When the Nationals decided to begin the year with Danny Espinosa as their starting shortstop, with top prospect Trea Turner beginning the year back in Triple-A, it was widely seen as another example of a team manipulating the service time rules in order to extend their controllable years over a valuable player. That narrative was seemingly reinforced when the Nationals stuck with Espinosa even after he hit .185/.316/.246 in April, especially given that Turner was hitting .317/.387/.463 in Triple-A at the end of the first month of the season. And as the two disparate batting lines were compared and contrasted, calls for Turner to replace Espinosa got louder and louder.

Trea Turner's at .357/.430/.529 in AAA. Danny Espinosa is hitting .182/.324/.200 and his OBP is inflated by batting in front of the pitcher.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) April 28, 2016

Yet the Nationals stuck with Espinosa. They pointed to his superior defense as a primary reason, also noting that Turner has some work to do with the glove, and stuck with that plan even after Turner came up and went 3 for 3 with a double and a walk after he got summoned to the big leagues while Ryan Zimmerman went on paternity leave. And now, as we reach the end of June, it’s probably time to admit the Nationals made the right call.

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Tampa Bay’s Blake Snell entered the season as one of Major League Baseball’s top prospects. Among the top-20 names on a number of the industry’s preseason lists and a dark-horse Rookie of the Year Candidate, there were rumors that the young left-hander might agree to a contract extension with the Rays that likely would have placed him on the club’s Opening Day roster. That didn’t happen, however. Finally, after sufficient time had passed to secure an extra year of service time for the Rays, Snell was called up to make a start and pitched well. Following that, however, a series of off days allowed Tampa Bay to deploy a four-man rotation. That, combined with a series of solid starts from Matt Andriese, meant Snell stayed down in the minors. Now he’s back and the results so far are mixed — but also easily corrected.

When a pitcher has compiled just three starts in the majors, and the first one of those is separated by more than a month from the other two, evaluating his statistics is a glass-half-full-half-empty situation. If you want to believe Blake Snell is doing well, look at his ERA and FIP — they’re 2.40 and 2.92, respectively — and how he has yet to concede a home run. For those who’d like to view the glass as half empty, consider instead that Snell has allowed five unearned runs for which his ERA (by definition) doesn’t account — and that, in his last two starts, he’s recorded as many walks as strikeouts. While giving up no home runs is good, it likely can’t continue like that and could lead to higher run totals in the future.

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There’s another disagreement regarding the Kansas City Royals and advanced metrics. If you’re still standing, you may take another drink.

This time, it’s Eric Hosmer and the defensive metrics. The Kansas City Star’s Rustin Dodd penned a column over the weekend regarding the disconnect between the perception of Hosmer’s defense and the evaluation of Hosmer’s defense. It’s a well-written and well-researched piece that’s worth your time, but I wanted to dive a bit deeper. And it’s probably about time we had the talk anyway — it’s been an elephant in the room each of the last three seasons, while Hosmer’s won a trio of Gold Glove Awards despite grading as nothing more than an average defender.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Seattle at Detroit | 13:10 ET
Sampson (4.2 IP, 112 xFIP-) vs. Norris (1.0 IP, 225 xFIP-)
The idea that being handed lemons by Life — the idea that this somehow represents an undesirable state of affairs — is a bit perplexing for those among us who’ve been compelled actually to pay for lemons at a grocery. Nearly as perplexing as the suggestion that, once having been supplied with all these lemons, that one ought immediately to run out and go make lemonade. Because consider: lemons are present in a number of pesto recipes. And serve as a nice complement to broiled fish. Nor does this even credit the many uses of lemon zest. Lemonade, whatever its merits, doesn’t come close to representing the fully actualized state of the lemon.

Today’s baseball schedule has handed the reader metaphorical lemons. There are fewer games than usual and a paucity of elite starters. But this oughtn’t prevent one from extracting pleasure from it. The best use of the day, perhaps? To play the role of impostor-scout and carefully observe the starts of Seattle’s Adrian Sampson and Detroit’s Daniel Norris, neither of whom has recorded even as much as five innings in the majors this season.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio.

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Our position-by-position tour of hitter contact quality reaches its midway point today. Last time, we looked at shortstops. Today, hot-corner regulars. As we have in the previous installments, we’ll use granular ball-in-play data, such as BIP type frequencies, exit speed and launch angle to perform this analysis.

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Ben and Sam banter about Steven Wright and knuckleball physics, then answer listener emails about the least interesting inning, the one-baserunner leash, an all-or-nothing Ichiro, Mike Trout’s hypothetical twin and more.

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The Indians lead the Royals by two games in the Central. They lead the Tigers by a little more than that, and they lead the White Sox by a little more than that. The Twins are also a baseball team. These things have a tendency to shuffle, and it’s not like the Indians are guaranteed to remain where they are all season, but this is what anyone would want. They’re right where they want to be. They happen to be the only team in the division with more runs scored than allowed. The Indians loom as the greatest threat to the defending champs.

A first-place campaign is built upon an intricate foundation, one comprising many parts. Francisco Lindor, for example, has completely changed the look of the team since he first arrived. It helps the Indians to have the Royals playing without Alex Gordon. It helps the Indians to have the Royals playing without Mike Moustakas. The various issues of the White Sox and Tigers have also been rather indirect good news. A baseball team isn’t one of those big things you can boil down to a little thing. But if I can exaggerate just a bit, I prefer one key, at least besides the presence of Lindor. The Indians are in first in large part because of Lindor, and they’re in first in large part because of their surprising group outfield.

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Atlanta’s ace, Julio Teheran, has a career 3.34 ERA, a good mark even for this pitching-friendly era. This year’s numbers, at least in some ways, are the best of his career. He’s a 25-year-old with less than $30 million in guaranteed money remaining on his contract, which runs through 2020 if you count the low-cost team option for that season. If the Braves make him available before the deadline, he’d instantly become one of the most valuable assets on the market.

But is Teheran an ace, like the Braves are likely to price him? Or is he more of a good pitcher on a nice run? Since assuming regular major-league duties in 2013, he’s 44th in pitching Wins Above Replacement despite being 11th in innings pitched, as he’s accrued value by staying healthy and racking up innings, but not dominating in the traditional walk, strikeout, and home run categories.

But this year, once again, Teheran is dealing, and he’s doing so without strikeout, walk, or home-run rates that would appear on the first page of each leaderboard. For teams hoping to acquire the Braves ace, they’ve got to be wondering who he will be on their team; the guy who looks great by ERA or the guy who looks like an innings-eater by FIP?

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