30.7%; meanwhile, his walk rate has plunged from a career-high 15.9% to a more representative 9.4%. He’s been utterly hopeless both against breaking balls (.103 AVG/.207 SLG, 44.2% whiff rate) and offspeed pitches (.143 AVG/.143 SLG, 50.8% whiff rate).

While Ozuna hasn’t lost his job completely, manager Don Kelly has cut him back to about two starts a week against righties since late May, with switch-hitter Bryan Reynolds and lefty Ryan O’Hearn each in the mix, as well. Both have been productive, in that capacity and overall, with Reynolds hitting for a 140 wRC+ on the season and O’Hearn, a 121 wRC+. When Ozuna has sat out those games, 26-year-old rookie Tyler Callihan has filled in at either first base or left field, and has hit .244/.326/.449 (110 wRC+) overall. The arrangement has also worked out well for Ozuna, who is still starting against lefties; he’s hit .268/.339/.428 (112 wRC+) in 62 plate appearances since the start of June. That might be enough to keep him around, as the last thing the tight-fisted Pirates are likely to do is pay somebody not to play, but as they have a real shot at a playoff spot (48.2% odds at this writing), they may be more aggressive about finding an upgrade.

Marlins

Former Rule 5 pick Liam Hicks is in the midst of a breakout season, hitting .286/.360/.448 (121 wRC+) with 13 homers and a microscopic 9% strikeout rate — third lowest among qualifiers — while making 30 starts at catcher, 29 at DH, and 18 at first base. He’s put up a 113 wRC+ in 128 plate appearances at DH, mainly against righties. He’s managed just a 60 wRC+ against lefties, however, and he can’t fill multiple spots at once, so the team has used 13 other players at DH. Fellow catcher Agustín Ramírez (68 wRC+ in 55 PA) and corner infielder Connor Norby (50 wRC+ in 48 PA) have gotten the most work out of that bunch but haven’t acquitted themselves well, while Kyle Stowers, Leo Jiménez, and Owen Caissie each have a wRC+ of 100 or better in lesser time, though Jiménez’s hold on a roster spot is tenuous given his 78 wRC+ overall.

Cubs

Catching prospect Moisés Ballesteros spent most of 2024 and ’25 raking at Triple-A Iowa, and hit a tantalizing .298/.394/.474 (143 wRC+) in 20 games spread over three stints in the majors last year. Even with his receiving rather shaky, the 22-year-old Ballesteros placed 84th on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list as a 50-FV prospect, and opened the season as the Cubs’ third catcher and regular DH, hitting an ungodly .338/.392/.620 with five homers and a 175 wRC+ in April. He couldn’t maintain that clip, however, and as pitchers adjusted, he chased with increasing frequency, and fell into a deep slump. From May 1 onward, he hit .141/.229/.188 (22 WRC+) with just one homer and a 25% strikeout rate in 96 plate appearances before being optioned to Iowa on June 18. Overall, he’s hit .231/.303/.385 (91 wRC+) with a 35% chase rate and a 46.7% groundball rate — no good for a 5-foot-8, 240-pound catcher with third-percentile sprint speed.

In addition to getting Ballesteros regular playing time behind the plate while he irons out his swing and approach, sending him down allowed the Cubs to DH Seiya Suzuki while he was recovering from a knee issue and get Matt Shaw time in right field — but Shaw landed on the IL with a right hand sprain in late June. Suzuki is now back in right while the Cubs cycle Carson Kelly, Kevin Alcántara, and Michael Conforto through the DH spot. After a dreadful season with the Dodgers, Conforto has rebounded to hit .241/.327/.476 (119 wRC+), though he’s produced just a 90 wRC+ in 56 plate appearances as a DH. Still, he offers hope of above-average production from the spot, at least until Ballesteros gets back on track.

Source

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

One note on the rankings: Particularly at the bottom of the list, there isn’t a lot of room between the players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there isn’t much of a gap between, say, the 38th-ranked player and the guy who would have been 58th if the list went that deep. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several of the folks I talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. I think the broad strokes are correct, and this is my opinion of the best order, but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. I’ll note places where I disagreed meaningfully with the people I spoke with in calibrating this list, and I’ll also note players whose value was the subject of disagreement among my contacts. As I mentioned in the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, I’ll also indicate tier breaks between players where appropriate, both in their capsules and in the table at the end of the piece.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the first batch of players.

Source