Once upon a time, 12 teams and 15 years ago, Edwin Jackson was a Dodgers phenom who outdueled Randy Johnson in a major-league debut that happened to fall on his 20th birthday. Six trades, one All-Star appearance, one no-hitter, and several free-agency signings — some lucrative, some humbling — later, he’s the co-holder of a record for colorful laundry. Forget the “E Jax” nickname, the 34-year-old righty should be known as “Transaction Jackson.” Suddenly, he’s come back from the brink of professional oblivion to pitching as well as he has in half a decade with a performance that has not only helped the upstart A’s take possession of the second AL Wild Card spot, but has almost exactly coincided with their surge past the Mariners.

Jackson, who tied Octavio Dotel’s major-league record of 13 teams played for when he donned the green and gold for the first time, has been on quite an odyssey since that 2003 debut. He’s been traded in deals involving Danys Baez and Lance Carter (from the Dodgers to the Devil Rays in 2006), Matt Joyce (from the Rays to the Tigers in 2008), Curtis Granderson, Max Scherzer, and Ian Kennedy (from the Tigers to the Diamondbacks in a three-way, seven-player deal in 2009), Daniel Hudson (from the Diamondbacks to the White Sox in 2010), Mark Teahen and Jason Frasor (from the White Sox to the Blue Jays in 2011), and Dotel, Corey Patterson, Marc Rzepczynski, and Colby Rasmus (from the Blue Jays to the Cardinals on that same July 27, 2011 day, without even getting to suit up for Toronto). In his first taste of free agency, he signed a one-year, $11 million deal with the Nationals in February 2012. In his next one, he signed a four-year, $52 million deal with the Cubs in December 2012 — the first big free-agent deal of the Theo Epstein regime — but after a so-so first season (8-18, 4.98 ERA, 3.79 FIP, 2.0 WAR), his performance deteriorated to the point that in mid-2015, having delivered just an additional 0.8 WAR and converted to a relief role, he was released with $15.63 million remaining on his contract.

It’s at that point, on July 27, 2015, where this particular journeyman’s journey through the majors reached the lightning round; since then, Jackson has pitched for the Braves (2015), Marlins and Padres (2016), Orioles and Nationals again (2017). Over that three-season, six-team span (including his final months with the Cubs), he threw 215.2 innings with a 4.92 ERA, 5.24 FIP and -0.6 WAR, the last mark the second-lowest total of any of the 204 pitchers with at least 200 innings in that span. In his three starts for the Orioles and 13 for the Nationals last year, Jackson pitched to a 5.21 ERA and a career-worst 6.14 FIP in 76 innings, “good” for -0.3 WAR.

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The outcome seems unthinkable, but the trendlines are undeniable and the conclusion unavoidable: Félix Hernández, for so long the ace of the Mariners, is doing more to hinder the team’s bid for a playoff spot — and thus end the longest drought in North American professional sports — than to help it. As the Mariners try to claw their way back into the second AL Wild Card spot, his place in the rotation is in jeopardy. The 32-year-old righty fondly known as “King Félix” may not be dead, but his exile from a job at which he’s excelled for so long may be imminent.

On Tuesday night against the Rangers in Arlington, a hellish place for a hurler even when the first-pitch temperature isn’t 98 degrees, Hernández was torched for a career-high 11 runs. Granted, just seven of those were earned, due to a pair of errors when hot smashes deflected off the normally reliable glove of Kyle Seager, but by the time those happened, the reality was already clear: the Hernández who had breezed through the first two innings on just 23 pitches, retiring all six hitters and making his pal Adrián Beltré look silly on an 0-2 curve, had left the building:

Alas, there was little joy in what transpired after that. After getting ahead of Robinson Chirinos 1-2 to start the third, Hernández’s command deserted him. He threw three straight balls for a leadoff walk, then surrendered hits to four of the next five batters, plating four runs (two on Rougned Odor’s double) before Beltré grounded into a double play. A one-out walk to Joey Gallo in the fourth, followed by Seager’s first error, set up the Rangers’ fifth run, via a Willie Calhoun sacrifice fly. A two-out, one-on error by Seager in the fifth was soon followed by a three-run homer off the bat of Jurickson Profar to run the score to 8-4.

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While the AL East race appears to have tilted decisively towards the Red Sox over the past five weeks, an even more dramatic turnaround has taken place in the AL wild card race over an even longer timeline, one involving the Mariners and A’s. This one has yet to be decided, which is good news, because it’s practically the last race standing in the Junior Circuit.

Through June 15, the Mariners were running neck-and-neck with the Astros despite a massive disparity in the two teams’ run differentials, a situation that — as I had illustrated a few days earlier — owed a whole lot to their records in one-run games (22-10 for Seattle, 6-12 for Houston). The A’s, though solidly competitive to that point, were something of an afterthought, far overshadowed by the Mike Trout/Shohei Ohtani show in Anaheim:

On June 16, despite placing Matt Chapman on the disabled list with a contusion on his right thumb, the A’s, who had lost to the Angels 8-4 the night before, kicked off a five-game winning streak, taking the two remaining games of the series that weekend, then two from the Padres at Petco Park and the first game of a four-game set against the White Sox in Chicago. Though they merely split a four-gamer on the South Side, they swept four from the Tigers in Detroit, sparking a six-game winning streak that also included two victories at home against the Indians. Remarkably, they’ve strung together two separate six-game winning streaks since then, as well, one against the Giants (a pair of walk-of wins) at home and the Rangers in Arlington from July 21 to 26 and then another from July 30 through August 5 at home against the Blue Jays and Tigers. Alas, that one ended on Tuesday night against the Dodgers.

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The 2018 season is looking like another one in which the Giants’ even-year magic has deserted them. Amid a barrage of bad news about Brandon Belt, Johnny Cueto, and Pablo Sandoval — not to mention unsettling signs regarding Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey — they were inactive at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline and now look ill-suited to leapfrog nearly half the league in order to get to October. After a crushing 3-1 loss to the Astros on Monday night via Marwin Gonzalez’s three-run homer off Will Smith with two out in the ninth inning, they’re 57-57, six games out of first place in the NL West and six back in the Wild Card hunt. Their playoff odds (2.8%) suggest they’re fated to play out the string.

Mind you, coming off a 64-98 season, the Giants never appeared to be a juggernaut. Offseason trades for Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen did fill a couple of obvious holes, albeit with players whose best years are probably behind them, but the team’s preseason odds (23.9%) still suggested more than a puncher’s chance at relevance. Yet the Giants haven’t been in first place in the NL West since March 31, and have spent just five days in second since I last checked in on them on June 7, two days after Bumgarner made his belated season debut. Then as now, they were a .500-ish team — 30-30 before Bum’s return, and 27-27 since — but as time has run off the clock, the hits have kept coming. Not the good kind, either.

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A three-homer game by Steve Pearce, a pair of stifling pitching performances by Rick Porcello — an 86-pitch complete game, the fewest needed for a nine-inning outing since 2014 — and Nathan Eovaldi, and an after-midnight comeback from a 4-1 deficit. With that, the race for the American League East flag is all over but the shouting. At Fenway Park this weekend, a banged-up Red Sox squad swept four straight against a banged-up Yankees squad, widening their division lead to 9.5 games, their largest margin since 2013.

At 79-34 (.699), the Red Sox are on a 113-win pace. Even if they go 24-25 the rest of the way, they would surpass the 1978 team’s win total of 99 — still a Bucky Dent homer short of what they needed — for the franchise’s highest win total in the post-1960 expansion era, and they have a good chance of surpassing the highest winning percentages of their pre-expansion forebears:

A recently as July 1, when they were fresh off losing two out of three in the Bronx, Boston (then 56-29) was in a virtual tie with their pinstriped foes (54-27) for at the AL East lead; the two teams owned the top two records in all of baseball. Since then, the Red Sox have gone 22-6, the Yankees just 15-14. A picture is worth a thousand words:

To be fair, the Red Sox have played the cushier schedule of the two teams since that point, with their three-game series against the Nationals from July 2-4 their only games against a team with a winning record until their July 30-31 pair with the Phillies. In between, they played the Royals, Rangers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Orioles and Twins – six of the seven worst teams in the league, a combined 144 games below .500 through Sunday — with a two-game split in Baltimore the only time they failed to win a series.

While they were luxuriating on that pillow-soft slate, the Yankees faced the Braves, Indians and Rays, and won just the first of those series; they also split six games with the Orioles and two with the Mets. That’s a tough way to catch up under the best of circumstances.

Neither lineup has been whole in this span. The Red Sox have been without Dustin Pedroia for all but three games this season in the aftermath of an experimental cartilage restoration procedure in his left knee, and Eduardo Núñez has been so bad that he (and Brock Holt) topped the second base list in my Replacement-Level Killers series. The catching tandem of Christian Vazquez and Sandy Leon also earned a spot among the Killers even before Vazquez suffered a fractured right pinky that required surgery. Likewise for third baseman Rafael Devers, who first missed time due to left shoulder inflammation and then went back on the DL in late July due to a left hamstring strain. Even Ian Kinsler, who was acquired from the Angels on July 30 in order to shore up the keystone, got in on the injury racket by straining his hamstring in his third game for the Sox. Boston also lost starter Eduardo Rodríguez to an ankle sprain just before the All-Star break, and has been without Chris Sale since July 27 due to shoulder inflammation.

On the other side, the Yankees began this stretch without catcher Gary Sanchez, who has been scuffling for most of the season. After being sidelined from June 25 until July 20 with a groin strain, he played in just two games before reinjuring himself, but not before a dumb, only-in-New-York controversy involving his apparent lack of effort in chasing down a passed ball (the point at which he apparently re-aggravated the groin) and then grounding into a game ending force out. Second baseman Gleyber Torres suffered a right hip strain on July 4, sidelining him for three weeks, and then, most devastatingly, Aaron Judge suffered a chip fracture in his right wrist when he was hit by a Jakob Junis pitch on July 26.

Masahiro Tanaka missed a month due to bilateral hamstring strains from running the bases during an interleague game; he returned on July 10. On top of all this, J.A. Happ, whom the Yankees acquired from the Blue Jays on July 26 with an eye towards his career-long success in Fenway Park, missed this weekend’s series because, like the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard, he came down with a case of hand, foot and mouth disease. Chance Adams, who was recalled from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to make his major league debut in his stead, gave the Yankees a five-inning, three-run performance that simply wasn’t enough opposite Eovaldi’s eight shutout innings.

Judge has been the Yankees’ most productive hitter all season, hitting .285/.398/.548 for a 157 wRC+, good for the fifth highest wRC+ in the league. From July 2 until he went down, he was humming along at a similar clip, but remarkably, four Sox hitters have been even hotter in that span:

The Yankees have gotten average-or-better production at every position besides catcher and first base during that span — and it just hasn’t been enough to keep up with the Sox. Pearce, acquired from the Blue Jays for High-A infielder Santiago Espinal on June 28, has clubbed five homers in just 71 PA since the trade, tied with Betts for second on the team behind Martinez’s eight. In other words, he’s even hotter than the players who have ranked second and third in the league in wRC+ overall this year. Those scorching performances have helped to offset the replacement-level ones at second base and catcher, though of course it was Leon’s 10th inning single off Jonathan Holder — just his fourth hit in 34 at-bats since the All-Star break — that turned into the winning run on Sunday night. Everything’s coming up Milhouse.

While there’s been only a slight separation between the two teams on the offensive side, the separation has been massive as far as the rotations go:

Sixty-four percent of the innings thrown by Yankees starters in this span have gone to pitchers hit for ERAs well above 5.00. Most glaringly, Severino has failed to last six innings in any of his last five starts while allowing eight home runs, likely ending his Cy Young hopes. Sabathia has apparently run out of gas, and Gray, an enigma since being acquired from the A’s at the 2017 non-waiver deadline, has pitched his way to the bullpen; his next turn will be taken by July 31 acquisition Lance Lynn.

On the other side, both Sale and Rodriguez were stellar within this stretch before landing on the DL, and Eovaldi picked an outstanding moment in which to put together back-to-back scoreless starts for the first time in his career. As a group, the Sox starters have a home run rate that’s half that of the Yankees (0.9 per nine versus 1.8) while striking out more (9.6 per nine to 8.6) and walking fewer (2.4 per nine to 3.4). Good morning, good afternoon, good night.

I’ll spare you the bullpen table, but where it had tilted towards the Yankees prior to this series (a 3.13 ERA/3.32 FIP ERA versus a 3.87 ERA/3.42 FIP),
it’s now tilted towards the Sox, thanks to the work they did this weekend: 3.79 ERA/3.57 FIP to 4.08 ERA/3.50 FIP. Much of the damage on the pinstriped front owes to Thursday night’s debacle, when manager Aaron Boone pulled Sabathia after three innings and two runs allowed, then sat on his hands as Holder, who entered the night with a 2.06 ERA and 2.52 FIP, allowed seven straight batters to reach base, serving up four extra-base hits including one of Pearce’s homers. Boone then called upon Chad Green, who retired just two of the five hitters he faced. By the time the dust had settled, a 4-2 lead had turned into a 10-4 deficit, and that was before Cessa, who had retired Pearce with runners on the corners to end the frame, allowed five garbage-time runs in his next three innings. As for Sunday, while Aroldis Chapman has looked wobbly lately due to left knee tendinitis, with a 6.10 ERA and eight walks (but 22 strikeouts) in 10.1 innings dating back to June 25, it was only his second blown save of the season.

Both Boston’s Dave Dombrowski and New York’s Brian Cashman were active in the days and weeks leading up to the July 31 deadline, with the former adding Pearce, Kinsler and Eovaldi and the latter Zach Britton, Happ and Lynn. Playoff odds-wise, none of what they did had much effect because the two teams are so far ahead of the pack; per Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, the Yankees’ moves added about one percentage point to their chances of winning the division at the expense of the Red Sox, but those chances are now less than a third of what they were less than a week later because of the Boston trouncing.

It’s not that the Yankees are a bad team — they’re still projected to win 99 games this year. But right now, 99 wins in the AL East gets you a set of steak knives and a date with either the A’s or the Mariners in the Coin Toss Game. This Red Sox team has gotten hot at the right time, and they’ve left the Yankees eating their dust.

This isn’t a round-numbered anniversary — next year will be 40 years — but every August 2, my thoughts invariably turn to Thurman Munson, particularly as a baseball-minded New York resident. Munson’s 1979 death, via the crash of a plane he was flying, remains a pivotal moment of my own childhood for the confrontation it forced with the mortality of the men playing the game. It robbed the game of an iconic player, one whose career I believe is worthy of a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

On Wednesday, the New York Times‘ David Waldstein published an account of Munson’s final moments and the events that led up to them, based upon depositions from two lawsuits that were recently uncovered by a Long Island lawyer named Allan Blutstein. Directed at Cessna (the airplane manufacturer) and FlightSafety International (the school where Munson learned to fly), the lawsuits were separately filed by the Yankees and the other by Munson’s widow, Diana.

The depositions include testimony from two of Munson’s most prominent Yankees teammates, Reggie Jackson and Graig Nettles, as well as manager Billy Martin. All three had flown with Munson — who had only begun flying in the spring of 1978 — less than three weeks before his fatal crash in flights that themselves were not mistake-free. Jackson and Nettles both testified that the oxygen masks deployed on theirs after a loud noise, while Martin recounted flames from one engine. Given that, it’s not hard to imagine the tragedy compounding into one that could have left an even bigger hole in baseball, and in the Yankees.

Waldstein’s story is not for the faint of heart. It grimly details the injuries Munson sustained when his plane crashed short of the runway at Akron-Canton Airport — due to pilot error brought on by fatigue and improper safety procedures, according to the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board — and his passengers’ failed attempts to save him.

You don’t need the blow-by-blow of his demise to appreciate Munson’s career, however. He packed a tremendous amount into his 11 major league seasons: seven All-Star appearances (six straight from 1973-1978), three Gold Gloves, an AL MVP award (with support in six other seasons), an AL Rookie of the Year award, and a central role on a team that won three straight pennants (1976-1978) and two championships. He excelled on both sides of the ball; five times he hit for at least a .300 batting average with a wRC+ of at least 120 (his career mark was 116) and twice he led the league in caught stealing percentage, throwing out more than half the baserunners who tried to steal against him.

Drafted with the fourth pick out of Kent State University in 1968, Munson broke in with Double A Binghamton that summer and played just 99 games in the minors before making his major league debut on August 8, 1969, the start of a 26-game cup of coffee. In 1970, the 23-year-old backstop took over the Yankees’ regular catching duties and hit .302/.386/.415 with six homers and a 127 wRC+ in 526 plate appearances. Defensively, he threw out 52% of would-be base thieves. His 5.5 WAR (the Baseball-Reference version, since we’re in the Hall of Fame realm here) ranked 11th in the league and tops among all catchers. He came within one vote of being a unanimous selection for AL Rookie of the Year, and the Yankees, who had maxed out at 83 wins during the 1965-1969 stretch, went 93-69, their best record until 1976.

Munson had his offensive ups and downs over the next couple of seasons, with good on-base percentages offsetting sub-.400 slugging percentages. He was worth a combined 7.6 WAR in 1971-1972, but in 1973 he broke out to his .301/.362/.487 with 20 homers, a 141 wRC+ and 7.2 WAR, numbers he would never surpass; the last mark ranked third in the league. That kicked off a five-year stretch during which Munson hit .299/.347/.438 for a 123 wRC+, averaging a hefty 622 plate appearances, 16 homers, six steals and 5.4 WAR per year.

In 1976, Munson helped the Yankees to their first playoff appearance since 1964, hitting .302/.337/.432 with 17 homers, 14 steals, 105 RBI (his second of three straight years topping 100), a 126 wRC+, and 5.3 WAR. It may not have been his best all-around season by the numbers, but when coupled with the Yankees’ 97 wins under Martin, it was good enough for him to garner 18 of 24 first-place votes in the AL MVP race. Though Munson went a combined 19-for-40 in the postseason, the Yankees were swept by the Big Red Machine after outlasting the Royals in a five-game ALCS.

The Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series in both 1977 and ’78. The former year, Munson’s age-30 season, was a banner one (.308/.351/.462, 123 wRC+, 4.9 bWAR), but the latter (.297/.332/.373, 99 wRC+, 3.3 WAR) suggested that the grind of catching more than 10,000 innings in such a short timespan was taking its toll, particularly on his knees. He hit just six homers in the latter season, during which he played DH in 14 games and right field in 13. His bat came to life in both World Series; he went 8-for-25 in each, driving in seven runs in 1978. Indeed, he nearly always rose to the occasion in October, hitting .357/.378/.496 with three homers in 135 postseason plate appearances, and .373/.417/.493 in 72 World Series PA.

From a performance standpoint, Munson’s 1979 was looking a lot like 1978. Though he was the DH five times and started three times at first base, he caught 88 of the team’s 106 games through August 1 and hit .288/.340/.374, though with his still-steady defense, he was already to 2.4 WAR. After an 0-for-5 as a DH in the Yankees’ July 31 game against the White Sox in Chicago, he played just three innings at first base on August 1, then flew home to see his family in Ohio the next day; owner George Steinbrenner had granted him special permission to travel separately from the team.

The rest, alas, is history. To this nine-year-old Dodgers fan, Munson was, along with Jackson, one of the most seductively enjoyable players on the evil Yankees, one whose baseball cards I treasured. He wasn’t the first ballplayer I remember dying – sadly, Lyman Bostock preceded him by nearly a year – but Munson and the Yankees were staples of the televised games I’d witnessed to that point, Bostock merely an extrapolation from my baseball card collection and the daily box scores.

For all of his accolades and his .292/.346/.410 batting line, Munson finished his career with “only” 1,558 hits and 113 homers. Under the rules adopted by the Hall of Fame following the death of Roberto Clemente, he was eligible for the 1981 BBWAA ballot (not the 1980 one), but the writers, who had the first-year candidacies of Bob Gibson, Harmon Killebrew and Juan Marichal to consider among the 11 future Hall of Famers on the ballot, barely noticed. He received 15.5% of the vote, roughly one-fifth the support needed for election. The next year, with Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson both eligible for the first time, he sank to 6.3%, and he never reached double digits again during his 15-year run of eligibility.

Munson was similarly ignored when he appeared on three Veterans Committee ballots from 2003-2007, years where all of the living Hall of Famers were allowed to vote on a particularly expansive slate. Lost behind a handful of stronger or at least more popular candidates such as Ron Santo, Dick Allen, Gil Hodges, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva and Joe Torre, Munson received single-digit vote totals each year. He did not appear on either the 2011 or 2014 Expansion Era Committee ballots, nor was he on the 2018 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, whose election of Jack Morris and Alan Trammell marked the first time since 2001 that any of the small committees elected a living ex-player.

Munson deserved better from the voters, because he’d laid a strong foundation for a spot in Cooperstown. Even with his death in the middle of his age-32 season, his 46.1 career bWAR ranks 14th all-time, about seven wins shy of the average Hall of Fame catcher. More importantly — most importantly given his abbreviated career — his 37.0 peak WAR, from his best seven seasons, is tied with fellow Yankees legend Yogi Berra for eighth all-time, a solid 2.5 WAR above the standard. Only five of the 15 enshrined catchers — contemporaries Gary Carter, Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk, and recent honorees Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez — are ahead of him in this category. He’s 2.2 WAR ahead of Ted Simmons, another contemporary whose candidacy I felt strongly enough about to feature in The Cooperstown Casebook given the heft of his career numbers. If I do a second edition of the book, Munson will get a spotlight.

In short, Munson’s 41.6 JAWS is 2.4 points short of the standard, ahead of just six of the 15 enshrined. The only mistake he made was dying before rounding out his career with perhaps a couple more two-win seasons and enough lingering to escape the “Rule of 2,000” mob that has effectively short-circuited so many candidacies. His career is about a year ahead of where 31-year-old Buster Posey — winner of Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, as well as a three-time champion, but in the midst of an offensive decline — finds himself now:

Munson will next be eligible for inclusion on the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot. Here’s hoping he can join some combination of Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, Keith Hernandez and Simmons, all of whom deserve a closer look from committee voters.

Less than three weeks ago, in the context of a July 11 game that featured the longest pitching appearance by a position player since 1988, the earliest mound entry by one since 1979, and the first instance of multiple position players tossing multiple innings in the same game since 1956, I noted that the count of such instances for this season had already reached 29 (not including those of Shohei Ohtani), essentially guaranteeing a smashing of the single-season record of 36 (or 32, depending upon how you feel about Christian Bethancourt, whose conversion to the mound didn’t take), set just last year. In the 21 days since then — four of which were part of the All-Star break — an additional 17 non-pitchers have taken the hill, an average of one per day. On Tuesday night, we saw the worst of them, and perhaps the nadir of the entire genre, when the Mets’ Jose Reyes was battered for six runs by the Nationals while throwing 48 pitches in a single inning of work.

Reyes, who already has little business being on a major-league roster given his ineptitude as a position player (.182/.254/.240, -1.1 WAR entering Wednesday, when of course he homered twice!), entered a game in which the Mets trailed 19-1 in the eighth inning. Working with a fastball that averaged 81.5 mph and topped out at 86.9, and a curve that averaged 63.5, he retired Ryan Zimmerman on a fly ball, and then proceeded to allow the next six batters to reach safely: Juan Soto won a 10-pitch encounter with a double to rightfield, Matt Adams followed with a two-run homer to right-center (21-1), Michael Taylor and Matt Wieters both walked, pinch-hitter Mark Reynolds followed with a three-run homer (24-1), and then Trea Turner singled. Reyes got Anthony Rendon to fly out, but then Wilmer Difo tripled (25-1). Good grief, Charlie Brown.

Reyes then hit Zimmerman with a 54-mph curveball, after which Zimmerman pretended as though he might charge the mount. Finally, Soto flied out to end the debacle.

While a position-player pitching appearance is supposed to be either a break-glass-in-emergency desperation move (generally in extra innings) or a lighthearted farce that draws attention away from an otherwise unpleasant blowout, this was unpleasantness itself. In all, Reyes’s 48 pitches were three more than Jacob deGrom threw in a single inning on June 17 before being pulled out of concern for his health. Regardless of Reyes’s current playing ability or his status as a pariah in the wake of his 2016 domestic violence suspension, manager Mickey Callaway allowing him to toil that long was irresponsible, though it was at worst the second-most irresponsible act of the night following a dead-armed Steven Matz being torched for seven first-inning runs and then later examined for complaints of forearm tightness. Chalk it up as the umpteenth data point illustrating the team’s incompetence and lack of accountability when it comes to protecting its players.

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For as pitching-rich as the Braves may be, they could not afford to stand pat at the non-waiver trade deadline, particularly given the recent struggles of their rotation, the uncharted territory towards which their top starters are heading innings-wise, and a 31-games-in-31-days stretch that has only just begun. On Tuesday afternoon, they dealt four prospects and $2.5 million in international signing bonus slot money to the Orioles in exchange for 27-year-old righty starter Kevin Gausman and 35-year-old righty reliever Darren O’Day It’s the second deal in three days between the two teams, following Atlanta’s acquisition of 32-year-old righty reliever Brad Brach, also in exchange for slot money.

At 56-47, the Braves entered Tuesday half a game back in both the NL East (behind the Phillies) and the Wild Card races (behind the D-backs, .001 ahead of the Rockies). They’ve generally gotten good work from their starters this year, at least in terms of ERA, as the rotation ranks third in the NL (3.68). They’re a shakier eighth in FIP (4.19), with a gaudy 9.8% walk rate, the league’s second-worst. The team’s 9-13 record this month owes plenty to the unit’s recent struggles; their 4.90 ERA and 4.95 FIP in July both rank in the bottom third of the league.

All of that has been a problem, but if the Braves stay In This Thing, they’ll have another:

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This post has been updated to reflect the Washington Post’s latest report about Harper’s availability.

Last week, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Nationals, who at the time were 50-51, “might need to win three of its next four games in Miami to stave off growing internal pressure to sell.” While the team trounced the Marlins in the series’ first two games, they lost the final two, capped by a two-hit shutout by Jose Urena and three relievers on Sunday. Now 52-53, they’re 5.5 games back in the NL East and six back in the Wild Card race. On Monday night, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported that they’ve made it known that pending free agent Bryce Harper is available:

[Update] On Tuesday morning, via the Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo proclaimed the team’s intention to keep Harper:

Mike Rizzo just reached out with this message:

"Bryce is not going anywhere. I believe in this team."

— Chelsea Janes (@chelsea_janes) July 31, 2018

Harper, of course, is not having his best season. Though he’s first in the league in walks (84) and second in homers (25), he has struggled like never before when it comes to hitting against infield shifts; both his .240 BABIP and 42 wRC+ in such situations are career lows. In all, he’s hit .220/.369/.473 for a 121 wRC+, down from a 139 career mark, and his 1.6 WAR in 103 games is less than half of last year’s 4.9 in 111 games.

Even before Janes’ report, FanCred’s Jon Heyman suggested that Rizzo may not have been earnest about moving the 25-year-old slugger:

That jibes with Rosenthal’s report, which suggested that money is at the root of the Nationals’ concerns, but that not all of the team’s decision-makers were onboard (a situation that may have changed in the ensuing days):

“According to sources, ownership is pushing Rizzo to sell, particularly with the Nationals projecting to be over the $197 million luxury-tax threshold. That ownership preference, first mentioned by MLB Network Radio’s Jim Duquette, is shared by some in the front office who believe it might be time to retool. Rizzo, however, is not inclined to concede, and other sources suggest ownership is simply ‘riding it out’ and waiting for Washington to play better.”

Per Cot’s Contracts, the Nationals’ payroll for luxury tax purposes is $208,548,348. As second-time offenders, they would pay a 30% penalty on the amount over the threshold, which comes to all of $3.46 million, about what they’re paying Howie Kendrick this year — peanuts, by major-league standards. For the sake of comparison, the Dodgers paid $36.2 million in taxes and penalties last year, the Nationals just $1.45 million.

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