Last week, I wrote about the dearth of production at the first-base position this season. In the piece, I highlighted Wil Myers as one of the few, young beacons of hope at the position and mentioned a few other young stars, but there was one notable guy I failed to mention: the Braves’ sole star-caliber position player, 26-year-old first baseman Freddie Freeman. It wasn’t a slight on my part, but instead was a side effect of my awareness that Freeman was worthy of an entire post of his own. Well, the time has come. Let’s take a look at Freddie Freeman.

Freeman’s 2016 season started unbearably slowly. After homering in his first at-bat of the season, he went on to accumulate just two more extra-base hits – both doubles – over his next 81 plate appearances. After play on April 26th, he’d recorded a miserable 65 wRC+ and had been bumped down in the batting order from his typical spot in the three-hole. Fortunately for the Braves — who have Freeman under contract for $106.5 million from 2017 to 2021 — Freeman’s season quickly began to turn around. Entering play on Tuesday night, he had posted a .307/.379/.571 slash line — good for a 151 wRC+ — ever since his statistical nadir on April 26th.

His offensive production during the month of June has been among the best in the majors and has led to Freeman currently sporting the highest ISO figure (.211) of his career. On the strength of his power surge, it might appear that Freeman is well on his way to another predictably strong season, but it must be noted that not all indicators are trending in the right direction for Freeman.

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Earlier this month, the typical hardcore baseball fan was exposed to an onslaught of new names. As each team excitedly announced their picks in the Rule 4 draft, scouting reports were doled out and irresponsible comps were laid on players not yet old enough to legally purchase a beer. But nearly as quickly as the newest prospect wave was officially christened, most of the actual players who compose it have moved to the backburner of the public baseball consciousness. Each winter, we’ll check their progress via the annual tradition of prospect rankings, but it will be years before we have enough information to actually assess the results of this draft class specifically.

Six months ago, though, there was another draft — and we don’t have to wait nearly as long to find out how that one worked out. That’s right, it’s time to take a look back on the amateur draft’s nerdy cousin, the Rule 5 Draft.

The 2015 season was one of the best years for the Rule 5 draft in recent history. The Phillies picked up outfielder Odubel Herrera, who has already accumulated 5.9 WAR in his season-and-a-half as a big-league center fielder. The Rangers also snagged a center fielder, Delino DeShields Jr., who is struggling this year but successfully filled a critical outfield hole for the division champion Rangers last summer. Sean Gilmartin posted a 2.67 ERA in the bullpen for the pennant-winning Mets. Coming off these great successes, it seemed as though there was a bit more attention on the Rule 5 draft this December. Would any team be as successful this year?

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There’s a bizarre trend in baseball this season that I’ve spent much of the year ignoring because it’s uncomfortable to believe. As unpredictable as baseball can be at a granular level, it’s equivalently reliable in a macro sense. There’s a game virtually every night; nine defensive players are on the field at any given time; base-runners run counterclockwise; and first basemen mash. This is the baseball I know. This is the sport I’ve been watching for decades. And, yet, as Aaron Gleeman discussed at Baseball Prospectus recently, offensive production from first basemen this season has been little more than mediocre.

When Gleeman wrote his piece last week, first basemen had compiled a .761 OPS as a unit this season. They’ve since raised that to a robust .769 OPS — or, roughly the same mark as third basemen (.772 OPS) and second basemen (.761 OPS). Take a moment to truly absorb that… Second basemen have produced an OPS a mere eight points lower than first basemen. As a result, I’ve found myself searching for answers at first base that I can hope will restore balance to baseball. There aren’t many to be found — Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, Brandon Belt, and Eric Hosmer are a few of the only 20-somethings providing hope at the position — but there is one notable former top prospect who is currently growing into a role as a productive first baseman after having been written off by some as a bust. I’m referring, of course, to the twice-traded San Diego Padre, Wil Myers.

Now, Wil Myers may not be a masher in the first-base tradition of guys like Frank Thomas, Mark McGwire, and Albert Pujols, but he currently ranks fourth among MLB first basemen in total offensive production. Not only that, Myers is the youngest qualified first baseman in the league this year. Of course, that’s a bit of a back-handed compliment because first base is often the landing spot for older players who can no longer hack it at a position which requires more range. The good news for Myers, though, is that a history of arm problems sent him to first base, not a lack of speed. Still, it’s very much worth noting that, although it feels as though Myers has been around for ages, he’s still just 25 years old — more than a year younger that George Springer!

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Imagine you’re magically granted the power of time travel and that you use it to visit the days leading up to Opening Day 2016. Suddenly back in a world without daily regular-season baseball, you approach an unsuspecting baseball fan and tell them that you’re a time traveler with this bit of baseball information from mid-June: over the past 30 days, the Nationals have had the best offense in the National League.

The fan, presumably, would begin by chastising you for having wasted the gift of time travel on something so frivolous. Then, after gathering him- or herself, would likely respond with something like, “That Bryce Harper sure can rake, can’t he?” With the trap successfully set, you would then drop this bomb on them: “… and Bryce Harper posted a 77 wRC+ over those 30 days!”

Good job, time traveler. You successfully terrified an innocent person about the future without mentioning the name Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But we seasoned veterans of the 2016 season are able to accept those facts as true. Over the past 30 days, Bryce Harper (.289 wOBA) and Ben Revere (.287 wOBA) have been equivalently awful for the Nationals and, yet, the team is on an offensive tear. As you might expect, it’s been necessary for a lot of different players to perform well in order to make up for Harper’s lack of production – Wilson Ramos and Daniel Murphy have hit well all season while Danny Espinosa and Jayson Werth have recently turned their early season struggles around – but the biggest contributor for the Nationals at the plate of late has been Anthony Rendon.

Through May 9th, Rendon had hit a dismal .211/.289/.297, a line which amounted to offensive production nearly 40% below league average. Coming off a disappointing and injury-plagued 2015 season, it was natural to start wondering whether the 2014 season which led to him finishing fifth place in MVP voting was a flash in the pan never to be seen again. But then, Rendon started hitting. He entered play last night with a .324/.411/.546 line since the cherry-picked date of May 9th. This offensive outburst has raised his full-season wRC+ to a perfectly respectable 107.

Although the May 9th dividing line is arbitrary, it does come close to splitting his season in half, with 142 of his plate appearance coming before this magical date and 128 coming after. Let’s keep using this convenient dividing line to help us take a look at a key change in Rendon’s approach — one which may help explain his recent offensive outburst.

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To begin with a gross oversimplification of a maddeningly complex sport, there are two ways to win a baseball game: score runs and prevent runs. Those two acts inform the predictive significance of run differentials and Pythagorean record and represent the reason I enjoy perusing leaderboards to see which teams are currently the best at run generation and prevention. We’re at the point in the season where the tops of the leaderboards aren’t terribly surprising – the Red Sox score frequently, the Mets don’t allow many runs, the Cubs are ridiculously great in both categories – but one team I’m still getting accustomed to finding near the top of the runs-scored leaderboard is the Mariners.

After years of battling mediocrity and a frustrating relegation to relative baseball obscurity, the Mariners have scored more runs than any American League team not named the Red Sox. With 315 runs scored through 63 games played, the Seattle is now averaging five runs scored per game — a rate they haven’t sustained over a full season since averaging 5.02 runs per game in 2002… you know, back when they had a designated hitter named Edgar Martinez, a second baseman named Bret Boone and a catcher named Dan Wilson. As offense has declined around the league during the last decade and a half, the Mariners’ offense has more than followed suit. In all but one season from 2004 to 2015, the Mariners finished anywhere from 11th to 14th in the AL in R/G. (Recall that, for a majority of that stretch, the American League consisted of only 14 teams.)

But now they’re scoring five runs a game – and are on a pace equivalent to 810 runs over a full 162-game schedule. Only five teams in the past five seasons have scored 810 runs and, of those five, all but the 2011 Red Sox made the postseason. And you might remember that the 2011 Red Sox team had to work darn hard to not make the playoffs. What the Mariners are doing right now is an undeniably good thing, and one that’s very much conducive to winning. And a little further digging reveals something endearingly quirky about the way the Mariners are scoring all of their runs.

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Bartolo Colon has been a major league pitcher for longer than the high school kids being drafted this weekend have been alive. It’s likely that he has seen and done more in his major league career than any of these draftees will ever have the opportunity to see and do. He’s pitched in All-Star Games and the postseason. He’s played in 42 different major league parks – 42! He’s won a Cy Young Award and struck out 2,285 batters. He hit a home run! He’s had about as full and productive a career as one can have without being deemed Hall of Fame worthy.

Of course, there are still a few things Colon hasn’t done in his career. He’s never won a World Series or thrown a no-hitter, for instance. But plenty of illustrious careers end without those achievements being added to a resume. There is one glaring and unique empty statistical category remaining on Bartolo Colon’s career stat sheet, though: he has never drawn a walk in his career. In fact, after his two strikeout, one sac bunt performance against Brewers pitching last night, Bartolo Colon now holds the record for most career plate appearances without drawing a single walk.

Although much of Colon’s career has occurred in the designated hitter league, he has now stepped to the plate 260 times in his career dating back to his first career plate appearance in 1997 against the Cardinals’ Andy Benes. From Terry Adams to Jordan Zimmermann, Colon has faced 131 different pitchers and not a single one has yielded ball four.

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If you hit 10 home runs in 15 games for an awful, last-place team, will anyone notice? What if you hit 10 home runs in 15 games after entering the season with just eight major-league homers to your name — will anyone notice then? These are the questions Adam Duvall is asking the baseball world right now. While spending his first season as a major-league regular in the relative baseball obscurity that is 2016 Cincinnati, the 27-year-old Duvall is suddenly begging the baseball world to take notice. Well, we see you, Adam, and we want to get to know you better.

Power has always been the key component to Duvall’s game. He has 130 career minor-league home runs, most of which came during his time with the Giants organization. In June 2014, during Duvall’s major-league debut, he homered off Reds pitcher Mike Leake. Just over a year later, the Reds traded Leake to the Giants and in return received none other than Adam Duvall in return. As a September call-up for Cincinnati last fall, Duvall made an early case for the 2016 everyday left-field job, recording five home runs in just 72 plate appearances. This spring, he officially won the job over guys like Jake Cave, Scott Schebler, and Kyle Waldrop. So far, it sure looks like the Reds made the right decision.

Duvall’s current hot streak is part of a larger season-long trend of tremendous power-hitting — historically tremendous power-hitting, even. Of his 50 hits this season, 31 have been of the extra-base variety — 17 home runs and 14 doubles – which gives Duvall a 62.0% extra-base hit rate. In the modern era (since 1901), only two players have posted a higher XBH/H% over a full season: 2010 Jose Bautista (62.2%) and, naturally, 2001 Barry Bonds (68.6%).

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Last year’s brilliant rookie class was exciting for many reasons, one of which was that it brought the arrival of an infusion of talent to the shortstop position in Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and Addison Russell. Remarkably, we were assured that even more young shortstops are on the way – an assurance reinforced by Corey Seager’s strong debut last September and his near unanimous presence atop top-100 prospect lists this past winter. But, at the start of the season, it was less-heralded rookie shortstops Aledmys Diaz and Trevor Story catching all the headlines. Where was Corey Seager?

While Story spent the month of April hitting 10 home runs and Diaz spent it batting .423, Seager posted an unremarkable 92 wRC+ through 106 plate appearances. He put up decent enough plate-discipline numbers — a 8.5% walk rate and 14.2 strikeout rate — but a low BABIP (.275) and low ISO (.146) kept him from producing at the level expected of the sport’s top prospect, whether those expectations were fair or not.

Ever since the end of April, however, Seager has been quietly reestablishing his place among the league’s best players. Well, he was going about it quietly, until this weekend. On the off chance anyone had forgotten about Seager or prematurely written him off as over-hyped, he reminded the baseball world Friday night that he’s exceedingly worthy of our time and attention when he did this to Braves pitcher Julio Teheran:

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Can you name the starting pitcher with the lowest ERA in the month of May this year? If you paid attention to the Pitcher of the Month awards announcements yesterday, you might know the answer. If you’ve been paying attention to Major League Baseball at all over the past five years, you can definitely guess it. The answer, to nobody’s surprise, is Clayton Kershaw, who posted a ridiculous 0.91 ERA over six starts. What’s infinitely less intuitive and more thought-provoking is the identity of the pitcher who is second on the May ERA leaderboard: CC Sabathia.

In the interest of full disclosure, a bit of leaderboard manipulation is necessary in order to find Sabathia’s ERA ranked ahead of every pitcher not named Kershaw. A groin strain sent Sabathia to the disabled list after his start on May 4th and limited him to just four starts and 26 innings pitched for the month. So, if we’re being technical, Sabathia’s 1.04 ERA was second in the majors among starting pitchers with a minimum of 20 innings pitched. But the arbitrary nature of month-long splits isn’t why we need to talk about Sabathia. We need to talk about Sabathia because that great month contributed to his ERA doing this:

Sabathia closed out his 2015 season with a 2.86 ERA over his final nine starts. The difficulties he experienced off the field — and which immediately followed that impressive run — have been well-documented and are outside the scope of this analysis. Let’s focus entirely on what we know has happened on the field, which is that Sabathia has picked up right where he left off, recording a 2.85 ERA through his first eight starts of 2016. Considering Sabathia turns 36 years old next month and is coming off a disappointing three-year stretch during which he posted a 4.81 ERA, there are two obvious questions here. First: how did this happen? And second: will it last?

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We are excited to have Corinne Landrey join the FanGraphs writing staff. She’ll be contributing here several times per week, and is going to be an excellent addition to the site. Below is her first post as a FanGraphs author.

If you know one thing about Cole Hamels beyond his profession or employer, it’s likely the fact that he throws a magnificent changeup. It’s the pitch upon which Hamels’ impressive career has been built from the moment he made his major-league debut as a 22-year-old kid. Like any successful pitcher, Hamels has had to adjust and improve over the years first by refining his curveball and later adding a cutter to his repertoire, but the changeup has been the omnipresent ace up his sleeve throughout his major-league career. Until now, that is.

For the first time in Hamels’ decade-long career, his changeup is no longer serving as his go-to secondary pitch. That honor now belongs to the cutter he began using in 2010 after watching his teammate Cliff Lee use the pitch with tremendous results down the stretch the previous season. Since then, the pitch has developed into Hamels’ preferred third pitch and now its usage has officially surpassed the changeup:

This year Hamels has gone to the cutter 202 times, or on 24% of his pitches, whereas the changeup has been used just 185 times, or 22 percent of the time. This usage shift, however, is not the result of a season-long trend. In fact, during the month of April, Hamels threw his changeup more than he threw any other pitch, fourseamer included. But after his start on April 20th, something changed.

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