RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The trade deadline is only five days away and unless you count the Connelly Early-for-Curtis Mead swap , we're still waiting for the first significant trade of the summer. Expect the biggest moves ( Tarik Skubal ? Mason Miller ?) to happen just before the deadline, which is 6 p.m. ET on Monday, Aug. 3. Smaller moves will trickle in between now and then. Until then, here are three trends worth knowing about around baseball.
Last Thursday, the Diamondbacks made a quick one-game stop in St. Louis to play a makeup game against the Cardinals . The two teams got rained out on June 25 and last Thursday's mutual off-day was the best day to make it up. The D-backs were in the middle of traveling from Arizona to Washington and the Cardinals were coming home from Anaheim. Inconvenient, but that's baseball.
That makeup game wound up being notable because, in the fifth inning, Corbin Carroll ripped a leadoff triple and later scored Arizona's fourth run in what became a 10-6 win. It was Carroll's 55th career triple, which moved him into a tie with Starling Marte and Mike Trout for the most triples among active players. Here's the play:
Carroll has, of course, played many fewer games than Marte and Trout, who made their MLB debuts when Carroll was in elementary school. He recorded his 55th triple in his 587th career game. Marte hit his 55th triple in his 1,421st game on Sept. 14, 2024. Trout hit his 55th triple in his 1,542nd game on April 25, 2025. Carroll got there in 1,000 fewer games, more or less.
"I just think there's value in taking the extra base. If you can get (to third) before two outs, you don't necessarily have to get a hit in order to score a run," Carroll said in May (via MLB.com ). "I'm just always trying to run hard and make the job easier for a teammate. I just want to take advantage of what's given to me, and when the opportunity is there, I definitely want to take the extra base."
Carroll led the league in stolen bases every year from 2023-25 and his 41 steals those three years were 12 more than runner-up Jarren Duran . He's not just this generation's best triples threat either. He's approaching history. Here are the most stolen bases through a player's first five MLB seasons in the Expansion Era (since 1961):
There are still two months to play this year, Carroll's fifth season, and his first season was technically his 32-game late-season call-up in 2022. He entered the top five on that list without playing five full seasons. It helps that Chase Field is a great triples park with its deep corners and gaps, and high center field wall, but that's not all of it -- Carroll leads baseball in road triples since 2023.
Triples are a very cool and very fun baseball thing that do not happen often now. MLB has averaged 0.13 to 0.15 triples per game since 2020. As recently as 2009, it was 0.20 triples per game. That makes Carroll's three-bagger prowess even more impressive. He's doing this in a low triples era. When it comes to getting three bases, no one in baseball is better than the D-backs star.
One month into 2026, setup man Luke Weaver looked like another dud offseason acquisition in a winter full of them for the Mets . He surrendered a two-run homer to CJ Abrams in the eighth inning on April 30 to blow a one-run lead, which gave him a 6.00 ERA with the poor underlying numbers to match (4.95 FIP and only a 16.0% strikeout rate). It wasn't great.
Since that game, though, Weaver has been one of the very best relievers in baseball. Going into Tuesday, he'd pitched to a 0.30 ERA (one earned run in 30 innings) in 28 appearances since April 30, and boosted his strikeout rate to an excellent 31.0%. Double what it was before, basically. Weaver shook off that poor April and reverted back to the guy he was from 2024-25.
"It's attack. It's confidence," interim manager Andy Green said about Weaver's in-season turnaround earlier this month (via MLB.com ). "It's filling up the strike zone with his fastball early, and then the changeup can really play at that point in time. His stuff is good. I just think he's had elite command with elite stuff, and that usually leads to really good results."
Weaver's turnaround boils down to two things: velocity and command. In April, his fastball averaged only 94.9 mph, and he did not throw a pitch over 96.5 mph. These days, that's barely average velocity for a late-inning reliever. The velocity came as he got built up more and stretched out. Since May 1, Weaver's fastball has sat 95.7 mph, and he regularly hits 97-98 mph.
Command, specifically of Weaver's changeup, has improved as well. Simply put, he hung the thing way too much in April. Too often, it floated in the middle of the zone, and a hanging changeup is a batting practice fastball. Over the last few weeks, though, Weaver has begun to dot it at the bottom corner and bury it in the dirt. Here are the pitch location heat maps:
A little more velocity and fewer hanging changeups can go a long way. In April, batters missed with 29.4% of their swings against Weaver's changeup. It's 40.4% since May 1, well above the 31.3% MLB average. Simply put, Weaver's fastball went back to being an above-average pitch and his changeup returned to the elite pitch it was the previous two years.
Weaver's success has created an interesting question for the Mets. Do they capitalize on this run and trade him, or keep him? He is owed $11 million next season, which is a reasonable sum for a high-leverage reliever, but might price some teams out. Given Freddy Peralta's performance and Clay Holmes ' injury, Weaver very well might be New York's best trade chip right now.
My inclination is to trade Weaver because relievers are so unpredictable year-to-year, even the best relievers. The fact that he's under contract next year means the Mets don't have to trade him. They can set their asking price, and if no team meets it, they can keep him for 2027. Regardless of the deadline decision, Weaver has been tremendous and the tea...
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