Every team enters the trade deadline with a wish list. Nobody gets everything they want — even if it might feel that way in San Diego right now.
No list is perfect. There are always holes in even the most powerful clubs, small problems that the front office and the manager must try to solve, game after game.
Let’s take a look at a few of these potential hot spots, focusing on the contenders. We’ll use some basic criteria: If a contending team has a position in a group that, according to bWAR, has performed at least half a standard deviation below the mean and projects to remain at that level for the rest of the season, they may be on this list.
Below are the roster holes with the biggest potential impact on the title chase, with some possible solutions. Positional rankings are listed for each spot: season-to-date and projections based on baseball-reference.com’s WAR for season-to-date production and Fangraphs’ projections for the rest of the season.
Problem position: Second base (19th season so far, 28th remaining).
Chicago’s inaction at the deadline was troubling, though perhaps more a reflection of how thin its system has become than a lack of motivation to improve the roster. There is no position where the White Sox need improvement more than second base, where their projection for the rest of the season is 1.6 standard deviations below average. Congratulations: That makes this the biggest positional hole of a contending team.
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The White Sox are left standing, relying on defensive production in the keystone and hoping they can make up for the offense elsewhere. Josh Harrison ranks fifth in Fangraphs’ defensive rankings. Meanwhile, the White Sox ranked 24th with a .611 OPS at the position.
And it could get worse. Harrison has a .691 OPS and has been a positive contributor offensively in the past. But in the four-year span entering this season, his overall OPS was .683. He’s been pretty hot the last few weeks, so maybe he’ll be better than what Chicago could get from a trade pickup like Brandon Drury or Whit Merrifield. Predictions don’t like his chances.
At 34, Harrison probably needs a day off now and then, but the less the better. That’s because Chicago’s other option at second is utility player Leuri Garcia, who had a terrible season. Garcia’s OPS is .511, and in the latest release of my AX Ratings — a consensus rating from Advanced Metrics — he ranks 1,342 out of 1,345 players this season. And yet only five White Sox hitters have more appearances.
An option could come up on the DFA front, and if so, the White Sox should pounce. Their bar for upgrading at second base, especially on days when Harrison is out of the lineup, is pretty low.
Problem position: First base (19th season so far, 22nd remaining)
The Keepers traded backup catcher Sandy Leon to the Twins at the deadline. Leon promptly stroked a key two-run double in his first at-bat for Minnesota, the team Cleveland is chasing in the AL Central.
I bring this up not because I think the Guardians will rue the day they traded Sandy Leon (curse of Sandy!), but because this transaction is a quintessential summary of what Cleveland did at the deadline. The guards could use a catcher, especially now that they traded Leon, but I want to focus on first base, mostly because it should be so easy for a team struggling at that spot to find at least a minor trade upgrade market.
And Cleveland is struggling at first base: No. 19 in the rankings, primarily led by Josh Naylor and Owen Miller. Naylor has been hitting righties very well this season, which is the main reason the Keepers aren’t worse at that spot. The problem is that Naylor can also play the outfield, and the Keepers may need him to do that, or at least fill in at DH more often.
And that’s because Franmil Reyes’ season-long slump got so bad that the Guardians sent him to the minors earlier this week. Maybe Cleveland can handle it at first base, but they clearly needed a bat at the deadline, pretty much any bat, but they sat back, did nothing, and as usual touted their infield capabilities.
The Guardians are a smart, well-run franchise, and it’s easy to attack them from the outside. But it feels like we’ve been repeating this statement about their approach to the deadline for years.
Problem position: Center field (15th season so far, 18th remaining).
The Astros have a good margin for error when carrying a positional hole because they are so good elsewhere. They’re 17th in bWAR in center this season, but that’s misleading. Houston ranks just 25th in OPS at the position, so the overall average production is mostly due to the defense. Which would be nice, but the player most responsible for the defensive position was Jose Siri, whom the Astros traded to the Rays at the deadline.
I have to think that at the time Siri was traded, the Astros thought they would grab another center fielder before the deadline, perhaps a standout like Oakland’s Ramon Laureano. It didn’t happen. For now, the Astros will play a combination of Jake Myers, Mauricio Dubon and Chas McCormick in center. It’s been exclusively Myers and Dubbon of late, but McCormick has offered the most at the plate this season.
Houston’s prognosis for the rest of the season in center field isn’t dire, and the talent they have at their disposal could do better. But the group is also unproven, so things could get worse. Again, the Astros are so good overall that they can afford to juggle options for the rest of the season and still win the AL West going away. The problem will come when we get to October and a potential showdown with the Yankees where any minor advantage (or disadvantage) could make the difference.
The Astros may be another team eyeing the transaction, where one intriguing name — Boston’s Jackie Bradley Jr., released Thursday — has already surfaced.
Problem position: Catcher (27th season so far; 19th remaining season)
Clearly, teams evaluate their catchers in ways that don’t necessarily match WAR formulations. The Astros, one of the smartest teams in baseball, were completely committed to using Martin Maldonado as their regular catcher the last two years, even though he posted an OPS+ of 60. Houston traded Christian Vazquez from Boston at the deadline, but that didn’t matter. little mattered to Maldonado and much more to do with the season-ending knee injury suffered by backup quarterback Jason Castro.
With the Mets, there was a predicament. They rank fifth in Fangraphs ratings in catching defense and eighth in pitch framing. They also rank 29th in catcher OPS, just behind Houston and just ahead of the Cardinals. Obviously, the Mets have bet on defense at that position. None of Tomas Nido, James McCann or Patrick Mazeika have cracked a .550 OPS. All three have positive defensive numbers, with Nido ranking fifth overall on Fangraphs.
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So good. You like the way your pitchers work with your current catchers, and maybe what you had to trade for future Cubs free agent Willson Contreras was too much. So you let him ride with the guys who got you this far. McCann is close to returning from an oblique injury, and he at least has some plus offensive seasons on his record.
Overall, the Mets project to rank 20th in catcher WAR by the end of the season. The problem is that the teams the Mets are battling at the top of the National League — the Dodgers and Braves — have no problem choosing offense or defense behind the plate. They’ve gotten plenty of both, with the Dodgers projecting the rest of the season as the best catcher in baseball.
The Mets will need to make up for this significant deficit at that position in other ways once they enter postseason games with the Dodgers and Braves, and let’s not forget about JT Realmuto and the Phillies. The deficit could be nearly erased with the acquisition of Contreras.
Then there’s the elephant in the room, as a prospect with a very large amount of hype behind him: catcher Francisco Alvarez, who incidentally hit a ball completely out of the minor league ballpark he played on Wednesday. Earlier this week, Mets GM Billy Eppler told reporters that Alvarez is “not an option right now.”
In the absence of a terminal upgrade at catcher, the Mets’ best chance for better production at the position may be if Alvarez forces Eppler’s hand by getting hot very soon.
Trouble Position: Shortstop (29th season so far, 25th remaining)
Apparently the Phillies agree. As this was being written, news broke that Philadelphia had released Didi Gregorius, the most used shortstop this season.
The Phillies rank 29th in bWAR at shortstop with Gregorius, Bryson Stott and Johan Camargo combining for minus-0.4 wins. They are 29th with a .570 OPS at the position and 22nd in defense according to Fangraphs. With Gregorius gone, the defense should at least improve. For several years, he has been one of the worst defenders in baseball, regardless of position.
The plan to replace Gregorius seems pretty straightforward: Let the kid play. Stott has been about a league-average defender as a shortstop thus far, though the sample size is too small to make any definitive statements about his acumen with the glove. Baseball America rated him as a 55th grade defender (slightly above average) in its preseason guide.
Stott has not hit so far, posting a .196/.262/.314 slash line, but he has hit .300/.389/.495 as a minor leaguer, and the upside of those numbers looks like the Phillies’ best shot at turning this position in force, or at least non-hole, down the stretch. The Phillies also recently acquired Edmundo Sosa in the mix after acquiring him from the Cardinals at the deadline.
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