As he celebrates his 24th birthday, it’s worth asking if there’s anything Mike Trout can’t do. In any case, there apparently is one more thing he can do.

It got lost in the haze of the week of the trade deadline, but I want to take you back to a recent Trout performance against the Rangers. Let’s look at a pitch that Nick Martinez threw. The approximate location:

Clearly low, clearly inside (relative to the middle of the plate). Trout swung, and this is where the ball went:

Home run, right field. Now, for a lot of players, it’s enough to hit one home run. I’ve set up what’s going to follow. A full-count pitch later in the same game, thrown by Spencer Patton:

Another pitch in. Another Trout swing. The result:

That, to the opposite side of center field. Twice in one game, Trout went deep. Twice in one game, Trout went deep to what could technically be referred to as the opposite field. Twice in one game, Mike Trout did that on inside pitches. Intuitively, that seems like a hard thing to do. When you think about it, it follows that inside pitches get pulled, and outside pitches get pushed. That is, generally, the way things go, at least when you’re talking about balls hit with authority. But, see, Trout has learned something.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

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Every so often, someone asks where I got my start. My first online conversations about baseball took place on the ESPN message boards, and I’m a Mariners fan, and that was back when the Mariners mattered. Around the turn of the millennium, the Mariners were entering the best era in franchise history. Between 2000 – 2003, the Mariners racked up more regular-season wins than anybody else. They ultimately crashed, and crashed hard, but four strong teams were built. Four competitive teams were built. It was terrific, except for the thing that was missing. In 2003, the Marlins of all teams won that thing. There was much debate over what a fan really wants. Say what you will about the Marlins, but they’ve brought home a couple trophies.

Here, I ask you what some might consider a fundamental question. There’s a poll at the end of this, and I want you to try to answer honestly, as a fan who’s presumably something more than just a casual observer. I’m going to go ahead and update my Mariners and Marlins examples. There are current(ish) teams who can fill the same roles. We’re all more familiar with what’s current!

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Why yes: performance. If you want to argue that Carlos Correa is already baseball’s best shortstop, you can simply point to his performance, and to the performances of the other shortstops. What could be easier? Correa, of course, hasn’t played a full 2015 season, but he has batted a couple hundred times, so let’s look at the numbers and keep them all above a common, 600-plate-appearance denominator. Do that and Correa comes out as a top-10 position player. The closest shortstop, by WAR, is Brandon Crawford, who trails by just about two wins. Whatever you think of the error bars in WAR, two wins per 600 plate appearances is a big margin. The argument, in other words, has decent support.

Why no: projections. Statistics reflect talent, but they can also mislead. It can be better to refer to the projections, as they can be a decent proxy for current estimated true talent. Projections don’t suffer from recency bias. They don’t suffer from hype, and they don’t suffer from any sort of overreactions. Looking at the shortstop depth-chart projections, and putting WAR over 600 plate appearances, Correa is basically tied with Crawford and Jhonny Peralta, a win behind Troy Tulowitzki. Some months ago, Tulowitzki was the unquestioned best shortstop in baseball. How much should we really reconsider, after part of one season?

If you choose to believe Tulowitzki remains the best shortstop, that’s fine. It’s totally justifiable, and Correa still doesn’t have an extended track record. Could have a slump just ahead of him. Could be a bad one. But as absurd as it might sound, Correa really does have an argument of his own. He’s been that good to date, and if you don’t believe he’s better than Tulowitzki yet, it seems only a matter of time until the trend lines intersect. One of them turns 31 in two months. One of them can finally buy his own drink in a month and a half.

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All right, here’s the deal. At the start of the season, everybody cares about schedule strength, but they care only a little bit. At this point in the season, far fewer people care about schedule strength, but they tend to care much much more, since the games are higher leverage than ever for those still in the race. So if you’re someone who cares about schedule strength, boy, do I have the post for you. At least, I have a post for you.

Two graphs follow, one for the American League, and one for the National League. This was actually really easy to put together. If you click on “Standings” above, you end up at this page, and that one has team projections on it. If you go to the Playoff Odds page, though, you see similar but different team projections. That second set adjusts for schedule, so to find a measure of schedule strength, one need only compare the projections on the two pages. It’s so easy you could do it yourself! You can do more than you think yourself.

There’s a key difference between this and what you might read elsewhere about schedule strength. People typically look at the number of games against, say, .500+ opponents. Or they’ll evaluate schedules based on team records so far. This is 100% about projections, so if there are projections you disagree with, that’ll have an effect. So this is kind of a FanGraphs measure, but then this is FanGraphs, so take it with however much salt you like. On the graphs, a positive number means an easier schedule. The bar shows the number of extra wins once you schedule-adjust. Of course, negative means the opposite. We’ll start with the American League, because here, the American League looks boring.

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Madison Bumgarner starts for the Giants today, in Atlanta. That’s good for them, for two reasons. One, it means the Giants get to have Bumgarner pitch. Two, it means the Giants get to have Bumgarner hit. Bumgarner regularly dazzles in batting practice, and that isn’t where his ability is confined — in his most recent start in an NL ballpark, he went deep. Bumgarner was outspoken in his disagreement with Max Scherzer earlier in the year, when Scherzer lobbied for the NL to adopt the designated hitter. Bumgarner, see, takes pride in his slugging, and he wouldn’t want to lose that advantage.

Not that Bumgarner was always much at the plate. As recently as 2013, he was a mess, like pretty much every other pitcher. But then he devoted more attention to the offensive side of things, and his successes have been numerous and remarkable. In honor of Bumgarner’s hitting, then, I’ve put together this poll-post, comparing Bumgarner and Josh Hamilton. Hamilton has obviously been a disappointment since signing his nine-figure contract, but he remains a threat, batting fifth or sixth in a Rangers lineup with a lot of name value. Below, there will be six polls, for six statistics. I’ll show you the high value, and ask you to pick which guy is responsible. Answers are revealed at the end. Good luck!

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When the Nationals picked up Jonathan Papelbon, they weren’t doing so to replace Drew Storen, but they knew they’d be giving him a demotion. It didn’t sit real well with Storen, nor did it sit well with a large number of fans, who wondered what Storen did to deserve getting booted from the closer role. Storen is in the middle of probably the best season of his career, with a strikeout rate that’s skyrocketed from last year’s one in five hitters to this year’s one in three. Storen has become a real shutdown reliever, and you generally don’t see those guys losing responsibilities.

But it is possible for Storen and Papelbon to share the later innings. Provided they get along, having both ought to be better than having one or the other, and Papelbon, for his part, was quickly impressed by the younger righty. A tweet that went around:

Jonathan Papelbon: “I was in the shower with Storen, I said ‘can you show me that slider grip tomorrow?’ He was really, really good.”

— Chris Johnson (@masnCJ) July 30, 2015

That slider — we should talk about that slider. Drew Storen has long thrown a slider, but his slider this year is behaving differently, and while you can’t simply chalk his entire improvement up to a tweak of one pitch, it seems to be a major component. Now, some weeks back, Owen already discussed a bit of what was going on. He highlighted some of the changes, and pointed out how successful the pitch is. So, Owen wrote about why the pitch is notable. I want to tell you why it might look familiar.

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Watching the Mets and the Nationals Sunday night on ESPN, there was a lot of talk about momentum. Momentum that the Mets seem to have, which has allowed them to catch and overtake their heavily-favored rival. It’s an easy thing to say, and an easy thing to believe, but then, right before the Mets caught fire, you could argue they bottomed out. They lost to the Padres, they had the whole Carlos Gomez fiasco, and then they lost to the Padres much much worse. The Mets right now are at a local maximum. Immediately preceding this, they had crashed to a low point.

There are some parallels between the Mets as a whole and their own Lucas Duda. Overall this season, Duda’s been pretty good. Over the last week and a half or so, Duda’s been the very hottest hitter in baseball. But from the start of June through July 24, Duda slugged .275. He then ripped off a stretch of nine homers in eight games. The timelines aren’t the same, but, Duda, like the Mets, bottomed out, and then reversed course in an instant. Duda flipped his own momentum, and in so doing, he wound up bashing an anomalous dinger.

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We know that the Tigers aren’t pleased to have wound up in this position. They’ve been one of baseball’s most win-now organizations in recent years, and nothing about the 2015 roster construction really conveyed an impression of “building for the future!” Rather, there’s been concern that the Tigers are headed for a cliff, on account of all the money they have tied up in declining players. And when that’s what the future looks like, you at least hope that you can win soon. This year, the winning hasn’t happened. The Tigers had to acknowledge their situation, and sell. There’s no way that was an easy call for them to make.

There is a silver lining, though, one other than simply understanding that sports are frivolous entertainment and there are far more important things in the world. That’s the steady and constant silver lining in the background. There’s a particular silver lining to the Tigers having dealt David Price to the Blue Jays. If the Tigers had their wish, they would’ve given the ball to Price in Game 1 of the ALDS. They got him for two years for a reason. But the return package the Tigers got from the Blue Jays is strong. The group, headed by Daniel Norris, instantly helps the Tigers’ system, and the return seems at least equivalent to what the Tigers gave to get Price in the first place. Which was a year ago, when Price was available for two playoff runs, not one.

Put it another way: Dave Dombrowski traded for Price. Price helped the 2014 Tigers win the AL Central by one game, and then he pitched in the playoffs. Granted, the Tigers got swept, but they got to use Price for their opportunity. Then they had Price for another four months. Now he’s been traded, for a strong group of young players. Even though Price himself has lost some value, given his imminent free agency, it looks like the Tigers managed to turn a profit here, overall.

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Here’s a trade that’s as much about a trade that didn’t happen as it is about itself. Yeah, it’s independently interesting that the Brewers traded Carlos Gomez to the Astros. It’s made all the more interesting by the fact that the Brewers also traded Carlos Gomez to the Mets, except that they didn’t, officially. The Mets, as you’re probably aware, claim they didn’t like Gomez’s medicals. Gomez and the Brewers said there’s nothing wrong in there. The Astros evidently didn’t see enough to convince themselves Gomez isn’t worth a barrel of prospects. So now it’s basically about the Astros’ evaluation vs. the Mets’ evaluation, and it was the Astros who freaked out about Brady Aiken.

Could be, it wasn’t actually about health. Maybe the Mets didn’t want to take on money, and we’ll see if they do anything else before Friday afternoon. Could be, also, there are just valid differences of opinion, since passing a physical isn’t always black and white. A few offseasons ago, Grant Balfour passed a Rays physical after failing the Orioles’ version. Teams look at things differently. I don’t know how right or wrong the Mets really are.

Here’s what I do know: another team in the race has determined Gomez should be able to help them. That team is paying a lot for the privilege. For the Mets, Gomez could’ve solved two problems. Instead, he’ll try to solve problems for the Astros, and honestly, this package is probably a better one for the Brewers, too, compared to Zack Wheeler and Wilmer Flores. The Brewers had a trade fall through, and then they made a better one. I don’t mean to make this about the Mets, but they’re the most fascinating party in all of it.

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