Five contenders with major gaps
Chicago White Sox
Position problem: Second base (ranked 19th on the season to date, 28th for the rest of the season).
Chicago’s inaction at the deadline was troubling, though it may have been more a reflection of how much their system has weakened 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 gap on a contending team.
The White Sox stood pat, leaning on defensive production at the cornerstone and hoping to make up for the offense elsewhere. Josh Harrison ranks fifth in Fangraphs’ defensive rankings. Meanwhile, the White Sox rank 24th with a .611 OPS at the position.
And it could get worse. Harrison has a .691 OPS and has been a positive offensive contributor in the past. But over the four-year span starting this season, his total OPS was .683. He’s been pretty hot over the last few weeks, so maybe that’s better than what Chicago could have gotten from a trade like Brandon Drury or Whit Merrifield. The projections don’t like his chances.
At 34, Harrison will likely need an occasional day off, but the less the better. That’s because Chicago’s other option at second is utility player Leury Garcia, who has had a terrible season. Garcia’s OPS is .511 and in my latest set of AX Ratings (a consensus index of advanced metrics) he ranked 1342nd out of 1345 players this season. And yet, only five White Sox hitters have more plate appearances.
An option may emerge on the front end of players put into assignment, and if so, the White Sox should pounce. Their standard for upgrading second base, especially on days when Harrison is out of the lineup, is quite low.
Cleveland Guardians
Position problem: First base (ranked 19th on the season to date, 22nd for the rest of the season).
The Guardians traded backup catcher Sandy Leon to the Twins at the deadline. Leon promptly hit a key two-run double in his first at-bat for Minnesota, the team Cleveland is chasing in the American League Central Division.
I mention that not because I think the Guardians will rue the day they traded Sandy Leon (the curse of Sandy!), but because that transaction is a complete summary of what Cleveland did at the deadline. The Guardians could use a catcher, especially now that they traded Leon, but I want to focus on first base, mainly because it should be very easy for a team struggling at that spot to find at least a marginal upgrade on the trade market.
And Cleveland has struggled at first base: a No. 19 ranking, propped up primarily by Josh Naylor and Owen Miller. Naylor has hit righties very well this season, which is the main reason the Guardians aren’t worse off at this point. The problem is that Naylor can also play in the outfield and the Guardians might need him to do that, or at least fill in at DH more often.
And that’s because Franmil Reyes’ bad run of a season has gotten so bad that the Guardians sent him to the minors earlier this week. Maybe Cleveland can rebuild first base, but they clearly needed a bat at the deadline, almost any bat, but they sat back, did nothing and, as usual, praised their in-house options.
The Guardians are a smart, well-run franchise, and it’s easy to criticize them from the outside. But we seem to have been repeating this diatribe about their deadline approach for years.
Houston Astros
Position problem: Center field (ranked 15th on the season to date, 18th for the rest of the season).
The Astros have a good margin for error in carrying a positional hole because they are so good elsewhere. They rank 17th in bWAR in the Central this season, but that’s misleading. Houston ranks 25th in OPS at the position, so the average overall production is mostly due to defense. Which would be fine, but the player most responsible for the defensive position was Jose Siri, who the Astros traded to the Rays at the deadline.
I have to think that at the time they traded Siri, the Astros felt they would nab another center fielder before the deadline, perhaps a flashy one like Oakland’s Ramon Laureano. It didn’t happen. For now, the Astros will go with a combination of Jake Meyers, Mauricio Dubon and Chas McCormick in center. Lately, it’s been exclusively Meyers and Dubon, but McCormick has offered more at the plate this season.
Houston’s rest-of-season prognosis for center field is not tragic, and the talent they have available is capable of doing 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 the options for the rest of the season and still win the American League West Division. The problem would come when we get to October and a potential showdown with the Yankees, where every marginal advantage (or disadvantage) could make the difference.
The Astros could be another team keeping an eye on the trade thread, where one intriguing name – Boston’s Jackie Bradley Jr. and released Thursday – has already surfaced.
New York Mets
Position problem: Catcher (Ranked 27th on the season to date; 19th for the rest of the season).
It’s clear that teams value their catchers in ways that don’t necessarily fit WAR formulations. The Astros, one of the smartest teams in baseball, have been perfectly intent on using Martin Maldonado as their regular catcher the last two years despite hitting for an OPS+ of 60. Houston instead got Christian Vazquez at the deadline with Boston, but that had less to do with Maldonado and much more to do with the season-ending knee injury suffered by backup Jason Castro.
With the Mets, there was a dilemma. They rank fifth in Fangraphs’ defensive rankings as a catcher 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 put a premium on defense at the position. None in the group of Tomas Nido, James McCann or Patrick Mazeika has posted a .550 OPS. All three have positive defensive metrics, with Nido ranking fifth overall on Fangraphs.
So, good. You like the way your pitchers work with your current catchers, and maybe what you needed to trade for Cubs free agent-to-be Willson Contreras was too much. So let yourself go with the guys who got you this far. McCann is on the verge of returning from an oblique injury and at least has a few offensive seasons on his record.
Overall, the Mets project to rank 20th in catcher WAR the rest of the season. The problem is that the teams the Mets are competing with at the top of the National League (the Dodgers and Braves) have no problem with having to choose offense or defense behind the plate. They’ve gotten plenty of both, with the Dodgers’ projection for the rest of the season as the best catcher in baseball.
The Mets will have to make up for this considerable deficit at this position in other ways once they face the Dodgers and Braves in the postseason, and let’s not forget about J.T. Realmuto and the Phillies. The deficit could have been almost completely erased with the acquisition of Contreras.
Then there’s the elephant in the room, as in a prospect with a large body of hype behind him: catcher Francisco Alvarez, who incidentally sent a ball completely out of the minor league baseball stadium he played in on Wednesday. Earlier this week, Mets general manager Billy Eppler told reporters that Alvarez was “not an option at this point.”
Absent an upgrade at the deadline as a catcher, the Mets’ best chance for better production at the position could be if Alvarez forces Eppler’s hand by getting very hot, very soon.
Philadelphia Phillies
Position problem: Shortstop (ranked 29th on the season to date, 25th for the rest of the season).
Apparently, the Phillies are on the same page. As this was being written, news broke that Philadelphia had released Didi Gregorius, their most-used shortstop this season.
Phillies rank 29th in bWAR at shortstop with Gregorius, Bryson Stott and Johan Camargo combining to produce minus-0.4 wins. They rank 29th with a .570 OPS at the position and 22nd defensively according to Fangraphs. Without Gregorius, the defense should at least improve. Over a period of several years, he has been one of the worst overall defenders in baseball regardless of position.
The plan for replacing Gregorius seems pretty clear: let the kid play. Stott has been about a league-average defender as a shortstop so far, though the sample size is too small to make firm statements about his sharpness with the glove. Baseball America rated him as a 55-grade defender (slightly above average) in its preseason guide.
Stott hasn’t hit so far, posting a .196/.262/.314 offensive line, but he has hit .300/.389/.495 as a minor leaguer and the top end of those numbers looks to be the Phillies’ best chance to turn this position into a strength, or at least a non-hole, down the stretch. The Phillies also recently acquired Edmundo Sosa in the mix after optioning him to the Cardinals at the deadline.