The Tampa Bay Rays have reportedly been shopping their starting pitching, a move that I called for back in May. The Rays have more than enough pitching, but lack the position players to compete in the very difficult AL East. Their team just doesn’t quite all fit together.  I guess that’s what happens when you’re poor and are constantly collecting items that other people have seemingly failed to value properly.

Think about it: does a homeless man ever seem to have a full wardrobe or ensemble? No, his shiny new shoes might look fly, but they’ll be paired with socks that have seen better days. The Rays have always had Evan Longoria as their shiny new shoes, and they seem to constantly pair that with a supa-fly button-down shirt of a rotation, but lack the run-scoring pant’s, socks, and underwear necessary to support it. That the approach has led to a last place standing here in 2016.

With news that they’re shopping Archer, it would appear that their thinking evolving: they’re trying to swap that swanky button-down for a nice T-shirt, and set themselves up with a decent pair of pants that will score some runs. It makes sense to me (and I hope you followed that analogy).

Analogies aside, the bigger issue Chris Archer, his 2016 season, and what he might command on the market.

Archer currently sports a 4.42 ERA and leads the league in losses. That’s the type of guy who wouldn’t fetch much in return. But those two basic stats fail to highlight Archer’s overall package. The guy currently leads the league in strikeouts, with 155 in 130 innings. He’s 27 now, and coming off of a 5th place Cy Young performance last year. He’s signed through 2021 on a very reasonable contract, and is still chucking his fastball in there at an average of 94.1 mph.

When the rumors cropped up that Archer was being shopped, plenty of teams started doing their homework. They were, and likely still are, trying to determine if he’s the pitcher that had the baseball world abuzz last year, or if he’s like a really nice and likable AJ Burnett. Let’s do our homework along with those other teams.

The first thing to understand about Archer is that he’s simply been wildly inconsistent. Below are his single game ERA’s for the season (thanks Fangraphs!). You’ll notice that good performances are followed by bad ones, or vice versa. He’s been all over the place. That’s way more frustrating for fans, Archer, and evaluators than if he were simply good/bad.

OK, we’ve established that he’s been inconsistent, but I really wanted to find out why. I went to Statcast and started playing around, looking for anything that could help explain these fluctuations. I looked at all kinds of stuff: Velocity differences, straight velocity, perceived velocity, spin rate, spin rate differences across pitches, pitch selection. None of them correlated very well with Archer’s Game Scores. I used game scores, because that combines his ERA with other predictors of success, like walks, strikeouts, and hits allowed into a single metric.

The one thing that I found that appears to predict success? Well, you’re going to have to click over to find out more about Chris Archer’s fastball profile. I promise it’s worth it. There’s a fancy graph and everything.

Aroldis Chapman is now a member of the Chicago Cubs. It had long been speculated that Chapman would be on the move at some point, as the Yankees currently sit 7.5 games back in the AL East, as well as 4.5 games out from the second wild card spot with a record of 50-48 and while this deficit may not seem too large, the Yankees have question marks all over their lineup and rotation. 39-year-old Carlos Beltran, who like Chapman is in a contract year, has been the team’s best hitter.  The rotation has failed to find consistency beyond Masahiro Tanaka. It all adds up to the Yankees -25 run differential on the season; the other three teams ahead of them in the AL East all have a run differential of +40 or better. The Chicago Cubs, on the other hand, lead the entire league in both record, 59-38, as well as run differential, at +150.

The deal that has been agreed to is as follows:

New York Yankees Receive:

1. SS Gleyber Torres
2. RHP Adam Warren
3. OF Billy Mckinney
4. OF Rashad Crawford

Chicago Cubs Receive:

1. LHP Aroldis Chapman

New York’s Side of the Deal:

For the first time since I can remember, the Bronx Bombers have decided to sell pieces from their major league roster at the trade deadline rather than make a run at a championship. GM Brian Cashman picked a great time to do so. Just about every contender in the league is in the market for relief help, and Aroldis Chapman, a rental player who will become a free agent at season’s end, just so happened to be the best one available. As a result, the Yankees were able to demand a return package that was far and away greater than the one they had to give up for Chapman in March.

To continue reading about why the Cubs and Yankees needed to make the Aroldis Chapman trade, please visit Off The Bench.

For most teams in the Yankees’ situation, becoming a deadline seller would be a no-brainer. But New York has long suffered from ‘Yankee Pride,’ a mental block that prevented the front office to from making the right decisions for the franchise going forward. Trading Aroldis Chapman is the first true signal that they might have gotten past it.

Seemingly since the close of the World Series in 2009, the team’s last championship, the New York Yankees have been running out lineups of increasingly aging, immobile, progressively unwatchable former superstars, capable of winning 85 games– no more, no less.

Of course, that’s perception more than reality– the Yankees finished in second in 2010 and won the AL East in 2011 and 2012, making it to the ALCS in 2012– but for Yankee fans accustomed to winning, or at the very least, exciting baseball, a la the Core Four Era, it’s been a bit of a drag.

Since 2013, for instance, the Yankees have finished no closer than 6 games out in the division, making the playoffs for one measly day, while the Red Sox hoisted their third championship banner of the 2000’s. It’s been a pretty dramatic fall from grace.

But things seem to have come to a head this season. The team is in 4th place in the division….

To Continue reading about what Yankee fan Max Frankel (@OTBB_Max) thinks about What the Aroldis Chapman trade means for the Yankees Future, please check out Off The Bench.

At the age of 40, Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz is playing in his final and perhaps best season of a 20-year major league career. He is providing a grand finale for what may well end up being an eventual induction in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Although such impressive exits from the game are rare, there have been others who retired with a bang instead of a whimper.

If the 2016 season were to end today, it could be reasonably argued that Ortiz truly did go out on top. Thus far, in 89 games, he has hit .332 with a league-leading 35 doubles, 24 home runs, 81 RBIs and a 182 OPS+, which represents a career high. He also leads the league in on base percentage (OBP) and slugging, all while walking (52) more than he has struck out (45).

Keep reading for some other outstanding final seasons. Eligibility was determined by players who voluntarily retired, as opposed to those like Shoeless Joe Jackson (who hit .382 in 1920 with 218 hits, 121 RBIs and just 14 strikeouts but never returned to the game after being suspended for life); injury (Sandy Koufax and Kirby Puckett had tremendous final seasons before retiring suddenly for health reasons), or death (like Roberto Clemente, who hit .312 and won a Gold Glove in 1972 but was killed during the offseason in a plane crash).

READ FULL POST

The Seattle Mariners are just about in the race for a playoff berth. An improbable 6-5 win over the White Sox in 11 innings last night, after having been down 5-2 in the 7^th, leaves the team 6.5 games behind the slumping Rangers in the AL West and 5.5 behind the final Wild Card spot.

For most clubs at this time of the year this would dictate aggressively approaching the trade market in an attempt to force their way into the postseason. Yet with yesterday’s trade between the Mariners and Cubs, with Mike Montgomery heading to Chicago in return for Triple-A slugger Dan Vogelbach, have the Mariners just revealed their hand?

The instant reaction to the trade has been one of quiet satisfaction on both sides, the Cubs got their high-leverage lefty out of the pen without having to pay an astronomical price for Andrew Miller or Aroldis Chapman from the Yankees. Vogelbach also represents good value for the Mariners, offering insurance for a declining Adam Lind and plenty of upside on top of that. Furthermore, Vogelbach’s route to the Majors with the Cubs was blocked by Anthony Rizzo who isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Yet still – has a seemingly even and mutually beneficial swap signaled the Mariners’ intentions that 2016 is not to be their year, thereby positioning themselves as sellers come the deadline on July 31^st? To answer this question, 3 factors need to be considered:

1. Just how good is Mike Montgomery?
2. Can Dan Vogelbach improve the Mariners this year?
3. Finally, does the Mariners current record of 48-47 reflect their potential?

To continue reading about how yesterday’s trade impacts the rest of the Mariner’s season, please visit Off The Bench. (Click that last link)