This post is not about Yoenis Cespedes’ amazing run of late for the New York Mets. Not really, anyway. You have probably heard about Cespedes since his trade to the Mets. He is hitting .302/.352/.676 with 17 home runs and a wRC+ of 179 in 193 plate appearances with his new club. Even more amazing, from August 12 through September 14, Cespedes hit .323/.379/.805 with 17 homers and a wRC+ of 220 in 145 plate appearances. During this time the Mets went 22-9 and seized control of the National League East from pre-season, early-season, and even most of late-season favorites Washington Nationals. What Cespedes has done is incredible, but he is not the only major league player to have a great run along these lines.

This post is also not about Cespedes’ MVP candidacy. Matthew Kory did a good job breaking that argument down and discussing whether Cespedes’ time in the American League should be a part of the consideration when discussing MVP. What this post is about is recognizing those performances throughout the season on the hitting side that have been up to par with Cespedes’ great run. Some of the performances are from players on winning teams, some are from non-contenders, many of these runs have been covered by various FanGraphs authors as the runs were happening, but they all deserve recognition for playing incredible baseball for a stretch at least a month long.

We’ll start with the very best players in baseball this season. Looking at the top ten in WAR on the season, we have four players from the American League, five players from the National League, and Cespedes, who has split time with both. First, Cespedes’ line, mentioned above.

Yoenis Cespedes and His Incredible Run

	Dates	PA	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	wRC+	Team W-L
Yoenis Cespedes	8/12-9/14	145	17	.323	.379	.805	220	22-9

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One of the great things about baseball is that it’s always changing. The changes don’t happen quickly, in most cases, but the game being played today is quite a bit different from the one being played 10 years ago, and the one 10 years before that, and the one 10 years before that. Baseball has eras where no one could hit and eras where even a shortstop could launch 20 homers a year; it has had eras where starters pitched nearly every inning and eras where managers would bring in his specialist to counter the other team’s newly-inserted specialist.

The current era is all about pitching, as the rise of hard-throwers on every roster and an expanding strike zone have made this a great time to throw the ball for a living — so long as you can manage to keep from visiting Dr. Andrews, anyway — and a rough time to try and put up big offensive numbers. This is a drastic change from the style of play that we saw during the Steroid Era, where players used copious amounts of PEDs and offensive rates neared all-time highs. If you’ve been watching baseball for since we entered the 21st century, you’ve seen the game change in pretty dramatic ways, even while it is still the same sport.

Over the last 50 years, one of the most interesting changes has been the rise and fall of the popularity of the stolen base. Aggressive baserunning reached its peak in the 1980s, when teams like the St. Louis Cardinals featured line-ups of slap hitters who could run and field, while stars like Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines were also setting the standard for what leadoff hitters should be. But when home run rates surged in the 1990s, stolen bases were de-emphasized; why risk making an out when the next guy up can hit one over the fence?

Now, with the strike zone getting bigger and PED testing getting more sophisticated, offense is back to the levels we saw back in the 1980s, with teams averaging roughly 4.25 runs per game over the last five years. With runs being more scarce, it was thought that perhaps MLB would move back towards 1980s-style players, and we’d see a resurgence in stolen bases once again.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

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As Melvin Upton steps to the plate and readies for the pitch, Buster Posey appraises him. First, he looks at his feet as they dig in. Gradually, his eyes move up Upton’s body, brazenly staring as he takes in information. Down pops the sign as the catcher moves his attention to the pitcher.

It’s not just idle ogling. He’s looking for clues. Which ones?

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Let’s see, what are some of the current baseball headlines? With the Mets, Yoenis Cespedes is performing like an MVP candidate (for crazy people). Johnny Cueto’s season has taken a nasty turn in Kansas City. J.A. Happ has been a wonderful surprise find for the Pirates. Troy Tulowitzki might not play for the Blue Jays for a little while, but even the healthy version was offensively under-performing. Carlos Gomez hasn’t quite looked like himself. Cole Hamels hasn’t quite looked like himself. Maybe these aren’t all the biggest headlines in baseball, but they are at least things that are happening.

And there’s something all those players have in common: they’ve all very recently switched leagues. Some went AL to NL, some went NL to AL, and while the league switches don’t explain everything, you have to think they’re some kind of factor. In that, they can’t be considered irrelevant. Because, once again, the evidence points to the American League being the superior league. This isn’t anything new. Rather, this just continues a trend, a trend that’s lasted for more than a decade.

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Apologies for walking on trodden ground. None of what’s below is new. Many of you already know everything in here, but I feel like this is a good opportunity to review why our position is our position. I’ll do my best to keep this simple and short. Just like all the world’s best analysis!

Over the last little while, I’ve written a few things about Clutch. The specific stat might be difficult to explain to the average fan, but the idea is a basic one. Teams with high Clutch scores have had really good timing. Teams with low Clutch scores have had really bad timing. Timing is important! This explains a lot of the difference we see between actual wins and BaseRuns wins, which you can just think of as “expected wins.” This year, the five most clutch teams in baseball so far have beaten their BaseRuns win total by a combined 45. The five least clutch teams in baseball so far have fallen short of their BaseRuns win total by a combined 43. It’s hugely important, and this isn’t a one-year phenomenon.

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The introduction of the second wild-card playoff team in each league in 2012 ignited the latest in a never-ending round of debates between baseball purists and modernists. Purists argued that the expansion of the playoff field cheapened the regular season, bringing it closer in line with the other major sports in terms of percentage of teams qualifying for the postseason. Major League Baseball, on the other hand, argued that it would keep a larger number of clubs in the pennant race, hopefully jacking up attendance and TV ratings in the process. From a competitive standpoint, the change really didn’t seem to be that big of a deal. It basically pitted teams ranked somewhere between fifth and 12th in MLB’s overall pecking order in a one-game showdown, with the side benefit of no longer subjecting a division winner to a “one game and out” end after a successful regular season.

It’s a little bit different scenario this time around in the National League. If today’s standings hold up over the next three weeks, we will be treated to a baseball rarity, as the clubs with the second- and fifth-best records in all of baseball, the Pirates and Cubs, divisional rivals, face a one-game showdown for their postseason lives. For my money, this ranks right up there with any non Super Bowl one-off sporting event on the calendar; it’s a Game 7, Djokovic-Federer, and Spieth-McElroy all rolled into one. When you get down to it, it’s a matchup that would be historically rare even if the two-wild-card system had been in place since the dawn of the divisional era.

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On Aug. 22, Tampa Bay left-hander Matt Moore reminded everyone of how excellent he can be. Once a consensus top-three prospect (alongside Bryce Harper and Mike Trout), Moore was dominant. In six innings, he recorded 16 strikeouts — 13 of which came in a stretch of just 15 batters. He allowed a single run. But there’s one problem: Moore was pitching for the Durham Bulls, in a game against the Columbus Clippers.

Sad puppies.

At a point earlier in his career, Matt Moore had been an All Star; now he was in Triple-A. Why? Well, since returning from a Tommy John procedure that limited him to just two appearances in 2014, he had been, to put it not nicely but succinctly, putrid. Moore made his season debut in Tampa on July 2. Since (and including) that time, he’d made six major league starts, giving up 26 runs (all earned) in 26.2 innings. Lest you think this was a function merely of batted ball luck, consider: over those 26.2 innings, Moore had struck out 17, walked 13, and gave up four homers as well. The Rays sent him to Durham.

Moore had been an ace starter before having the surgery two starts into the 2014 season, but six starts into his return he hardly looked the part (and two starts following his return from the majors haven’t offered any counterarguments to that point). I’m not sure what Tampa’s expectations were for him, but the often less-grounded expectations of fans and media were that he’d step back into his previous role in front of the Tampa rotation, thereby forming an unbeatable duo of awesomeness (potentially with capes!) with Chris Archer. But so far it hasn’t happened. Can Matt Moore be an ace again? Was Matt Moore ever an ace? Do capes help you pitch? Why questions? How about answers!

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At 60-84, the Rockies are not merely way out of contention, but also mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. The team’s in full on rebuild mode these days, and simply put, there aren’t all that many exciting players on their roster. However, they’ve called up a couple of interesting hitters this September who could ultimately develop into useful contributors and help out the next competitive Rockies team: infielder Cristhian Adames and catcher Tom Murphy.

Cristhian Adames

Let’s start with 24-year-old Cristhian Adames, who’s a good bit closer to being ready for the big leagues than Murphy. Adames has hit a loud .391/.440/.435 in semi-regular playing time the last couple of weeks, and has played each of the past few days while filling in for the injured Jose Reyes. Over half of Adames’s balls in play have fallen for hits, which has certainly played no small role in his recent success. But even so, pushing .400 is a great way to make a positive impression.

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Over the last couple years, the battle for higher wages for minor league baseball players has been fought on several legal fronts. The highest profile challenge has come in the form of litigation claiming that the minor league pay scale — under which minor league players often earn as little as $3,000 to $7,500 per year — violates the nation’s minimum wage laws.

At the same time, however, a separate lawsuit filed last December attacked the problem from a different legal angle. In Miranda v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, four former minor league players asserted that Major League Baseball’s minor league pay practices violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. In particular, the players argued that MLB and its thirty teams have illegally conspired to fix minor league players’ salaries at below-market rates not only by agreeing to a uniform, league-wide salary scale for minor league players, but also by artificially reducing the size of the signing bonuses that entry-level players receive under MLB’s domestic and international signing bonus pool rules.

As I noted at the time the Miranda case was filed last year, the plaintiffs in the suit faced at least one major impediment in their attempt to challenge the minor league pay practices under the Sherman Act: baseball’s antitrust exemption. Indeed, soon after the case was filed, MLB filed a motion asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit in light of its antitrust immunity.

Given that precedent, it should come as little surprise that Judge Haywood Gilliam dismissed the Miranda suit on Monday, concluding that MLB was shielded from the plaintiffs’ claims by virtue of its antitrust exemption.

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