When the Royals traded away Wade Davis in a one-for-one swap for Jorge Soler in December of 2016, the trade looked like a win-win. The Cubs needed a closer and had an extra young, cheap outfielder. The Royals had Kelvin Herrera presumably ready to step in at closer but needed some offense to make one last run with their core.

For the Cubs, the deal worked out as expected. In 2017, Davis had a very good year for a very good club. For the Royals, however, the trade went less well. Herrera struggled — and, even though Scott Alexander and Mike Minor exceeded expectations, the team probably missed Davis to some extent. Soler, meanwhile, played poorly, ultimately passing much of the season at Triple-A. The Royals ended up finishing just five games out of the Wild Card. If they had gone 11-8 against the Twins instead of 8-11, they might have had one last chance at October.

Soler is now off to a great start in 2018, and the Royals control him at a low cost for the next four seasons, although there is a reasonable argument to be made that winning the trade is impossible at this juncture. The Davis trade diminished the the Royals’ chances of winning a division title, prevented the club from receiving a compensatory draft pick, and led the team to trade away Esteury Ruiz, Matt Strahm, Travis Wood, and cash for Ryan Buchter, Trevor Cahill, and Brandon Maurer. Cahill didn’t work out with the Royals, Maurer is off the 40-man roster, Buchter was sent to the A’s with Brandon Moss for Jesse Hahn — currently on the 60-day disabled list — and Heath Fillmyer. That’s the road the Royals traveled down last year, it did not work, and now they are terrible and likely several years away from contending.

Concluding that the Davis-Soler trade is already a loss for Kansas City requires some hindsight analysis. Davis was hurt in 2016, and his performance in 2017 was far from a guarantee. There is an alternate, even reasonable, scenario where Herrera pitches well in 2017, Soler provides solid production in an outfield corner, and the money saved on Davis’s salary that went to (which went to Moss and Wood) produces two more contributors to a potentially contending team. Davis didn’t get hurt, Herrera wasn’t great, Wood didn’t pitch well, and Soler and Moss combined for -1.4 WAR on the season. The plan didn’t work out, but it was at least defensible in terms of competing in 2017 with the added benefit of acquiring a future asset in Soler.

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In 2015, A.J. Pollock posted the sixth-best WAR in baseball. The Arizona Diamondbacks center fielder put up 6.8 WAR — a total that trailed only Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson, Joey Votto, and Paul Goldschmidt. The 27-year-old hit 20 homers, stole 39 bases in 46 tries, rarely struck out, and complemented all that with good defense for a great season.

A fractured right elbow right at the start of the 2016 season robbed Pollock of a chance at a repeat, and last year he turned in a diminished version of his 2015 season while missing time due to a groin strain. Last year might have put to rest any ideas that the Pollock of old would return. The 2015 Pollock hasn’t returned this season, either. Rather, we’ve seen a new-and-improved Pollock who could be better than the burgeoning star we thought we had three years ago.

Through 33 games, Pollock already has 10 home runs, three triples, and nine doubles, his 22 extra-base hits tied with Mike Trout and behind only Mookie Betts and Ozzie Albies. Pollock’s .306/.362/.669 line produces a 173 wRC+ that ranks fifth in the sport, with his 2.1 WAR coming in behind only Trout, Betts, and Didi Gregorius. He’s on his way to a great year, and through the first 33 games of the season, he’s hit better than he ever has. The graph below shows Pollock’s 33-game rolling average of his wRC+ over his career.

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Yadier Molina inspires considerable debate. Debate about his importance to the the St. Louis Cardinals. Debate about his value in terms of wins, more generally. Debate about his place among the best players both of past and present.

Buster Olney himself stirred up considerable debate last week when he asserted that Molina was “the best catcher of his generation” and asked fans to vote whether they believed the Cardinals’ catcher would make the Hall of Fame. While the precise magnitude of his impact will continue to be a matter of some dispute, there’s less disagreement that Molina is both (a) a good player right now and also (b) important to the current edition of the Cardinals, even at 35 years old. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, they’re about to lose Molina for at least a month after the catcher suffered a painful injury over the weekend.

Before hitting the disabled list, Molina paced all MLB catchers with 256.1 innings behind the plate this season — or nearly 20 more innings than second-place Yasmani Grandal. The Cardinals’ Gold Glover had started 29 of the team’s first 31 games. Since the beginning of the 2015 season, Molina has started 435 games at catcher and recorded 3,750 innings in that capacity, roughly 50 games and 400 innings ahead of any other backstop. Now, Molina heads to the DL for first time since 2014 — and only for the fifth time in his 15 big-league seasons.

Most of Molina’s injuries over the years have been more of the freak variety rather a product of physical deterioration. He tore thumb ligaments in 2014 while diving into third base. He fractured his had in 2005 and his wrist in 2007. He did miss a couple weeks with a sprained right knee that had been bothering him during the 2013 season, but that’s the closest thing to a chronic problem.

This injury, what has been called a “pelvic injury with traumatic hematoma,” is most definitely a freak sort, although it’s among the risks to which catchers subject themselves daily.

Here’s how it happened:

Out of respect for readers, I haven’t reproduced Molina’s entire pained reaction. Basically what happened, though, is Jordan Hicks threw the ball at 101.5 mph according to the Statcast Gamefeed. Kris Bryant deflected the pitch just enough to divert it away from Molina’s glove. The ball ricocheted into an extremely sensitive area of the male anatomy. Molina immediately fell over, was tended to, and, shortly thereafter, underwent surgery.

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The Dodgers have not gotten off to the start they would have liked this season. Failing to win even half their games, they’ve seen the Diamondbacks parlay a strong first month into a place atop the NL West standings. The combination of those two developments has allowed the D-backs to turn the Dodgers’ projected 14-game divisional edge at the beginning of the season into a complete tossup.

Injury has played a part in LA’s struggles. The club, of course, recently learned that star shortstop Corey Seager would miss the entire season with Tommy John surgery. In addition to Seager, Logan Forsythe, Yasiel Puig, and Justin Turner have all missed time, as well. Despite all that, however, Dodgers position players rank third among NL teams in WAR. The Dodgers’ depth in the lineup has thus far passed the test.

For much of the the season’s first month, the club’s rotational depth hasn’t been tested in the same way. It’s about to be, however. And a good season out of prospect Walker Buehler — once a luxury in the organizational depth chart — could be necessary for the team to overtake the Diamondbacks in the division.

Before the season started, the Dodgers opted to get under the competitive balance tax to save money. In doing so, they absorbed the contract of the thus-far resurgent Matt Kemp, sending Scott Kazmir and Brandon McCarthy to Atlanta. Kazmir, since released by the Braves, was purely a salary dump, but McCarthy represented some depth for a Dodgers’ rotation that already had quite a few arms. Walker Buehler was foremost among that depth, but after pitching around 100 innings last year in his return from Tommy John surgery, he might have to blow past that mark this year to keep the Dodgers in the race.

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Tanking is a problem. Professional sports like baseball are built on the assumption that both sides are trying to win. Organizations putting forth less than their best efforts hurts the integrity of the sport and provides fans with little reason to engage. That said, the perception of tanking might have overtaken the reality of late. Competitive imbalance is not the same as tanking. Sometimes teams are just bad, even if they are trying not to be.

Tanking concerns are not new. Two years ago, just after the Astros and Cubs had turned their teams around, the Phillies were attempting to dismantle their roster by trading Cole Hamels. The Braves had traded multiple players away from a team that had been competitive. The Brewers, who traded away Carlos Gomez, would soon do the same with Jonathan Lucroy after he rebuilt his trade value.

The Braves, Brewers, and Phillies all sold off whatever assets they could. Two years later, though, those clubs aren’t mired in last place. Rather, they’re a combined 54-37 and projected to win around 80 games each this season in what figures to be a competitive year for each. While the Braves and Phillies could and/or should have done more this offseason to improve their rosters, neither resorted to an extreme level of failure, and the teams are better today than they would have been had they not rebuilt. While accusations of tanking dogged each, none of those clubs descended as far as either the Astros or Cubs. None came close to the NBA-style tank jobs many feared.

One might suspect that I’ve cherry-picked the three clubs mentioned above, purposely selecting teams with surprising early-season success to prop up a point about the relatively innocuous effects of tanking. That’s not what I’ve done, though. Rather, I’ve highlighted the three teams Buster Olney cited by name two years ago — and which Dave Cameron also addressed — in a piece on tanking.

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Josh Hader entered Monday’s game in the bottom of the seventh inning with the Brewers clinging to a one-run lead. Nine batters and eight strikeouts later, that one-run lead was the margin of victory. Jeff Sullivan predicted this, or something like this, more than two weeks ago in his article titled “Josh Hader Is Becoming Baseball’s Most Valuable Reliever.” You can see a lot of things coming if you read Jeff’s work, as he covered Hader’s arsenal and how the Brewers lefty is carving up hitters:

If Josh Hader isn’t baseball’s most valuable reliever, he’s close. He could get there soon, elbow willing. Plain and simple, he does everything right, going multiple innings at a time and pitching well independent of batter handedness. You could think of him as peak Dellin Betances, another non-closer who racked up strikeouts over 70 or 80 or 90 innings. Betances made four consecutive All-Star Games. Maybe his control is starting to go, but nothing is forever. Hader is that good, and he’s only improved since basically doubling the size of his repertoire.

Fast-forward a couple weeks and here’s the reliever leaderboard for April.

Hader is rightfully up top. That K/9 number is incredible and the 0.42 FIP naturally follows. Maybe most interesting is that Hader is the only pitcher on the leaderboard who has given up a home run. In small samples like what we have through one month, a homer makes a pretty significant difference. The only other pitchers among the top 20 of reliever WAR with a homer allowed are Craig Kimbrel and Bud Norris. For Hader to top the list despite allowing a home run is truly remarkable. That homer, to Tommy Pham on April 11, was very nearly not a homer considering it was called a double on the field and required a review to be turned into a home run. If that ball was a few feet shorter, Hader’s FIP for the month would have been -0.30. If you were wondering if that would have been some sort of record, the answer is yes, it would have.

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Through the first month of the season, no starting pitcher has struck out more batters per nine innings than Gerrit Cole. Cole is a talented pitcher whose fastball sits at nearly 97 mph. He also seems to have made some improvements since joining the Astros. His appearance at the top of the strikeouts leaderboard isn’t a surprise.

Next on that same list is reigning National League Cy Young-winner Max Scherzer. Scherzer is routinely considered one of the three best pitchers in baseball. Last year, he recorded the 13th-best strikeouts-per-nine mark ever. His appearance near the top of the strikeouts leaderboard isn’t a surprise.

After those two, one finds Marlins pitcher Caleb Smith. Smith is left-hander who was acquired in the offseason in a trade featuring international pool money from the Yankees as New York went after Shohei Ohtani. Smith neither throws 97 mph, nor has he won a Cy Young Award. It would be fair to characterize Smith’s performance so far this season as surprising.

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Since 1999, five second basemen have produced 40 or more wins. Of that group, Chase Utley debuted first, in 2003. Robinson Cano arrived in 2005, and Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, and Ben Zobrist all made their first major-league appearances in 2006. Over the last dozen years, those five players have dominated the position, and while they might not have gotten a shirtless photo-op like the shortstops of a generation prior, they have defined excellence at second base.

Even looking at the production of that group over the last four years — roughly a decade after their debuts — Cano, Kinsler, Pedroia, and Zobrist make up half of the top eight by WAR. Jose Altuve and Brian Dozier, who appear among the leaders, have emerged over the last half-decade, while Daniel Murphy has been a late-bloomer. But a collection of older players who debuted in 2005 and 2006 — one that also includes Aaron Hill, Howie Kendrick, Brandon Phillips (Reds debut in 2006), Dan Uggla, Rickie Weeks Jr. — have been mainstays at the position over the last decade.

At the moment, however, it seems as though a changing of the guard is underway. Young talents like Ozzie Albies and Yoan Moncada — along with a strong group of prospects — appear ready to take over.

The 2016 season represented the best one ever seen for second basemen. Twelve players recorded four-win seasons, while batters at the position produced a collective 106 wRC+ for the season. While Jose Altuve topped that season’s production, Cano, Kinsler, and Pedroia made up three of the next five players. Due to the aging veterans near the top of the list, that level of production was going to be impossible to maintain. Unsurprisingly, the positional numbers dipped last season, with only Altuve, Dozier, and Murphy reaching the four-wins threshold, while Jose Ramirez’s great season came mostly while playing third. Second basemen put up a respectable 99 wRC+, but it was much closer to traditional expectations of the position.

This year, second-base production is up to a 103 wRC+. This early in the season, of course, we don’t know if that production will continue. What’s of considerably more interest, however, is the players occupying the top of the leaderboards at second base.

Jed Lowrie and Asdrubal Cabrera are off to incredibly good starts, but the next three players on this list are all 25 or younger. Like Lowrie and Cabrera, their hot starts are unsustainable. They’ve each built themselves a cushion, however, such that even modest production will result in strong end-of-season numbers.

According to the projections, which are conservative in nature, Albies and Moncada — the latter using an unusual approach at the plate — are headed for nearly four-WAR seasons, while Baez seems likely to reach three wins. The last time three second basemen aged 25 and under produced at least three wins was 2007 when Cano, Hill, Pedroia, Weeks Jr., and Kelly Johnson did it. Before 2007, you have to go all the way back to 1993, when Roberto Alomar and Delino DeShields led a young group that also included Chuck Knoblauch the previous season. No group is likely to measure up to the triumvirate of Paul Molitor, Willie Randolph, and Lou Whitaker from 1979 or the class of 1965 (featuring Gene Alley, Jim Lefebvre, Joe Morgan, and Pete Rose, but a collection of good, young second basemen is not a common occurrence, no matter how good the group turns out.

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In 1961, the American League added two teams. To ensure that the 10 teams played an equal number of games against each other, the league moved from 154 games to 162, while the National League stayed put at 154. The following season, the National League followed suit, expanding both the number of teams and the number of games on the schedule. With the exception of strike seasons, the MLB schedule has remained at 162 games. The current setup has teams play 19 games against teams in their own division, with 66 games of the remaining games coming against the rest of the league, and 20 against interleague opponents. This year, more off days pushed up the start of baseball season. That early start coupled with horrendous weather has caused a large number of postponements, which has led to calls for a 154-game season. While I personally prefer the current schedule, a reduction in games is pretty doable.

First, let’s talk about a reason that shouldn’t be used as a justification to shorten the regular season: this year’s postponements. While postponements are drawing a lot of attention, we are likely dealing with a set of unique circumstances that won’t affect future seasons. The season did start a few days earlier than we’ve typically seen, but the biggest factor in all of these postponements isn’t the early start; it’s the bad weather. The number of postponements and cold weather games this season compared to past seasons suggests that this year’s weather is an anomaly unlikely to cause similar disruptions in future seasons. Cutting eight games from the schedule after more than 50 years because of somewhat unusual weather in one year seems unnecessary. If the goal is to move the season back to early April, a half-dozen Saturday day-night doubleheaders later in the summer would accomplish the same thing.

Players certainly seem like they would be willing to drop down to a 154-game schedule, as getting a few extra days off was an important negotiating point in the last round of collective bargaining with the owners. Removing eight games from the schedule would allow players the same number of days off they just bargained for and allow the league to start the season in early April instead of late March. From a pure feasibility standpoint, there is some merit to it, and it doesn’t seem like it would make a ton of difference to fans. The season would be about as long as it used to be; the handful of extra off days spread out over the course of six months wouldn’t make its presence deeply felt. The feel of a baseball season would hardly be impacted. The impediment, seemingly, would be money.

Over at The Athletic, Jayson Stark did some excellent reporting discussing the potential for a 154-game season. Particularly illuminating to me was the nugget that a vast majority of teams would be happy to drop down to an 154-game schedule. Stark did indicate that the minority of teams who would object to a shorter season would have very loud objections.

Stark estimated that a team like the Yankees might lose more than $10 million in gate and concession revenue. Losing four home dates, assuming a couple are less desirable weekday games in April plus a couple Monday games in the summer probably, might have a slightly smaller affect than that as the number of tickets sold for those games is likely to be somewhat lower than average. I am skeptical that teams could raise prices enough to recoup all of that money lost. I would be surprised if teams aren’t already doing whatever they can to maximize ticket and concession revenue. They may be able to get some of that money back, however, particularly from season ticket holders. They could, for example, provide 5% less inventory by taking away four games, but only drop season ticket prices by 3%, thus getting back some of the lost money while still providing a discount compared to what season ticket holders previously paid.

In his piece, Stark discussed the potential problems that might emerge with teams’ contracts with regional sports networks. Contractually, it is possible teams promised a certain number of games, making a change in the schedule challenging. But in terms of revenue, the money lost would be fairly insignificant. The lost revenue for regional television partners would be pretty minimal as the vast majority of that income derives from cable subscriber fees rather than advertising. Nationally, baseball would have little trouble fulfilling any of their deals, as the number of national games seems unlikely to change.

If the Yankees’ lost revenues are somewhere around $10 million, we might be able to roughly estimate the total losses to be somewhere in the $100 million to $150 million range before considering mitigation through some minor price increases. While MLB owners haven’t ever easily given up that much money, we are probably looking at something in the range of 1% or less of total MLB revenues. There might be talk of the players having to sacrifice pay, but these small decreases in overall revenue shouldn’t significantly alter the player-owner split as it is currently structured, and would be the subject of bargaining. Players get the off days they crave, the season starts in April, and the revenue split for the players and owners would likely remain roughly the same.

Financially, dropping eight games from the schedule is probably a lot more feasible than one might think. Of course, making the situation financially feasible doesn’t necessarily make it a great idea. I realize this makes me a bit of a curmudgeon, but I’m used to records and performances based on a 162-game schedule. And the baseball season is long. That’s a feature, not a bug. While 154 games might not feel that different, as someone who consumes baseball in a near-constant fashion all of the months of the year, I would rather have those 120 meaningful regular season games than not have them. The grind of the season with relatively few of the teams qualifying for the playoffs helps make the regular season more special than that of the other major sports.

These reasons aren’t necessarily compelling enough to keep the schedule the way it is. Perhaps someone else can come up with better ones. But it certainly doesn’t seem like finances should be a major impediment.

At the beginning of every season, each team has at least some kind of chance of eventually making playoffs. At the start of the present season, for example, the Orioles featured about a 5% probability of making the postseason in some form.

Those odds aren’t great. That said, there’s recent precedent for club’s succeeding from that modest starting point. Last season, the Rockies started their campaign with about a 10% shot at October. The Arizona Diamondbacks, meanwhile, were at 8%, while the Minnesota Twins begin with about a 5% probability of reaching the playoffs, just like this season’s Orioles. The Rockies and Diamondbacks got off to hot starts and jumped their chances up to around one-in-three within a few weeks. The Twins hung around .500 for a while. keeping their odds steady for a time. When no other challenger emerged for the second Wild Card, they claimed it almost by default.

The Orioles, on the other hand, are following a different trajectory. They’ve begun the season 6-17 and have lost whatever margin for error they possessed. And while the calendar hasn’t even flipped to May, it’s likely time for them to look ahead at the long-term health of the club. That means finding the best possible package for superstar Manny Machado.

Before we get to Machado, specifically, let’s consider Baltimore’s place in the standings a bit more thoroughly. The Orioles started off this season with a reasonable shot at the playoffs. As noted, however, they’ve gotten off to an awful start. That awful start has already rendered their long-ish playoff odds essentially non-existent. Here’s what their playoff-odds graph looks like since the beginning of the season.

It’s possible that graph doesn’t really do the odds justice, so here is another graph showing the odds as their chances of making it to the playoffs. For example, at the beginning of the year, the Orioles had a 5% chance of making the playoffs, which we will say is a 1-in-20. If they had a 2% chance, we’d say that is a 1-in-50 shot. Here’s how the graph has changed since the beginning of the season.

The Orioles’ chances of making the playoffs are down to about 1 in 1,000. If you prefer to look at things in terms of wins, you’d find that Baltimore is currently projected to win about 45% of the rest of their games — equivalent to about 63 more victories — to get them up to 69 for the season. Needless to say, that won’t be enough to make the playoffs. We don’t know what is enough for the playoffs, but if we give the AL East to the Red Sox, the Central to Cleveland, and the West to the Astros, that still leaves the Angels, Blue Jays, and Yankees as viable candidates for the Wild Card — with the Twins not too far behind. Given the talent and relatively positive starts from those teams, it seems like 87-89 wins will be necessary to take the second Wild Card spot. That means the Orioles — expected to play like a 74-win team (out of 162) the rest of the way — would need to play like a 94-win team to make the postseason.

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