For a good while this season, it looked like Clayton Kershaw was going to win the Cy Young Award this season for the fourth time in six seasons. It’s possible he still might: with a sub-2.00 ERA and FIP — and a WAR that still leads major-league pitchers — he has a strong case. But given his relative lack of inning (just 121 currently), he faces a steep uphill climb against those who will have spent far more time on the mound this season.

Jose Fernandez and Noah Syndergaard are likely to be mentioned for the most prestigious year-end pitching award. Kyle Hendricks is making a run at it, too. That said, no pitcher has been on the mound more this season than Max Scherzer. Only Fernandez is within 30 of Max Scherzer’s 238 strikeouts, and after a slow start this season, Scherzer is making a run at joining Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and Gaylord Perry in winning the Cy Young both in the American and National League.

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There was a time not that long ago when Masahiro Tanaka was one of the most exciting players around. He was then a new import said to throw the world’s best splitter, and though many lamented he just wound up on the Yankees, the most important thing was to see how he did. Tanaka, toward the beginning, was must-watch baseball. But we all move on fast these days. Tanaka pitched well, but in a way that resembled other players we’ve seen. Novelty wore off, as it always does. And then there was the matter of the elbow ligament. Tanaka has pitched through a tear, and I suspect people out there are afraid to embrace him, fearing surgery could be needed at any moment. That fear has legitimacy, but it would be legitimate with any pitcher.

We’re 71 regular-season starts into Tanaka’s big-league career. He’s run an ERA 23% better than average. This year, his numbers are no worse than they were when he was a rookie. Sure, the strikeouts are down, but so are the dingers, and this is a hell of a year to experience a dinger reduction. Tanaka, ever so quietly, has positioned himself as a contender for the American League Cy Young Award. He remains worthy of your attention. And helping to fuel Tanaka’s big year is that, for the first time, he’s throwing a successful fastball.

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Yesterday, preliminary rosters for the 2016 Arizona Fall League were released. Below I’ve provided a brief rundown of the many of the more prominent or interesting names included in this year’s class. Between now and October 11th, when the league kicks off, rosters will inevitably change — just as they will throughout the course of the league itself. If I’ve written about a player below recently because they were traded or because I’ve seem them lately, I’ll have a link to that report tagged in the post.

East Valley Teams

Mesa Solar Sox (CHC, CLE, MIA, OAK, TOR)

Franklin Barreto and Ian Happ are the big names in an infield chock full of bat-first infielders. Yairo Munoz and Yu-Cheng Chang (report) fall into that category, as well. Mesa’s outfield has perhaps the most impressive collection of talent since Scottsdale’s Mike Trout/Bryce Harper/Gary Brown triumvirate from 2012. Cubs OF Eloy Jimenez has easy 70-raw-power projection. Indians CF and 2016 pop-up guy Greg Allen (report) gets a chance to prove that his breakout year is for real (I think it is), while Cleveland OF Bradley Zimmer and Toronto OF Anthony Alford, two high-upside talents with serious swing-and-miss issues, have a chance to receive instruction from a new set of coaches as they attempt to close holes in their offensive profiles.

Sleeper: Marlins RHP Jeff Brigham fell in the 2014 draft because of concerns about his size and health but has been up to 99 in the past and pitched well in the FSL this year. I also like Cubs C Victor Caratini’s bat.

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The Kansas City Royals had won 13 of 15 games entering play on Tuesday only to lose their last two games in one-run, extra-inning fashion to the Yankees. They are now three games back in the Wild Card race and trailing five other teams in competition for two spots. Two weeks ago our playoff odds gave them a less than 1% chance of making the playoffs — and, two days ago, those odds were 9.4% — but after last night’s loss, they’ve fallen back down to 4.7%. Have the Royals really pulled themselves back into contention or has their late-season surge been for naught? They’ve proven projection systems wrong many times before and it’s possible the Royals are preparing for a magical run in September, but it’s undeniable that their path to the playoffs is not an easy one.

What strikes me most about the Royals’ recent run of success is that it’s come largely on the strength of what has been considered the team’s biggest weakness: starting pitching. Over the past 30 days, only the Cubs and Red Sox have posted a lower starters’ ERA than the Royals’ 3.42. Add in the bullpens and the Royals have recorded a 2.77 team ERA in the past 30 days, a figure which narrowly trails the Cubs’ 2.75 team ERA and is head and shoulders above the third-best team ERA over that stretch – the Pirates’ 3.41 mark. Meanwhile, their offense has posted a team wRC+ of 84 during that same stretch which is 26th worst in the majors and just a smidge ahead of the flailing Phillies offense (85 wRC+).

Inasmuch as the Royals have climbed back into contention, they’ve done it on the strength of pitching, which means it’s time to take a look at one of the key pieces in this resurgence, their much-mocked free-agent acquisition and current ace: Ian Kennedy.

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Heading into the season, the Dodgers’ outfield looked remarkably deep, and the big question was how Dave Roberts was going to find enough playing time to keep everyone happy. The starting trio of Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, and Andre Ethier all looked like solid regulars, but because of the depth, the team was likely to run a bunch of platoons: Scott Van Slyke would share time with Ethier in left, Enrique Hernandez would give Pederson a break against lefties in center, and Carl Crawford would play some days as well, probably at the expense of Puig on days right-handers were on the mound, with Ethier shifting back to right field on those days.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Ethier broke his leg in spring training and has missed the whole season. Crawford played poorly enough to get released. Hernandez and Van Slyke have struggled with injuries and poor performance, and have seen their playing time reallocated to Howie Kendrick and Trayce Thompson, respectively. The team tired of having Puig around, so they traded for Josh Reddick in July.

But despite cycling through a half-dozen internal options and making a deadline acquisition for a former All-Star, the Dodgers are currently being carried by an outfielder that they could not have imagined would be playing a significant role for them this year. Last night, after getting down early in the second game of a double-header, they came from behind to beat the Rockies 10-8 on the strength of a grand slam from rookie Andrew Toles. It would have been more shocking if Toles hadn’t been torching big-league pitching since making his debut in July.

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What a time to be alive. Not only is 29-year-old Tim Tebow attempting to launch a career as a baseball player, but he held a showcase in front of scouts from 28 teams — and actually managed to impress some of them. The ex-NFL quarterback put on a show in batting practice, which prompted some scouts to spew superlatives about his power tool. The rest of his game was underwhelming, however, including his performance against live pitching and his throwing arm.

When it comes to gauging Tebow’s talent, all we really have is this showcase and the scouting grades that came out of it. He hasn’t played baseball since high school, so we have exactly zero statistical data to use. The logical conclusion seems to be that he isn’t very good. Sure, Tebow was something of a prospect in high school, but a tiny fraction of high-school baseball prospects succeed in the pros, and that’s without having sat out a dozen years.

The responsible thing to do would be to recognize that this is little more than a publicity stunt and that Tebow will probably bust. But where’s the fun in that? Instead, I decided to play around with the shred of data we do have and infer what it might mean for Tebow’s future.

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Carlos Rodon didn’t have the time to make his initial pro-ball adjustments in the minor leagues. Less than a year after being drafted third overall by the Chicago White Sox in the 2014 amateur draft, he was summoned the majors. When Rodon got the call, he’d made all of eight minor-league starts and had thrown just 34.2 innings. So it’s not a surprise to see him find things along the way, like that moving toward the third-base side of the rubber halfway through his rookie year would help with his fleeting fastball command. That’s the sort of early-career adjustment that might typically happen out of the public eye, under the watch of a Double-A manager. Rodon’s not going to have the typical career. We’ll see nearly every adjustment he makes. We’re seeing one right now.

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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
San Francisco at Chicago NL | 20:05 ET
Samardzija (166.2 IP, 102 xFIP-) vs. Montgomery (79.2 IP, 85 xFIP-)
Without wasting even a moment on something as pedestrian as “research,” the author of this post is prepared to state that today’s schedule features the fewest games of any specific day so far this season, with the exception of those which precede and follow the All-Star game. Nevertheless, that schedule also features the San Francisco Giants, a club whose games are of greater consequence right now than basically every other team’s. Per the coin-flip methodology that appears at this site, the Giants currently possess a 36% probability of winning the division and 46% probability of qualifying for the wild-card game — which leaves just under a 20% chance that neither of those events will occur. Wild uncertainty, is how one might characterize their predicament.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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In February of 2015, 19-year old Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada agreed to a contract with the Boston Red Sox that included a $31.5 million signing bonus. In the 18 months that have elapsed since then, the baseball world has anticipated his arrival to its biggest stage and, this weekend, it’s going to get what it wants.

While we’ve all understandably been following and analyzing his progress and development in anticipation of things to come, possibly lost on us has been that Yoan Moncada is already a significant historical figure in baseball’s history. His departure from Cuba with the country’s unexplained blessing came at a time when the public was just beginning to understand what his predecessors and their families endured during their defections just as relations between the island and the United States began to change. He symbolizes the end of a historic era of Cuban baseball excellence, the most remarkable talent in a wave of defectors who have left the country, at least momentarily, dry.

His delivery to America and, eventually, the major leagues was preordained. There was too much money on the table for all parties involved for Moncada to take a bow behind an isolated archipelagian curtain. Unlike several supreme Cuban baseball talents who preceded him, American baseball fans are fortunate that they don’t have to ask themselves, “What if?” as they do with players like Yulieski Gurriel, Jose Contreras and Orlando Hernandez who debuted stateside past their primes, in their 30s. They instead have been asking, “When?”

Moncada’s relevance extends beyond international baseball popular culture and deep into the business end of things. He is so talented that, at the age of just 18, he shined a very public light on a multi-billion-dollar business’s flaccid and discriminatory system designed specifically to suppress the wages of teenage Latin American ball players by single-handedly pushing it to its limit. He forced Major League executives to confront a once-in-history scenario, a stoned sports fan’s hypothetical question about loopholes and generational talents: “How much money is the best teenager on the planet worth, up front?”

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