The Houston rotation is more than one man, but no one man is more important for the rotation than Dallas Keuchel. Peripherals aside, Keuchel didn’t have the year he wanted to have in 2016, having to fight most of the way through shoulder discomfort. Related to that, Keuchel saw his ERA jump from 2.48 to 4.55. There were downs, and there were ups, but Keuchel and the Astros came in this season looking for a far greater performance. Give the Astros a 2015 version of Keuchel and the rotation would feel plenty more stable.

Three starts in, Keuchel’s allowed a total of two runs. He’s gotten some of his grounders back, and he’s seeing positive results again off of his sinker. It’s fair to wonder, then, whether Keuchel has re-discovered his old form. The reality of it? Not exactly. There’s a similar-looking pitcher here, sure, but Keuchel hasn’t succeeded through the 2015 approach. Rather, he’s gone the full Brad Ziegler.

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Eric Thames is, at present, the major-league leader in wRC+. He’s also the major-league leader in home runs, and he’s the major-league leader in WAR. He’s gone deep in, what, five games in a row? That would be easy enough for me to fact-check, but I don’t want to waste my time checking those facts when Thames might extend his own streak at any moment. He’s homered in many games in a row. Let’s unpack what’s going on.

Literally yesterday, Nick wrote a post here entitled “Eric Thames Is Still Mashing.” That post spoke of Thames’ considerable power. Literally hours ago, Dave wrote a post here entitled “The Even Scarier Eric Thames Stat.” That post spoke of Thames’ seemingly improved ability to make contact. Power? Check! Contact? Check! What’s something that might drive both those things? Right — swinging at the correct pitches. At this writing, Eric Thames has baseball’s third-lowest swing rate at pitches out of the zone.

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Home runs. People love them! And people love them when they happen a bunch. Giancarlo Stanton has, during his career, hit four home runs in a row. Carlos Gonzalez has also hit four home runs in a row. It’s a crazy-good achievement, pulled off only a couple dozen times. There have been about as many such home-run streaks as there have been perfect games. Everyone loves a home-run streak or a perfect game.

Part of the appeal of something like that is the individual-accomplishment aspect. A pitcher can’t be better than perfect, and homering all the time would be the hitter equivalent. But don’t forget about the related matter of scarcity. We all also fall all over ourselves when we see something that never happens. Think about what it means for a baseball event to be rare. And I mean ultra-rare. There is so much baseball, all of the time. Every season involves an unnecessarily large number of baseball games, for even the most forgettable and pointless of rosters. Baseball is nothing but an endless series of repetitions. An endless number of opportunities for strange things to happen. As a consequence, many strange things have already happened, even several times. You’d never expect a perfect game. The overwhelming majority of us have probably watched perfect games, if maybe not all the way through.

Between Sunday and Monday, Josh Harrison batted seven times. The first two times, he grounded out. The seventh time, he grounded out. In between, he was hit, then he was hit, then he was hit, and then he was hit.

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For the Mariners, pitching-wise, 2017 has already been a mixed bag. Drew Smyly showed some extra arm strength in the WBC, but then almost immediately afterward, he experienced arm discomfort that sent him to the disabled list. Yovani Gallardo has shown better stuff, but not better results. Hisashi Iwakuma has shown far worse stuff, and far worse results. Felix Hernandez, though, has gotten himself back to throwing consistent strikes. And then there’s James Paxton. Many have focused on whether Felix would be able to bounce back, but it’s Paxton who’s been the best and most exciting starter for a while.

Last Saturday, against the Rangers, Paxton spun eight frames of shutout baseball, getting all the way up to 114 pitches. Some shutout efforts come as the result of exceptional defense or exceptional fortune, but Paxton threw strike after strike, whiffing nine of 26 opponents. He looked every bit like a rotation ace, and although it can take some time before that label is truly earned, Paxton is making a charge for it. In the early going, he’s made three starts. He’s allowed a run in none of them.

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Remember when we used to write for Fox? A few Septembers ago, I published an article for Fox, titled “The Attempted Reinvention of Elvis Andrus.” At that point, Andrus was not a very good hitter. What he was was a changing hitter, a hitter in progress. There was enough there to get my attention, although we hadn’t yet entered the era where people are constantly talking about swing-changers. Andrus, back then, was a curiosity.

After last night, he’s got three home runs in 2017. Another player with three home runs is Mike Trout. Andrus also has three doubles and a triple, so he’s slugging .800. Those numbers don’t really matter, but when you look at them, you also look at what Andrus pulled off a season ago. There’s no longer just an attempted reinvention. The reinvention is effectively complete. Elvis Andrus is somehow still just 28 years old, and now he’s an offensive threat.

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There’s no shortage of disappointing teams in the early going. The playoff-hopeful Cardinals are 3-6. The playoff-hopeful Rangers are 3-5. The playoff-hopeful Giants are 4-6. Scoot all the way to the bottom of the standings, though, and two teams stand out. The Blue Jays are a terrible 1-7, and Dave just wrote about the decision they could shortly be facing. And the Mariners are a hardly-better 2-8, already multiple games behind every team in the division. Based on the calendar, it remains too early for anyone to panic. Yet no one should doubt that a challenging start can result in significant damage.

It’s not too hard to put a semi-positive spin on things. While the Mariners have wound up losers in eight games, they’ve had a lead at some point in seven. Last night, they lost a game they led 5-0. Over the weekend, they lost a game they led 8-1. Games like that are fluky. A week ago, they lost a game they led in the bottom of the 13th, because they had to use a pitcher who was replacing another pitcher whose wife was having a baby. Tough losses always feel like unfortunate losses. But, they are losses, and they all count just the same. It feels like we just reached the end of spring training, but life comes at you fast.

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How could you know that Aaron Judge is strong? If you have access to Baseball Savant, you could see he’s one of just four players in Statcast’s limited history to hit at least three batted balls in the air at 115+ miles per hour. You could see he ranks tied for fifth in average exit velocity on non-grounders. If you have access to Aaron Judge himself, you could ask him to help you move furniture. The simplest thing is to probably just look at him. Look at him in person. Look at him on TV or on the Internet. He’s strong. Not surprisingly strong, like some world-class little rock climber. Obviously strong, like a man who spends his free time mindlessly juggling crates.

Because of what he is, Judge is capable of extraordinary feats of strength. In that way, he’s similar to Giancarlo Stanton, who once used a home run to destroy part of a scoreboard. When Judge makes perfect contact, with a perfect swing, he can send a baseball farther than almost anyone else. Judge achieved a more subtle feat of strength on Wednesday afternoon. Look at this stupid impossible dinger.

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The Texas Rangers are 2-5, which is not good. Consolation comes in two flavors. One, so early! Who cares! Two, the Mariners are 2-7. The Blue Jays are 1-6. The Cardinals are 2-6, and the Giants are 3-6. Baseball will find its level, and its level will have the Rangers winning at a clip higher than 29%. So, yeah. Still, it’s a fan’s place to overreact to the season’s beginning, and it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder why the Rangers have been so bad. Let’s just take a look at something:

Yeah, that’ll do it. By WPA, Sam Dyson has already been a win worse than the next-worst pitcher. As a matter of fact, according to the best research I could do, Dyson has the lowest WPA on record through a team’s first seven games. It’s a weird stat, but a telling one, and in case you don’t love WPA, let’s go old-fashioned. Dyson’s tied for first (last?) in baseball in runs allowed, while being tied for 138th in batters faced. Bad. Dyson has been a drag, and he was a drag again Tuesday night.

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Chris Sale is great! The Red Sox traded for Chris Sale because he is great. He was great when he was coming off his 2016 season, because that season was pretty great. When it came to Chris Sale, there weren’t any real reasons for worry, aside from his simply being a pitcher, and a team can’t not have pitchers.

That all being said, who’s to say Chris Sale was the best he could be? Who’s to say he couldn’t change some things up from what he did in his last year with Chicago? The White Sox and Sale agreed to a tweak: Sale would try to pitch more efficiently. It’s a fine idea, because if it were to work out, the White Sox would get Sale throwing more innings. That’s better than innings going to anyone else. Sale threw more fastballs, and he threw more strikes, and he was great. Lost some strikeouts, but that was the idea.

When the Red Sox got their hands on Sale, they turned back the clock. That’s what the early evidence shows, anyway. The fastballs? They’re there, but in lesser numbers. Chris Sale is back to being almost impossible to predict.

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