It took a little while to get here, with an unexpected obstacle or two, but we’ve got a six-player trade between the Braves and the Dodgers. The youngest player involved is 26, the average age of the players is about 31, and this year they’ve all combined to be worth -1.2 WAR. Sounds to me like something worth examining in detail.

Going from Atlanta to Los Angeles:

• Alberto Callaspo
• Eric Stults
• Ian Thomas
• Juan Jaime

Going from Los Angeles to Atlanta:

• Juan Uribe
• Chris Withrow

It’s anything but a blockbuster. You could say a lot of these parts were expendable. Uribe lost playing time. Withrow’s still sidelined after surgery. Callaspo was likely to be designated for assignment. Jaime already had been designated for assignment, and cleared waivers. The Braves booted Stults from the starting rotation. Thomas has 16 big-league innings. Most likely, this isn’t a trade that’s going to make any meaningful difference, but if you look at it long enough, you can see components of certain interest. It’s kind of like a statistical Magic Eye puzzle, where the image revealed is very slightly more interesting than the immediate visual appearance of the puzzle itself. OK, good, I think I’m selling this well.

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If you just look selectively at some of the names, it doesn’t seem so bad. So far this year, through a little more than a quarter of the season, Robinson Cano has hit about as well as Matt Kemp. He’s hit a little better than Troy Tulowitzki, and a lot better than Carlos Gonzalez and Chase Utley. Those are all names of proven star players! The problem being, they’re star players who’ve sucked. On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see these names near the bottom of the wRC+ list — it’s a good reminder that struggles can be perfectly normal — but that doesn’t make the struggles themselves any easier to tolerate, and in the case of Cano, his problems are among the factors contributing to the Mariners being a disappointment. It’s not that they’ve wasted a month and a half of Nelson Cruz hitting for Barry Bonds power, but they’ve accomplished less than you’d think.

Because of the team expectations, there’s more pressure than there usually is. Because of the enormity of Cano’s contract, there are more eyes on him than there usually are. And because of Cano’s age, there’s a bit more fear than you’d usually figure. The good news is there’s potentially good news. The bad news is we don’t know what to make of it yet.

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It’s been known for a while that the Reds are in a difficult place. Stuck somewhere between contending and rebuilding, they’ve had good talent — but not enough of it — and it figured they’d have to make some decisions in 2015. There was sense in trying to win — in this wild-card era, it doesn’t take much — but, failing that, tearing down appeared to be the right course. And while it’s not like the outcome has already been determined, the 2015 Reds are coming into focus.

And they’re not great. Nor are they good. And at a few games below .500, it doesn’t seem like this is the year. Odds are, these Reds aren’t going to win the World Series. Now, to be fair, the World Series odds work against every team, and that’s not always a reason to sell off valuable pieces. But, for the Reds, this is Johnny Cueto‘s contract year. Next year is Aroldis Chapman’s contract year. Doesn’t make much sense to keep Cueto if you’re not contending down the stretch. And without Cueto for 2016, it’??s tougher to see Chapman belonging. Contention-wise, the Reds aren’t in a good position. But trade-wise, they’ve got some power.

Since the end of the winter, we’ve been waiting to see where the Phillies might send Cole Hamels. The rest of the trade market has been relatively unclear, because pretty much every other team had better chances of playing competitive baseball than this year’s Phillies. We have heard recently that the Brewers are somewhat open for business. The Rockies seem open to mixing things up, even if those things don’t yet include Troy Tulowitzki. But the Reds could offer two of the premier pieces. Cueto’s as good as almost any other starter. Chapman’s definitely as good as any other reliever. In one course, they could be dealt separately; in another, they could be packaged.

So it leads you to the question: What might the Reds be able to get back for their ace starter and their ace closer?

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

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As far as health is concerned, the Orioles have had something of a middle-infield catastrophe, with injuries to J.J. Hardy, Ryan Flaherty, and Jonathan Schoop. Injuries sometimes force teams to do creative things, and what we saw Buck Showalter do was push Steve Pearce to second base on the fly. Pearce had never played the position before, but Showalter liked his potential over the somewhat defensively-challenged Jimmy Paredes, even though Paredes had experience. That wasn’t the whole story, though: Paredes remained at DH. Showalter said he still wanted to keep that bat in the lineup.

Which is a funny thing to say about a guy who’s been a terrible hitter for most of his big-league career. Granted, it’s not like Paredes has a decade-long track record, but through his first four years, when he batted almost 500 times, his wRC+ ranked right between Yuniesky Betancourt and Freddy Galvis. There are reasons why Paredes was dumped by the Astros, when the Astros couldn’t afford to be liberal with their dumps. Showalter, though, has been a believer. You could say he’s seen some things. And right now, if you sort by wRC+, with at least 100 trips to the plate, Paredes finds himself sandwiched by Paul Goldschmidt and Miguel Cabrera. What those players have in common with Betancourt and Galvis is that they’re players in major-league baseball.

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As I look at things now, Brandon Crawford has been as good a hitter this year as Matt Holliday and Kris Bryant. But, I understand it’s just May. Small samples can turn opposites into comparisons. So, turning to the past calendar year, I see beside Crawford’s name those of Torii Hunter and Aramis Ramirez. By now, it seems evident that Crawford is at least an average hitter or so. He’s showing signs, this year, of being something greater than that.

And maybe that’s something you’ve grown used to. We adapt with remarkable speed. But, try to remember what Crawford was when he was younger. Or, failing that, let me just remind you. In the minors, in Double-A, Crawford managed a .682 OPS. In Triple-A, he was dozens of points worse than that. As a major-league rookie, Crawford didn’t exactly hit like a pitcher, but he hit like one of those people we call a good-hitting pitcher. This was the first paragraph of an article from March 2012:

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Even after a win Tuesday, the Padres stand at a flat 20-20, and there’s talk that manager Bud Black might be on the hot seat given ownership expectations. Curiously, the Padres aren’t letting minor-league coach Pat Murphy talk to the Brewers, and while there’s any number of potential explanations, one could be that the team sees Murphy as a Black replacement. Managers get fired by disappointing baseball teams. The Padres haven’t quite lived up to their preseason hype.

When you get to thinking about why, it’s only natural to consider the team defense. It always looked like it was going to be a potential issue, and the numbers indicate the defense has indeed been a weakness, mostly in the outfield. By Defensive Runs Saved, the Padres have been the fourth-worst defensive team in the league. By UZR, they’re second-worst. Right there, it seems like you can explain the team’s bottom-six ERA. But as it turns out, there’s something else going on. Something that’s hurt the Padres even more than their defense.

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The Miami Marlins have been in the news this week, because they did something that’s at worst kind of stupid, and at best pretty confusing. But the Marlins only did something newsworthy in the first place because the team, overall, has been an early disappointment, and disappointing baseball teams tend to leave a few people jobless. But there’s something else true about even the most disappointing teams: not everything is going wrong. It’s kind of the key to keeping yourself interested — even bad teams have bright spots, promising spots. With this in mind, let’s watch Dee Gordon make a throwing error.

This is from Tuesday’s game. It’s a weird play, but it’s ultimately a play that didn’t go in the Marlins’ favor.

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Perhaps it’s felt to you like it’s been a year of bullpen uncertainty. You wouldn’t be alone. Not only are certain bullpens wildly under- or over-achieving; there’s been a good number of jumbled roles. In some cases, there might not be any clear roles at all. I’m not just making that up. It’s essentially a direct quote:

Banister very clear: There are NO roles in the bullpen at the moment

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) May 17, 2015

There’s been some weirdness in, for example, Los Angeles. The same could be said of Oakland. Also, Toronto. Also, Tampa Bay. And so on and so forth. It feels like things have been unusually unconventional. It feels like perhaps we’re edging ever nearer to the end of the set closer role. That’s one of the oldest subjects in sabermetric commentary.

And there’s reason to think there’s something bigger going on. Consider what’s taken place within the Dodgers organization. The Dodgers have tried to spread around the saves, so that young pitchers grow accustomed to working out of different roles. This way, they teach their pitchers versatility, and everyone’s subjected to every situation. What that seems like is the future of bullpens. And, you wonder, is the future arriving today? Are we seeing different usage patterns at the major-league level?

Not so much. Not in a way that’s easily observable. The closer role is very much alive, and it’s hard to spot any statistical trends.

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Monday afternoon, I participated in an Orioles-centric podcast, where one of the things I was supposed to talk about was Manny Machado. I wrote about Machado a couple of weeks ago, and more specifically, I wrote about him suddenly exercising a lot more patience at the plate. From what we understand about plate-discipline statistics, they find themselves pretty fast. It’s unusual when they move around, so Machado’s change was unusual and worth some attention. He seems to be doing the thing we all want prospects to do, but that they only infrequently pull off.

In advance of the podcast, I thought it would be smart to do a little Orioles research. I know some things about them, but I do not know everything about them, since I’m supposed to keep aware of 30 teams until the passing of the deadline renders a few of them irrelevant. Nobody wants to sound unprepared. I checked in on Machado, to make sure things were still keeping up. I checked in on Steve Pearce, out of offensive and defensive curiosity. And it was while scrolling through pages I noticed something about Adam Jones. Machado, as noted, is showing some weird changes in his plate discipline. Jones is, too, in a different way.

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