The most unhittable arm in the minors is a 24-year-old lefty reliever. Two months ago, he was selected as a player to be named later in a major-league trade swung in February. He’s never made a prospect list of any significance, be it league-wide or organizational, and he doesn’t have any video clips on the official Minor League Baseball website. Whenever we write posts here, we’re supposed to include photos to go out to accompany the tweets, and I had to use a photo of the player from his previous club. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the guy’s last name until this morning.

The most unhittable arm in the minors is Colin Poche. Last year, he led the minor leagues in strikeout rate. This year, he again leads the minor leagues in strikeout rate, having increased his own strikeout rate by a dozen points despite going up against much stiffer competition. When Poche pitched in High-A last year, he struck out 37% of the hitters. In Double-A this year, he struck out 60% of the hitters. In Triple-A this year, he’s struck out 50% of the hitters. All year long, over 41.1 innings, he’s allowed just three runs. He’s allowed an OBP of .185, and he’s allowed a slugging percentage of .184. Colin Poche is turning in one of the most unbelievable performances you might ever see. Better still, it’s not entirely clear how he’s doing it.

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Luis Severino currently ranks second among all major-league pitchers in WAR. He’s third by park-adjusted ERA, he’s first by park-adjusted FIP, and he’s sixth by park-adjusted xFIP, and he’s done this while facing the seventh-toughest average opponent, among everyone with at least 50 innings. There was a time when a lot of the attention was on the development of Severino’s changeup. The changeup is there, and it’s not like Severino is afraid of it, but he’s blossomed into one of the best pitchers in either league largely on the back of his fastball and slider. Two pitches can be all you need, when said pitches are elite.

Just Tuesday, Severino blanked the Phillies over seven innings, whiffing nine without issuing a single walk. In all, 95% of his pitches were fastballs or sliders, and Severino’s 101st pitch clocked in at an even 100 miles per hour. It’s been said before that high velocity affords a pitcher a greater margin of error. That’s true, and part of the story behind Severino’s emergence simply comes down to how hard he can throw. Yet there’s more there, more that underscores how difficult Severino is for hitters. Let’s take a look at how his pitches play off of one another.

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It’s been a strange few months for the Tampa Bay Rays. The front office spent the spring denying accusations they were trying to tank, and even at a half-decent 39-40, the club is nowhere particularly close to the playoff hunt. And yet, if you prefer the BaseRuns standings to the actual ones, the Rays have been a top-ten baseball team, even while playing a difficult schedule. And while injuries and being shorthanded led the Rays toward their “opener” experiment in the middle of May, as a team they’ve allowed the lowest ERA in baseball ever since. They’ve also allowed the lowest wOBA. This is where the Rays have gotten without Brent Honeywell. This is where they’ve gotten without Jose De Leon. Injuries have sidelined Nathan Eovaldi, Chris Archer, Anthony Banda, Jake Faria, and Kevin Kiermaier, among others. A month ago, Denard Span and Alex Colome were traded.

Through one lens, the Rays have been mediocre. They are how they were designed. Through another lens, the Rays have been an inspiring success. One could argue only luck separates them from a wild-card spot. No matter the lens, though, the Rays haven’t been boring. It’s a young club, stocked with talent. The strategy around the starting rotation and the subsequent relievers has been inventive. And on Tuesday, in the ninth inning of a one-run game, manager Kevin Cash played a pitcher at first base. The circumstances weren’t extraordinary. It was done very much on purpose.

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By actual games played, we’re coming up on the halfway point of the season. By now, statisticians might continue to insist that certain data samples remain small, but they generally don’t feel small. We’ve had three months of baseball, everyday baseball, and three more months of everyday baseball remain. This is the middle of the summer routine, the routine where baseball stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction. It’s a comfortable time of year; games are becoming increasingly important, but there’s still ample time to correct mistakes.

We’re always trying to take stabs at the future. We know that baseball will play out however it likes, but we still attempt to guess what’s going to happen. This kind of thinking is what informs a lot of trade-deadline activity. So I’ve been thinking lately about second-half predictions. How can we know what’s going to happen in the standings? First things first: In a sense, we can’t. Baseball has an endless capacity to make the analysts look stupid. But it’s not like we don’t know anything. So I’m returning to a project similar to something I’ve done before.

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Last week, I asked you about ten surprising hitters. These are their names!

• Max Muncy
• Brandon Nimmo
• Mookie Betts
• Matt Davidson
• Eddie Rosario
• Bryce Harper
• Jackie Bradley Jr.
• Giancarlo Stanton
• Dexter Fowler
• Chris Davis

It had been a while since I ran a polling project, so that was the exercise. Five of those players had greatly overachieved, relative to their projections, and five of those players had done the opposite. So what I was looking for was for the FanGraphs audience to collectively project their rest-of-season wRC+ marks. For each player, I provided their current wRC+, their projected rest-of-season wRC+ based on Steamer and ZiPS, and a poll with a bunch of options. In this post, I’ll analyze the results of the polls. Polling projects are nothing without the analysis.

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I don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s true. I know that, as I write this, the A’s are clobbering the Padres. And earlier on Wednesday, the Blue Jays took a one-run game over the Braves. But also, the Reds beat the Tigers. There is plenty of season left to go, and it’s a guarantee that there will be events that surprise all of us, yet for right now, at this moment in time, in interleague play, the National League has a better record than the American League. You can understand why this is notable.

I write a post like this once or twice every season. I mean, not a post like this, but a post that serves as a midseason interleague update. The posts have generally all said the same thing: The AL still looks like it’s the better league. That statement has been true for quite some time. Because there’s still so much baseball left, the AL could end up better in 2018 once again, but I thought I’d give you a snapshot of our present reality. I think we’ve all been waiting for this!

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Shohei Ohtani was supposed to win the American League Rookie of the Year. And, you know, he still might, depending on how he recovers from his injury. His numbers are great, and he deserves a bonus for the degree of difficulty of his job. But Ohtani’s elbow makes me nervous, and I’ve become skeptical about these things. You can’t count on him coming back and looking like himself. And as the award goes, that would open up the door. One prime contender would be Gleyber Torres. Another strong contender would be Miguel Andujar.

And as I look at things, the Yankees might very well run the table. Rookie of the Year voters select three names. Torres or Andujar could finish first. The other could finish second. And Domingo German could finish third. Or, I suppose, second or first, if he had a really good second half. But the point here is that the Yankees have three great and significant rookies. In March, Torres was considered the Yankees’ No. 1 prospect. Andujar was considered their No. 2 prospect. German slotted in at 13th.

A month and a half ago, Travis wrote about German right here. Since then, over 40 innings, German has allowed 28 runs, which is too many. Yet he’s also generated 45 strikeouts, with only a dozen walks. He’s turned in three strong starts in a row, and four times in a row, now, he’s gone at least six innings. I will not be making the point that German is amazing. I will be making the point that he’s probably being underrated. That might just be a consequence of how loaded the Yankees already are.

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For the past week or so, I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing about Justin Miller. Miller is a 31-year-old reliever, and, by the way, he’s pitching for the Nationals. Though he’s allowed runs in each of his last two appearances, he’s faced 43 batters so far, and he’s struck out 22 of them, without one single walk. Miller, last year, was bad in Triple-A for the Angels. Now he looks like he could be one of the more dominant relievers around. It’s too early to go quite that far, but, well, you know how relievers are. They can emerge or decline in the blink of an eye.

It’s possible that, in Miller, the Nationals have found something. He might turn out to be one of the keys to their season. But Mike Rizzo is also no stranger to making midseason bullpen upgrades, and you don’t want to end up counting on Miller to keep up the miracle. And so, Monday, Rizzo has moved to beef up the depth in front of Sean Doolittle. In the current era of baseball, it’s almost impossible to have too many good relievers. The Nationals got a new one from the Royals.

Nationals get:

• Kelvin Herrera

Royals get:

• Kelvin Gutierrez
• Blake Perkins
• Yohanse Morel

I’m not sure there’s anything stunning here. Herrera was very obviously going to be available, as a contract-year closer on a terrible team. The Nationals are in the hunt, and the bullpen in front of Doolittle has sometimes been shaky. The prospect package seems to be light, but rentals generally don’t fetch a blockbuster. Herrera’s strikeout rate is only 23%. What surprises me more than anything is that this happened on June 18. It doesn’t surprise me that the Nationals would want Herrera for five or six extra weeks. It surprises me that, on so early a date, the Royals would settle.

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Been a long time since I ran a polling post. So, this is going to be one of those, where I ask you, the smart audience, to tell me what you think about certain questions. Typically, these polling posts focus on teams. This time around, the focus is on ten specific hitters. These are ten hitters whose performances to this point don’t look very much like their preseason Steamer and ZiPS projections. I’ve selected five significant overachievers, and five significant underachievers. Their names!

• Max Muncy
• Brandon Nimmo
• Mookie Betts
• Matt Davidson
• Eddie Rosario
• Bryce Harper
• Jackie Bradley Jr.
• Giancarlo Stanton
• Dexter Fowler
• Chris Davis

We spend a lot of time writing about players who are in some way defying expectations. Players who might have reached or sunk to a new level. For example, I’ve written about Muncy a couple times lately, and Jay Jaffe recently wrote about Davis. It’s interesting when players don’t do what we think they’re going to do. Rarely, though, do we open things up to audience opinion. You all watch a lot of baseball, and you all are familiar with contemporary analysis. That’s why you’re here. But most of the time, all you get is a comment section. Consider this something like a midseason fan-projection project. How much do you believe in the success of the players above? Are you expecting positive or negative regression, or do you believe some of them have new true talents?

Everything that follows is simple. I’m not going to offer any analysis, beyond each player’s current wRC+, and projected rest-of-season wRC+. All I’m asking for each guy is what you think his wRC+ will be over the remainder of the season. When the results are in, we can see what the community thinks of each of the players. Doesn’t mean anything is conclusive or correct! It’s just nice to get other data points for a change. Thank you in advance for your participation. You don’t have to vote in every poll if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything here if you don’t want to. You wouldn’t believe how completely voluntary this is!

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As a part of their sudden organizational push, the Brewers almost simultaneously acquired both Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain. Yelich is only 26, but Cain is 32, yet when the Brewers gave Cain a five-year free-agent contract, they justified the investment by saying they believed his aging curve would be graceful. The Brewers were believers in Cain’s athleticism and track record, and they didn’t see him as a player likely to fall off a cliff. Every team that signs a free agent is optimistic, of course. But Cain was one of relatively few free agents whose market didn’t crater. In an otherwise challenging winter, he got what he was worth.

To this point, Cain’s been even better than the Brewers might’ve imagined. He’s 11th among position players in WAR. He’s more than halfway to his career high in stolen bases. He leads all major-league center fielders in Defensive Runs Saved, and he leads all major-league center fielders in Ultimate Zone Rating. And Cain is also showing off a new and disciplined approach at the plate. I know it’s early, and there’s plenty of contract to go. But Cain isn’t just avoiding decline — he’s taken steps to improve.

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