The 2023 MLB trade deadline has passed. The major moves of the season have been made. Teams will still tweak their rosters with call-ups and waiver claims. There will even be a handful of trades, as some minor leaguers can still be dealt. Mostly though, we can now declare that teams are what they are.
Through Wednesday's games, 20 of the 30 teams still had better than a one in 10 shot at the postseason, per my simulations. The teams in that group have a wide range of probabilities. The Atlanta Braves made the postseason in all 10,000 sims during my latest run; the New York Yankees made it just 1,241 times (or 12.4%). So while some teams have rosier outlooks than others, there is much left to be settled over the last two months of the regular season.
As always, a lot of players changed teams in the days and weeks before the deadline, as clubs clamored to fix as many roster flaws as possible. But only so many upgrades were available, and no teams got everything they wanted. Now teams will have to get creative when it comes to papering over underperforming positions and filling out the depth chart where a key injury has struck.
Let's run through some of these lingering roster holes of greatest potential impact on the playoff races. As I did last year at this time, I note each team's season-to-date performance at a spot (by baseball-reference.com's positional WAR) and rest-of-season forecast (per FanGraphs).
I'll also preview some potential solutions for these problem spots now that we know a major trade is not going to fix things.