News broke earlier that the Pirates agreed to a three-year contract extension with Francisco Cervelli. It’s an easy enough story to analyze in isolation, but to really add depth, you can compare and contrast Cervelli and Russell Martin, who was Cervelli’s predecessor. When Martin left the Pirates, it seemed like it ought to have delivered a massive blow, but if anything Cervelli has been the superior catcher since. This year in particular, they’ve shot off in completely opposite directions.

Cervelli’s not someone who’ll hit for power, but in 2016 he’s reached base nearly 40% of the time. And the defense is there, so the Pirates are pleased. The Blue Jays like Martin, and there’s no question he’s one of their leaders, but — well, maybe you haven’t noticed this. I don’t know which things you have noticed. Russell Martin has been one of the worst hitters in baseball. Like, worse than you’d believe. Did you know Erick Aybar has a wRC+ of literally 7? That’s a 7, where a 100 would be average. Martin’s all the way up at 11. The next-worst mark: teammate Ryan Goins, at 22. The Blue Jays don’t have a good record yet, and while that’s because of a number of things, Martin has been horrible. He’s made it tough to be successful around him.

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We’re back, with another one of these! Previous community polling topics have included front offices, ownerships, pitching coaches, general enthusiasm, and so on. Now I’m here to ask you about team chemistry. You know, that thing that’s impossible to measure, that thing that continues to be debated as if nothing has ever been settled, because nothing has ever been settled. That thing that exists — or doesn’t exist — mostly within a community that does not include yourself, because you yourself are not a major-league baseball player. How does your favorite baseball team get along? You don’t know. How do you think your favorite baseball team gets along?

I don’t know why I’m asking this now, exactly. It’s just coming out of curiosity, and I wouldn’t be any less curious tomorrow, or a week from now. But the timing, I suppose, isn’t bad — we’re deep enough into the season that teams should have personalities, but we’re not so deep everything will just be colored by wins and losses. Braves and Twins aside, everyone still gets to think they have a chance, so nothing has totally gone off the rails.

I do know I’ve been reading the Ben Lindbergh/Sam Miller book, and they’ve discussed chemistry prioritization and observation. I also read this post by Kate Preusser last week, and while that was specifically about the Mariners, it must’ve cemented the topic in my mind. I don’t want to talk about any particular team up front because I don’t want to bias any of the voting down below. But for something that gets talked about so often, I’m a little surprised we haven’t tried this before.

Don’t get me wrong — none of us actually know anything about team chemistry, for sure. I don’t think there’s even an agreed-upon definition. But we do get to observe how players interact, some of the time, and we get to read about more. So I think fans can get a certain sense of how the roster fits together. Whether there’s adequate leadership, whether there’s adequate support, whether there’s adequate interaction between all groups. What idea do you have about your favorite baseball team? Your idea might be wrong, but you might’ve also been wrong about the pitching coach, and I doubt that stopped you from voting back whenever that poll post went up. I’m just hunting for informed opinions. There’s information within informed opinions.

What I love about these poll posts is that they allow us to establish a context. Instead of saying, oh, this team seems to get along, or this team seems unhappy, we have an average, we have comparisons. It’s only by seeing the whole landscape that you can try to identify the standouts. This is why I could use your help! I sure as shoot couldn’t generate this data by myself. I need help from the community, so I can come back and analyze the voting a day or three from now.

You probably have a favorite team, or a couple favorite teams. You probably have some kind of mental definition of team chemistry. How good do you think is the chemistry of your favorite team? We can probably learn something from this. Even if we can’t, at least this is a few minutes you can distract yourself from thinking about the roiling sea of horrors that threatens to drown us all every day that we breathe.

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Sunday, in what was undoubtedly one of the coolest moments of his career that no one remembers, Ian Desmond slugged a lead-changing and eventually game-winning home run. Desmond homered off of a horrible pitch, and then he flipped his bat, which is funnier now.

I’m not convinced there’s anything to learn there. Most hitters would be able to punish a hanging two-strike curveball. Desmond last year probably would’ve been able to punish a hanging two-strike curveball. That being said, Desmond only saw a hanging two-strike curveball because he’d stayed alive in the at-bat. The previous pitch:

One pitch is one pitch, no more and no less. In isolation, it’s a normal-looking foul ball, and maybe Desmond fouls off the same ball a year ago. But a year ago, and even before, Desmond struggled against high fastballs. A year ago in particular, Desmond struggled against plenty of things. That’s why he wound up signing a one-year pillow contract toward the end of the offseason, but a month and a half in, now, Desmond is looking like a total success. Ian Desmond has helped the Rangers scoot back into first place.

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Let’s take a little stroll through the big-league leaders in strikeout rate. Jose Fernandez. All right. Clayton Kershaw! Of course. Drew Pomeranz. Naturally. Danny Salazar. Predictable. Max Scherzer. Duh. Stephe-wait, rewind. Well I’ll be damned, there he is. Pomeranz, indeed.

Most recently, Pomeranz went into Chicago and struck out 10 Cubs, and eight of them weren’t even John Lackey. And if you think this might just be a case of strikeout fetishizing, Pomeranz owns a 1.80 ERA, and he’s given up just two unearned runs. The peripherals are good, even if the walks are a little bit up. Seven starts in, and Pomeranz looks fantastic. Not bad for a guy who came to camp as a probable reliever. While relatively little has gone right for the Padres, Pomeranz looks like he could be gathering and assembling all of his pieces. It’s either taken a while, or it’s taken no time at all. That’s up to your own perspective.

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Over the course of big-league history, there have been a few hundred no-hitters. There have been 66 occasions of a pitcher hitting multiple homers in one game. Scarcity doesn’t automatically mean a superior accomplishment, but what Noah Syndergaard just did against the Dodgers was extraordinary. His first time up, he hit a home run. His second time up, he hit a home run. The last pitcher to pull this off was Micah Owings in 2007, and Owings was more of a hitter, anyway. Here are the MLB.com highlights. This would be no fun without the highlights.

Not that there’s any such thing as a bad home run, but those were big-boy dingers. Syndergaard jumped on a first pitch, and then he jumped on a two-strike pitch. He gets points for diversity, and he also gets points for dumb luck, since the second homer followed four consecutive shown bunts. Instead of moving the runners a little bit over, he moved them all the way over. Syndergaard drove home all the Mets’ runs. He genuinely pitched and hit them to victory. It was one of the better all-around single-game performances in history, I’m sure.

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There’s always a risk that comes with pre-writing. I’m writing this Wednesday afternoon, about Yasiel Puig, even though Puig hasn’t yet begun his game Wednesday night. I can’t know what’s going to happen. Puig might have the game of his life! Or he might hijack a blimp. Life’s a mystery. But what I know is that I’m writing about the Puig who’s batting .235. The Puig with a 78 wRC+ that would very easily stand as a career low. Maybe Puig snaps out of this in between writing and publishing, but what’s happened has most definitely happened, so now, a discussion of that.

You might’ve noticed by now that I take a lot of interest in the way that good hitters get pitched. Puig’s been pitched in a certain way, and it’s remarkably uncomplicated. A couple weeks ago, Dave Roberts said Puig’s been hurt on fastballs in and soft stuff away. Pretty much. And that’s also kind of a traditional blueprint, but it’s been aces against Puig to this point. We have the overall numbers, and we have the idea from the manager. Let’s now get into some deeper evidence.

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This isn’t my own subjective interpretation. When you throw around a word like “favorites,” that opens the door to opinion-based writing, but I have numbers on my side. Sweet, sweet, precious numbers. Look at the following table. You have our preseason projected win totals, and our current projected win totals, which take into account everything that’s happened.

We liked the Astros a lot. Still do, but they’ve done themselves considerable harm. After the Astros, there was a group of four teams, all vying for second or last. The Mariners have emerged through the early going, and now they’re well out in front. Sure, that’s just us, but if it makes you feel any more trusting, PECOTA agrees. Projections still like the Astros, but the Astros are way behind the Mariners, just because of the games in the books. So the Mariners find themselves in a great divisional position. Getting to the point faster: This.

A lot has gone into that picture. Let’s talk.

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Believe it or not, I actually agonized over how to title this post. Ultimately, I couldn’t come up with anything better, not if I didn’t want to outright deceive. Because this is a post about Hector Neris, and about Brad Brach, and there’s no way around that. You should be aware of that from the start. Now the only people in here are people who might give a damn, and that’s better than me feeling like I tricked you.

Neris is someone who’s been on my radar for a few weeks. Before that, he was absolutely not on my radar, even though he pitched in the majors in each of the previous two years. I became aware of him after a Phillies person told me to become aware of him, and Neris is in the early stages of a breakthrough major-league campaign. It’s been quiet, because he’s not a closer, and because he’s not a starter. Non-closing relievers take a while to command attention. But Neris has allowed four runs in 20 innings. More impressively, he’s increased his strikeout rate by more than fifty percent.

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You don’t need to know what spinal stenosis is to know you don’t want it, and to know it’s bad that David Wright has it. No major-league baseball player would choose the condition for himself, and for Wright, the diagnosis raised innumerable questions about the state of his career. When this very regular season opened, there was chatter in the first series that Wright looked stiff, that he looked exploitable and weak. Early on, it looked like Wright could and would be a liability. It would be a most unfortunate turn for a beloved former superstar.

Let’s be clear: David Wright still has spinal stenosis. That isn’t going to change. He is very much limited, but at the same time, as I write this, Wright is sitting on a 136 wRC+, about dead even with his lifetime mark of 134. Wright might be compromised, but Wright has also made things work, and he’s done that by focusing on maximization. David Wright has turned himself into an all-or-nothing hitter.

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