Yesterday I wrote about the emergence of Mariners reliever Edwin Diaz, in part because, on Tuesday, I watched him record his first career big-league save in dominating fashion. I was watching the Mariners and the Red Sox because that game was of some interest to me. I wasn’t watching the A’s and the Angels, because that game was not of some interest to me. It would’ve been of interest to almost no one — the game had zero playoff implications. What happened at the end of that game, though, was that Cam Bedrosian recorded his first career big-league save in dominating fashion. If I’m going to be honest, I’ve been more aware of Diaz’s success than I have of Bedrosian’s. Right now I want to try to make up for that.

Even though Bedrosian was a first-round pick in 2010, I first became aware of him in 2014. He got my attention by steamrolling through the minors — when he was first brought up to the majors, it was because in 24 minor-league innings, he’d struck out 45 batters, allowing a .285 OPS. The results were obscene, but they didn’t repeat in the bigs, so Bedrosian started bouncing back and forth. Between later big-league promotions, Bedrosian threw nine innings in the minors, striking out 22 while allowing another .285 OPS. Bedrosian made a mockery of lesser opponents. His inability to get outs with the Angels was frustrating, and I gradually lost interest. Sometimes the lower-level freaks don’t become upper-level freaks.

With the Angels in 2014, Bedrosian was bad. With the Angels in 2015, he was hardly any better. With the Angels in 2016, he’s been one of the game’s best relievers. Only Zach Britton has him in ERA. That’s a fine name to look up to.

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Over the last few weeks we have taken a position-by-position look at ball-in-play data for both hitters and pitchers, assessing their respective contact quality/management ability. Next up: a macro-type evaluation of overall team performance in those areas. An overview of this series appeared in this space last week.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a division-by-division look at each team’s granular data through the All-Star break, ultimately comparing their actual won-lost records to projected ones based on exit speed/angle of every ball in play hit and allowed by each club. About 90 games’ worth of balls in play is a fairly substantial sample size, one that enables us to make fairly educated guesses about the true talent level of each team. Today, we’ll begin to drill deeper into the data.

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If you’re a general manager itching to cause a stir among your team’s most devoted fan base, you can announce that you’re moving one of your most promising pitching prospects into the bullpen. For as little as some fans might actually know, one thing that’s widely understood is that a good starting pitcher is better than a good relieving pitcher. More valuable, anyway. So fans are inclined to be patient, letting pitching prospects sort their things out. Moving to the bullpen is often considered a last resort. Something that should happen only to lesser players. Fans don’t love when it’s a move that’s made early.

And just generally speaking, I’m sympathetic to that perspective. I’m mostly in alignment — I, too, like being patient with prospects. I want starters to have time to develop. But on the other hand, there’s the case of Edwin Diaz. Before the year, Baseball America ranked Diaz as the No. 2 prospect in an admittedly lousy Mariners system. Early in the season, the Mariners announced that Diaz was being transitioned to relief, citing an inability to learn a third pitch. At the time, the decision was questionable. I suppose it still is, and forever will be. But, why do teams move starters into the bullpen? Because relievers can move quickly, and the best ones can become hugely important. Diaz, already, has become hugely important. Diaz is already pitching like one of the very best relievers in baseball.

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When a player puts up a great first half that departs considerably from his established levels, it’s generally expected that the player will come back to earth in the second half. This is regression in its simplest form, and it’s baked into the sort of projections which appear at this site. This isn’t to say the player won’t continue to be good, just that he might not be as good as he showed in the first half. The same is true for players with uncharacteristically poor first halves. We expect them to figure things out and get back closer to their prior performance level. We can look at many indicators of the poor performance — BABIP is usually prominent — and tie some of the performance to bad luck. Sometimes it’s injuries. Another avenue we can travel down is to look at exit velocity.

Over the winter, I looked at players who under- or overperformed their average exit velocities in the first half of 2015 and then compared it to their second-half production. Standard caveats about the importance of launch angle and somewhat incomplete data apply, but those players who most outperformed their exit velocity in the first half last season saw massive drops in production in the second half. Here’s the methodology I applied in February (and repeated a few weeks ago in looking at players who underperformed last season):

I created IQ-type scores for exit velocity and wOBA from the first half of last season based on the averages of the 130 players in the sample. In each case, I assigned a figure of 100 to the sample’s average and then, for each standard deviation (SD) up or down, added or subtracted 15 points.

Once the IQ scores for both stats were calculated, I subtracted the IQ score for exit velocity from the IQ score for wOBA to find the players with the biggest disparities.

Here are the overperformers from the first half of last season — i.e. the players whose production most exceeded their exit velocity:

As you can see, players who outperformed their exit-velocity numbers in the first half of 2015 produced a collective wOBA that was 50 points lower in the second half of that season.

With that in mind, here are the overperformers from the first half of this season:

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Brandon Guyer is currently baseball’s Hit-by-Pitch King. You could take that to mean this year, as Guyer leads all batters with 23 hit by pitches this season. Or you could take it to mean lately, as Guyer leads all batters over the last two years with 47 hit by pitches, and his 58 over the last three leaves him just one behind Anthony Rizzo’s league-leading total, despite Guyer having half the plate appearances over that stretch. Or, you could even take it to mean all-time, because if you set a career plate appearance minimum of 500 and search the entire history of modern baseball dating back to 1921, no one’s been hit more frequently than our recently anointed Hit-by-Pitch King.

HBP%, 1921-present, min. 500 PA

1. Brandon Guyer, 5.9%
2. Derek Dietrich, 4.7%
3. F.P. Santangelo, 4.0%
4. Ron Hunt, 3.9%
5. Carlos Quentin, 3.9%

The gap is remarkable. Throughout the entire history of modern baseball, at this particular skill, Brandon Guyer is truly a one-of-a-kind. And make no mistakes, it is a skill. Maybe “skill” isn’t the word you’d immediately think to use, but another way to think about a skill is the ability to repeatedly do something others can’t as a means to gain an advantage over the opponent. Most often, we see that manifested in a batter consistently getting hits, or stealing bases, or drawing walks. Oh, Guyer can hit, too, but where he really gains his edge is the being hit.

Eno Sarris wrote about this a bit when the Indians acquired Guyer at the deadline for low-level prospects Nathan Lukes and Jhonleider Salinas. The reason the Indians went out and got Guyer is because he can play all three outfield positions with what appears to be above-average ability, and mostly because he’s been one of baseball’s very best bats against left-handed pitching since he began receiving regular playing time in 2014. As Eno put it, Guyer improves the Indians’ ability to both hit lefties, and be hit by lefties. But plenty of batters have been able to hit lefties. Nobody in the history of the sport’s been hit like Guyer, so that’s where our focus turns.

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Some while ago, baseball sent a packet to the player’s union, and within a few ideas were reportedly mentioned that might potentially help restore what had been dwindling levels of offense. There was talk about maybe lowering the mound. There was talk about the DH. There was talk about livening up the baseball, and there was talk about tweaking the strike zone. There was other stuff, too. It was probably a detailed packet.

Now, those were just scattered ideas, conversational starting points. Nothing was made into rule, but it’s interesting to reflect on the point about the ball, given recent research by Ben Lindbergh and Rob Arthur. Or, if you prefer, just given recent home-run trends. Rob Manfred has denied that anything about the baseball has changed, but balls have gone flying and run-scoring is up. It is, at the very least, curious. Not that fans are complaining.

And then there’s the matter of the zone. Manfred correctly observed that the zone had expanded. It’s possible that, as soon as next season, the strike zone could be officially raised. Major League Baseball has stayed on top of the research, and league officials understand that the zone grew over time, in particular around the knees. Next year, we could have a rule change. But based on indications, we’ve already seen the strike zone move a little up. For the first time in recent recorded history, baseball is using a strike zone smaller than the one it had the year before.

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A little while ago I asked Dave to guess off the top of his head what Yasiel Puig might get if he were a free agent this winter. Now, I didn’t tell Dave this was going to be public, so if you disagree with his estimate let’s all be nice, but he landed on one year and $6 million. What Yasiel Puig actually has left on his commitment after this year is two years and something like $14 million, plus some arbitration eligibility in 2019. So while Puig is anything but extraordinarily expensive — in baseball terms — there really is some chance he could be moved in a waiver deal. As unlikely as it is, it’s incredible we’ve gotten here at all.

The Dodgers have been trying to trade Puig. They’ve been trying for months, and now that they have Josh Reddick, Puig, who remains, is going to the minors. In part, this is about performance, and in part, this is apparently about discipline, which is hardly anything new as Puig is concerned. The discipline issues are bad enough that the Dodgers are overlooking Puig’s recently acceptable numbers. The marriage there is very clearly ending, just a few years after Puig was anointed one of the faces of the franchise.

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There’s a bad joke that we throw around when an older player signs — that he brings with him veteran presents. In the modern clubhouse, though, it’s unclear how much this sort of thing matters. There’s a lot of putting your head down and working on your craft — or keeping your nose out of other players’ business, at least. But then you get the odd story here or there where a veteran comes in and helps a young man develop, and you wonder if the jokes are misplaced.

Like this story about Jon Gray. He was a man with a fastball and a slider, searching for something that would expand his arsenal. The curve was promising, but less effective in Colorado. “Then I talked to [Adam] Ottavino about the slider,” the 24-year-old Rockies starter told me earlier this year, “and I started manipulating it differently in different situations.” Look at that: tangible veteran presents, from a player who just last year told us about his ability to alter his slider to battle lefties.

I recently got to check back in with Gray about that slider manipulation. He was fresh off a rejuvenating bullpen session in San Francisco and had even better feelings about his changeup. And his curve. Now we look up and, in his last start, on Wednesday against the Orioles, he actually used both his curve and change 10% of the time… and it was the third time he’d done so all season. Looks like Gray has found a few more pitches that he trusts.

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Two years ago, Steve Pearce was a revelation for the Orioles, hitting 21 home runs and recording a 161 wRC+ in just under 400 plate appearances. Last year, Pearce failed not only to duplicate that season, but even to maintain a league-average line, producing a .289 on-base percentage and 91 wRC+ whille playing first, outfield, and a little second base. As a result, the 33-year-old was left unsigned by the Orioles and had to settle for a one-year deal for under $5 million with the Tampa Bay Rays. Just a few months later, Pearce has returned to the Orioles, who traded young catcher Jonah Heim to bring him back.

From 2007 to 2013, Steve Pearce recorded at least 15 games played per season, but never received a chance at extended playing time, failing to accumulate 200 plate appearances in any one year. In 847 total plate appearances during that time, Pearce hit 17 homers, posting a 9% walk rate and 20% strikeout rate with a disappointing .283/.318/.377 line — good for an 87 wRC+ and 0.4 WAR. The Orioles were one of three teams for which Pearce played in 2013, and the team saw enough to bring him back for 2014, setting the table for his big season.

After that disappointing 2015 campaign, Pearce struggled to find a market for his services. The FanGraphs crowd estimated a two-year, $12 million contract, while Dave Cameron guessed a one-year, $8 million contract and labeled him one of the offseason’s biggest bargains before the signings began. Cameron justified his choice, thusly:

But for a team looking for a right-handed hitter who can play first base or the outfield, signing Pearce at a bench player price and giving him a shot at a regular job might be a risk worth taking. The underlying skills suggest that he’s better than a lot of other guys who have picked up the everyday player label, and unlike a lot of sluggers, he’s not just a one trick pony. He makes contact at league average rates, draws enough walks to be a decent on-base guy, is an above average runner on the bases, and defensive metrics have graded him out as an asset at first base and average in the outfield. When you combine those skills with a guy that has hit 36 homers in his last 682 plate appearances, that’s a player who is worth putting in the line-up most days.

The Rays took that minor chance on Pearce and were rewarded for it. This season, Pearce has played first and second base for Tampa Bay and appeared in 60 games so far. In his 232 plate appearances, he’s hit 10 homers, with a 147 wRC+ and a .309/.388/.520 line. While his .342 BABIP is likely to regress, his projections are still very positive. ZiPS forecasts Pearce for a rest-of-season 119 wRC+, while Steamer is a bit more pessimistic at 111. In either case, though, both numbers are solidly above average. Where Pearce can really help the Orioles is against left-handed pitchers, as the Orioles have recorded just an 85 wRC+ against southpaws, among the very worst in the game.

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Below is my ranking of the prospects dealt during this year’s “Trade Season,” a span of time encompassing the second half of July, essentially from the Drew Pomeranz deal onward. Each tier of prospects is separated by the Future Value grade I’ve placed on them. For further explanation on what goes into FV, please go here. I’ve also included a brief, one sentence summary of each player’s skillset as well as links to the full reports I’ve written here for the site over the past few weeks and hours. Players who didn’t get full write-ups have slightly longer blurbs written in this post. Players with the same FV are ranked within their tier simply in the order I like them.

Dilson Herrera isn’t technically a prospect and is therefore not on the list but his full report is here. Hector Olivera is also not a prospect, not because he’s exhausted his rookie eligibility but because the reports I’ve gotten there, as well as what I’ve seen in person, have been quite bad.

60 FV Prospects

Anderson Espinoza, RHP, San Diego Padres (report)

Traded from BOS to SD for Drew Pomeranz

Summary: One of the most electric arms in the minors, Espinoza has a shot at three plus or better pitches and a realistic #2 starter’s ceiling but is still just 18 and obviously risky.

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