It was a strange start to the season, you’ll remember. Even though the Astros, as a whole, were completely disappointing, Jose Altuve came out absolutely on fire. He put up numbers you’d expect from some elite-level slugger, and on May 5, he bashed his ninth home run. That put him on pace for something like 50, and though Altuve was never going to get all the way to 50, he was impossible not to notice. He already had the remarkable bat-to-ball skills. To that, he was adding selective strength. Call it a superstar turn.

It’s overly simplistic, but when you look at Altuve, you don’t see a home-run hitter. I shouldn’t need to explain why. The extent of the power was hard to believe, and now you could say things have calmed down: Last night, Altuve hit his first dinger in a month. I want to talk about that dinger, but more importantly, I want to talk about the process that led to that dinger. It’s not that Altuve’s start was a mirage. It’s that he was getting opportunities they’re not giving him anymore.

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You put it off, and you put it off, and you put it off, but at some point, you have to just suck it up and write a post about Mark Trumbo. Why a post about Mark Trumbo? He’s major-league-leader-in-home-runs Mark Trumbo. Granted, a guy tied for fourth is Adam Duvall, and he’s even more surprising, but, one thing at a time. Trumbo leads in dingers. He’s eighth overall in wRC+. Trumbo already has his highest WAR since 2013, and he’s a bad defensive outfielder, and it’s June. He can’t not be written about, right? Here, watch a dinger. It was yesterday.

Something that’s always struck me with Trumbo — even though he wouldn’t put up elite numbers, he always looked so natural hitting homers. The swing wouldn’t look exaggerated; it would look quick, somehow both short to the ball and powerful. Trumbo’s always swung and missed, and he’s always gone out of the zone a little too often, and those things were limiting. To be better, he’d either have to change one of those, or he’d have to make more of his batted balls.

Thus far, he’s been making more of his batted balls. So, he’s sitting on career-best results. Why has this been happening? It might actually be really simple.

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Historically, players selected straight out of high school in the Major League Baseball draft, or those drafted following their junior year in college, were forced to walk something of a fine line. Because the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s rules specified that any player who formally signed with an agent would lose his remaining college eligibility, draftees could not be directly represented by an agent when negotiating with an MLB team.

Instead, players could only employ an agent in an “advisory” capacity. Under NCAA rules, so long as a player’s “advisor” did not directly communicate with an MLB team on the player’s behalf, and so long as the player compensated the advisor for his services (at the advisor’s normal hourly rate), a player would maintain his college eligibility should he ultimately elect not to sign a professional contract and instead return to (or enroll in) college.

Of course, in practice this distinction between an “agent” and an “advisor” often turned out to merely be a matter of semantics. Teams routinely expected (and preferred) to communicate directly with a player’s agent, rather than the player himself, while recent draftees usually preferred to have their agent/advisor negotiate directly with an MLB team on their behalf. So despite their official title, advisors often served as players’ agents, directly representing their clients during their interactions with MLB teams, in violation of NCAA rules.

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In the winter of 2013, the Yankees faced a decision on star second baseman Robinson Cano, and after years of getting burned with big contracts for aging players, the team drew the line in the sand when Cano asked for a 10 year deal. After maxing out their offer to Cano at $175 million over seven years, the Yankees let Cano leave for Seattle, but then promptly reallocated most of the money earmarked for their second baseman to center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury; he signed with New York for $153 million over seven years a week after Cano signed with the Mariners.

Because of the similarities of the offers and the timing of when they occurred, Ellsbury is always going to be linked to Cano, and comparisons between the two have become a frequent source of conversation. That was especially true back in April, when Cano got off to a blistering start to the season while Ellsbury struggled tremendously. A few days into the season, ESPN ran this story from Andrew Marchand.

Jacoby Ellsbury could go down as one of the worst free agent signings in Yankee history https://t.co/2EXsqLKfur

— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) April 8, 2016

Similar stories followed over the next month, as Ellsbury limped to a .235/.278/.341 line over the first month of the season. The slow came on the heels of a miserable second half to the 2015 season, and by the time April ended, Ellsbury had hit just .241/.293/.338 (a 71 wRC+) over the past calendar year, spanning a total of 498 plate appearances. It was pretty easy to write Ellsbury off as a washed-up and overpaid mistake.

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Ever since we’ve known about Aaron Nola, whom the Phillies selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2014 draft (nearly two years ago to the day), we’ve heard about front-of-the-rotation potential without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff. Nola’s a righty, and he throws in the low-90s, and so for there to be front-of-the-rotation potential suggests something else. Pitchability, command, deception, feel — whatever non-stuff-related adjectives you want to use, the thought’s been all along that Nola’s possessed it in spades.

Following the draft and half a season of professional ball in 2014, Baseball America’s scouting report declared that “Nola’s hallmark is his stellar command.” Baseball Prospectus noted that Nola “brings a polished three-pitch arsenal, with strong command and solid deception.” Kiley McDaniel’s evaluation included perhaps the strongest description of Nola’s unquantifiable pitching ability, saying he “has an amazing feel to pitch.”

Fast-forward another year and some change, and Nola’s in his second major-league season — first full season — and we’re not only seeing that front-of-the-rotation potential quicker than most expected, but we’re seeing hints of an even higher ceiling than most expected. Through 12 starts, Nola’s averaged 6.5 innings per start with a 2.65 ERA and a 2.73 FIP. He’s been a top-30 starter by RA9-WAR and a top-10 starter by FIP-WAR. He’s been a top-15 starter in strikeout, walk, and ground-ball rate — arguably the three most important traits for any pitcher to possess.

Nola looks like one of baseball’s best young starters and, as expected, he’s doing it without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff; he’s still right-handed, and the fastball still barely averages 90 mph. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a plus pitch — Jeff Sullivan already called Nola’s curveball the best in baseball — but he’s not dominating hitters in the obvious, easily quantifiable way that many of today’s young flamethrowers do. He’s doing it in a more sneaky kind of way, and that adds an extra layer of intrigue to an already intriguing pitcher.

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The first read of Trevor Story’s split stats produces an easy narrative. In April, he recorded a .988 OPS due (in part) to ridiculous, unsustainable power. Since then, his OPS has been under .800, with half as many homers. The league adjusted to him, and he didn’t adjust back. Simple enough.

Of course it’s much more complicated than that in reality, at least in terms of what’s happening on the field. To the player, it’s simple.

Jeff Sullivan documented a stark adjustment that the league made to the Rockies’ shortstop after that huge first week. They stopped throwing him inside because he showed he could pull those pitches for homers.

“A lot of people don’t pitch inside, I don’t think,” said Story about that first week, framing that first week as the anomaly, which might come as a surprise. “Some teams do, and some teams don’t.”

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Every so often baseball repeats the same lesson about the irrelevance of momentum. Momentum is our own construct; we believe in it because we believe it can help us see into the future. We are and have always been terrible at seeing into the future. Last Wednesday, the Rangers lost to the Indians in extra innings. They had Thursday off. The Mariners didn’t have Thursday off — rather, they spent it orchestrating one of the very greatest comebacks in big-league history. The two teams were tied for first place, and now they are not, because the Rangers promptly swept the Mariners away, assuming sole possession of first place in the American League West, and in the American League.

Here’s one way to tell the tale:

For the first time, we now have the Rangers as the AL West favorites. And this is according to math that many people believe undersells the roster. The Astros’ lousy start opened the door, and though they’ve righted themselves, and though the Mariners sprinted out, now the Rangers are in charge. It’s a good position to be in, even if the draft is still in front of us.

Yet there’s something I can’t stop thinking about. See, it’s not just that the Rangers are back in first place. They finished in first place literally just last season. Where they are isn’t a complete and utter shock. What I find more astonishing is how they’ve gotten here. First place was the plan, but not like this.

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Back in July of 2013, I put together a little bit of research to put Michael Cuddyer’s 27-game hitting streak into perspective. I had been quite critical of Mr. Cuddyer at that time, and it only seemed fair to show him a little love. At the time, I mentioned that I might look into some more hitting streak data in the near future. Turns out the “near future” was three years later. Spurred on by the recent hitting streaks from the killer B’s on a swarm — Jackie Bradley Jr. and Xander Bogaerts — I thought I’d wade back in.

First, as I mentioned last time, a couple of ground rules. I don’t count streaks that span two seasons. I don’t like doing it, and you can’t make me. Second, there are some streaks that took place from the time before we have game logs. When I first conducted this research, the earliest season for which we had game logs was 1916; now it’s 1913. Fortunately, for the sake of convenience, no relevant hitting streaks occurred during 1913-1915, so we’re not getting any new information in that respect.

We are getting some other new information, though. For instance, Baseball-Reference has WPA calculated further back than they did before, so where before we didn’t know the WPA of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak, now we do have that figure. We also have a few more years of streaks in the mix. The cut-off for WPA data now seems to be 1930, though there was one streak from 1943 for which WPA information appears unavailable.

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Jon Gray had one of his best starts of the season on Sunday. The Colorado Rockies right-hander fanned 12 while limiting the Padres to two runs over seven innings. It was his third straight solid outing following a a nine-run dud against the Cardinals on May 19.

A few days after his St. Louis shelling, the 24-year-old University of Oklahoma product threw a pre-game bullpen session at Fenway Park. On his way back to the clubhouse, he stopped in the outfield grass and conferred with his pitching coach, occasionally mimicking his pitching motion.

After the confab concluded, I approached him to ask what they’d been working on. I had other questions in mind as well. I’d interviewed Gray a few months after he was taken third overall in the 2013 draft, and a lot of development had occurred since that time. A follow-up was in order.

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Gray on his development and needing to stay in sync: “There’s a lot more to this game than it might seem. You’re constantly making adjustments in order to compete. I’ve done a lot of things with my delivery, as well as mentally. You have to make adjustments a lot faster at this level. If I know something isn’t right in my delivery, I have to change it as soon as possible, otherwise it’s going to get bad. Same thing mentally. I have to really keep tabs on myself, with each pitch, each approach.

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CHICAGO — Cubs ace Jake Arrieta continued his year-long run of brilliance on Sunday afternoon, striking out 12 batters with one walk in a 3-2 home loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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