If the baseball season ended today, an awful lot of people would be awfully confused, and the Seattle Mariners would qualify for the playoffs. There’s no bigger reason for the Mariners’ success than Felix Hernandez, and there’s no bigger reason for Felix Hernandez’s success than his changeup. Felix featured his change as the American League’s starting pitcher in Tuesday’s All-Star Game, and here’s that pitch putting away Yasiel Puig:

Here’s that pitch putting away Troy Tulowitzki:

Good hitters, both of those. Good pitches, both of those. By this point Felix is a household name, and it’s no secret that he offers a dominant changeup, or cambio. He’s been throwing the pitch for years, for almost exactly as long as he’s been a Cy Young contender.

But sometimes it isn’t enough to just know something. With Felix pitching as well as he ever has, it seems like a good time to get more familiar with the best pitch he throws, that’s also one of the best pitches in the league. Let’s review some facts about the Felix Hernandez changeup.

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The Dodgers’ outfield situation might be more complicated than ever. Yasiel Puig is one of the league’s better young players, you’re all familiar with the three expensive veterans, Scott Van Slyke is a better player than even the Dodgers might’ve recognized, and Joc Pederson is hanging out in Triple-A with a four-digit OPS. It’s pretty obvious that some bodies are going to have to be moved, and one trade possibility is Matt Kemp. Kemp was the subject of rumors over the offseason, and those rumors haven’t gone away now that Kemp’s on the field and getting kind of squeezed out. The idea is he isn’t yet 30, and he’s an athlete who can be a source of right-handed power. If the Dodgers were to cover some of Kemp’s remaining contract, they would be able to find a destination.

On paper, Kemp is a two-time winner of a Gold Glove. Yet one of the problems here is that Kemp doesn’t appear to be a good defender. He’s been moved away from center field by a team without a true center fielder, and Kemp’s reduced mobility reduces the value he can provide, to the Dodgers or to someone else. Worse, Kemp isn’t accepting the aging process. From a newsy article Wednesday, by Ken Rosenthal:

The outfielder’s agent, former major-league pitcher Dave Stewart, told FOX Sports on Wednesday that Kemp again wants to be an everyday center fielder, something that isn’t in his immediate future with the Dodgers.

“Whatever they want to do we’re favorable to, as long as it gives him an opportunity to play every day,” Stewart said. “He’d like to eventually go back to center field. He’s not opposed to right or left. But his hope at some point is to get back to center.”

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In one sense, baseball’s most extraordinary pitcher right now might be Clayton Kershaw. He’s generating results that put even Cy Young-winning Clayton Kershaw to shame, to the point where he’s starting to make people reflect upon career-prime Pedro Martinez. Career-prime Pedro Martinez sets an impossibly high bar, but Kershaw’s trying his damnedest to get there, and it’s a pleasure for everybody that isn’t a baseball player tasked with the responsibility of opposing Clayton Kershaw. He’s doing what he can to be the perfect starting pitcher.

But we can attack the term “extraordinary” in a variety of different ways. Kershaw might be the most extraordinary pitcher by results, but what about the related but different matter of style? Who are baseball’s most unusual pitchers, in the way they go about their business? That’s the question I set out to answer, following a fairly simple and user-friendly process.

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Based on the chats that we host, these things seem to go in waves. This past spring training, it felt like one of every two questions asked about teams trading for Nick Franklin. Once the season got underway, everybody was wondering when the Pirates would finally call up Gregory Polanco. And now there’s a new and different question of the moment: what are the Cubs going to do with all of their prospects? The situation appeared to be a little bit crowded even before the organization added Addison Russell and, less notably, Billy McKinney. Now there are people wondering when the Cubs are going to diversify.

I’ve dealt with this in a few consecutive chats. I think Dave has also done the same. But it seems like a topic worthy of a dedicated post. If all the players were to stay where they are, and if they all were to develop well, then the Cubs would have quite the crowd on their hands. At the moment, though, it’s a crowd that doesn’t exist. It’s a crowd that exists only in theory, in some possible future out of infinite possible futures, and therefore the Cubs aren’t facing any kind of urgency.

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Something I assume the Rays understand: From here on out, they project to be perhaps the best team in the American League East. Something else I assume the Rays understand: They’ve dug themselves into too deep a hole, so this year the playoffs presumably aren’t in the cards. And that’s why we’re probably going to see the Rays trade David Price within the next couple weeks. He can help them only so much in 2014, he’ll be difficult for them to afford in 2015 and pieces received in return could replenish what’s become an emptier system than usual. This is how the Rays do the Rays. Price’s status is no kind of secret.

Given how good Price is — and given how many teams consider themselves to be in the playoff hunt — the lefty has a number of potential suitors. Price is the premier impact player available, so no one out there can shift the balance like he can. He might be worth 2 WAR in the final two-and-a-half months; then there’s the playoff bonus, to say nothing of 2015. It’s pretty easy to plug in numbers and see how Price could improve any rotation. But how do those improvements translate to changes in the odds?

Another way of asking the same question: Who might stand to benefit the most — in 2014 — from acquiring a guy like David Price?

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As I see it, there are three ways to determine which is better, between the American League and the National League. Those ways:

• The hard way
• The easy way
• The easiest way

The easiest way is to just pick one and stand by it. Think the National League’s better? Declare as much and refuse to give any ground, no matter the evidence. You have made your determination!

That leaves two ways to do this with actual math. The more complicated way is to look at the performances of players who’ve switched leagues, and compare those performances to expected performances. That’ll get you somewhere, but that’ll also cost you a good amount of time, most probably. Thankfully, there’s an easier way that works just fine. Want to know which league is better? Look at how each league has performed against the other league! This is the 18th year of interleague play. It’s as old as Brady Aiken. It’s not new anymore — it’s old enough to join the army — and we can make use of the data it provides.

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Used to be I’d refer to these as the worst called balls, or something. But I feel like that puts too much of the blame on the umpire. Which isn’t to say the umpire doesn’t deserve blame, because of course he does, but when an obvious strike gets called a ball, it tends to be due to a number of things, involving a number of people. I’m not here to umpire-shame. I just want to show off some called balls on pitches thrown basically down the heart of the strike zone, because it’s a fun thing to look at while baseball takes a little vacation.

According to Baseball Savant, in 2009, there were 111 balls on pitches middle-middle. Here are the year-by-year rates, calculated as balls / all pitches taken down the gut:

2009: 1.01%
2010: 0.37%
2011: 0.28%
2012: 0.34%
2013: 0.27%
2014: 0.25%

In a sense, 2014 is showing overall improvement. But 0.25% isn’t 0.00%, and pulling up balls on pitches in the middle third yields 15 different instances. Whenever anything is controlled by human observation, there are going to be mistakes, and when there are mistakes, there are going to be worse mistakes. Standard deviations, and everything. Out of those 15 different instances of pitches down the middle being called balls, here are the top five strike-iest since the start of this regular season.

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Welcome to the time of year where it’s all about fractions. If the regular season were a game, we’d be at the start of the sixth inning, and the leverage is beginning to climb, making everything more important. Your team’s in the race and you want it to make a trade. Maybe the deal projects to add half a WAR over the course of the remainder. What’s the value of a win on the free-agent market, $7 million? And wins are more valuable in high-leverage positions on the win curve, right? A half-WAR improvement might be worth five or ten million dollars. That’s a lot of dollars! For many of the teams in baseball now, runs are more important than they would’ve been in April.

People care now about every last little detail. You never know which detail might end up determining which teams do and don’t make the playoffs. Among the details to care about: strength of schedule. Schedules, as everyone knows, are unbalanced. So some teams might have easier schedules than others. Now that we’re at the All-Star break, who’s looking at a schedule advantage, and who’s looking at a schedule disadvantage? Not a single race has been decided, so opponent identity will be some kind of factor in how the rest of the season plays out.

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Thursday was a rough day for baseball on the injury front. For Cincinnati, Brandon Phillips was diagnosed with a thumb injury that’ll knock him out a month and a half. For New York, Masahiro Tanaka was diagnosed with an elbow injury that’ll knock him out at least a month and a half. And for St. Louis, Yadier Molina was diagnosed with a thumb injury that’ll knock him out for 8 to 12 weeks. All of these teams, of course, are trying to make the playoffs, and all of these players, of course, are important.

The commonality: significant injuries. Upon deeper investigation, though, the injuries have different meanings. The Reds should be able to survive without Phillips, who’s no longer a star. The Yankees could be devastated without Tanaka, who’s all but irreplaceable and who might still eventually need Tommy John surgery. And the Cardinals should be able to survive without Molina, even though he is still a star, unlike Phillips. Other than Adam Wainwright, Molina’s the most valuable player on that ballclub, but even still, the Cardinals aren’t in a terrible situation.

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