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Last night, Kris Bryant became the first player in Major League history to hit three home runs and two doubles in the same game. His offensive barrage was part of a five homer attack by the Cubs — Jake Arrieta and Anthony Rizzo also went yard last night — in their 11-8 win over the Reds. But while Bryant’s game was indeed spectacular, we also shouldn’t be too surprised that it came in Cincinnati, because the Reds staff is allowing dingers like no pitching staff in baseball history.

Through 77 games, the Reds have allowed 129 home runs, 23 more than any other team has allowed this season. That works out to 1.7 homers allowed per game, a pace that would shatter the all-time record for home runs allowed if the Reds were to keep serving longballs at this rate. The title of the most homer-prone pitching staff in history currently belongs to the 1996 Detroit Tigers, who allowed 241 homers, or a rate of 1.5 homers per game. They edged out the 2000 Royals, 2001 Rockies, and 1999 Rockies, all of whom were attempting to pitch during the height of baseball’s “Steroid Era”, when home run records were falling left and right.

To break the record, the Reds would have to allow 113 home runs over their remaining 85 games, a 1.3 home run per game pace that would be somewhat formidable for most pitching staffs. But for this particular group of hurlers, it’s actually not that hard to imagine them breaking the record.

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A few weeks ago, when the Pirates got swept by the Cardinals, while also losing Gerrit Cole and Francisco Cervelli to the DL the same weekend, I noted that the Pirates might have to be a seller this summer, as their playoff odds has dropped down to 14%, and it was looking like this might not be their season. Well, in the two weeks since I wrote that post, their playoff odds have continued their freefall.

As it stands this morning, we’re projecting the Pirates to finish at 80-82, and with the Cubs, Nationals, and Giants all looking like they’ll finish north of 90 wins, that leaves the Mets, Dodgers, Cardinals, and Marlins all looking like Wild Card contenders, each with expected totals between 85-90 wins. To make it into the Wild Card game, the Pirates would have to leapfrog over three of those four teams; that would require them to play at over a .600 clip the rest of the season, most likely, and this doesn’t look like a team that is likely to go on that kind of sustained run.

So barring a miraculous turnaround over the next month, the Pirates are going to be sellers. According to the rumor mill, teams are already kicking the tires on Mark Melancon and Francisco Liriano, and as the deadline draws closer, it’s easy to imagine interest growing in the team’s other contract-year role players like David Freese, Neftali Feliz, and Sean Rodriguez. But with the team looking like a likely seller, attention has turned to a less-likely trade target, with speculation mounting that perhaps now is the time for the Pirates to trade Andrew McCutchen.

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Five weeks before the trade deadline, contenders are starting to ramp up discussions on moves that would bolster their rosters for the stretch run, but this year, there’s a wrinkle. For teams looking to add an offensive upgrade, there’s also a free agent to consider: Cuban superstar Yulieski Gourriel. The infielder was the country’s best hitter before he and his brother left the country in pursuit of Major league jobs, and MLB recently cleared him to sign on and get his career underway. Instead of giving up talent from their farm system, a team could simply spend money to add Gourriel, and the ability to upgrade with budget room only has to appeal to a number of clubs.

But, of course, the question will be how much money the 32 year old Gourriel is going to cost. Every team would take him if the price was low enough, but because of the high incentives for large-revenue teams to spend on international free agents, Cuban players have increasingly been getting significant guarantees. And, unfortunately for Gourriel, the last batch of players to cash in after leaving the island have been a miserable failure.

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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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Heading into the season, the Mets plan to repeat as National League champions seemed pretty obvious; they were going to beat their opponents with elite starting pitching and an above average offense, hoping those strengths would outweigh their defensive deficiencies and a just-okay bullpen. It was a solid enough plan, and based on their depth chart on Opening Day, we gave them a 51% chance to win the division and a 78% chance to make the postseason. And mostly, those things have played out as expected. The rotation has been fantastic, ranking second best in baseball to this point. The bullpen has been fine, with occasional lapses. The defense has been bad.

But one part of the formula hasn’t really gone according to plan yet; that productive offense hasn’t really come to fruition. To this point, the offense has been a little bit below average, ranking right in the middle of the pack in wRC+ while costing themselves some runs with relatively poor baserunning. And on top of that, the team has distributed their hits in a highly inefficient way, so despite an expected 4.2 runs per game based on their BaseRuns inputs, they are only scoring 3.7 runs per game, third-worst in the majors.

Certainly, health has been part of the problem. First, Travis d’Arnaud went on the DL at the end of April. Then in May, it was Wilmer Flores and and Lucas Duda. June brought David Wright’s DL stint, and more recently, news that he’ll require back surgery that may sideline him for the rest of the season. The infield has ended up as a patchwork group, and with Michael Conforto and Alejandro de Aza not hitting as well as expected, the outfield hasn’t been able to carry the load. And so now, the team is openly talking about making more additions, and not waiting until the trade deadline to do so.

“I think we might need to do something before,” Wilpon said Monday at the Harlem RBI fundraiser in Manhattan. “The deadline is still four, six weeks away. We’ve got to start playing better baseball now.”

Thankfully for the Mets, identifying a potential spot to upgrade is pretty easy. They’re not going to add an outfielder, most likely, given that group is already crowded, and Conforto and de Aza can both be expected to improve in the second half. Neil Walker has been good at second base, and Asdrubal Cabrera is a good enough player at shortstop to not require a replacement. So, the team is left with just the corner infield spots or behind the plate if they want to upgrade the offense.

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A couple of weeks ago, James Shields gave up 10 runs in a start against the Mariners, prompting the Padres owner to call the team’s performance embarrassing. He even cited Shields by name, saying that the pitcher — 18 months into a four year, $75 million contract — should be embarrassed by his outing. It would be the last start Shields would make as a Padre, as a few days later, San Diego shipped him to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for a replacement level arm and a 17 year old who is a long way off from the big leagues. In order to facilitate the deal, the Padres agreed to pick up $31 million of the remaining $58 million on Shields’ deal, giving the White Sox an innings eater at an innings eater price.

At least, that was the thought. In both of his first two starts in Chicago, Shields has been a disaster, giving up 14 runs and lasting only seven innings combined between the two outings. Combined with his final start in San Diego, Shields has now allowed 24 runs in his last three starts, and it’s not like it was just bad luck; he has a 13.48/8.46 FIP/xFIP over those outings as well. It’s likely that Shields will turn things around, as he’s not the worst pitcher baseball has ever seen, but you have to think the White Sox are already wondering if the Padres sold them a lemon.

After all, it wouldn’t be the first time a perfectly reasonable sounding plan — a contender taking on part of an albatross contract in order to get a fairly priced veteran without surrendering much value in return — went sour. In fact, if you look at the recent history of deals made in the same vein as the Shields trade, they’ve almost all been disasters for the acquiring team.

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It was the tale of two cities in Pittsburgh this weekend. On Sunday, the local hockey team won the Stanley Cup, reaching the highest heights an NHL team can manage, adding another championship to the cities storied legacy. But at the same time the Penguins were setting in motion plans for a parade, the Pirates were getting swept by their division-rival from St. Louis. At home, no less. And that wasn’t even the worst part of the weekend.

During Friday’s contest with the Cardinals, team-ace Gerrit Cole had to be lifted after two innings on the mound, leaving with what has only been called “triceps tightness” to this point, but is likely to force Cole to miss at least one start, if not land on the disabled list. Catcher Francisco Cervelli then left the game in the fourth inning after suffering a broken hamate bone; he’s out at least a month, and hamate injuries are known to sap power from hitters even after they return to the field. These were blows the team couldn’t really afford to suffer, especially given how the rest of the weekend went.

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