No roster is perfect. There are always holes even at the strongest clubs, little problems that the front office and the manager have to try to solve, game by game. Let’s examine some of these potential pain points, focusing on candidates. We’ll use some basic criteria: If a contending team has a position group that has performed, according to bWAR, at least half a standard deviation below average and projects to continue at that level for the rest of the season; may be on this list. Below are the roster holes with the biggest potential impacts on the title chase, with some possible solutions. Position rankings are listed for each position: season-to-date and projections, based on baseball-reference.com’s WAR for season-to-date production and Fangraphs’ remaining season projections. Trouble Position: Second Base (19th season to date, 28th remaining) Chicago’s inactivity at the deadline was troubling, though perhaps more a reflection of how thin its system has become than a lack of incentive to improve the roster. There is no position where the White Sox needed an upgrade more than second base, where their projection for the rest of the season is 1.6 standard deviations below average. Congratulations: This makes it the biggest position hole on a contending team. 2 Related The White Sox are left to sit idly by, relying on cornerstone defensive production and hoping they can make up for the offense elsewhere. Josh Harrison is ranked fifth in Fangraphs’ defensive rankings. Meanwhile, the White Sox rank 24th with a .611 OPS at the position. And it could get worse. Harrison has a .691 OPS and has been a positive contributor to the offense in the past. But during the four-year stretch entering this season, his overall OPS was .683. He’s been pretty hot the last few weeks, so maybe he’ll be better than what Chicago could have gotten from a trade pickup like Brandon Drury or Whit Merrifield. Projections don’t like his chances. At 34, Harrison probably needs an occasional sabbatical, but the less the better. That’s because Chicago’s other option at second is utility player Leury Garcia, who has had a terrible season. Garcia’s OPS is .511, and in my latest set of AX ratings — a consensus rating of advanced metrics — he ranked 1,342 out of 1,345 players this season. And yet only five White Sox hitters have more plate appearances. It’s possible that an option will come up on the DFA front, and if so, the White Sox will blow up. Their bar for upgrading second base, especially on days when Harrison is out of the lineup, is pretty low. Trouble Position: First Base (19th season to date, 22nd season remaining) The Guardians traded backup catcher Sandy Leon to the Twins at the deadline. Leon promptly stroked a two-run double in his first at-bat for Minnesota, the team chasing Cleveland in the AL Central. I bring this up not because I think the Guardians will disappoint the day they trade Sandy Leon (curse of Sandy!), but because this trade is a non-abbreviated summary of what Cleveland did at the deadline. The Guardians could use a catcher, especially now that they’ve traded Leon, but I want to focus on first base, mostly because it should be so easy for a team struggling at this point to find at least a marginal upgrade in the trade Buy . And Cleveland struggled at first base: The No. 19 ranked shortstop, led by Josh Naylor and Owen Miller. Naylor has hit righties very well this season, which is the main reason the Guardians aren’t worse at this point. The problem is that Naylor can also play the outfield, and the Guardians may need him to do that, or at least fill in at DH more often. And that’s because Franmil Reyes’ season-long slump has gotten so bad that the Guardians sent him to the minors earlier this week. Maybe Cleveland can make it at first base, but they clearly needed a bat at the deadline, almost any bat, but they sat back, did nothing, and as usual praised their interior options. The Guardians are a smart, well-run franchise, and it’s easy to take potshots at them from the outside. But it seems like we’ve been repeating this rant about their approach to the deadline for years. Trouble Position: Center Court (15th season to date, 18th remaining season) The Astros have a good margin for error in carrying a positional hole because they are so good elsewhere. They rank 17th in bWAR in center this season, but that’s misleading. Houston ranks just 25th in OPS at the position, so the overall mid-level production is mostly driven by defense. Which would be fine, but the player most responsible for the defensive position was Jose Siri, whom the Astros traded to the Rays at the deadline. I have to think that at the time Siri was moved, the Astros felt they would land another center fielder before the deadline, perhaps a slugger like Oakland’s Ramon Laureano. It didn’t happen. For now, the Astros will go with a combination of Jake Meyers, Mauricio Dubon and Chas McCormick in center. Lately, it’s been all Meyers and Dubon, but McCormick has provided the most at the plate this season. Houston’s projection for the rest of the season at center isn’t dire, and the talent at its disposal may do better. But the team is also unproven, so things could get worse. Then again, the Astros are so good overall that they can afford to juggle picks for the rest of the season and win the AL West going away. The problem will come when we get to October and a potential matchup with the Yankees, in which any marginal advantage (or disadvantage) can make a difference. The Astros might be another team watching the trade wire, where an intriguing name — Jackie Bradley Jr. of Boston, released Thursday — has already appeared. Trouble Position: Catcher (27th season to date, 19th season remaining) It’s clear that teams value their catchers in ways that don’t necessarily mesh with WAR compositions. The Astros, one of the smartest teams in baseball, have had every intention of using Martin Maldonado as their regular catcher the last two years, even though he’s hit an OPS+ of 60. Houston traded for Boston’s Christian Vazquez at the deadline, but that he had nothing to do with Maldonado and much more about the season-ending knee injury suffered by backup Jason Castro. With the Mets there was a dilemma. They rank fifth in Fangraphs defensive ratings at catcher and eighth in pitch framing. They also rank 29th in catcher OPS, just behind Houston and just ahead of the Cardinals. Obviously, the Mets have placed a premium on defense at the position. Not one of Tomas Nido, James McCann or Patrick Mazeika has cracked a .550 OPS. All three have positive defensive metrics, with Nido ranked fifth overall on Fangraphs. Which stars moved? Which contenders made the biggest splash? Here’s everything that went down before the deadline. Watch MLB Trade Deadline » Points for each offer » So well. You like the way your pitchers are working with your current catchers, and maybe what you needed to trade for future Cubs free agent Willson Contreras was too much. So you let it go with the guys that got you this far. McCann is nearing a return from an oblique injury and has at least a few plus offensive seasons on his record. Overall, the Mets project to rank 20th in Catcher WAR the rest of the season. The problem is that the teams the Mets are competing against at the top of the National League — the Dodgers and Braves — have no problem having to choose offense or defense behind the plate. They’ve gotten a lot of both, with the Dodgers projecting the rest of the season at catcher, the best in baseball. The Mets will have to make up for that big deficit at that position in other ways once they get into postseason matchups with the Dodgers and Braves, and let’s not forget JT Realmuto and the Phillies. The deficit could have been eliminated with the acquisition of Contreras. Then there’s the elephant in the room, as in a prospect with a very large body of hype behind him: catcher Francisco Alvarez, who incidentally hit a ball completely out of the minor-league field he played on Wednesday. Earlier this week, Mets general manager Billy Eppler told reporters that Alvarez was “not an option at this time.” Absent a deadline upgrade at catcher, the Mets’ best chance for better production at the position may be if Alvarez forces Eppler’s hand by getting too hot, too soon. Trouble Position: Shortstop (29th season to date, 25th remaining season) Apparently, the Phillies agree. While this was being written, word broke that Philadelphia had released Didi Gregorius — their most-used shortstop this season. The Phillies rank 29th in bWAR at shortstop with Gregorius, Bryson Stott and Johan Camargo combining for minus 0.4 wins. He is 29th with a .570 OPS at the position and 22nd defensively according to Fangraphs. With Grigorios gone, the defense should at least improve. Over a period of several years, he was one of the worst defenders in baseball in general, regardless of position. The plan to replace Gregorius seems clear enough: Let the kid play. Stott has been about a league-average defender as a shortstop so far, though the sample size is too small to make any firm statements about his acuity with the glove. Baseball America rated him as a 55th grade defender (slightly above average) in its preseason guide. Stott hasn’t hit so far, posting a .196/.262/.314 slash line, but he’s hitting .300/.389/.495 as a minor leaguer, and upside from those numbers looks like the Phillies’ best chance at turning this the position in strength, or at least without a hole, under the stretch. The Phillies also recently got Edmundo Sosa in the mix after acquiring him from the Cardinals at the deadline.