In a sense, there isn’t that much wrong with the Dodgers. They won on Thursday — albeit barely — and they stand in first place in their division. You could excuse them if they’ve gotten used to that. The last time the Dodgers weren’t in first place was one night in the last week of May. Prior to that, you’re looking at the second week of the season. All year long, they’ve been positioned well, and they have two unbelievable starting pitchers, and they’re heavily favored to advance to the first round of the playoffs. The Dodgers aren’t struggling. Most of the teams in baseball would be ecstatic to be where they are.

But, of course, not every team is equal, and given the Dodgers’ resources, it feels like they should be doing better. It feels like they should be almost unstoppable, unless they were to be brought down by injuries, like the Nationals. One could reasonably assert that the Dodgers should be running away with things, and that it’s worrisome they’re still fending off the Giants. The Dodgers might not make the NLDS. It’s unlikely, but very possible. Things just feel underwhelming. Observers feel it. The players themselves feel it.

Look over the numbers, and there’s one glaring curiosity. What might be one explanation for the Dodgers’ performance? You might be familiar with wOBA, which is like a better version of OPS. Right now, the Dodgers offense ranks third in wOBA in all of baseball. They lead the National League. What could be better than pairing a good offense with two proven aces? And yet, the Dodgers rank 18th in baseball in runs scored. By one measure, they’re tremendous. By another, they’re average. This is an unusual discrepancy.

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Wednesday was a pretty good day for starting-pitcher redemption. Most visibly, Justin Verlander came a few outs from no-hitting the Angels, calling attention to the fact that it looks like he’s back on track. In Chicago, Rick Porcello returned to the Red Sox and spun seven shutout innings, after entering with an ERA near 6. And Felix Hernandez turned in an effective outing at home against the A’s, following a stretch of particular and peculiar hittability. None of these pitchers stand to mean very much down the stretch, their teams basically out of contention, but fans want to know who can be relied on, and the three of them provided arguments for why they can still be good, for a while to come.

With Felix’s outing came an explanation. Felix was aware of how badly things had gone for him, so he took the uncharacteristic step of watching some video of himself and working out in the bullpen. According to Felix, he saw that he was rushing through his delivery, and that was costing him both location and movement. So he worked on knocking that off, and then not only were Wednesday’s results good, but Felix felt like he had his command. He thought his pitches were much better. It seems like that should be everything. There was a problem, the pitcher claimed to identify the problem, the pitcher worked on the problem, then the next performance was good. It ought to be comforting, everything wrapped up so neatly.

Yet I still can’t help but wonder. Just how much did Felix actually solve? A pitcher knows himself better than anyone, but even a pitcher can end up biased by results. Wednesday, the numbers were there. Dig deeper, and it’s a stranger case.

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We’ve been through this about the Blue Jays — a promising team suddenly added both Troy Tulowitzki and David Price, and since then, the Jays have taken off. Since the day Tulowitzki first appeared in a Toronto lineup, the team has gone a league-best 21-4, storming into first place and showing few signs of slowing down. Right now, in the American League, the Blue Jays are probably the best ballclub. With two new elite-level players, there’s no team looking much stronger as we head for the playoffs.

Funny thing about that Tulowitzki-specific date — since then, the Blue Jays have gone 21-4, but the Cubs have gone a strikingly similar 21-5. Granted, the Pirates and Cardinals have also done well, but the Cubs have caught fire, featuring what’s been a top-five offense. Before this specific stretch, the Cubs were 10th in the National League in runs scored, and fifth in runs allowed. Over the highlighted weeks, they’re second in runs scored, and tied for second in runs allowed. Run prevention, they’ve mostly had. Run production is a newer thing. Top-to-bottom power is a newer thing. Just about everyone has been a positive contributor, but in particular, Dexter Fowler and Addison Russell have seemingly turned their seasons around.

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Like a lot of people, Wednesday evening I was watching Justin Verlander try his damnedest to no-hit the Angels. I was tuning in because of the pitcher, but in the seventh inning, I found myself thinking about the hitter. It was in the top of the seventh that Verlander faced Mike Trout for what would be the last time, and I was reminded of something Sam Miller pointed out a couple years ago. All it took was one pitch.

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I find that writing goes in phases, and they can be unpredictable. I don’t know when it’s going to be a good writing week. I don’t know when it’s going to be a bad writing week. And I don’t know what I’m next going to find interesting. For example, I feel like I spent a good year or two zoning in on pitch-framing, which I thought was just the coolest thing. And my current fascination appears to be player adjustments. That’s good, because players are always adjusting, and it’s bad, because adjustments can be complicated. But I feel like there should be more attention paid to what’s going on underneath, even when the surface numbers seem stable. What’s driving a player’s success or failure? What’s driving his stability?

Adjustment analysis comes in different flavors. Some are more convincing than others. Some are more subtle than others. There are PITCHf/x adjustment analyses. There are mechanical adjustment analyses. And there are just plain ordinary statistical adjustment analyses. Many times, people will argue it’s just an observation of sample-size noise. Definitely, some of the time, that’s true. Other times, the adjustments are real, even if fleeting. And sometimes they’re so significant they just about slap you in the head. You want a story of a player who made an adjustment and kept himself around the top of his game? Embrace the case of Adrian Gonzalez, who is what he was, yet at the same time very much isn’t.

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The funny thing is, Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte are so good the Pirates would be in the conversation for baseball’s best outfield no matter who the third guy was. But more often than not, the third guy has been Gregory Polanco, and Polanco came with enormous hype. He’s had his good days and bad days, his good moods and bad moods, but these days Polanco’s on a tear. A few weeks shy of his 24th birthday, Polanco looks like he might be realizing his potential, with power, a quick swing, and a diminishing rate of groundballs. The more Polanco hits, the better off the Pirates are, and the better are the chances that Polanco really is establishing himself as a quality regular.

An interesting thing about Polanco is that, even when his numbers weren’t great, they were well and good against right-handed pitchers. It was lefties who were giving him fits, and while that’s not too uncommon for a young lefty bat, it was clearly a hurdle for Polanco to overcome. As much as the Pirates believe in and practice positional versatility, they still would’ve loved to not have to keep Polanco platooned. This leads to something that’s really encouraging. Polanco’s numbers, lately, are up. So is something else.

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A little over a month ago, Dave ran through his annual trade value rankings, and as he likes to do, after all the good bits, he wrote up the bad bit, addressing the game’s least-valuable players. Ranking third on his list was fallen Tigers ace Justin Verlander, whose contract is steady even when the pitching isn’t. Verlander ranked worse than Matt Kemp. Worse than Shin-Soo Choo. He’s making $28 million a year through 2019, and when Dave wrote the post up, Verlander looked like a wreck, after a season in which he also looked like a wreck. Verlander’s contract has been used as one of the reasons why the Tigers might be headed for disaster.

And, the Tigers might be headed for disaster. So might you and I be, I don’t know. Who knows anything? One thing I think I know, though — Verlander has turned things around. As the Tigers have faded out of the race, Verlander has seemingly re-emerged, and now it’s worth wondering what he actually is. Just as the world was getting used to the idea of an underwhelming, under-performing Justin Verlander, he’s showing signs that he…might…be…back? What if that were true? Are we open to the chance that that’s true?

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A week and a half ago, there was a remarkable home run, which I like. I’m drawn to those kinds of things, and I almost can’t help myself but write about them. I was floored by the home run itself; it was one of the most obvious subjects ever provided to me. The only problem was then I didn’t write for a week. The moment passed. Usually, these things have to be written right away, or people cease to be interested. It’s been a while since the home run, now. People are thinking about other things. The Mets. The Mets are neat.

I feel like I have to do it, though. I can’t let it fade away — FanGraphs needs to have a post dedicated to this home run. It was sufficiently incredible that we’d be doing you a disservice by not putting something together. While I know the moment is gone, this is a home run with a longer life, a home run for which you needn’t worry about context. Come with me back to Saturday, August 15. We’re going to watch the Indians and the Twins in Minnesota. We’re going to watch them because, in the fifth inning, there was Eddie Rosario.

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Hello and welcome to a relatively easy post to generate on the other side of a week off. You might already be familiar with the idea, so if that’s the case, then once again, you’re invited to just skip ahead to the table and move on from there, after having interpreted it yourself. You are your own boss; you read however many words you choose.

This is the third post in what I guess is a four-post series. The first one came when the regular season was about one-quarter old. At the very beginning of July, I did this again, when the season was about one-half old. Now the season is about three-quarters old, so we can check in one more time. Which teams have benefited the most from favorable strike zones? Which teams have paid the greatest penalty, on the other hand? If you accept that all the information comes with some error bars, this is simple. Increasingly simple, as I run these numbers more and more.

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