One fact for you: After Tuesday, the American League has won 16 of the past 20 All-Star Games. The National League has won a lousy three, and then there was the silly one. That’s a pretty striking set of results.

Another fact for you: The fact above doesn’t really mean much. Leaving aside all the countless other considerations — we’re talking about 20 games. The Cubs have lost 14 of their past 20 games. The Phillies have won 12 of their past 20 games. The Cubs are a lot better than the Phillies. No one would ever argue that.

A third fact for you: Fans don’t really have league allegiances. It doesn’t really matter to fans which league is better. You just want your team to be good in its league, and then you want to win the last series. There aren’t rival AL and NL street gangs. Differences can exist, and so what.

But, a fourth fact: It’s often said the AL is better than the NL. It long has been. Is it still? It’s an easy thing to check up on, and we are now more than halfway through the season. We can look at things. These have been introductory facts. Let us now consider even more facts.

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The All-Star Game is behind us, the unofficial second half of the season is set to kick off and, today, we present the last installment in our position-by-position look at hitter contact quality. Last time, it was right fielders; this time, catchers. Granular ball-in-play data such as BIP frequencies, exit speed and launch angle are the key inputs in this analysis.

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Over the past few weeks I’ve seen Cleveland Indians prospects in several different places: at the club’s Spring Training complex in Goodyear, Arizona; at the Cal/Carolina League All-Star Game in Lake Elsinore, California; in Wilmington, Delaware; and at the Futures Game in San Diego. Below are my notes on some of Cleveland’s most relevant prospects scouted during this brief window.

Justus Sheffield, LHP, Lynchburg (High-A)

Once primarily a fastball/curveball pitcher, Sheffield’s most used secondary offering now appears to be a slider. His fastball sat 93-95 mph at the Cal/Carolina League All-Star Game in one inning of work and then was 92-94 in his first post-ASG start in Wilmington. Frequently, Sheffield, who is listed at 5-foot-10, fails to get on top of his fastball and the pitch comes in flat and hittable. The slider isn’t totally new — I wrote up Sheffield back in 2014 when it was his fourth option — but, considering how promising the curveball once looked, it’s a bit of surprise that that the slider has become his go-to secondary weapon. It was 84-86, some featured tight, two-plane movement while others were shorter and more cutter-like. It flashed above-average, and I think there’s a chance it could one day be a 55 offering, but was generally fringe-average to average. Sheffield is already trying to run his slider inside on right-handed hitters.

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One of Dino Ebel’s responsibilities as Mike Scioscia’s bench coach is positioning the outfielders. It’s a data-driven task. Ebel — now in his 12th season with the Angels — relies heavily on information provided by the front office and scouting staff. When you see Kole Calhoun move in several steps or Mike Trout shifting into the opposite-field gap, you can be sure it was done with probability in mind.

Ebel explained what goes into positioning the Anaheim outfield prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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Ebel on positioning the outfield: “We look at spray charts and who is pitching. We look at the last 150 at-bats to the last 1,000 at-bats, or whatever it is they give us. Our front office provides us with a lot of data and we put it all together. We have an in-house guy who does the dots.

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And now we’re really getting into the best players in the game. This group is made up of some of the elite performers in the sport, and the quality of short-term value is nearly as high as it is with the top 10. The difference for most of these guys is price and control years; many of them are into their arbitration years and are close enough to free agency that they don’t bring a lot of long-term value. But their short-term impacts are still large enough to put them among the most valuable assets in baseball.

As a reminder for those who haven’t read the first three parts of the series, we’ve significantly upgraded the way we’re presenting the information this year. On the individual player tables, the Guaranteed Dollars and Team Control WAR — which are provided by Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections — rows give you an idea of what kind of production and costs a team could expect going forward, though to be clear, we’re not counting the rest of 2016 in those numbers; they’re just included for reference of what a player’s future status looks like. And as a reminder, we’re not ranking players based on those projections, as teams aren’t going to just make trades based on the ZIPS forecasts. That said, they’re a useful tool to provide some context about what a player might do for the next few years.

With those items covered, let’s get to the guys who just missed making the top 10.

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James McCann remains a work in progress, but he’s established himself as more than Detroit’s catcher of the future. The 26-year-old University of Arkansas product is entrenched as the Tigers’ primary backstop, having earned the lion’s share of playing time thanks to solid defense and strong leadership skills.

The one thing McCann hasn’t been providing is offense. The second-year player is slashing just .208/.259/.324, with five home runs. Those numbers have come over 53 games, as McCann missed three weeks in April with an ankle injury. Last season, he logged a .683 OPS in 114 games of big-league action.

McCann talked about his defensive game, including his game-calling and improved framing, earlier in the season.

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McCann on processing information and reading hitters: “There’s a stat for everything. You can look up what guys are hitting on 1-1 counts against sliders, and probably even what they’re doing in long sleeves versus short sleeves. That’s how crazy it gets. The information available to us is endless.

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A few months back, Jeff Sullivan asked me what type of baseball dork I am. A big one, is probably the answer, but Jeff was inquiring on a more specific level. He asked: hitting or pitching? I answered: defense. It’s what I was best at when I played the game. It’s what my favorite players did best growing up. It’s the area of the game, analytically speaking, which most interests me. I derive more pleasure doing deep dives on defense in cases of dissenting opinion — talking about guys like Eric Hosmer, Jose Iglesias, or Jay Bruce — probably moreso than any other type of post I write. This won’t be a super deep dive. This is more of an observation, some video, and maybe a few chuckles. With Bartolo Colon, there’s always some chuckles. We’re all Bartolo Colon dorks.

Because I’m a defense dork, I hand out my own Gold Glove Awards at the end of each year, which really are just the numbers’ Gold Glove Awards, because all the different defensive metrics in one is all I use for those posts. And so, because I do that at the end of each season for the posts, I often find myself doing it at the midway point of each season, as well, just to see. I bring this up because I just did it, and that’s why this post exists. Because here’s how the pitchers currently grade out:

Total Defensive Runs, Pitchers

1. Bartolo Colon, +3.8 runs saved
2. Zack Greinke, +3.6
3. Dallas Keuchel, +3.2
4. Tyler Chatwood, +3.0
5. Justin Verlander, +2.9

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Every year we go through the same routine. A previously unimpressive player has a couple great months and we wonder if we’re observing something new and meaningful or if it’s simply random variation and the regression monster is coming. I haven’t done a thorough analysis, but I’d imagine a larger percentage of articles written on sites like this during the first months contain the sentiment “This sure looks new and interesting, but it’s just too early to tell.”

Frequently, we don’t follow up on these analyses. There’s simply too much going on throughout the game and there usually isn’t much to add to the original article other than thumbs up or down. Last year, one such article that actually merited a follow-up was this one concerning Zack Cozart’s best 40 games. After three seasons of well below-average offense, the slick-fielding shortstop was crushing the ball into late May. I pointed out that Cozart seemed to have developed a new approach that generated harder contact and more pulled fly balls, which was supported by some comments by Cozart himself regarding a conversation he’d had with Barry Larkin during Spring Training.

Three weeks after the article appeared on the site, Zack Cozart suffered a nasty right-knee injury and was sidelined for the remainder of the season. That meant I would have to wait more than a full calendar year to approach a sufficiently large sample to determine if Cozart had really improved or if we were looking at some well-timed good fortune. Thirteen months after Cozart’s knee gave out, we have our answer: Zack Cozart can hit.

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Not too long ago, I wrote about how the Blue Jays have gotten back to hitting the snot out of the ball. That shouldn’t be too surprising — a year ago, the Blue Jays hit the snot out of the ball. There was something in there, though, I’ve had trouble shaking. I included it as just a throwaway remark, but with Jose Bautista sidelined for the past few weeks, Ezequiel Carrera has gotten regular playing time. And even Ezequiel Carrera has hit.

Odds are, you don’t care. At least, you don’t care much. Several of you might not have ever heard of Carrera before. He’s 29 and he’s made the rounds, and, well, low-profile players can get on good runs. Numbers like Carrera’s could be easy to ignore, but I’ve known of Carrera for years, and I dug in. Carrera has started to show something. Somethings, more like. He’s got a good batting line for the first time in his career. The Blue Jays, as an organization, seem to know something about hitting, and I’m wondering now if even Carrera is reaping the benefits.

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Ben and Sam banter about box scores and the All-Star Game, then answer listener emails about alien abductions, odd career arcs, Clayton Kershaw, and being above or below .500.

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