This year's one-stop-shopping trade deadline has come and gone, and it's no exaggeration to say that several teams didn't check off every item on their lists. Many didn't even come close, and some teams didn't do anything of note. With the disappearance of the August waiver period and its arcane rules for making trades, teams either have to solve their remaining problems from within their organizations, or by grabbing someone via the waiver wire, or by trading players who are on minor league deals, which significantly limits their options. If you're looking for rotation help, Zack Wheeler ain't walking through that door.
What follows here is a look at 10 remaining holes on contenders -- more or less once around the diamond, with some doubling up. Several are ones that I identified in my annual replacement-level killers series, which ran at FanGraphs the week before the deadline. For that series, I identified contenders -- teams with records above .500 and with playoff odds of at least 10%, a definition that covered 17 teams at the time but is now down to 15 -- that had received less than 1.0 WAR at a given position and hadn't already addressed that situation with a trade, a late-arriving prospect or a recently returned stalwart. Each positional list generally ran three to six teams deep.
The killers series does not address pitching, however, because every team has multiple spots where they're dealing with the dregs on the mound. So here I'll bring that half of the game into the equation as well as highlight some of the killer holes that weren't fixed. Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are through Saturday.
New York Yankees: Rotation
Yankees starters were lit up for a 6.23 ERA and 5.82 FIP in July. From July 21-27, they went 0-for-7 in getting at least five innings from a starter, and only one of their final 12 starts of the month was a quality start. Masahiro Tanaka's splitter has abandoned him, CC Sabathia's right knee has sent him to the injured list for the second time this season, and both free agent J.A. Happ and trade acquisition James Paxton have been disappointments. Domingo German, who has pitched as well as any Yankees starter lately, will run out of innings at some point, and there's no guarantee that Luis Severino, who has been sidelined all season due to rotator cuff inflammation and a lat strain, can rejoin the rotation.