I don’t remember where I saw it, but I read the other day about some baseball executive who doesn’t like the idea of paying July prices for relievers. If it isn’t actually true, it at least seems true that relievers get the biggest mark-up come deadline time. Which might seem silly, given how few innings relievers throw. But then, teams keep paying. Maybe they’re on to something, or maybe it’s an inefficiency, but in our reality, we see relievers get prospects. The Mets just traded prospect Casey Meisner for reliever and free-agent-to-be Tyler Clippard.

Something you note about the Mets: they’re in second place in their own division, trailing the Nationals by two games. Something else you note about the Mets: they’re 3.5 back of the second wild-card slot, and the Cubs are also a game in front of them. Because the Mets aren’t even in playoff position, it’s easy to see things staying this way, the Mets ultimately giving up a prospect for practically nothing. But the Mets have been working to make the team better now, and, there’s something about relievers and important games.

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The Angels find themselves in what you might term a familiar situation. They’re right in the thick of the race, like they’ve often been, and they’re run by the guys that used to run them, by which I mean Bill Stoneman and Mike Scioscia. Stoneman and Scioscia see eye-to-eye on a number of things, and there’s a certain type of player Scioscia used to love. Prime Shane Victorino would’ve been a phenomenal Angel. Alas, there is no more prime Shane Victorino; alas, even if there were, the Angels wouldn’t have had the players to trade for him. So what we have instead is a match, exchanging little for a post-prime Victorino who might have just enough left in the tank. The Red Sox save a little money, and they can dream on a utility player. The Angels get to see how much turbo remains in Victorino’s well-worn legs.

I was reading an article the other week, when I stumbled upon the following excerpt:

Stoneman was nowhere near as active on the trade front as Dipoto. His most significant July acquisition was reserve outfielder Alex Ochoa in 2002.

Stoneman says it only makes sense to swing a midseason trade if it’s worth it, which is one of those statements you don’t realize is empty until you think about it for a few seconds and the speaker walks away. The general point is that Stoneman isn’t one to panic in the face of midseason trends. Yet in the case of this Angels team, the need for outfield help has been such that no one could dismiss it. Something almost had to be done. Stoneman did it, at the cost of Josh Rutledge.

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Even if it were not the most important game of his life, Cole Hamels’ might have just pitched the very best game of his life on Saturday, a potentially fitting end to a fantastic Philadelphia Phillies career. Hamels has started 13 playoff games, including three in the World Series. He put together a 3.20 ERA and 3.51 FIP in over 80 innings of postseason work. Five times Hamels has pitched the opening game in a playoff series and his team has won the last four. He won the World Series MVP for the champion Phillies in 2008 after starting two of the games and pitching 35 innings during that postseason. In 2010, he clinched a series against Johnny Cueto and the Reds with a shutout. So no, Cole Hamels’ start on Saturday was nowhere near the most important start of his career, but it might have been the best and it might have been the last. If Hamels is traded, he left the team nearly a decade after he started, and he provided one final memory in a career that already had plenty to begin with.

The Phillies called Hamels up early on in 2006, and by 2007 he was the ace of a staff that would help the Phillies to five straight division titles. In 2010, the team added Roy Halladay, and in 2011 it was Cliff Lee, although those additions could not top the World Series win in 2008, nor the appearance in 2009. After the run of division titles ended following 2012, injuries and age caught up to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee, with stars Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins also in decline, but Hamels kept pitching well as the losses piled up in Philadelphia.

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Three historically great pitchers were inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame this past weekend, with John Smoltz and Randy Johnson representing two-thirds of the former titans to be inducted into Cooperstown. There was always something special about the final member of the trio, however. He had a season in 1999 that ranked among the greatest pitching seasons of all time, and he put together a string of seasons between 1997 – 2003 that are collectively among the most dominant ever when compared to league average. That pitcher, of course, was Pedro Martinez.

Though there might never be another pitcher with the unbelievable combination of fastball, curveball, and changeup that Pedro had, it is possible there are current pitchers with arsenals that are similar to him. Today, in honor of Martinez’ induction, let’s try to answer a possibly unanswerable question: who’s the closest current pitcher to vintage Pedro?

We’re going to focus only on Pedro’s 1999 season — when he was at the height of his powers — in comparison to 2015 starters. As a preface, here is the incredible stat line from that season:

Martinez had the 10th-best ERA+ of all time in 1999, setting career-highs in strikeouts, wins, and Fielding Independent Pitching. He also famously struck out five of six hitters in the first two innings of the 1999 All-Star Game, proving his complete dominance on the mound at the height of the PED era by fanning Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Jeff Bagwell. Some would argue 2000 was as great a season for Pedro as 1999, but we’d be splitting hairs by trying to decide between them: they both represent two of the greatest pitching seasons in history.

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Yesterday, David Ortiz hit two homers. That’s a good day for anyone, and especially for someone 39 years old. I’m 39, too, and I’m writing this article and also my hip hurts, so advantage Ortiz! But! Two days ago Ortiz was preemptively one-upped by Alex Rodriguez. Saturday, Rodriguez hit three homers while he continued his 39-year-plus-long streak of being almost four months older than Ortiz. Rodriguez’s three homers were more impressive than Ortiz’s two in both the binary way that three is better than two, and in the way that, to date, this is just more of the same from a guy who spent the better part of last season at the beach because baseball didn’t allow him to play. Then there was the whole thing about whether or not the Yankees would even let him play for them again. As it turns out they’re quite the magnanimous bunch, and Rodriguez got to attend spring training and everything. Had George Steinbrenner been alive, Rodriguez would have been traded to the Marlins for Mat Latos’s cat, Cat Latos, and yes, this whole article is an excuse to mention Cat Latos.

But Steinbrenner is as dead as Napoleon so Rodriguez returned to the Yankees unmolested and has somewhat bizarrely arrested his career slide and reverted to his late-aughts MVP-candidate self. As I write this, Rodriguez has an wRC+ of 151, a mark he last bested in 2008, when he finished with a 152 wRC+. This is late peak-era A-Rod so far this season minus the defense of course. At this rate, it won’t be too difficult for him to finish with a higher wOBA than he’s reached in any season since 2009, more homers than he’s hit since 2008, and a higher wRC+ than any season since 2007.

Rodriguez has missed considerable time over the last few seasons, so nothing over the remaining 65 games is assured, especially so when you consider he hasn’t played 150 games in a season since 2007. So extrapolating his season numbers is perhaps a foolish (though fun) exercise. The prudent thing to do is to not look a gift centaur in the mouth (or in any other orifice) and take what he’s given us so far this season. In that sense, I want to look back at his three-homer day on Saturday to see what it can tell us about the hitter Alex Rodriguez is right now.

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After weeks of speculation, the New York Mets finally pulled the trigger Friday and summoned top prospect Michael Conforto from Double-A. With an injured and struggling Michael Cuddyer in left field, and few alternatives on their roster, the Mets needed some help. So although Conforto has just 197 plate appearances above A-Ball, the Mets are throwing him into the fire. Conforto hit .297/.372/.482 in just over 400 plate appearances between High-A and Double-A this year. Things have gone extremely well so far, as Conforto’s posted a 253 (!) wRC+ in his first three games.

Last week, shortly before Conforto’s call-up, Jeff Sullivan looked into just how much the outfielder might be able to help the 2015 Mets. Looking at the performances of similarly ranked prospects in their rookie seasons, he concluded Conforto might be a slightly below-average hitter right now. For a corner outfielder that’s not great. Better than an ailing Michael Cuddyer? Probably, but not by much.

The projections agree. Steamer calls for an 91 wRC+ from here on out. Conforto could easily surpass this forecast, but a 91 wRC+ feels like a reasonable expectation for the 22-year-old. Hitting major-league pitching is hard, and domination in High-A and Double-A isn’t a sufficient condition for success at the highest level.

So that’s the skinny on Conforto for the next three months. But what about after that? In theory, at least, Conforto’s best years are ahead of him. Let’s see what the data say.

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Want to be a better pitcher? Pick one of your pitches and work on it all offseason. Change the grip. Alter the release. It can change your career.

At best, you might find a new pitch that changes everything for you, like the time Clayton Kershaw picked up the ball and tried to throw a slider for the first time. Or you’ll improve an old standard that has faded, as Cole Hamels has done with his curveball this year.

While this sort of improvement happens so often in spring, or in the offseason, the most improved pitch of the first half is actually improving in front of our eyes.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Atlanta at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Wood (112.0 IP, 104 xFIP-) vs. Gausman (33.0 IP, 114 xFIP-)
Relative to some of baseball’s recent daily schedules, today doesn’t offer a particularly compelling collection of games, lacking a number of the clubs — such as Houston and Pittsburgh and Toronto, for example — currently featuring the least certainty with regard to their postseason futures (and thus eliciting the greatest urgency at present). This is perhaps the ideal sort of day on which to perform any number of tedious errands which have been neglected for too long: visiting the town offices, for example, in order to acquire a one-day burn permit — or, otherwise, procuring for one’s dog the bordetella vaccine, which protects canines against the influence of Italian culture and people.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta Radio.

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Trade season is now in full swing. The biggest trade of the summer (so far) came down the pike on Sunday, as the Royals acquired Johnny Cueto from the Reds in exchange for young, lefty hurlers Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb and Cody Reed.

As he often does, Jeff Sullivan produced a prompt and excellent write up of the deal and what it means for both sides. This morning, Kiley McDaniel provided the scouting breakdowns of the guys going back to Cincinnati, and now, I’m here with a data driven analysis of the players the Reds acquired for their ace.

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