Ever since we’ve known about Aaron Nola, whom the Phillies selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2014 draft (nearly two years ago to the day), we’ve heard about front-of-the-rotation potential without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff. Nola’s a righty, and he throws in the low-90s, and so for there to be front-of-the-rotation potential suggests something else. Pitchability, command, deception, feel — whatever non-stuff-related adjectives you want to use, the thought’s been all along that Nola’s possessed it in spades.

Following the draft and half a season of professional ball in 2014, Baseball America’s scouting report declared that “Nola’s hallmark is his stellar command.” Baseball Prospectus noted that Nola “brings a polished three-pitch arsenal, with strong command and solid deception.” Kiley McDaniel’s evaluation included perhaps the strongest description of Nola’s unquantifiable pitching ability, saying he “has an amazing feel to pitch.”

Fast-forward another year and some change, and Nola’s in his second major-league season — first full season — and we’re not only seeing that front-of-the-rotation potential quicker than most expected, but we’re seeing hints of an even higher ceiling than most expected. Through 12 starts, Nola’s averaged 6.5 innings per start with a 2.65 ERA and a 2.73 FIP. He’s been a top-30 starter by RA9-WAR and a top-10 starter by FIP-WAR. He’s been a top-15 starter in strikeout, walk, and ground-ball rate — arguably the three most important traits for any pitcher to possess.

Nola looks like one of baseball’s best young starters and, as expected, he’s doing it without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff; he’s still right-handed, and the fastball still barely averages 90 mph. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a plus pitch — Jeff Sullivan already called Nola’s curveball the best in baseball — but he’s not dominating hitters in the obvious, easily quantifiable way that many of today’s young flamethrowers do. He’s doing it in a more sneaky kind of way, and that adds an extra layer of intrigue to an already intriguing pitcher.

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CHICAGO — Cubs ace Jake Arrieta continued his year-long run of brilliance on Sunday afternoon, striking out 12 batters with one walk in a 3-2 home loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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Two offseasons ago, James Shields was seeking a five-year deal worth $125 million. He went unsigned until February, and ended up settling for a four-year deal worth $75 million in San Diego. One year and four months later, the Padres are paying more than half of Shields’ remaining salary for him to play on another team.

The deal goes like this:

So the full deal — James Shields and cash for Erik Johnson and Fernando Tatis Jr. — is what @barstoolWSD originally reported. Nice work.

— Dennis Lin (@sdutdennislin) June 4, 2016

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I know it’s obvious, but it’s worth a reminder. The most important thing to consider before serving up a Julio Urias take is that he is 19 years old. Think about what you were doing as a 19-year-old. Think about what Julio Urias is doing as a 19-year-old. When Stephen Strasburg was 19, his competition was the Mountain West Conference. When Jacob deGrom was 19, he was a shortstop at Stetson University. Julio Urias has already struck out seven major league batters. He’s 19! That’s more strikeouts than literally every other active major league pitcher had when they were 19, aside from Felix Hernandez who may one day be enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

So Julio Urias is 19, and we must always keep that in mind, but he’s now been tasked twice with getting major league hitters out, and he hasn’t done a great job. He can be both unfathomably young and also ineffective at the same time — they aren’t mutually exclusive. The age isn’t an excuse; it just serves as context.

But we can have more context than age and results! How about the process? How’s the stuff? Ultimately, it’s the process that matters; the age will change and results can be wonky. Execute the process enough times and the results will follow. There’s still only so much we can learn from two games, but at the very least it gives us an excuse to analyze Julio Urias, which we’ve all been waiting for, and maybe we’ll see something to help quiet some of the alarm bells currently going off in Dodger Nation. We’ll observe some good, and we’ll observe some bad. We shouldn’t come way with a much different opinion of Urias’ future — two starts shouldn’t have moved the needle anyhow — but we’ll certainly come away with more information.

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Just as much as we’ve trained ourselves not to take Spring Training stats at face value, we should also by now have trained ourselves not to take player and manager Spring Training quotes at face value. Words are words, and until those words become actions, they’re not super fun to consume or analyze. Like, here’s a few examples pulled from a preseason story by the excellent Clark Spencer, with expectations for the upcoming season inferred from comments by star pitcher Jose Fernandez and manager Don Mattingly.

Spring Training Report #1

• Expectation: “He just might not resort to his fastball quite as much…”
• Reality: Fernandez’s fastball rate is mostly unchanged, and in fact is slightly above (52%) his previous career-high (51%).

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We’re doing it. It’s happening again. We’re forgetting about Mike Trout. It’s like collectively, we’re a second-grade teacher with a real-life wizard in our classroom and yet we never call on him or her to be the volunteer for any of the science experiments, so as not to single out the wizard kid while also ensuring that we remain impartial to the other, more normal children, except we know damn well that the normal kids would rather see the wizard kid perform science experiments rather than do it themselves. Call on the wizard kid! Mike Trout is right there!

Y’know how I know we’re forgetting about Mike Trout again? It’s June 1. We’re one-third of the way through the baseball season. Trout has been tagged in exactly one FanGraphs post since Opening Day. It was a post about whether Bryce Harper is better than him. Since that post, Harper’s hit .207 with a 115 wRC+. Trout’s slugged .641 with a 198 wRC+.

For the year, Trout’s been the most valuable position player in baseball. He’s been a top-three bat mixed with a top-three base-runner. He’s seventh in the league in on-base while also ranking among the league’s top-20 power hitters. He’s projected to finish the season with 9.7 WAR (yawn, but it’s not 10), which would give him 47.3 WAR over his first five full major-league seasons. And that’d be the ninth-best five-year peak of any hitter, ever. And Mike Trout is 24.

Even though we, the collective second-grade teacher, don’t call on the wizard kid in class, we’d be lying to ourselves if we said we weren’t curious what he or she were doing at all times. We’re curious what the wizard kid does at recess, we’re curious what the wizard kid eats for lunch, we’re curious what the wizard kid does at home, we’re even curious how the wizard kid gets to school. Broom? Honda Odyssey? Intangibility?

We want up-to-the-minute updates on the developments of wizard kid’s life, so we should want up-to-the-minute updates on the developments of Mike Trout’s game, too. Let’s now briefly discuss five things that are different about Mike Trout.

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It was an inauspicious start to the season for Michael Feliz. It’s been an inauspicious start to the season for the entire Houston Astros ballclub. One of them’s turned it around, providing hope to the other.

Feliz’s numbers, on the whole, are impressive, and even they come with something of an asterisk. In 20 innings of relief work, the 22-year-old right-handed rookie has struck out 33 batters and walked four — only two pitchers in baseball currently have a better K-BB%, and they both wear pinstripes. You’ve probably heard of them. The asterisk is that Feliz has walked just four batters all year, and they all came in his season debut, a 107-pitch relief outing back on April 6 after starter Collin McHugh recorded just one out. Feliz was thrust into action in the first, asked to eat innings, faltered, and was promptly sent to the minors for a fresh arm. He was recalled a couple weeks later, and since then, he’s been completely unhittable.

Dating back to that April 26 recall, Feliz has struck out half of the batters he’s faced, and he’s walked none of them. He’s getting ground balls, and he’s working multiple innings. Before the year, you might’ve only known Feliz’s name by being an Astros fan or a prospect hound — while he fell just outside of preseason top-100 prospect lists, most evaluators viewed him as a top-10 piece in a deep Astros’ system. Now, he’s turning heads, with the kind of numbers that practically demand attention.

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Nomar Mazara hit a 491-foot home run the other day. You’ve probably heard about it, you’ve probably seen it. If you haven’t, go check it out. Something special, that homer. Something special, that Mazara. I thought there might be a post in that homer, and there might still be, but in the midst of running some numbers on it, something else caught my eye. While looking up information about a 21-year-old phenom who hit a 491-foot home run, I somehow came away most impressed with Michael Saunders.

See, there’s some outstanding stuff about that Mazara homer, even beyond the age and the raw distance. You’ll see that it came off a left-handed pitcher, with Mazara being a left-handed batter himself. You’ll see that it was pretty far on the inside of the plate, that Mazara really had to turn on it. And you’ll see that it was a breaking pitch, one that started even further inside, that was never really in the strike zone until the moment Mazara hammered it. It was already a special homer on the surface, made even more special by the way it happened. And Mazara hit it a long way. You can’t fake what Mazara did. I’m not sure you can fake what Michael Saunders has done, either.

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