ESPN | Jorge Castillo: The two New York teams are expected to have wildly different trade deadlines, with the Yankees presumed to be buyers and the Mets perhaps the biggest sellers. While there's a couple possible deals to be had between the two clubs — ****** o, Luke Weaver? — the largest possible splashes for the Yankees look like they could come from the West Coast. The San Diego Padres offer two relievers that could reinforce the bullpen, and the Angels feature both Zack Neto and Reid Detmers as alluring trade targets.
FanGraphs | Jay Jaffe: With Cody Bellinger out 4-6 weeks with a hamstring strain, the Yankee lineup and outfield are starting to look pretty bald. The team is already suffering significantly without Aaron Judge in the lineup, and while they still have a chance to win the AL East, they need someone to step up and start hitting, or they have an increased need to bring in an impact bat before the Trade Deadline.
Front Office Sports | Eric Fisher: As a longtime lover of MLB.tv, I get to benefit from what might be sports' best livestreaming experience. From what I've heard from New York locals, the Gotham Sports App has not been a very good livestreaming experience. The platform has repeatedly had playback, UI, and general quality issues over the past two seasons, and it seems it is being sunsetted by the YES and MSG networks. Streaming service DAZN is being tapped as the replacement for Gotham Sports, and I'll keep using MLB.tv.
MLB.com | Bryan Hoch: The Yankees announced who will be coming back to the Bronx on August 8th for the 78th edition of Old-Timers' Day. Hall of Famers Joe Torre and Mariano Rivera lead the way, and they'll be joined by Monument Park honorees Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph, Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte. The first-time Old-Timers are Dellin Betances (born in 1988, gulp), Todd Frazier, David Weathers, and Adam Ottavino (who just pitched last year). Check out the full list!
TSN: If you know me, you know I'm a born hater. I want Shohei Ohtani to grow old and die warm in a bed surrounded by loved ones and I hope he has a rock in his shoe every single time he steps on a baseball field. Yesterday was a win for the haters, as Alek Manoah was released by the Angels. One imagines Gerrit Cole opened a particularly special bottle of wine last night's game with the White Sox.

#yankees #Angels

The Guardians were rained out yesterday and will play at 1:40 and 7:10. Slade Cecconi and Gavin Williams will both pitch as the Guardians have an off day on Thursday to get the rotation back on track.
The Guardians have five players in FanGraphs' new Top 100 prospects list. 11. Angel Genao, 37. Braylon Doughty, 38. Ralphy Velazquez, 67. Juneiker Caceres, 96. Aaron Walton. Khal Stephen also snuck on to the 11 players listed just outside the 100 at 111. Get well soon, Khal.
AROUND MLB:
The Tigers and White Sox lost.

#players #fangraphs

Those hoping hoping to see the Sox splash the cash on some hard-to-sign candidates on day 2 of the MLB Draft were immediately disappointed, as the Red Sox spent their fifth round pick on Lucas Davenport, a pitcher out of Baylor University who was unranked by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline heading into the draft.
Davenport is a beastly 6-6, 230 lbs. and his pick launched a mini-run on those big college pitchers Craig Breslow likes so much: sixth rounder Brett Lanman, a 6-5, 23o lbs. lefty out of Abilene Christian, eighth rounder Josh Volmerding, a 6-4, 210 lbs. lefty out of California Polytech, thirteenth rounder Mason Lei, a 6-4, 215 lbs. righty out of the University of Illinois-Chicago, and fifteenth rounder Chase Frey, a 6-6 225 lbs. lefty out of Grand Canyon University.
The highlights of Day 2 are the two higher-ranked high schoolers the Sox nabbed back-to-back in the ninth and tenth rounds. Ninth rounder Martin Shelar, an outfielder, comes out of the baseball powerhouse that is the Marist School in Georgia. He has massive power potential, is committed to Mississippi State, and was ranked as the 65th-best prospect overall by FanGraphs, 125th by Baseball America, and 175th by MLB Pipeline.
Tenth rounder Kaleb LaFavor out of Bishop Heelan Catholic High School in Sioux City, Iowa is a towering 6-7 righty with a ton of extension who can already hit 95 MPH on the gun. He was ranked the 171st-best prospect by ESPN evaluator Kiley McDaniel, 465th by Baseball America, and is committed to the University of Iowa. Craig Breslow's got bonus pool money burning a hole in his pocket, and it's going to go to these guys in hopes of enticing them away from college (speaking as someone who spent a fair bit of time partying in Iowa City as a 22-year-old, good luck in LeFavor's case).
Here's the full slate of day 2 picks:

The Texas Rangers, with their second round pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, #54 overall, select Austin high school infielder Connor Comeau. We did a write-up on Comeau earlier this week.
Connor Comeau is a 6’4”, 180 lb. lefthanded hitting, righthanded throwing infielder out of Anderson High School in Austin, Texas. Comeau is on the young side for a draftee, as he doesn’t turn 18 until August. He is committed to Texas A&M, though the Rangers wouldn’t be taking him in the second round if they weren’t confident he would sign.
Comeau offers a quality hit tool with power projection. Baseball America says he “stands out for his present hitting ability.” He has a nice, easy swing and showed strong contact ability on the showcase circuit last summer. He has shown the ability to hit the ball hard to all fields. He has shown the ability to hit for power — MLB Pipeline notes he finished second in the Home Run Derby at the Canadian Futures Showcase this past summer — but is still extremely lean currently, so there’s a belief that he should add more power as he develops and his body fills out.
Comeau played shortstop in high school, but most likely will immediately move to third base as a professional. He has a good arm, but not much speed, so third base would be the best fit for him, if he can stick there.
Baseball America has Comeau at #55 on their board. MLB Pipeline has Comeau at #55 on their board. Kiley McDaniel puts puts Comeau at #66 on his top 150 list. Keith Law has Comeau at #59 on his board. Fangraphs has Comeau at #32 on their board. Baseball Prospectus does not have Comeau on their top 30 draft board.

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across Major League Baseball. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Yankees fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
It's been a tough three-to-four weeks for Yankees fans, as they've seen their team that once stood 46-28 with the best record in the American League stumble through a 4-14 stretch. It was enough for the upstart Rays to pass them for first place in the AL East, and even though the Yanks have won their last couple contests, they still trail Tampa Bay by four games.
The Rays also have one of the lighter remaining slates by current strength of schedule, so that's not helping matters, nor is the fact that the Yankees will have to sweep their only remaining series against the Rays (a four-game set at the Bronx in late September that includes a doubleheader) to take the head-to-head tiebreaker that didn't go their way last year against Toronto. The second half formally begins next Friday, but mathematically, we are already halfway through the 162-game slate, and FanGraphs currently projects the Rays with a 59-percent chance to take the division. The Yankees sit at 38 percent with none of the remaining teams sitting above 1.5 percent.
As such—and given the gloomy vibes around the team this week—it's not surprising to see that per our SB Nation Reacts results, only about a quarter of the Yankees fans who responded said that they believe this team will win the AL East. A total of 18 percent even predicted that they would miss the playoffs entirely:
The most popular vote has the Yankees finishing in the spot they presently occupy and the one they held at the end of the 2025 regular season: the top AL Wild Card and hosting a first-round best-of-three against the second-best Wild Card. The Yankees survived that rumble with the Red Sox last year, but it certainly put them behind the eight-ball against the top-seeded Blue Jays, and that could certainly happen again this year with Tampa Bay.

When the Jays dumped Trevor Richards on the Twins at the 2024 deadline, the return was an infielder who’d signed a way under slot deal in the sixth round of the previous year’s draft out of the decided non-baseball hotbed of Penn State University by the name of Jay Harry. Baseball America ranked him 426th among draft eligible prospects that year and promptly never wrote about him again. After the trade, Fangraphs’ rated him the 87th best prospect dealt at the deadline and described his likely peak as “a utility guy for a weak Double-A team.” Which is harsh, perhaps, but looked about right as his OPS last season, split between A+ and AA, started with a five.
I’m writing about him here, so you can guess that things have improved. And indeed they have, to the tune of a .327/.368/.591 line split between New Hampshire and Buffalo that makes Harry one of the best 40 or so hitters in the upper minors this season.
So what’s happened here? Harry was an ultra-contact-oriented hitter in college, with a swing geared just to try to poke line drives through the infield. You can see that approach carry over to his first taste of pro ball after the draft, where he struck out just 6.8% of the time in A ball but failed to generate much impact. His contact rate dropped, though, from 85% that season to 76% during his time with the Twins organization in 2024 and then 71% after his trade to the Blue Jays. At the same time he showed a little bit of game power, going from 1 home run in 129 PA in his draft season to 12 in 448 in ‘24. Last year he seems to have been caught in between, bringing his contact back to 77% but losing almost all of his impact. In 2026, his contact rate remains at 77%, but all of the power production has returned and then some. Normally with a left in New Hampshire, you can write some power jumps off as the product of park factors, but a) he was awful in the same park last season, and b) he’s hit even better since moving up to Buffalo.
On video, you can see his swing change a little over the course of the last three years, going from a very upright setup with almost no hand load and the bat starting upright in 2024 to a bit deeper of a load and more angle in 2025. His 2026 swing is back closer to 2024, very upright and with his hands starting out front to give him a super short path to the ball. These are all subtle differences, though, and I don’t see evidence that he’s reinvented his swing.
There are a couple of other changes to note. First, he’s just swinging a lot. He’s always been aggressive, but his 59.5% rate this season is among the highest in the league and would be in the top five in the majors. That’s resulted in a collapse in his walk rate, although without much change in his strikeouts.

Detroit Tigers’ manager A.J. Hinch announced prior to Tuesday night’s game against the Athletics that third base coach Joey Cora has left the organization. Hinch told reporters that he and Cora had met and mutually decided to part ways based on some philosophical differences that had developed. Billy Boyer will take over as third base coach effective immediately.
Hinch characterized the differences of opinion as purely baseball related. That’s interesting considering that Cora has been his third base coach for two and a half seasons after joining the organization in November of 2023. The 61-year-old had an 11-year career in the major leagues, mainly with the Padres, White Sox, and Mariners, before moving into coaching. Apart from his third base responsibilities, Cora has also been the Tigers infield instructor for the past two and a half seasons.
One wonders if the difference of opinion may have had more to do with coaching players than Cora’s work at third base. Like every third base coach since the dawn of time, he’s been criticized for some aggressive sends that worked out badly, but overall the Tigers have graded out pretty well in the baserunning department under his watch, despite not stealing many bases. That’s changed a little bit this year, with the Tigers slipping in the baserunning metrics a bit. They currently rank 17th best in team baserunning per FanGraphs, compared to finishing 10th in that category in 2025.
The 41-year-old Boyer was a college coach before joining the Tigers’ organization as a minor league infield coordinator back in 2021. That was part of now ******* istant general manager, Ryan Garko’s, overhaul of the entire player development system after for director of player development, Dave Littlefield, was reassigned. Boyer became the quality control coach for the major league club this season. As a longtime infield coach who has been working with infielders all year anyway, we ******* ume he’ll take over Cora’s responsibilities working with the infielders as well.
We look forward to seeing a new set of gestures at third base, but otherwise this probably won’t change much about the way the Tigers run the bases. They’re still committed to being aggressive in terms of sending runners from third base to home. We’ll see if they’re more or less successful with Boyer making the calls.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Each summer brings with it some omissions for the All-Star Game roster. On Saturday, two Red Sox players who were thought to be good bets for inclusion on the AL roster were, instead, left off.
First baseman Willson Contreras was not chosen despite his 18 homers and 53 RBI and a slugging percentage of .532. Contreras ranked second in WAR (2.8) as calculated by FanGraphs among AL first baseman — only the Athletics' Nick Kurtz (3.5) had a higher figure.
Sonny Gray, who started Saturday night in the second game of the Red Sox' nine-game road trip, was 9-1 with a 2.69 ERA that would have ranked him fourth among AL starters had he qualified. Gray missed some time in April on the IL, and that absence prevented him from qualifying.
"The way I look at it is," said interim manager Chad Tracy, "we do have a couple more players who, when you look at the numbers and what they've done, are definitely deserving. I'm still holding out hope. Between now and when the All-Star Game happens, there's so much roster fluctuation. It happens every year, where people can't go or get hurt or things happen. So I'm still holding out hope that there's a couple more guys (selected) on our team that I feel are deserving, no question about it."
"I'm not disappointed," said Contreras. "I try not to build up too many expectations when it comes to the All-Star Game. But if you ask me if I feel like I'm personally deserving, I would tell you, 'Yes.' But talking about with my teammates, I wasn't filling my head up with illusions of being on the team."

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Arizona Diamondbacks fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
Since I was out of range this week – I will be leaving a one-star review on Yellowstone’s TripAdvisor page, due to the lack of wifi – there was no specifically D-backs related question this week. So let’s just discuss the national poll, sent out to those on the list (and if you aren’t on it, the link above has you covered). There were three questions. The first was in regard to which executive was on the hottest seat. You probably won’t be surprised to discover that the Mets’ David Stearns was the clear winner there, at 62%. However, the Giants’ Buster Posey (20%) while the Red Sox – and former D-back – Craig Breslow (18%) also got significant support.
These are all examples of teams with large payrolls, in excess of $210 million cash value per Spotrac, putting them comfortably in the top half of MLB spending this year. But they are also all struggling: the Red Sox, at 38-48, have the best record. We’re still not even at the All-Star break, and they only have a fifteen percent chance of making the playoffs, according to Fangraphs – and that feels generous to me. The Mets and Giants might as well pack it up and go home. New York and Boston have already fired their managers, and one wonders how long San Francisco will stick with Tony Vitello, the first man to go straight from a college job to MLB management.
Related: another question was “Who won the Rafael Devers trade?” and a resounding victory there was “No one” at 69%. However, the Red Sox did beat the Giants in the remainder, by a 22-9 percent margin. That seems fair. Boston did get to dump a massive contract for a player who was increasingly toxic there. However, the players they got back have either fizzled, or been traded on. For example, Kyle Harrison was yesterday’s starter for the Brewes against the D-backs, and despite his struggles there, is 8-1 with an excellent 2.82 ERA. Meanwhile, Devers has been worth just 3.2 bWAR over a year and a half. He’s on the SF books for seven more seasons and $225 million. Yep. Happy not to be them.

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The Snake: Jake McCarthy, +0.33 WPA
Walks Will Haunt: Michael Lorenzen, -0.20 WPA
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Graphics via FanGraphs.
Hey, Mickey!: Eury Pérez, +0.33 WPA
Max-imum: Max Meyer, -0.23 WPA
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The Hall of Fame Index was first published in 201o. It had been in the works for nearly a decade at that point. The whole point was to establish a systematic way of looking at Hall of Fame candidates and those already in the Hall of Fame. At its best, it measures fitness for the Hall of Fame and aims to put players into groups with other similar players so we can compare them.
The sequel was published in 2020. It obviously updated numbers for players that were currently active, but also adjusted the formula as we got more information. One of the key things in statistical **** ysis is that we are always learning something new. The formula is similar to JAWS, but has a couple of key differences. First, it combines baseball-reference.com WAR and Fangraphs.com WAR into one number. I do that for two main reasons. First and foremost, the more data the better in most instances. It gives us a cross-section of what keen sabermetric minds feel about a player.
The second reason is that there is always an intellectual divide on these things. The old formulas included win shares, but since Bill James retired, there is no longer an update on current win shares, so that one has been dropped from the formula. Like JAWS, the index includes a peak value element. However, the peak value is made up of ten seasons. I have gotten push back on this and the push back is perfectly reasonable. I chose ten years because you need to play at least ten years to get into the Hall of Fame and ten years gives you slightly more data than the seven years that JAWS brings.
That is important distinction because I do not profile any players until they have been in the league for at least ten seasons. So, as we compare Alex Bregman to his contemporaries, there are five third baseman that make the list. I will not speak for Jay Jaffe (the creator of JAWS) but the index was never meant to rank order players. It was meant to place players into groups with other similar players so that we can directly compare them using other means. I have done this before with Bregman, but since we are at the midway point of the 2026 season, it is a good time to revisit it.
BWAR

You don’t owe the Mets anything, and the way they’re playing, they clearly don’t feel that they owe you a professional performance. Mets infielders combined to commit a staggering six errors in a game that saw their team lose to the Cubs for the second time today and the third time in as many games by the Cubs.
Even when the score was closer in this game, it never really felt like the Mets had a chance. They’re playing a brand of baseball that makes you wonder if they ever practice. And in the end, the final score—Cubs 10, Mets 5—was a fairer representation of the way the game went.
If you want the play-by-play of this one for some reason, the play log FanGraphs has you covered. There’s not much of a reason to pay attention to these Mets that thoroughly, though, and the defensive efforts of Brett Baty in right field, Marcus Semien at second, and Mark Vientos at first make you long for players who have enough experience at a position to play it properly without having so much experience that they’re on their way out of the league.
How the organization has had the patience to leader all of its under-performers on the active roster, its manager in place, and its president of baseball operations in charge of baseball operations is beyond me at this point. It’s not that everyone must go, but right now, it looks like there are simply no consequences within the org.
Find better things to do with your time than watch the 2026 Mets until they earn it. The fact that another year of Francisco Lindor’s prime, injury-interrupted as it may be, is set to go to waste is particularly frustrating on the night that he returned from a two-month stint on the injured list.

Leverage index and box score
Graphics via FanGraphs.
Sonny Skies:Sonny Gray, +0.34 WPA
Nothing's Free, man: Tyler Freeman, -0.18 WPA
Game thread comment of the day

Pirates 8, Rockies 6
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Making Dad proud: Nick Gonzales, 0.17 WPA
Grounded: Juan Mejia, -0.13 WPA

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Shaw-some: Matt Shaw, +0.17 WPA
Second-inning blowout: Sean Sullivan, -0.37 WPA
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Graphics via FanGraphs.
Putting it all together: Kyle Karros, +0.28 WPA
Pitching at elevation is hard: Jeffrey Springs, -0.62 WPA
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The New York Mets acquired All-Star starting pitcher Freddy Peralta in January with the hope he would improve heir odds of reaching the World Series. Months later, with the team under .500, Peralta has been the subject of constant MLB trade rumors entering the summer.
As of now, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today, Mets’ president of baseball operations David Searns has “no interest in shopping” Peralta or anyone else and he remains firm in his belief that the club can make a postseason run.
Related: MLB Trades We’d Love to See, including a Freddy Peralta Deal
Freddy Peralta stats (FanGraphs): 3.63 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 23.9% K-rate, 9.7% BB rate, .235 batting average allowed in 72 innings pitched
Peralta, who turned 30 last week, was acquired by New York from the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat. With the Mets seven games below .500 entering MLB games today, Peralta has been one of the most talked-about MLB trade candidates this summer.

Tanner Bibee finally got some run support and a win against the Rangers.
Zach has your recap here. The series rubber match today features Joey Cantillo vs. Jacob deGrom. Then, the Guardians come back home to play the Yankees again on Monday.
Michael Baumann has an interesting article for FanGraphs about how contracts formerly seen as immovable are probably no longer immovable.
AROUND MLB:
Josh Naylor has been doing silly things like throwing his sliding glove into the catcher and the Tigers responded by throwing a 97 mph fastball at his head.

Emerson Hancock, the breakout star of the vaunted Mariners rotation in 2026, turned in another strong start last night against the Mets, going six innings with seven strikeouts and giving up just two runs, both on solo homers. This, in and of itself, is not particularly surprising; Hancock, one day after his 27th birthday, has settled into a steady hand in the Mariners rotation, and this kind of line now feels like just another day at the office for Hancock.
What is surprising is how he got there: last year, Hancock’s four seam-sinker combo accounted for over two-thirds of his pitches, with his changeup accounting for the bulk of the rest and a slider/sweeper rounding it out. He was a classic ***** ator, working within what Mario Delgado Genzor has termed the “pronator’s triangle.” Here’s Hancock’s pitch mix in 2025, with his particular ***** ator’s triangle skillfully drawn in for you:
A quick review, if you don’t know: Pitchers with a supination bias, or supinators, get on the outside of the ball as they release it (you can remember this by imagining scooping up a big spoonful of delicious soup), leading to glove-side movement. These kinds of pitchers excel at pitches that rely on horizontal movement like sweepers, cutters, and curveballs. Pitchers with ***** ation bias, on the other hand, stay to the inside of the ball, ending palm-out. ***** ators are able to get significant arm-side run. While ***** ators tend to throw a very spin efficient fastball, leading to more ride up in the zone, that comes at a cost of horizontal movement, limiting their options to enhance their ***** nals with things like sweepers or cutters.
But in 2026, Hancock changed up his pitch mix, somehow magically developing all those pitches that are supposed to be off-limits to ***** ators, as Michael Rosen examined in his article on FanGraphs about how Hancock dropped his arm angle and spin efficiency and in doing so escaped “low slot ***** ator jail”. All of a sudden we don’t have a triangle so much as we have…Massachussetts.
The cutter, while still classified as a hard pitch like the fourseam or sinker, has a totally different movement profile – while the sinker and four-seamer move armside, the cutter moves gloveside, although Hancock will still throw it to both sides of the plate, making things even less predictable for hitters.