At some point, there was going to be a correction. Pitchers have been taught forever to work off their fastballs. If not for the fastballs, after all, to what would the other pitches be compared? The fastball has always been the primary pitch, and yet it was something of an unexamined position. How many fastballs are too many fastballs? How few fastballs are too few fastballs? Do you actually need to throw fastballs the majority of the time?

This is the age of information, so this is the age of experimentation. Just the other day, Trevor Bauer was critical of Avisail Garcia’s expectation of a fastball. Tom Verducci wrote up a whole feature earlier in the year about the Yankees’ fastball avoidance. One thing we know is that the fastball rate is going down.

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Even just a couple months ago, Justin Verlander was a name. He was a name with a contract and diminished results, and his desirability on the market was low. Teams were interested in him, for sure — teams would always be interested in someone with Verlander’s background. Yet his performance wasn’t matching up with his cost, and so it didn’t seem like a trade would be likely. The Tigers didn’t want to give their legend away, yet contenders didn’t want to pay for someone whose best days were long gone.

Ultimately, Verlander did get traded. The Tigers, admittedly, paid him down, but the Astros picked up the bulk of the money, and they even gave up three legitimate prospects. The Astros paid for Verlander as if Verlander were an ace again. And for the past several weeks, Verlander has resembled an ace. He made his debut for Houston on Tuesday, and he allowed one run over six innings. Verlander’s gotten back to looking like one of the best in the world. So, what changed? What convinced the Astros to pay what they did? Outside of their own pitching issues, I mean. Verlander, it won’t surprise you, has made a couple tweaks.

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The Yankees bullpen is short on neither talent nor name value. Most baseball fans are aware of Aroldis Chapman, even if they’re not aware that he’s been in a funk. Likewise, many baseball fans are aware of Dellin Betances, and they’ve generally heard of David Robertson, who this year has re-emerged as terrific. To make the unit all the more deep, the Yankees acquired Tommy Kahnle, one of the year’s big bullpen breakout stories. Kahnle has struck out 38% of his opponents, ranking him seventh in baseball among regular or semi-regular relievers.

Kahnle, in the breakout sense, is a surprise. He finally has the results to go with the powerful stuff. And yet Kahnle may play second fiddle in here, because of another development. The highest strikeout rate for any reliever belongs to Craig Kimbrel. Well, sure. In second place, we find Kenley Jansen. Yes, of course. The name in third place reads “Chad Green.” And he’s up around 60 innings, so this isn’t just a hot week or month. Green has piled up the strikeouts, and as a consequence, he ranks seventh among all relievers in WAR. Chad Green made his season debut on May 9.

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Yesterday, the Diamondbacks throttled the best team in baseball, winning by 13 runs. Last Thursday, they beat the same team by seven runs. Wednesday, they beat them by two; Tuesday, they beat them by one. Before that series, the Diamondbacks swept the Giants, and took three of four from the Mets. Between the last two series against the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks swept the Rockies, and they did so on the road. In all, the Diamondbacks have won 11 in a row, and 13 of 14. A playoff position that was once in some doubt has now been effectively sealed.

It’s certainly true that the Diamondbacks aren’t this good. No team is this good, because no team has ever been this good, because no team could ever be this good. Every team looks perfect when it’s riding a winning streak, and winning streaks end. Heck, from June 28 until the start of this run, the Diamondbacks went 17-29. That’s bad! But that’s why you always need to look at the bigger picture. The Diamondbacks have baseball’s fifth-best winning percentage. They have baseball’s sixth-best BaseRuns estimated winning percentage. This team is good, and better than it was expected to be. Let’s think about that for a few minutes.

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Two things are simultaneously true about the American League wild-card race. One, none of the teams, outside of the Yankees, are particularly good. Even the Yankees have their own flaws, but the rest of the teams in the mix are even weaker. One could argue whether any of them will deserve to be playoff teams at all. Two, there will be playoff teams. There will be, probably, the Yankees and someone else. No matter what you might think about team quality, playoff positions are at stake, and a playoff spot, for any club, holds considerable value. We don’t actually know how the playoffs will ever go. The biggest thing is just making it there. Plenty of AL teams are trying to make it there.

It’s with this year’s playoff race in mind that we’ve got the following trade:

Angels get

• Justin Upton
• moderate 2017 salary relief

Tigers get

• Grayson Long
• a player to be named later

The Angels are not a good baseball team, relative to other baseball teams. However, they don’t need to be good — rather, they just need to be good enough. Upton could well make them good enough, and because this trade was made official today, Upton, of course, would be eligible for the playoff roster. Upton’s contract does have another four years, but this trade is very much about today, tomorrow, and the weeks a little after that.

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The Orioles won again on Wednesday, continuing their surge back into the wild-card race. In the bottom of the fifth inning, Jonathan Schoop knocked a game-tying first-pitch homer against the admittedly homer-prone Ariel Miranda. Later on, in the bottom of the eighth, Schoop laced a tie-breaking first-pitch single against Marc Rzepczynski. Schoop was only one of the Orioles’ heroes, but they presumably wouldn’t have won without him.

As the Orioles have shaken off their slump, observers around the league have begun to notice. It was only weeks ago one wondered whether the team might elect to sell off Zach Britton, and more. There was even a little chatter about a trade of Manny Machado. The club now has three more wins than losses, and Machado’s drawn praise for his big second half. Dylan Bundy, too, is getting the spotlight treatment for his possible August breakout. Even Kevin Gausman has received plaudits for turning his season around. But you know who leads the 2017 Orioles in overall WAR? It’s Schoop, and it’s Schoop by the better part of a win. While Machado is still the best player on the roster, Schoop’s own progress shouldn’t be overlooked.

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Think about the teams in the American League wild-card race. Focus on the teams gunning for the second position. Focus further still, on their various starting rotations. They’re bad! They’re pretty much all bad. Or, if “bad” feels too cruel, we could go with “lacking.” All of them are lacking. I don’t know if the Orioles have the worst rotation in the group, but they’ve received maybe the most notice for being so thin. It’s not like it hasn’t been deserved.

Chris Tillman was supposed to be good, and his season’s been a nightmare. Ubaldo Jimenez wasn’t supposed to be nearly as good, but his season has also been terrible. Kevin Gausman has yet to make that leap people always figure he’s on the verge of making. The Orioles traded for Jeremy Hellickson when his strikeout rate was under 14%. There’s been so little, for so many months. The Orioles are in the race despite their rotation, not because of it. They’ve just been waiting for someone, anyone, to step up.

And now, Dylan Bundy is stepping up. Of the Orioles’ rotation value over the past several weeks, Bundy has accounted for almost all of it. I don’t think a pitcher can become an ace in the matter of one month. But if one could, that month would look a lot like Bundy’s August.

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For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, let me set the scene real quick. The Mariners are involved in that big giant fight for the AL’s second wild-card position. None of the teams in the picture are actually good, but all anyone will need is one more win than the rest of the pack. At that point, the playoffs will beckon, and, who knows? So that’s part of it. The other part is that the Mariners’ rotation was supposed to include James Paxton, Felix Hernandez, Drew Smyly, and Hisashi Iwakuma. Right now the rotation includes none of them. On the year, the Mariners’ rotation ranks 28th in baseball in WAR. Over the past month, they’re dead last, a few hairs below replacement. What do you do when you have a rotation that’s bad? One of the things you can do, I suppose, is acquire Mike Leake.

In part because of Luke Weaver, Leake became expendable in St. Louis. He remains under contract through 2020. Here are the details of the swap:

Mariners get

• Mike Leake
• $0.75 million in international bonus space
• About $17 million in salary relief (via Ken Rosenthal)

Cardinals get

• Rayder Ascanio
• Relief from the rest of Leake’s contract

The Mariners have added yet another back-end starter. At least this one is a little different from the others.

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There’s so much to like about Yasiel Puig, and the season he’s having in 2017. He has a career-high rate of walks, and a career-low rate of strikeouts. He has a career-high isolated power, and he also has a career-high 12 stolen bases. He’s remained, for the most part, totally healthy, even on a team that makes liberal use of the disabled list, and Puig’s even got easy career-best marks in both defensive runs saved and UZR. In so many different ways, Puig’s game is looking more polished. Yet his WAR is simply a hair over 2.

There’s only one thing that has held back that number. I mean, all right, sure, Puig could stand to have a higher BABIP. He’d look better if he gathered some missing singles. But there’s just one area where Puig doesn’t look good. If you know how WAR is calculated, you’re probably one step ahead, but I should issue some quick background context. Some numbers around these parts have changed.

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