2026 Trade Deadline Thread

[ComeTogether]

 

 

[Bob_Gratton]

4 hours ago, sliderguy35 said:

i really don't understand all the love for bateman, he'd need to be a jacob young / kyle isbel / brenton doyle level defender to even sniff big league relevancy, the offensive profile he brings just does not play at the big league level at all. 

guys who juice their obp in the minors through passivity without having some other kind of carrying offensive tool end up as bench players or out of the league sooner rather than later. I looked at the last 15 years of AAA minor league data (min 250 PAs) for guys who had a 50+% GB rate, a 12%+ BB rate, and an ISO under 0.150  so essentially, guys who walk a lot but don't have power or the ability to lift the ball. out of 93 seasons, there are 2 guys who you'd consider good major leaguers: yandy diaz & ivan herrera (both of whom have ++ bat speed)

it's hard to have confidence that this is the center fielder of the future for a contending team

He can eventually be first in the batting order, coz he`s fast, disciplinate and always have good .AVG, so his celling can be like a Juan Pierre or Kenny Lofton

[Olerud363.354]

12 hours ago, sliderguy35 said:

I looked at the last 15 years of AAA minor league data (min 250 PAs) for guys who had a 50+% GB rate, a 12%+ BB rate, and an ISO under 0.150

Center the groups.  You are comparing Bateman to guys who have 67% ground ball rates, guys who are 36, guys who have .031 iso.  Take Batemen, whatever he is at then make him the center of the group.  So he has a 50% ground ball rate, go 47 to 53 or whatever.  He has a .110 iso.  90 to 130 or whatever.

If you order by wRC+ or on base percentage Batemen is in the top 10 with Yandy Diaz, so I think in some respects he is more similar to Diaz then the average of the group. 

It's tough to do this fairly.   Like another weird thing is Ernie Clement isn't on the list because his walk rate is too low.   So some of the successes are eliminated because they were bad at something.  I am sure Ernie Clement types are 1 in 50 to make it too, but it just seems Clement like guys should be on the 'here are all the weaklings without power that made it' list. 

 

 

[sliderguy35]

38 minutes ago, Olerud363.354 said:

Center the groups.  You are comparing Bateman to guys who have 67% ground ball rates, guys who are 36, guys who have .031 iso.  Take Batemen, whatever he is at then make him the center of the group.  So he has a 50% ground ball rate, go 47 to 53 or whatever.  He has a .110 iso.  90 to 130 or whatever.

If you order by wRC+ or on base percentage Batemen is in the top 10 with Yandy Diaz, so I think in some respects he is more similar to Diaz then the average of the group. 

It's tough to do this fairly.   Like another weird thing is Ernie Clement isn't on the list because his walk rate is too low.   So some of the successes are eliminated because they were bad at something.  I am sure Ernie Clement types are 1 in 50 to make it too, but it just seems Clement like guys should be on the 'here are all the weaklings without power that made it' list. 

 

 

You misunderstood the entire point of the post i made lol. Its not a "here are weaklings without power who made it" list, its a list of guys who never made it b/c having a high walk rate at AAA cant be your only offensive skill, otherwise it doesnt mean anything.

Bringing up ernie who a) doesn't walk & b) has a valuable offensive skill (pulling basically every ball he hits in the air) doesn't make sense at all in this conversation.

When I pulled that list, i already factored in the lower bounds (batemans GB rate is 52%, i set the bottom bound at 50%, his walk rate is 16%, i set the bottom at 12%), so "centering it" is just reducing the sample size for no reason.

But since you asked, heres the list with the groups centered around batemans stats. Hope you kept your canaan smith-njigba & mark zagunis stock!

 

[Olerud363.354]

15 minutes ago, sliderguy35 said:

You misunderstood the entire point of the post i made lol. Its not a "here are weaklings without power who made it" list, its a list of guys who never made it b/c having a high walk rate at AAA cant be your only offensive skill, otherwise it doesnt mean anything.

What you are saying makes no logical sense.  So you are saying that a low walk rate in the upper minors would be better?   The issue with these players isn't the walk rate, it's the lack of power.  So what you are really interested in is how often these low power players make it.  Include the guys with low walk rates too.  If the higher walkrate is somehow bad (like low walk rate low power guys make it more often than high walk rate lower power guys) that would be fascinating and counter-intuitive.   

Now you've created a group of 9 seasons where Batemen's is clearly the best and you are being a jerk about it too.  

Previously you had 90 players of which Yandy Diaz was the best clearly, and Batemen was probably top 10.  9 is too small a sample size.  90 was a good number but the group should be more centered.   It should include Batemen, 45 player better (of which Diaz should still be one), and 45 players worse. 

[Olerud363.354]

30 minutes ago, sliderguy35 said:

(batemans GB rate is 52%, i set the bottom bound at 50%, his walk rate is 16%, i set the bottom at 12%

you ended up with a group that went from 50% to 67% ground ball rate.  Why not 45% to 55% ?

I would go for a group of 100 players, with Bateman being the center of every stat you think is important, and increase the range (in normalized standard deviations) until you get about 100.

I do get the point about Clement, but his ground ball rate started high in the minors, and ended low.  1.7 his first year, to 0.59 when he was good in Buffalo.  Not sure if his 2019 stats can be trusted.  He went something like 1.3, 0.24, 1.0, and then 0.59 in terms of ground ball rate.

[Omar]

Kevin Youkilis has entered the chat!

[Jays24]

15 hours ago, ComeTogether said:

 

 

Dont worry, we are too lol.  

[Olerud363.354]

One reason Batemen is hitting for a high average this year is a 25% or so line drive rate, and < 10 % iff, on a 20% fb rate, so like a 2% iff off of all batted balls. 

The funny thing is if you try to make a group of 100 centering line drive rate with the other things, you can't because there is like only a 3 or 4 others, with similar walk rate and power with that high a line drive rate. 

His pop-up rate is also low, his k-rate fairly low, so all that low fly ball rate and iff on top of it, high line drive rate, explains the average this year (some luck too, but not all luck). 

Whether or not the LD rate is sustainable, probably not, I don't know.  

But back to Ernie Clement.  Ernie sucked, Ernie had no power, Ernie I guess learned to pull fly balls. 

So Batemen sucked at 23.   Kind of really similar to Ernie at 23 in double a.  Batemen (low sample size) has changed the batted ball data a bit (high line drive rate) in a way if sustainable would work.   So different story I guess but to me, the Ernie Clement comparison is fair, at least to the matter of guy who sucked, changed approach, got better.  

Not saying Batemen's LD rate is sustainable.  I actually don't know.   Just that the LD rate should be in there to when trying to figure all this out. 

[Omar]

Sliderguy thinks Bateman will eventually washout in terms of developing into a bonafide major leaguer based on what he already articulated wrt high obp, low iso, etc. 

Olerud do you disagree?  

[metafour]

2 hours ago, sliderguy35 said:

its a list of guys who never made it b/c having a high walk rate at AAA cant be your only offensive skill, otherwise it doesnt mean anything.

But his walk rate isn't his only offensive skill. He is also a BABIP-God (career .352 BABIP in the minors) which is driven by his consistently above-average LD% (26-29% every single year), low IFFB%, and speed.

He obviously needs to add some more power to project as more than just a defensive CF, but even when you look at guys like Ernie Clement you need to realize that the player you see today didn't even materialize until his age 25+ seasons. He hit for zero power prior to then, and I'd bet that he wasn't pulling his flyballs from ages 21-25 either. Clement also didn't become a sub-40% GB hitter until he broke out in the MLB in 2024. He was a 40%+ GB hitter all throughout the minors before then.

Both Clement and Lukes learned new "skills" in their late 20's, hence why they both went from non-prospects to solid MLB players.

I'm not going to pretend like it is likely that he succeeds, but the Jays have had some success adding power to guys who were showing none beforehand (look at Dub Gleed), and Bateman in particular had hamate surgery in Feb of 2025 which clearly impacted his 2025 season.

 

[Omar]

Thats why I posted Kevin Youkilis has entered the chat.  He was the king of walks in the minors but developed power later at the major league level.

[Terminator]

Bateman kind of looks like Myles Straw?

Straw is faster and is a better defender. Bateman bats lefty though which makes him a more valuable strong side platoon partner instead of short side. And Bateman's power has ticked up a little bit (he's doubled his ISO this year). 

Straw has a pretty good launch angle and Bateman is a worm burner but since he bats left that could be okay?

IDK this Gausman trade has been a head scratcher for me. But there's got to be something they see with Bateman.

[Brownie19]

Olerud - please don't scare off sliderguy.  He's a great addition to the board.  Thanks.

[Olerud363.354]

16 minutes ago, Brownie19 said:

Olerud - please don't scare off sliderguy.  He's a great addition to the board.  Thanks.

The comparables thing with minor league players is really tough to do properly.  And is one thing that should be questioned.  

[Olerud363.354]

1 hour ago, Terminator said:

Straw has a pretty good launch angle and Bateman is a worm burner but since he bats left that could be okay?

This year I think he has a 52% ground ball rate, 26% line drive rate and 22 fly ball rate, with a 8% popup rate, which my understanding means 2% pop-ups per batted ball.  Then he has a fairly low k rate and speed. 

I think all that partially explains the high batting average (and some luck). 

He also apparently had a hamate injury in 2025 which could explain the disgusting numbers that year. 

I don't really know if the 26% line drive rate is meaningful if he doesn't hit the ball super-hard, or is even sustainable. 

Like maybe major league outfields would just play way shallow in on him and catch his soft line drives.  

[sliderguy35]

4 hours ago, Olerud363.354 said:

Not saying Batemen's LD rate is sustainable.  I actually don't know.   Just that the LD rate should be in there to when trying to figure all this out. 

LD rate has very little year to year correlation at the big league level. The reason for this and the reason i always quote GB% is that hitters are able to control whether or not a ball is on the ground or in the air, but have almost no control over whether a ball in the air ends up as a LD or a flyball. 

minor league pitching and defense are just so much worse that stats like babip and walk rate should be discounted. Term brought up straw, whos a good minor league comp here, minor league babip god who walked a ton. You look under the hood and the walks were just a result of being passive (incredibly high called strike rate) and as soon as he got to the big leagues, they challenged him in zone and he couldnt do anything to punish them. Is he a myles straw level defender? Probably not! Since the latest fangraphs report said his reads off the bat were questionable at times.

In general when looking at minor league hitters, the things to look at are:

• batted ball profile (GB vs in the air / pull vs oppo)
• Exit velocity / barrels
• swing decisions (do they chase? if they dont chase, are they just passive or are they aggressive in the zone too)

Its like how ERA doesnt matter when trying to project pitchers long term. If you do all the things above well, you'll probably have good results based stats, but the results stats themselves like babip & wrc+ just do not matter in AAA.

(Defense also obviously also has a huge impact on how to value guys, but from the public side we have to rely on prospect sites)

[Olerud363.354]

2 hours ago, sliderguy35 said:

LD rate has very little year to year correlation at the big league level.

Just one guy, but it seems to be correlated for Luis Arraez.  I checked a few other guys, Steven Kwan, Daulton Varsho, Jayson Heyward.  A couple guys I expected to have high and low line drive rates, and it seems correlated for those guys.   Like year to year they are pretty consistent.  I mean it varies, but 2 years of Varsho's line drive rate would do an OK job at predicting year 3, same with Arraez.  

Now it could be true that it takes a while to stabilize so bounces around so half a season of 25% is meaningless.     All I am saying is that if the 25% 50% 25% break down was repeatable it might work.  

You could argue that 25% 50% 25% doesn't happen, and it has to be more like 25% 40% 35% because line drive and fly ball rate are correlated.