Mike Trout has been baseball’s best and most dominant player since 2012, so a little earlier this year, when he encountered something of a slump, it was a newsworthy event. Trout seemed almost perfect in all things, so it raised more than a few eyebrows when he started striking out fairly often. Before Trout, there was no Trout, but between 2009 – 2011, no one accumulated more WAR than Evan Longoria. He was perhaps baseball’s best young player, and it’s not like he fell off a cliff after that; Trout was just better. But Longoria was an awesome young superstar, and he, too, seemed impervious to trouble. It would’ve been hard to imagine Longoria going through hard times.

Yet here we are now, and Longoria’s hit some hard times. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, it’s been partially masked by the whole Rays team dropping out of the race, and it’s not like Longoria’s been bad, but something’s been missing, something of great importance. He’s still just 28, so it’s probably too soon to talk about a decline, but to this point Longoria’s been without his greatest strength. And it’s a mystery as to why that is.

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Right or wrong, coming into the season we made an assumption around here: the Tigers were the favorites in the AL Central. More than that, the Tigers were the hands-down favorites in the AL Central, and they looked to have a pretty clear path to the postseason. At the start of the year, they were given a 61% chance to win the division, and as of this writing they’re alone in first place, five losses better than the second-place Royals. They’re on pace to finish with seven more wins than the next-best team, so in that regard, what was expected is coming true. Though the gaps aren’t yet large, we’re barely a third of the way through the schedule.

But, of course, the Tigers have been floundering, which hasn’t gone unnoticed. And you can notice something interesting on our Playoff Odds pages. On one page, we have projected standings using blending ZiPS and Steamer inputs. On another page, we have projected standings using season-to-date stats as inputs. There comes a certain time at which it might become preferable to use the most current data, and as far as the Tigers are concerned, the two different pages will tell you two different things.

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Whenever a player or team perform exceptionally well, a common question we get in our chats is, “is this the real player/team?” Usually, the answer is no — a hot streak is a hot streak, a fluke level of performance above the norm. Every so often, though, the outlook’s a little fuzzier, especially when it comes to individual players who might be having a breakout. Yet in the case of the Nationals’ rotation, we can declare unequivocally that no, this is not the real them. The Nationals’ starting rotation is good. Over 51.2 innings, between June 3 and June 10, Nationals starters didn’t walk a single batter.

And they struck out 51 batters. According to Adam Kilgore, that hadn’t happened in at least a century. We can say with certainty that the Nationals’ starters aren’t this good because, over that span, they posted a 1.66 FIP, putting them somewhere between Craig Kimbrel and peak Pedro Martinez. They achieved a strikeout-to-walk ratio of #UNDEFINED, and a K% – BB% of their K%. The Nationals’ rotation, without question, overachieved, but everyone who’s ever thrown a perfect game has overachieved, and those perfect games have drawn an awful lot of words. So the Nationals deserve some words of their own, before this streak is forgotten.

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We take Mike Trout for granted. It’s not a thing that’s unique to Mike Trout. We take all consistently great baseball players for granted. We take all consistently great anythings for granted. That’s why we’re always trying to figure out the next big thing — it doesn’t take long to get used to the current big thing. Mike Trout, right now, beats the hell out of Gregory Polanco, but Polanco might be of greater current interest, because he’s fresh and he could become a star. Trout’s already been a star for years. This is just part of having a human brain — we acclimate. We’re incredible at it. It has its upsides.

Once you start taking a player for granted, though, it’s that much more difficult to really appreciate what the player’s able to do. The best players aren’t guys regularly doing amazing things — the best players are guys regularly doing good things, some percentage more often than the inferior players. Usually those are standard good things. We get to the point where, in order to feel an appreciation, we need something extraordinary. So let’s seize a chance. Feel like you’ve been taking Mike Trout for granted? You’re not alone. Let’s watch him do something extraordinary, to remember that he is extraordinary.

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The surprising part wasn’t that Kendrys Morales signed immediately after he was no longer tied to compensation. The surprising part was that Kendrys Morales signed with the Minnesota Twins, instead of any of the more obvious possibilities. When Morales signed, the Twins were 29-31, and they fancy themselves a surprising potential contender, which tells you something about where the expectations were set a few months ago. The Twins got Morales for about $7.6 million and four months, and the organizational quotes you hear are full of optimism and positivity.

A rundown, courtesy of Rhett Bollinger:

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Friday night, the A’s were playing the Orioles in Baltimore, and it was tied up in the bottom of the tenth when Adam Jones singled with Nick Markakis on second. Markakis rounded third and tried to score, but Brandon Moss managed to throw him out, Derek Norris applying the tag a millisecond before Markakis swept the plate. The Orioles challenged the ruling, and one of the broadcasters noted that Markakis didn’t really respond negatively to the call, implying he didn’t think he was safe. The ruling was upheld, the inning ended with Nelson Cruz getting thrown out trying to straight-up steal home, and the A’s subsequently won in the 11th. As close as the Orioles came, they could only reflect on missed opportunities.

Intuitively, it makes sense that players would respond more emphatically if they felt like they were wronged by a call. It follows that player response might be a worthwhile indicator of eventual replay-review outcome. Sometimes, plays are challenged after a potentially wronged player reacts demonstratively. Sometimes, plays are challenged after a potentially wronged player doesn’t do that. Is there anything we can learn from what we’ve seen to date? Let’s find out, using the phenomenal Baseball Savant Instant Replay Database.

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The last factoid I can recall off the top of my head is that there were about three times as many infield shifts in 2013 as there were in 2011. And, in 2014, there have only been more shifts still. The shift, of course, has existed in some form for decades, but I don’t need to overwhelm you with a bunch of specific numbers — it’s common knowledge, at this point, that defensive shifts are in. More teams are doing it than ever, and more teams are doing it more than ever. It’s a part of the game, and it’s gotten to the point at which a shifted alignment isn’t even thought unusual. When the Astros got mad at Jed Lowrie for bunting that one time, part of my defense for Lowrie was that the Astros shifted him, so he should be permitted to use strategy back. Yet the more I thought about it, was shifting a strategic ploy for the Astros, or was it just the Astros playing 21st-century baseball?

But, to cut right to the point, I want to show you a couple graphs. The data comes from Baseball-Reference, and while they don’t split their fields in even thirds, the Play Index does allow one to select balls pulled, balls hit up the middle, and balls hit the other way. I’m showing data only from 2011 onward, because it appears that something changed between 2010 and 2011 that had more to do with the record-keepers than the game itself. Anyway let’s just get to the images.

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Take a quick glance and you might not be particularly encouraged by what Clayton Kershaw has done since returning from the disabled list.

There’s nothing wrong with a 3.32 ERA, but Kershaw hasn’t finished with an ERA that high since he was a rookie. You’d be tempted to think Kershaw’s under-performance is one of the reasons the Dodgers are looking up at the Giants in the standings.

But we can go deeper than this. For one thing, it’s worth acknowledging Kershaw’s one disastrous start against the Diamondbacks. This is bad analysis, but if you forgive Kershaw for a bad day, his ERA drops from 3.32 to 1.94. He’s been outstanding, except for once.

And we don’t even need to mess around with ERA anyway, since we have more meaningful numbers at our disposal. If you believe what the numbers are saying, Clayton Kershaw might’ve somehow improved. It all comes out of the following foundation: the very best pitchers get strikeouts, limit walks, and limit homers. In order to limit homers, it’s preferable to limit fly balls.

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Hey there, everybody. welcome to the second part of the year’s second edition of The Worst Of The Best. Right here is the first part, concentrating on really terrible pitches. And here’s a link to the complete series archive. Now, the big story is Thursday marked the beginning of the 2014 Major League Baseball amateur draft, which is also referred to by other terms.

The draft is one of the most critical events for an organization, and when evaluating drafts, a common measure is whether a given drafted player made it to the major leagues. Keep in mind that all of the players you see below made it to the major leagues — and some of them attempted terrible swings. There are major leaguers and there are successful draft picks, and while there is overlap it’s hardly complete. Drafting is difficult and baseball is difficult.

In this post we entertain ourselves with the wildest swings attempted in May. Featured is going to be a top-five list, and then we’ll also whip through a next-five list just so you know who almost earned several paragraphs of critical commentary. It’s all PITCHf/x and I specifically exclude checked swings and swings on attempted hit-and-runs. This is how it has always been, although in this particular instance there’s something of a gray area. We’ll get to in a while. You’ll look at the swings at the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone, and that’s the methodology until someone comes up with something better than that. Something that can be researched without watching every swing of every game. I like baseball, but I don’t like that much baseball. I like pepperoni sticks, but I don’t want everything I eat to be a pepperoni stick. I’d die. I’d die in agony. Basically, this is what we’ve got, so let’s just get into this thing.

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