The Nationals are in a pickle, and not one of those delicious hipster pickles with fresh dill and organic garlic cloves placed in a mason jar by a guy with lots of tattoos in some nondescript warehouse in Brooklyn. I’m talking a problem pickle. The kind you don’t want to see on your doorstep, the kind some hipster would make a horror film about with a hand-held camera in some nondescript warehouse in Brooklyn. Horror Pickle: The Dill of Death! It would be wonderfully awful! No, the nature of the Washington Nationals’ pickle comes from the lots of losing they’ve done this season — far more than the Mets, that is, who lead them both alphabetically (curse you, ancient Greeks!) and, possibly more importantly if more fleetingly, in the NL East standings.

Much has been said about the Nationals’ collapse, but some portion of their mediocre start falls on the broad shoulders of Stephen Strasburg, who my computer badly wants to call Stephen Starsbug, which needs to be a computer-animated movie starring Chris Pratt. In any case, Strasburg started out the season badly, then he hit the DL, then he pitched three games, then hit the DL again. His inconsistent health has been remarkably consistent. The odd thing was that, in between all these DL stints, Strasburg, one of the best pitchers in baseball since breaking into the majors in 2010, was awful. As Jeff Sullivan wrote about the issue back in May. Strasburg was having command issues, which manifested especially strongly with runners on base. But now he’s back (again) and he’s Stephen Strasburg again! What? How?

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When you think pitching and greatness it’s unlikely you think of Mike Fiers. Well Friday, Mike Fiers threw a no-hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers, so in your face. Of course, I’m kidding. No-hitters are fluky events by nature, and though the game’s greats have thrown them, so have many of the game’s not-so-greats. For example, the list of pitchers who have thrown no-hitters includes Joe Cowley, Mike Warren, and Jim Colborn, and excludes Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez*, Curt Schilling, Greg Maddux, and Robin Roberts. But still, pitching nine innings of baseball without giving up a single hit is a feat worthy of recognition and by golly we sure are recognizing it.

*Martinez threw nine perfect innings on June 3, 1995, but allowed a lead-off double in the 10th inning.

But there is controversy! You may have heard that Fiers has been accused of cheating while throwing his no-no. Who has made these accusations? The world’s morality police, also known as the internet, of course! So what “evidence” is there that Fiers cheated?

https://twitter.com/CaseyySheehann/status/634919577567100928

Oh. Whoops.

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Two weeks ago, the Detroit Tigers essentially fired long-time General Manager Dave Dombrowski. Despite four consecutive division titles — a streak that will end this year, of course — and a lot of success over the last decade, Dombrowski was unable to bring a championship back to Motown, and with their window closing and the team struggling, ownership decided to make a change. Now, it will be up to new GM Al Avila to improve a roster that is starting to show signs of age and decline.

The first step in retooling is to determine what you have. The 2011-2015 Tigers were known for great offenses, great starting pitching, and terrible bullpens and defenses that let down their star hitters and pitchers at the worst times. During their best years, they scored runs like few others, and their starting pitching was as good as it gets, but aging and departed stars have taken their toll, so the 2016 Tigers will be missing some key components that formed that foundation. Max Scherzer is now in DC participating in the the tire fire that is the Nationals season, David Price is busy attempting to free Blue Jays fans from two decades plus of a playoff-less existence, and Yoenis Cespedes now spends his time demonstrating to Mets fans that when you hit a ball with a bat sometimes it can go far.

Scherzer is signed long term in Washington and Cespedes and Price are going to command hundreds of millions of dollars on the free agent market, making a return to Detroit questionable at best. To offset some of the decline in pitching, the Tigers improved their defense this season mostly by adding a healthy Jose Iglesias. This is no longer a team that betrays it’s pitching staff with poor fielding; these days, they’re just giving up runs because their arms aren’t that good anymore.

As for finances, the Tigers have $111.8 million committed to seven players next season, only five of whom will be on the club (they owe the Rangers $6 million of Prince Fielder’s contract and Joe Nathan will get a $1 million buy-out on his $10 million option). What’s more, the Tigers are going to have to pay J.D. Martinez a big raise in arbitration, and role players like Jose Iglesias will also require above-the-minimum salaries as first-time arbitration qualifiers. Just keeping those players will cost another roughly $15-$20 million, so they could be on the hook for about $130 million to just 10 players. This means spending $25-30 million on a top tier free agent is going to be very difficult unless they are about to dramatically expand their payroll.

So the Tigers need to improve their bullpen, strengthen their rotation, and adding a bat who can also field some wouldn’t be a bad idea either. The question is, can they afford to acquire those assets on the free agent market, or do they need to be more circumspect and move assets around through trade?

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It’s difficult to figure out where to start with Jackie Bradley Jr. You could start with his incredible defense, and actually that’s probably the right place to begin. You could look at this play, or this play, or this play, or if you have four minutes and 31 seconds you can watch some defensive highlights from 2014. Or just use Google. I’m sure you’ll come up with something good. That’s because Bradley is an exceptional outfielder. Someone with his defensive skills shouldn’t have to hit much to play regularly. “Not much” is still more than “none,” though, and it’s the difference between these two that has held Bradley back.

Bradley was called up four times in 2013, including at the beginning of the season to serve as the club’s starting left fielder. He hit .097/.263/.129 and was sent down as soon as the team got healthy enough to do so. He was called up three other times with varying degrees of failure, but the end result was a .617 OPS on the season. Even so, Bradley had hit at every level of the minors, including posting an .842 OPS for Triple-A Pawtucket in 2013 in between trips to Boston. The team decided he would be their starting center fielder in 2014. And he was. And his defense was close to perfect. His hitting was also perfect — though only on opposite day. Now, though, he’s hitting on all the regular kinds of days, too.

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I live in Portland, Oregon which is a beautiful city of rivers and mountains and beer and pine trees and beer. About the only thing it doesn’t have that I wish it had is professional baseball. The closest pro team is the Hillsboro Hops, the short-season Single-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and they’re about a half hour away by car. In case you are not familiar, here is a hop.

That’s not a problem because a half hour isn’t a reasonable distance to drive for baseball. It is. It’s a problem in the general sense because a city like Portland should probably have more than a low Single-A baseball team. Then again, we’re all about to be swallowed up by the ground anyway so whatever.

But back to baseball! The lack of the sport here means there aren’t many opportunities to see a noteworthy game or related event. Wednesday night represented a departure from that norm. Dansby Swanson, the very first player selected in the most recent 2015 baseball draft, was going to make his professional debut and it was going to be with the Hops in Hillsboro. Yay Portland!

It was at this point that I thought, hey, I can watch Swanson in a scouty way and help inform not only myself but the readers of FanGraphs dot com as well. I get beer and a baseball game while, you, dear reader, get scouty-ish information on the top player drafted. That’s what we in the business call “a win-win.”

By way of catching you up on Swanson, here is what Kiley McDaniel had to say about him back in April.

Swanson was an advanced defender with a light bat in high school, then played second base his first two years at Vanderbilt and over the summers. Scouts got their first recent look at him playing short this spring and it still works. Swanson is a plus runner with fringy raw power and a strong 6’1/190 frame. He’s a contact hitter with more 10-13 homer power that wears out the gaps and would be a nice 6th-10th overall pick most years, but a high probability shortstop with some ceiling is hard to ignore in this draft.

Now back to me. I arrived, family in tow, at Ron Tonkin Field, home of the Hops, as the National Anthem was playing and had no trouble locating our seats. This is because the park contains not very many of them. When you’re used to a major-league stadium, finding six seats among 3,500 is like finding your bed in your bedroom.

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Unless he changes his name to Mike Trout and has some pretty impressive plastic surgery, there’s not a strong argument to be made for Mark Teixeira as the AL MVP this season. Teixeira currently leads the Yankees in FanGraphs WAR at 3.3 but he’s only 14th in WAR among AL batters, behind the likes of Logan Forsythe, Kevin Kiermaier, and, well, 11 others. Throw in pitchers and there are seven more above Teixeira. So despite having quite a comeback season and despite being the best hitter on a first place team, Teixeira isn’t in the AL MVP conversation.

But what if we try hard to put him there? Maybe we can find something we’re missing, some way that, even if things stay as they are through the rest of the season, Teixeira deserves to carry the mantle of best player in the American League. It’s probably a stretch, but what the heck! What else is a guy to do on a Sunday night? (Please, please don’t answer that.)

Right off the bat, and you know this is going to be good because I’m already resorting to baseball-themed cliche, I should acknowledge that leading the league in WAR doesn’t necessitate winning the MVP, but for our purposes here, it’s an easy way to sort players, especially since the presumed leader in the race also happens to be the leader in WAR. So convenient!

Including pitchers, there are 21 players with a higher WAR than Teixeira so far this season. Moving a guy from 22nd to first without him actually doing anything is a lot to ask, but here we go! We can start off by saying this: pitchers shouldn’t win the MVP. Pitching is a completely different position and necessitates different skills and should be judged independently. That’s why pitchers have the Cy Young award. Do I believe this? No! But it works here and we press onward! So drop the seven pitchers from the list and Teixeira moves up to 14th. That’s progress! I wish all my housing projects were this easily accomplished.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

Another day another tire fire. The Red Sox were beat by the Yankees 13-3 last night, dropping their record to 47-60. The team is in last place in the AL East again and looks destined for their third last place finish in four seasons, though there is a World Series win sandwiched in there (is a World Series a sandwich?) so it’s not like things are really that bad. Still, for a team of Boston’s means and expectations, a run of futility like this usually presages changes at the top, and low and behold, that’s exactly what has happened.

Two days ago it leaked out that Larry Lucchino, in the post of team president and CEO since 2002, would step down at the end of the season. He’ll be replaced by Sam Kennedy. Not exactly a bloodletting, but it should be noted that Kennedy will take only the CEO title (officially Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer) and focus solely on the business side of things. This leaves a hole in Boston’s baseball operations department. The Red Sox could let things sit as they are, with General Manager Ben Cherington in charge and right-hand-men Allard Baird, Brian O’Halloran, and Mike Hazen directly below him in the organizational structure, but there’s that impending three last place finishes in four seasons thing, so that seems unlikely. And when you consider the smoke from the media around a new addition to baseball operations combined with the removal of Lucchino, who is supposedly stepping down due to age but who rumors persist is poised to join another team rather than retire, then you’re entering the realm of ‘especially likely’.

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It has been argued that being the worst at something is as impressive as being the best. After all, both sides of a bell curve are equally proportional. Nothing like starting an article off with some distribution humor! But more germane to this, a baseball website, is that this is yet another way the Mets outfield is not impressive. They are not good to be sure, but also not the worst. And yet, as far as teams that still aspire to the playoffs go, the Mets outfield might be among the worst outfields. Curtis Granderson is having a nice season at the plate and Michael Conforto is an exciting young player but one good player and a dash of hope does not make a productive outfield. This is why the Mets sprung for Yoenis Cespedes at the trade deadline. Thank God for the Wilpons!

As his famous video shows, Cespedes is a man of many talents, only a few of which translate directly to the baseball diamond. His arm is like one of those plastic whip things that throws tennis balls for dogs at the park. His swing is powerful like one you’d see in a whiffle ball league. His pig barbecuing skills are at least a 75 on the 20-80 scouting scale, but sadly those skills are wasted on a baseball player. Even so, Cespedes has harnessed those other skills and become a productive major league player if not the transcendent star some thought when he came on the scene.

But a cursory glance at his stats shows a difference between his offensive production in his rookie season in 2012 and that in the following two seasons. His home runs were present the whole time, but the other skills had settled into a degrading state. The issue was which was the real Cespedes? The one from his stand-out rookie campaign in 2012 that came with power and above average on-base ability, or the one from the following two seasons who sold out for power at the expense of just about everything else?

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Yesterday, David Ortiz hit two homers. That’s a good day for anyone, and especially for someone 39 years old. I’m 39, too, and I’m writing this article and also my hip hurts, so advantage Ortiz! But! Two days ago Ortiz was preemptively one-upped by Alex Rodriguez. Saturday, Rodriguez hit three homers while he continued his 39-year-plus-long streak of being almost four months older than Ortiz. Rodriguez’s three homers were more impressive than Ortiz’s two in both the binary way that three is better than two, and in the way that, to date, this is just more of the same from a guy who spent the better part of last season at the beach because baseball didn’t allow him to play. Then there was the whole thing about whether or not the Yankees would even let him play for them again. As it turns out they’re quite the magnanimous bunch, and Rodriguez got to attend spring training and everything. Had George Steinbrenner been alive, Rodriguez would have been traded to the Marlins for Mat Latos’s cat, Cat Latos, and yes, this whole article is an excuse to mention Cat Latos.

But Steinbrenner is as dead as Napoleon so Rodriguez returned to the Yankees unmolested and has somewhat bizarrely arrested his career slide and reverted to his late-aughts MVP-candidate self. As I write this, Rodriguez has an wRC+ of 151, a mark he last bested in 2008, when he finished with a 152 wRC+. This is late peak-era A-Rod so far this season minus the defense of course. At this rate, it won’t be too difficult for him to finish with a higher wOBA than he’s reached in any season since 2009, more homers than he’s hit since 2008, and a higher wRC+ than any season since 2007.

Rodriguez has missed considerable time over the last few seasons, so nothing over the remaining 65 games is assured, especially so when you consider he hasn’t played 150 games in a season since 2007. So extrapolating his season numbers is perhaps a foolish (though fun) exercise. The prudent thing to do is to not look a gift centaur in the mouth (or in any other orifice) and take what he’s given us so far this season. In that sense, I want to look back at his three-homer day on Saturday to see what it can tell us about the hitter Alex Rodriguez is right now.

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Watching videos of Hanley Ramirez’s defense is a lot like using illegal drugs: a little bit is probably fine but too many will definitely kill you. Since taking over in left for the Red Sox this season, Ramirez has engendered strong opinions about his defensive abilities. To some, he’s horrible. Others say, no, he’s horrendous. Some others might point out that those are synonyms and the first two groups are being idiots anyway because Hanley is beyond horrendous and horrible and is, plainly, the worst. It is this third group of people who are correct.

He spent 11 seasons playing shortstop for two major-league teams. He’s an athlete. He has athlete skills. A free agent this past offseason, he explicitly wanted to come back to Boston, the team that signed him as a teenager, and to do so, he agreed to move to left field. With the exception of first base, probably, left is the least challenging of the defensive positions. Or rather, it’s not that it’s not challenging, it’s that mostly anyone who is decent enough to have played shortstop in the majors should be good at it. Should be. Except, in Hanley’s case, no. He’s not good. In fact, he’s bad. Very bad. But we don’t have to fall back on adverbs because this is FanGraphs and we have numbers!

The thing is, almost all of those numbers are big and start with a negative sign. It’s not like we’re debating the MVP here and Trout has 70,000 WAR and Cabrera has 69,999 WAR. The worst left fielder in baseball by UZR is Hanley at -15.2. The next worst is Chris Colabello at -9.1. The difference between Ramirez and Colabello is the difference between Colabello and Dalton Pompey, 13 guys up the list. Put another way, Ramirez has done as much damage to the Red Sox in left field (again, by UZR) as the second-worst left fielder and fourth-worst left fielder combined. If this were a good thing we’d say Ramirez was dominating the position, but it’s not so we can’t say that.

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