The St. Louis Cardinals recalled top prospect Alex Reyes yesterday and, a few hours later, the hard-throwing right-hander recorded his major-league debut, striking out one in a clean inning of relief work (box).

The book on Reyes is that his stuff is off the charts, but his control and command leave something to be desired. His numbers paint this picture vividly. His top-notch stuff enables him to miss a lot of bats, resulting in nearly unmatched strikeout rates the past couple of years. Meanwhile, his lackluster command has resulted in a concerning number of walks.

All else being equal, you’d prefer to have a pitcher that doesn’t have iffy command and an ugly walk rate. But all else isn’t equal with Reyes. His ability to generate strikeouts, especially at such a young age, is a huge point in his favor. I yanked some of those words from my recent Tyler Glasnow piece, but I’m recycling them here since they’re equally applicable to Reyes.

My KATOH projection system adores Reyes. It projects him for 7.6 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 12.6 WAR by the method that integrates Baseball America’s rankings. Reyes placed 18th and seventh overall, respectively, on KATOH’s recent top-100 lists. Among pitchers, though, he was third and first. KATOH’s lists tend to be relatively hitter-heavy — likely due to some combination of pitchers’ attrition rates and the fact that KATOH does not directly quantify “stuff.” But in terms of pitching prospects, scouting-infused KATOH thinks Reyes is the best one on the planet.

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After last season, Prince Fielder was named the American League Comeback Player of the Year. Neck problems and surgery ruined Fielder’s 2014, but he came back to run a 124 wRC+ over 158 games played. Fielder was plenty deserving of the award, and it looked like the 31-year-old had his career back on track. But this season, Fielder developed symptoms similar to the ones he had before. He was diagnosed with about the same problem, requiring a second surgery, and now Fielder’s playing days are done. Though he’s not actually retiring, he’s also not receiving clearance to return, which means functionally the same thing. The difference is important to the Rangers, but it doesn’t matter to the fans.

Situations such as these are always difficult to discuss from the outside. We know Fielder as a baseball player, and we know baseball players by their numbers. Fielder, right now, doesn’t care about his numbers; he cares about his own ability to move. He cares about what reduced flexibility could mean for his quality of life. It’s important to understand that being declared medically disabled means there’s something wrong with an actual person. As of today, Prince Fielder is one of us, and he’s hurting. Three months ago, he turned 32.

So, there’s no way for us to know what Fielder is truly going through. There’s no real way for us to connect beyond the shallowest of terms. I think the best we can do is to wish Fielder well, and to say that in his chosen line of work, he was outstanding for several years, a hitter sufficiently complete to overcome some obvious drawbacks.

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In an extra-inning affair last night, Brandon Crawford recorded eight at-bats, and seven hits. One thing that means is that Crawford recorded an out. Another thing that means is that Crawford recorded seven hits. A game in which a player finishes with seven hits is very obviously outstanding. Crawford became the first player to get there since Rennie Stennett went 7-for-7 in 1975. It’s unusual to get at least seven opportunities to knock a hit. It’s especially unusual to successfully knock a hit in pretty much all of them.

Based just on hits, Crawford has equaled Stennett’s accomplishment. But there’s another layer here. Yesterday, the Giants just barely edged out the Marlins, 8-7. When Stennett had his big day, the Pirates beat the Cubs 22-0. That was a nine-run game as early as the first inning, so in the end, Stennett registered a Win Probability Added — WPA — of +0.082. Crawford registered a WPA of +1.438. He was essentially worth about a win and a half on his own. By regular numbers, Crawford had an impressive game. When you take context into account, Crawford had one of the very greatest days in baseball history.

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Padres reliever Ryan Buchter has been around — playing for five organizations since 2008 — which really only means that teams haven’t agreed on his value. For every team that’s passed on the left-hander, another onehas seen something. That’s the life of a reliever, sure, but this one is doing well right now, and took a while to find his way to San Diego.

The lefty is well aware of his strengths and weaknesses in the minds of those organizations, since he heard different directives from each development team. He’s a fastball guy who doesn’t feature great secondary pitches, those coaches have told him, if not in those exact words. But along the way, Buchter has developed his own view on what makes his style effective. And it’s not just his elite spin rate.

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Something happened the other day that hadn’t happened in nearly 17 years, and had only happened twice in the last 50. Not counting Little League, I mean. It happens all the time in Little League. It happens in Little League because catchers aren’t great at catching the baseball, relatively speaking. Little League catchers aren’t great at catching the baseball, and there’s a (bizarre?) rule where batters can attempt to advance on dropped third strikes, and so we’ve all seen plenty of batters reach on strikeouts while we sigh from our positions on the field and wonder how we’re going to sneak out of our friend Gabe’s house to hang out with the girls across the street once Gabe’s parents go to sleep later that night. And then we hope our team’s pitcher strikes out the rest of the guys, too, because striking out more batters than there are outs in an inning is fun.

But it doesn’t happen as often in the big leagues, because, y’know, catchers are good. When it does happen, it’s usually because the pitcher’s stuff is so nasty that it becomes difficult to catch, even for the catcher. When it does happen, it’s also usually four batters in one inning. It’s rare, but it happens. Using the Baseball-Reference Play Index, I ran a search spanning the expansion era, looking for relief outings of exactly one inning with at least four strikeouts.

The results of that search:

Dating back to at least 1985, there are 19 instances of a pitcher whose entire outing consisted of one inning, and four strikeouts. There are plenty more instances of four-strikeout innings, of course, mixed in with the rest of a relief outing, but these are the only guys with one, clean, four-strikeout inning. Nineteen different guys, although two of them are named Mike Stanton.

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Kyle Barraclough has a record of 6-2 and a 2.88 ERA n 53 games out of the Miami Marlins bullpen this season. Those are his ho-hum numbers. The 26-year-old right-hander has 82 strikeouts, 34 walks, and has allowed 31 hits in 50 innings. Those are his holy-cow numbers.

Barraclough’s 14.75 strikeouts per nine innings is tops in the National League, and third highest in MLB behind Dellin Betances (15.86) and Andrew Miller (15.38). His 6.12 walks per nine innings is the most of any pitcher, in either league.

Obtained from the St. Louis Cardinals last July in exchange for Steve Cishek, Barraclough overpowers hitters with a mid- to high-90s fastball and a slider that averages a tick over 82 mph. The latter is his signature pitch. Barraclough throws it 40% of the time, and as Jeff Sullivan wrote in June, “It’s a phenomenal slider.”

Barraclough talked about his power arsenal, and how his ability to miss bats helps ameliorate his walk rate, prior to a recent game at Marlins Park.

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Barraclough on limiting damage and missing bats: “The walks matter — you obviously want to limit them as much as you can — but my ability to get out of jams with strikeouts is what helps me the most. If you walk a guy, but don’t give up a lot of hits… I mean, if you take your walk rate, K rate and hit rate, and two of them are good, that’s going to translate to better statistics, to fewer earned runs. You want your WHIP to be close to 1.00, or under 1.00, and if you walk a guy but don’t give up any hits, it’s going to be hard for them to score.

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I’m not really in the business of piling on. We know the Reds haven’t been very good, and we knew the Reds weren’t supposed to be very good. They are openly rebuilding, and while rebuilding teams don’t get to completely neglect the big-league product, it’s not really the priority. We all know how this works. And, say, wouldn’t you know it, but since the calendar flipped to July, the Reds have actually won more games than they’ve lost! Good for them. It would be nice to see the bad teams rise perhaps quicker than they ever thought possible.

There’s just something I can’t let go by, not without calling attention to it. The Reds, overall, have been bad. They’ve been bad in large part because their pitchers have been bad. Here are the month-by-month WARs for the Reds’ collective pitching staff:

• April: -1.4 WAR
• May: -1.3
• June: -0.8
• July: +1.8
• August: +0.1

They don’t seem to add up so cleanly, but if you look at the full-season statistics, Reds pitchers have combined for -2.1 WAR. Unsurprisingly, that’s the lowest mark in baseball — the Angels are second-worst, at +3.0. It seems like the Reds might have last place sewn up. But let’s step beyond just 2016. Let’s look at forever? Here are the worst team pitching staffs since 1900, according to FanGraphs WAR and FanGraphs WAR alone:

WAR is just one measure. I know. It doesn’t get everything perfect. I know. It does do a lot more right than wrong. And according to WAR, these Reds could end up being the worst pitching staff in modern baseball history. No team yet on record has rated below replacement level. That’s where the Reds are, underwater by a couple of wins, and while July suggested they could pull themselves out of this and get a breath of fresh air, there’s work to be done. The Reds have 52 games to go, assuming they play them all. They don’t necessarily need to pitch well. They just need to pitch better, or else they could rank as the worst anyone’s seen. That’s something to avoid. That’s something to play for!

Homer Bailey has returned. That’s a plus for the Reds. Alfredo Simon is on the disabled list, and J.J. Hoover is in the minors, and those are both pluses for the Reds. Quietly, Anthony DeSclafani has been super effective. The Reds should have the arms they need. As I look, the Reds are projected the rest of the way for +3.7 pitching WAR, which would get them out of…the…red, so to speak. But if nothing else, just know what’s already happened. The Reds pitchers have been historically lousy. You might’ve suspected that to be true, but it always helps to confirm. Or, maybe, it helps nothing at all.

I think everyone agrees the White Sox haven’t had the year they wanted. So, at present, they’re probably not too keen on celebrating individual accomplishments, but I don’t care, because I’m not them, and because I need material to write about. Therefore! Take a look at Adam Eaton’s player page. There’s something kind of weird that might jump out to you. Eaton as a regular last year was worth 3.6 WAR. Eaton as a regular this year is looking to push 5 WAR. That on its own isn’t real crazy for a 27-year-old, but look over at some other columns. Compared to last year, Eaton has hit worse. Compared to last year, Eaton has run the bases worse. Still, his value has gone up.

That’s because of his defense. What’s funny there, too, is that Eaton moved over to right field from center. So he’s handled a less-important position, but he’s been absolutely fantastic in the corner. Part of what’s happened is that Eaton has shown exceptional range. Yet that doesn’t come close to being a full explanation. You probably know that we have UZR on the site, and we also display many of its components. One of those components is ARM rating, and we have that information going back to 2002. Here are the top 10 player-seasons in ARM per 1,000 innings, for outfielders with at least 750 innings played on the grass. (As you understand, this season isn’t yet over.) (Just, be cool.)

That should go to show you how good Eaton has been. And now, I want to show you another table. I looked at every outfielder who played at least 750 defensive innings in the outfield for two years in a row. Here are the biggest year-to-year ARM-rating improvements:

If the season ended now, Eaton would officially rank first in the table. The season actually has a whole lot left — perhaps to the White Sox’ collective chagrin — but Eaton is still positioned well. He’s never had strong ARM numbers before. Now he’s having one of the best ARM seasons on record.

You don’t have to get too complicated with things. How can you explain these numbers? According to stats at Baseball-Reference, Eaton has been one of the best right fielders in terms of holding baserunners. He’s also held a lot of runners when he’s shifted over to center for occasional spells. And the thing you most closely associate with ARM rating is the outfield assist. Eaton leads all outfielders with 16 assists. Nobody else has more than 12. That kind of gap gets you a big positive number.

In the past, according to the Fan Scouting Report, Eaton wasn’t perceived to have a real strong arm. However, Eaton’s arm did eclipse 100 miles per hour on a throw in 2015. The strength was there, and it stands to reason Eaton this year has gotten more accurate. He might’ve also gotten better about his anticipation and his attack angles. This throw right here is a thing of beauty:

Of course, ARM success can also be tied to bad baserunning decisions:

…so it’s a noisy stat. Runners learn, and assists can come down to fractions of a second. There’s plenty of luck involved, to fold in with the skill. Adam Eaton might not actually have one of the most valuable arms in recent baseball history, but that arm has had a strong season. Most strong seasons are about both skill and luck.

Adam Eaton used to be a center fielder of questionable defensive adequacy. Now he’s a right fielder who looks more comfortable than perhaps any other right fielder. He’s done well to improve his angles, but even more importantly, Eaton’s arm has been playing incredibly well. It’s not close to enough to salvage the White Sox’ disappointing season, but Eaton, overall, has been among the least of their problems.

Yesterday afternoon, Ichiro Suzuki became just the 30th player to reach 3,000 hits in the major leagues. He did so with a triple, making him just the second player ever to get to hit number 3,000 on a triple. It was a pretty glorious hit, and it will be one of the capstones on an awesome career. To celebrate, I thought we could take a walk back down memory lane and look at some of the most impactful hits of his Hall of Fame career. Some are his best according to WPA, some are postseason hits, and a few are just round-number hits, because we all love those. We’ll go in chronological order.

April 2, 2001, Mariners vs. Athletics
Ichiro wasted little time getting going. After grounding out to the right side in his first two major-league plate appearances, and striking out in the third, Ichiro would single up the middle in his fourth plate appearance, and drop down a bunt single in his fifth and final plate appearance of his first game.

The first hit came off of T.J. Mathews, and the bunt came off of Jim Mecir. Ichiro scored following the first hit to pull the Mariners within one run, and the bunt would push go-ahead run Carlos Guillen to third. The bunt came following a walk. Generally speaking, you don’t want to give away an out with a bunt when a reliever comes into the game and walks the first batter he faces on five pitches, but Ichiro did anyway, quickly serving notice that the normal rules of engagement did not apply to him. Guillen would cross home three batters later, and the Mariners historic 2001 season started with a bang.

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So far in his major-league career, Mike Trout has worn the golden sombrero four times. The first time, three of the strikeouts came against Max Scherzer. The second time, two of the strikeouts came against Drew Hutchison. The third time, three of the strikeouts came against James Paxton. Sunday marked the fourth occasion. Sunday, all four strikeouts came against Paxton. So that made Sunday the first time the best player in baseball had struck out four times against the same pitcher in the same game.

Just in isolation, such a four-strikeout game would be notable. But when you consider the context, I love writing about Trout, and he’s amazing. And I love writing about Paxton, and he’s quickly improving his profile. What does it look like when a pitcher does this to the best in the world? Let us watch the strikeouts together. Trout doesn’t give us these opportunities very often.

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