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Archives for June 2023

Rockies’ Prospect Zac Veen Undergoes Season-Ending Hand Surgery

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Top Rockies’ prospect Zac Veen posted an image of himself in the hospital (on Twitter) after an apparent left arm surgery this evening. Thomas Harding of MLB.com reports the procedure was to address ligament damage in his hand (Twitter link). According to Harding, Veen is expected to be out of action until December.

Obviously, that ends his 2023 campaign. Had Veen been healthy, the 2020 first-round pick had a shot to make his MLB debut this year. He reached Double-A Hartford late last season and returned there to start this year. Regarded as a borderline top 50 prospect by each of Baseball America, Keith Law of the Athletic and Kiley McDaniel of ESPN, the left-handed hitter was seeking to hit his way to Coors Field by year’s end.

That won’t happen, as it seemed Veen was hampered by the hand issue all season. According to Harding, the young outfielder first felt discomfort midway through last summer. Veen’s numbers plummeted following a late-season bump from High-A to Double-A. While the higher caliber of pitching presumably played a role, the injury offers an additional explanation.

Veen’s 2023 numbers lend support to that possibility. Hand or wrist injuries can diminish a hitter’s power. Veen’s batted ball quality has evaporated this year. He connected on only two home runs over 46 contests and 201 plate appearances. Prospect evaluators have credited the 6’3″ corner outfielder with significant raw power potential. A lofty 47.7% grounder rate hasn’t helped his power output, but it stands to reason he wasn’t hitting the ball with as much authority as he would’ve had he been fully healthy.

The 21-year-old had a .209/.303/.308 batting line overall. He walked at a strong 11.4% clip while striking out at a roughly average 21.4% rate. While Veen’s plate discipline numbers were fine, a meager .260 average on balls in play and the lack of home run pop led to the dismal overall results.

Charlie Blackmon, Jurickson Profar and Randal Grichuk are all slated for free agency after this season. Kris Bryant will be assured one corner outfield spot if healthy, but the rest of the Rox’s future outfield is unsettled. Even if Nolan Jones builds off his strong start to lock himself into right field, Veen could have a path to DH reps next season depending on Colorado’s offseason activity. Colorado doesn’t have to add Veen to their 40-man roster until after the 2024 season, though they’d presumably be happy to get a look at him before then if he mashes in the upper minors to start the year.

Yoshi Tsutsugo Opts Out Of Deal With Rangers

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Corner infielder Yoshi Tsutsugo opted out of a minor league contract with the Rangers, tweets Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Texas allowed him to hit free agency rather than add him to the MLB roster.

The Rangers took a non-roster flier on Tsutsugo over the offseason. He didn’t get a big league look, instead spending the entire season with Triple-A Round Rock. He hit .249/.380/.432 over 280 trips to the plate. The left-handed hitter drew free passes at a huge 17.3% clip but went down on strikes over 28% of the time. He connected on six home runs, nine doubles and a pair of triples — fine but unexceptional power production for a bat-first player in the Pacific Coast League.

Tsutsugo will now look elsewhere in search of an MLB opportunity for what’d be the fourth consecutive season. He struggled early upon signing with the Rays and fared even worse in a cup of coffee with the Dodgers. Tsutsugo caught fire late in the 2021 season with the Pirates, though, popping eight homers in only 43 games.

Pittsburgh re-signed him in hopes he’d approximate that production over a full schedule. That didn’t happen, as he hit .171/.249/.229 in 50 contests last year before the Bucs released him. A late-season Triple-A run with the Blue Jays didn’t result in another MLB look. Tsutsugo heads back to the market with a career .197/.291/.339 line over 182 big league contests.

Tsutsugo has primarily played first base and designated hitter at the major league level. The Rays gave him a few looks at third base back in 2020. He didn’t see any time at the hot corner from 2021-22 but started 13 games there with Round Rock (in addition to 22 starts at first base and 16 outings as the DH).

Giants Acquire Dalton Guthrie From Phillies

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The Giants have acquired outfielder Dalton Guthrie from the Phillies for cash, according to announcements from both teams. San Francisco optioned him to Triple-A Sacramento. In order to create space on the 40-man roster, they transferred Mitch Haniger from the 10-day to the 60-day injured list.

Philadelphia had designated Guthrie for assignment earlier in the week, clearing a roster spot for Darick Hall to return from the injured list. That spurred the first organization change of his career. Guthrie had been with the Phils since they nabbed him in the sixth round of the 2017 draft coming out of Florida.

Guthrie first reached the majors last September. He played in 14 regular season games and made a single appearance in the Division Series during Philadelphia’s run to the NL pennant. Guthrie has gotten into 23 more games this year, starting eight times.

Between the two seasons, the right-handed hitter has a .244/.393/.333 line in his first 56 trips to the plate. He has quite a bit more Triple-A experience, tallying 607 plate appearances in parts of three seasons. Guthrie is a .296/.359/.467 hitter at the top minor league level. He can play all three outfield spots and had some infield experience earlier in his pro career.

Guthrie has never been regarded as a high-upside prospect. The 27-year-old has some positional flexibility and a solid minor league track record, though. There’s little downside for the Giants in jumping the waiver order to add him as a depth player. He’s in his first of three option years, meaning the club can keep him in Triple-A for the next few seasons if he earns a lasting 40-man roster spot.

Haniger’s injury meant the Giants were operating with a de facto opening on the 40-man. He underwent surgery to repair a fractured right ulna last week. He’ll be out into September.

The Silver Lining Of The Angels’ Catching Injuries

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The Angels came into 2023 with an apparent logjam behind the plate, something that MLBTR’s Anthony Franco examined back in February. Prospect Logan O’Hoppe had just been acquired from the Phillies at last year’s deadline and seemed ready for an extended big league audition. Max Stassi was coming off a rough 2022 season but the club committed to him with a $17.5MM extension at the start of that year. With those two seeming to be likeliest candidates for jobs on the major league roster, it looked like Matt Thaiss might get squeezed out.

Thaiss, now 28, had already been through some ups and downs prior to the 2023 season. He was considered a bat-first catcher when the Angels selected him in the first round of the 2016 draft, using the 16th overall pick to nab him. Since his bat was considered his standout tool, they decided to focus on that, moving him to first base and seemingly abandoning the idea of him catching.

He always hit well in the minors, with an overall batting line of .278/.367/.454 in 582 games down on the farm. However, he wasn’t able to hit the ground running in the big leagues. He first reached the majors in July of 2019 but hit just .211/.293/.422 in the second half of that season for a wRC+ of 86. Over the next three years, he would spend the vast majority of his time on optional assignment, only getting into 40 major league games over those campaigns. He struggled in his sporadic chances, hitting .196/.307/.299 for a 74 wRC+.

Coming into 2023, he was out of options on account of languishing in the minors for most of the previous three years, but he was on the catching depth chart again. Although the Angels had initially moved him to first base and had also tried him at third, they moved him back behind the plate in 2021. He got into 54 games as a catcher for Triple-A Salt Lake that year. In 2022, he was behind the plate for 45 more Triple-A games and 14 in the big leagues.

It seemed like a fork in the road was coming at the start of 2023. He was out of options and was blocked by one player with a longer major league track record as well as a younger and shinier prospect. Although Thaiss was a former first-round pick and had plenty of minor league success, it seemed like he was destined to be cut from the roster.

But a couple of plot twists have happened since then. Stassi opened the season on the injured list due to a hip strain and has stayed there due to an undisclosed family situation. That opened a door for Thaiss to stick on the Opening Day roster as O’Hoppe’s backup, but then O’Hoppe landed on the injured list himself just three weeks later. He was diagnosed with a torn labrum in his shoulder that required surgery, putting him out of action for four to six months.

In less than a month, Thaiss went from the roster bubble to the club’s top catching option. No club wants to lose its top two catchers, of course, but at least this finally created some runway for them to see what Thaiss could do in the big leagues.

Thankfully for both him and the Angels, it has been working out well so far. In 51 games, he’s received 155 plate appearances. His 27.1% strikeout rate is on the high side, but he’s paired that with an excellent 13.5% walk rate. Among catchers with at least 150 trips to the plate, only Will Smith and Adley Rutschman have walked at a higher clip. Thaiss has just three home runs, but his .267/.374/.382 batting line amounts to a 116 wRC+. That places him in the top five in the league among backstops over that threshold of 150 plate appearances.

Of course, it’s not a total shock that he’s performing well at the plate, since that’s always been considered his best skill and he’s always hit on the farm. But he’s also holding his own defensively. By each of Statcast’s Blocks Above Average and their Caught Stealing Above Average metrics, Thaiss is graded with a zero or exactly league average. That’s not going to blow anyone’s socks off, but it’s a nice outcome for a guy who’s always been considered bat-first and wasn’t even catching as of a few years ago. Thaiss is still considered slightly below league average by Defensive Runs Saved and FanGraphs’ framing metric, but he’s not killing the club back there.

It’s also worth mentioning that veteran Chad Wallach is holding up his end of the deal as well. Those Statcast metrics consider him a bit below average, but he’s hit six home runs and is slashing .247/.304/.482 for a wRC+ of 114. For a guy who signed a minor league deal and was fourth on the depth chart coming into the year, that’s excellent production.

Turning back to Thaiss, he may not be a superstar but he’s inflated his own stock significantly in a few months. The roster squeeze won’t be coming back anytime soon, since O’Hoppe probably won’t be back until rosters expand in September — if he returns at all this season. Stassi’s timeline is completely unknown. He still has one guaranteed year left on his extension at $7MM, plus a $500K buyout on a 2025 club option, but after a dismal campaign in 2022 and this year potentially being entirely lost, he’s won’t be guaranteed any roster spots going forward.

Thaiss came into this year with one year and 38 days of service time, meaning he will finish this season at 2.038. That will leave him shy of Super Two status, allowing the Angels to potentially retain him cheaply for next year and three more arbitration campaigns beyond that. His defense still seems like a work in progress, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect continued improvements there given his relatively short amount of time getting reacquainted with the position.

The Angels have often had star power from Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and others, but failed to succeed as a team due to injuries and a lack of depth. This year, they lost both of their primary catchers by the end of April, but it hasn’t been a disaster, with Thaiss and Wallach deserving credit for picking up the slack.

Pirates Place Bryan Reynolds On IL

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The Pirates announced they have placed outfielder Bryan Reynolds on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to June 20, due to low back inflammation. Right-hander Cody Bolton has been recalled in a corresponding move. Andrew Destin of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette relayed the moves on Twitter prior to the official announcement.

Reynolds, 28, sat out the club’s past two games due to this back issue and it seems it has lingered enough that the club will give him some extra time to recuperate. Since the move is backdated by a couple of days, he can theoretically return in just over a week if he heals up quickly.

Since the club waited a few days before making this move, it’s possible that it’s not a significant injury and Reynolds will be back after a minimum stint. Nonetheless, it’s an ill-timed development for the club. The Pirates got off to a hot start this year but have fallen on hard times recently and are currently mired in a nine-game losing streak. They will now have to try to pull out of this tailspin without one of their best players.

Since debuting in 2019, Reynolds has hit 82 home runs and has a career batting line of .281/.360/.480 for a wRC+ of 126. He’s been essentially right in line with that production this year, hitting .279/.350/.473 on the season for a wRC+ of 122. He’s also swiped eight bags on the year and has solid marks from advanced defensive metrics for his work in left field.

With Reynolds out of action, the club has a few options available for filling the corner outfield spots next to center fielder Jack Suwinski. They recently recalled catcher/outfielder Henry Davis, who is in right field tonight with Connor Joe in left. There’s also Andrew McCutchen, who has missed a few recent games with an elbow issue but is back in the lineup as the designated hitter tonight. Calvin Mitchell and Josh Palacios are also on the roster and could factor into the mix.

Despite the club’s recent struggles, their 34-39 record has them just five games behind the Reds in the weak National League Central. The Bucs are reportedly open to going into the deadline as buyers this year, though that would surely depend upon them stopping their recent slide and staying relevant in the next five to six weeks. For at least the next week or so, they will have to do so without the contributions of Reynolds.

Yankees Place Willie Calhoun On IL With Quad Strain

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The Yankees announced today that outfielder Willie Calhoun has been placed on the 10-day injured due to a left quad strain. Infielder/outfielder Oswaldo Cabrera was recalled in the corresponding move.

Calhoun, 28, signed a minor league deal with the Yankees this winter and had his contract selected just over a week into the season. Since then, he’s received 149 plate appearances in 44 games. He’s kept his strikeout rate to a 13.4% level while walking at a 9.4% clip. His .239/.309/.403 batting line amounts to a wRC+ of 96, indicating he’s been 4% worse than the league average hitter.

That might not sound like a significant loss, but it actually could be for the scuffling Yankees. They have dealt with injuries to a number of players, including superstar Aaron Judge, who has been out of action for almost three weeks now. Several other players have also dealt with their own injuries or underperformance. Aside from Judge, the only other Yankees to have produced a higher wRC+ than Calhoun in more plate appearances are Anthony Rizzo and Gleyber Torres. The team’s collective wRC+ of 96 is right in line with Calhoun’s and places them 19th out of the 30 clubs in the league.

The Yankees haven’t yet made any announcements about how long they expect Calhoun to be out, but it seems there’s a decent chance it won’t be a minimum stint of 10 days. The outfielder told Chris Kirschner of The Athletic that he felt his quad “pop” while running to first base in yesterday’s game. He’s going for an MRI today and will be receiving a platelet-rich plasma injection in the coming days. There should be more specificity forthcoming but it seems the issue is potentially significant.

As for Judge, manager Aaron Boone provided an update today to members of the media, including Bryan Hoch of MLB.com. Judge made an excellent catch at Dodger Stadium on June 3, crashing into the right field bullpen gate and hitting his foot on the concrete pad beneath. He was diagnosed with a bruise and ligament sprain in his right big toe and is coming up on three weeks of missed time. Boone says Judge has now advanced to pool/balance/strength work and could resume throwing and light hitting in the coming days. That seems to be encouraging progress but there’s still not much clarity on his timeline.

He’s following up his MVP campaign with yet another excellent performance here in 2023, having hit .291/.404/.674 for a wRC+ of 189. However, that production has come in just 49 games since he missed time earlier with a hip strain and now this toe issue. As mentioned, the club’s offense has been subpar overall this year but they are still in the postseason hunt. They currently sport a 41-33 record, enough for them to currently be in possession of a Wild Card spot, though each of the Astros, Angels and Blue Jays are within one game in the standings.

Astros To Select Bligh Madris

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The Astros are going to select the contract of outfielder Bligh Madris, reports Chandler Rome of The Athletic (Twitter links). Madris will take the active roster spot of catcher César Salazar, who has been optioned to Triple-A. Madris isn’t currently on the 40-man roster so a corresponding move will be required, but the club is off today so that may not come until tomorrow.

Madris, 27, came to the Astros from the Tigers via a cash deal this offseason. He didn’t make the club out of Spring Training and was designated for assignment, clearing waivers shortly thereafter. He’s been in Triple-A for all of this year so far, getting 281 plate appearances in 60 games. He’s struck out in 25.3% of those but walked at a 15.3% clip and hit 10 home runs. His .249/.363/.446 batting line looks strong at first glance but actually amounts to a wRC+ of 93 in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. But he’s also stolen 10 bases while playing first base and the outfield corners.

The fact that Madris can play first base could be why he’s getting the call today. The Astros have gotten dismal production from the position this year thanks to the immense struggles of José Abreu. Signed to a three-year, $58.5MM deal in the offseason, the veteran is hitting just .225/.279/.308 so far this year. That production is 37% worse than the league average hitter, as evidenced by his wRC+ of 63. That’s the lowest figure among all qualified hitters in the league this year.

Needless to say, the Astros were hoping for much more when they gave Abreu that hefty contract, but now they are scrambling for backup plans. Yesterday, Abreu got a day off while utility player Mauricio Dubón was put at the cold corner for the first time in his professional career. Perhaps the recall of Madris will lead to him getting a chance to get some playing time at the position instead. The fact that he’s a left-handed hitter could also give a bit more balance to a roster where Kyle Tucker is currently the only player who hits lefty.

Prior to joining the Astros, Madris made his major league debut with the Pirates last year but hit just .177/.244/.265. He got squeezed off Pittsburgh’s roster in September but continued to get interest from other clubs around the league. He was claimed off waivers by the Rays and Tigers before coming to Houston in the aforementioned cash deal.

As for the 40-man move, that should be too challenging for the Astros. Michael Brantley has already been on the injured list all year, so he can be transferred to the 60-day IL and still be eligible to be reinstated whenever he’s ready.

Kevin Herget Accepts Outright Assignment With Reds

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The Reds announced to reporters, including C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic, that right-hander Kevin Herget has cleared waivers and accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Louisville. Herget had been designated for assignment earlier this week when Joey Votto was reinstated from the 60-day injured list.

Herget, 32, signed a minor league deal with the Reds in the offseason and had his contract selected in the first week of the season. He was able to toss 22 innings over 13 outings but with a 5.73 ERA in that time. His 6.3% walk rate was a few ticks below league average but his 11.5% strikeout rate was well below par.

Since Herget has a previous career outright, he could have rejected another such assignment in favor of free agency. But it seems he’s comfortable with the Reds and has decided to stick in the organization. He’ll now return to the Triple-A level, where he’s posted a 4.35 ERA over six different seasons. He’ll provide the Reds with a bit of non-roster depth as he tries to work his way back to the majors.

Ohtani’s Dominant Start Not Enough Against Dodgers

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Shohei Ohtani had his best start in two months Wednesday night against the Dodgers. The Japanese superstar went seven sharp innings and struck out 12 while allowing one run on five hits, including a solo shot to Freddie Freeman. 

Ohtani has been in a slump on the mound since recording a 0.64 ERA in his first five starts of the season, but he may be slowly finding his groove again. The 2021 AL MVP has now posted back-to-back solid outings against two strong offenses in the Rangers and the Dodgers. 

“If I can keep this up it’s obviously good, but doing it again is the difficult part,” Ohtani said. “I want to maintain the feel that I have right now for the next outing.”

On the season, Ohtani has a 3.13 ERA with a 32.3 K% and 10.3 BB% and is holding hitters to a .179 batting average in 89 innings pitched. 

Although he walked two batters, Ohtani’s sharp command particularly stood out Wednesday night, as he threw 77 of his 101 pitches for strikes and was consistently working ahead in counts. Unlike the last outing against the Rangers where he struggled to put hitters away and got just five whiffs, Ohtani recorded 20 whiffs against the Dodgers.

Ohtani cruised through the first three frames, fanning six and allowing just one hit on a weak grounder to first. His only mistake came in the fourth inning when Freeman turned on a hanging 85 mph cutter. 

“I wanted to throw it a little lower,” Ohtani said. “I was trying to get a swing and miss on a ball but I left it up, and you can’t do that against a good hitter. That was a mistake on my part.”

Ohtani barely faced trouble on the rest of the outing, never allowing a runner to reach third base despite giving up a few hits and walks. 

It was a four-seam and cutter-heavy gameplan for Ohtani, who threw the two pitches 79% of the time (50% four-seam, 29% cutter). 

The Dodgers are one of the heavily rumored suitors for Ohtani this offseason, and he was asked about his thoughts on the team after the game. 

“I’m grateful to all the teams that made the effort to sign me when I decided to come here,” Ohtani said. “But it doesn’t matter who I’m playing, and I’m focused on the season.”  

Ohtani’s next projected start is at home against the White Sox on Wednesday, June 28 at 9:38 PM ET/6:38PM PT.

Best Deadline Rental Returns In Recent History, No. 1: Twins Land A Rotation Cornerstone

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With the trade deadline now less than two months away, we at MLBTR are setting our sights backwards for a bit to highlight past trades of rental players to provide a loose guideline of what sort of returns fans can expect with their teams’ current rental players. With an arbitrary cutoff point of 2017-21, we’re counting down the top 10 returns that a team got when selling a rental player. We’ve already published some honorable mentions as well as entries No. 10, No. 9, No. 8, No. 7, No. 6, No. 5, No. 4, No. 3. and No. 2. If you disagree with our rankings, let us know! It’s all part of the subjective fun! Now for the top spot in our series…

The 2021 season was a disaster for the Twins. Fresh off a division title in the shortened 2020 season, they entered the year as the team to beat in the American League Central but faceplanted with a 9-15 showing in the season’s first month and never recovered. Offseason signings of Andrelton Simmons, J.A. Happ, Alex Colome and Matt Shoemaker all flopped. Top prospect Alex Kirilloff, expected to be a key contributor, was limited to 59 games thanks to a torn ligament in his wrist. Kenta Maeda followed up his Cy Young runner-up season with an injury-shortened year that ended with him undergoing Tommy John surgery. Jose Berrios was the only pitcher who even reached 110 innings on an injury-ravaged Twins staff.

Berrios was also one of several veterans the Twins wound up trading once they waved the white flag on their 2021 season. After years of failed extension efforts, he was traded to the Blue Jays in exchange for prospects Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson. That trade was one of the headline moves of the entire 2021 trade deadline, but it wasn’t the defining move of the summer for the Twins.

That distinction goes to the first trade they made, jumping the market to send designated hitter Nelson Cruz to the Rays in a trade that brought back a pair of pitching prospects: the since-DFA’ed Drew Strotman and a near-MLB-ready right-hander by the name of Joe Ryan. The Twins also sent minor league righty Calvin Faucher to the Rays as part of the deal — he’s since made his debut but hasn’t pitched particularly well — so it can be argued that this wasn’t a pure rental, but the heart of the trade was a half season of Cruz for the aforementioned prospects.

Regardless of how things play out with Faucher, there’s no getting around the fact that the trade didn’t work out as the Rays hoped. Cruz was hitting .294/.370/.537 with 19 homers in 346 plate appearances at the time of the trade, and Tampa Bay hoped they were acquiring a heart-of-the-order slugger who could deepen their lineup and provide some needed thump in the postseason. Cruz kept hitting for power (13 homers, 238 plate appearances), but his strikeout rate spiked as his walk rate plummeted.

The end result was a .226/.283/.442 slash, plus a 3-for-17 showing in an ALDS loss to the Red Sox. One of those hits was a solo home run, but Cruz’s well below-average OBP and dramatic rise in strikeouts (from 18.2% in Minnesota to 26.5% in Tampa Bay) fell shy of expectations. Cruz hit free agency following the season and went on to sign a one-year deal with the Nationals.

The now-26-year-old Strotman’s time with the Twins lasted barely a year. He was hit hard in Minnesota’s Triple-A rotation following the trade and moved to the bullpen the following year, which did little to quell his long-running command issues. He’s since bounced to the Rangers and Giants via waivers, the latter of whom was able to pass him through waivers unclaimed. He currently has a 6.54 ERA in Triple-A Sacramento. Strotman was an upper-level pitching prospect who had a chance to debut in the Majors in relatively short order, but his half of the trade (quite clearly) hasn’t panned out.

The other half of the Twins’ return is another story entirely.

At the time of the trade, Ryan had only just begun to sneak onto the back-end of top-100 prospect rankings around the industry. He was in the midst of a strong season with Triple-A Durham, pitching to a 3.63 ERA with a 34.9% strikeout rate against a 4.7% walk rate. Ryan’s lack of velocity — he averages under 93 mph on his fastball — perhaps created some skepticism about his ability to continue missing bats at that level in the big leagues, but his atypical release point has allowed him to continually befuddle hitters despite his pedestrian velocity.

Ryan’s time in the minor leagues with the Twins was brief, to say the least. Minnesota had the right-hander make just two starts in Triple-A following the trade before summoning him for his Major League debut. In his next four starts, Ryan held opponents to a 2.45 ERA with a 25-to-3 K/BB ratio in 22 innings. He was hit hard in his final outing of the year, finishing out the season with a 4.05 ERA and 30-to-5 K/BB ratio in 26 2/3 innings.

The Twins had seen enough to not only pencil Ryan into their 2022 rotation, but make him their Opening Day starter after just five big league appearances. Ryan’s 2022 campaign, his age-26 season, marked a significant step forward. The right-hander made 27 starts, pitched to a 3.55 ERA and fanned a quarter of his opponents against a tidy 7.8% walk rate. If there was any doubt about his status as a surefire big league starter, it’d largely been eliminated.

Continuing on at that pace would’ve made Ryan a clear building block for the Twins, but he’s taken his game to another new level so far in 2023. Long an extreme fly-ball pitcher, Ryan has added a splitter that’s helped him up his ground-ball rate and further neutralize left-handed opponents. Ryan’s 35% ground-ball rate is still lower than average by nearly 10 percentage points, but it’s a huge increase from the 27.7% mark he posted in 2022. Lefties weren’t effective against him in the first place, hitting just .202/.288/.348 in 2022, but they’ve flailed away at a .199/.242/.281 clip in 2023. The addition of that splitter has helped out against righties, too; they’re hitting just .225/.257/.373 against Ryan this year. Statcast credits the newly implemented splitter with a .196 “expected” opponents’ batting average and a .283 expected slugging percentage.

Ryan entered play today with a 3.30 ERA, 27.1% strikeout rate and 4.5% walk rate in 84 1/3 innings. After averaging just over 5 1/3 innings per outing last year, he’s been given a longer leash by the Twins in 2023 and averaged a bit better than six innings per start. The mustachioed righty has already surpassed his 2022 total of 2.1 FanGraphs wins above replacement, and his 1.8 WAR over at Baseball-Reference is rapidly approaching last year’s mark of 2.3. He’s a candidate for a 2023 All-Star bid, and if he can sustain this pace, he’ll likely find himself on the periphery of Cy Young voting later this season.

Because Ryan fell well shy of a full year of service time in 2021, he didn’t accrue a full year of service until the completion of the 2022 season. He’ll finish the 2023 campaign with two-plus year of service and won’t be eligible for arbitration until after the 2024 season. The Twins control him all the way through the 2027 season, though his performance through his first 46 career starts certainly makes him a logical extension candidate for the Twins if the two sides can find a palatable middle ground.

It’s difficult for teams marketing rental players to command any degree of highly ranked prospects, let alone a near-MLB ready arm who can step into a big league rotation just weeks after the swap is completed. The Twins’ willingness to jump the sellers’ market — Cruz was traded more than a week before the deadline — and his status as perhaps the top bat available on the market created the right circumstances for Minnesota to strike gold and set a new benchmark for modern-day rental returns.

It’s probably not realistic for fans hoping their teams can cash in on a high-end rental player to expect a return this good, but the Twins surely don’t mind Ryan’s status as a best-case scenario for a return in this type of swap. Their decision to re-sign Cruz for a third year netted them a half season of excellent offense and, quite possibly, six-plus years of a pitcher who’s increasingly looking like a front-of-the-rotation arm. It’s the type of return any GM or president of baseball operations dreams of every July but the type that is rarely achieved.

Images courtesy of USA Today Sports.

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