Excluding Brandon Beachy, who will be sidelined for the remainder of the season due to Tommy John surgery, left-hander Wade Miley has the second-best ERA in all of baseball.

The same Wade Miley who compiled a forgettable 5.08 FIP in his 40-inning cup of coffee with the big league club last season. The same Wade Miley who failed to make our Top 15 D-Backs prospects prior to the season. The same Wade Miley who began the season in the bullpen and didn’t make his first start until April 23 against Philadelphia.

And yet, the 25-year-old Louisiana native boasts a 2.19 ERA and 2.88 FIP, including eight innings of one-run baseball against the Chicago Cubs on Sunday evening. His +2.5 WAR is higher than pitchers more traditionally thought of as aces, such as Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Clayton Kershaw, and Felix Hernandez. In his first full season in the big leagues, he is not only a leading candidate for Rookie of the Year, but he also possesses an extreme outside chance to walk away with the NL Cy Young, if his stellar performance continues.

That’s really the question, though. Can Wade Miley continue his unexpected dominance?

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In Tuesday night’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays, Nationals’ manager Davey Johnson asked home plate umpire Tim Tschida to examine the glove right-hander Joel Peralta for foreign substances.

Peralta was subsequently ejected for having pine tar on his glove.

This is not new. Baseball has a long history of players skirting around the rulebook in hopes of gaining an edge on their opponent. Whether it is spitting on the baseball, taking performance-enhancing drugs, corking bats, cutting the baseball, or even just (allegedly) having a man in white standing in the outfield bleachers, cheating is as much a tradition in baseball as hot dogs and cracker jacks.

As they say, if ya ain’t cheatin’, ya ain’t tryin’.

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On the first of June, left-hander Johan Santana labored through 134 pitches and meticulously navigated around five walks to become the first player in New York Mets history to throw a no-hitter.

It was assuredly a special moment for the organization, as well as the entire fan base. The Mets’ manager, Terry Collins, understood the magnitude of the situation. Despite the fact that Santana missed all of 2011 with a shoulder injury and had largely been limited in his pitch counts throughout the year to that point, Collins stuck with his 33-year-old veteran in an attempt to rewrite the history books.

To counteract the extra strain put on the shoulder in that no-hitter, Johan Santana received extra rest before his next start. That decision caused the left-hander to develop rust, according to his manager, and Santana was not sharp against the New York Yankees his next start — he surrendered six runs over five innings, including four home runs.

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When Stanford right-hander Mark Appel began his free-fall from the top spot to the eighth-overall selection due to signability concerns, many pointed to the new draft rules agreed upon in the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement as the culprit.

The new draft rules call for each pick in the first ten rounds to have a monetary value. The draft budget for each team is the combined value of their respective draft picks in the first ten rounds. By now, most following the draft are aware that penalties exist for exceeding the draft budget — first a tax, then the loss of future draft picks. The catch is, though, that any unsigned pick in the first ten rounds costs that team the corresponding budget money allotted to that specific pick, and any bonus greater than $100,000 after the tenth round still counts toward the overall draft budget.

Thus, Mark Appel fell to the number eight slot held by the Pittsburgh Pirates because teams felt the Stanford pitcher would demand too much of their budget, and the worst scenario for any team would be that the two sides failed to come to an agreement. Little would happen to Appel. He would simply return to Stanford for his senior year and return for the 2013 Draft. Though for the major league team, they would not only throw away a first-round pick, but also forfeit a huge portion of their draft budget, which would handcuff their options in remaining rounds.

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The MLB Draft will commence on Monday evening at 7:00 p.m. eastern time with the Houston Astros kicking off the night with the number one selection.

Scouts and front offices have routinely been quoted as saying this year’s class lacks elite talent, especially within the college ranks. Chicago White Sox scouting director Doug Laumann stated over the weekend that “it’s probably as thin as I’ve seen in a decade.” Despite that, it appears the Houston Astros could dip into the pool of collegiate talent for the number one overall pick.

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Injuries have run rampant throughout Major League Baseball this season, and one of the teams most decimated by injuries has been the Milwaukee Brewers. The club has six players on the disabled list, including pitchers Chris Narveson and Marco Estrada, which forced the organization to dip into the minor league system for a spot starter on Tuesday evening against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

That spot starter was right-hander Michael Fiers.

The 27-year-old Fiers earned Pitcher of the Year honors in the Brewers’ farm system in 2011, compiling a 1.86 ERA between Double-A Huntsville and Triple-A Nashville. He struck out more than a batter per inning over 126 innings of work and displayed an ability to throw four pitches — fastball, cutter, curveball, changeup — for strikes in any count. He eventually pushed his way into top prospect lists, with our own Marc Hulet ranking him as the 15th-best prospect in the Brewers’ system coming into the season.

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In January, the Tampa Bay Rays signed 33-year-old Luke Scott to a one-year, $5M contract (plus a club option for 2013) to serve as the team’s primary designated hitter.

He struggled last season with the Baltimore Orioles, only hitting .220/.301/.402 and failing to be at least a one-win player for the first time since his rookie season in 2005. The vast majority of his struggles, however, could be explained away by his mid-season shoulder surgery, which he underwent to repair a torn labrum. Finally healthy, the Rays looked to capitalize on an undervalued asset, hoping Scott would regain his previous form and produce somewhere around his career-average wOBA of .358.

This year, after a torrid start that saw him compile a .380 wOBA with eleven extra-base hits in the month of April, things have begun to cool off. He has hit .219/.286/.384 in the month of May, and his current .331 wOBA ranks below average amongst league DHs, who average a .347 wOBA on the year thus far.

Some of his drop off in May can be attributed to a .224 BABIP. In fact, his year-to-date BABIP of .240 is 52-points below his career average. The Tampa Bay Rays should expect that number to climb, especially since his 18.8% line drive rate has been slightly better than his career average. A few more balls in play find the outfield grass, rather than an outfielder’s glove, and his production should no longer be below average for the designated hitter position.

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When pressed to name the top offensive catchers in the league, names such as Mike Napoli, Miguel Montero, Brian McCann, Yadier Molina, Carlos Santana, and Alex Avila immediately come to mind. That is only natural, as all six of those players were in the top ten amongst catchers for wOBA last season (min. 100 PA). In addition, young, up-and-coming catchers, such as Matt Wieters and Buster Posey, also likely make the list for many people.

This season, however, none of those catchers listed above lead the league in production at the plate. Surprising names have risen to the top of the rankings through the first month and a half of the season. In fact, none of the top four catchers in wOBA this season (min. 100 PA) had a wOBA above .350 in 2011.
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Coming into the 2011 season, Domonic Brown ranked as the fourth-best prospect in all of baseball according to Baseball America. The Philadelphia Phillies had just watched right fielder Jayson Werth depart for greener pastures in Washington and felt confident that Brown was the long-term answer at the position.

A little more than a year later, we’re all left wondering what went wrong.

At age 23, Brown got his second extended look in the big leagues starting in May of 2011. Though some skill at the plate was evident, he ultimately underwhelmed with a .322 wOBA in 210 plate appearances. The league-average wOBA in right field was .334 in 2011, and the struggles on defense could not justify allowing him to work through his growing pains at the big league level — at least, not for a team with legitimate World Series aspirations.

Philadelphia sent Brown back down to Triple-A in August. The only other big league action he saw last season was a brief call-up in late September once rosters expanded and the Triple-A season had already been completed.

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According to a baseball source, Major League Baseball has dropped the 100-game suspension levied against Eliezer Alfonzo last season due to the same procedural issues that surfaced during the Ryan Braun case over the offseason.

The specific procedural issues were yet again not specifically outlined in this report, but the important aspect to note is that this was not an appeal case that Alfonzo and his team won. This suspension was not brought before an arbitrator. Instead, Major League Baseball re-examined the procedural facts of the sample collection and simply dropped the suspension.

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