With the trade deadline 22 days away, we’re starting to reach the point where deals could come together pretty quickly. The standings are beginning to sort out the contenders from the pretenders, and teams have mostly completed their internal evaluations of what they need for the stretch run. Over the next few weeks, the focus will turn to getting deals done, and for every team looking for a big deadline upgrade, two names will be at the front and center of those discussions: Johnny Cueto and Cole Hamels.

They’re not just the two best pitchers on the market; they’re probably the two best overall players as well. Both are high quality starters with long track records of success, and each could upgrade an acquiring team by something like a couple of wins over the remainder of the season, plus the upgrade of adding a frontline starter to their postseason rotation. Both players are going to be in high demand, and will likely return a significant haul for their organizations.

But which one should a team prefer? Let’s compare the pros and cons of each, and look at whether contenders should be willing to pay more for either pitcher.

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Yovani Gallardo was supposed to slot into the Texas Rangers rotation as the number-three starter behind ace Yu Darvish and Derek Holland. Those plans quickly disintegrated after Darvish underwent Tommy John surgery and Holland pitched just one inning before suffering shoulder problems that will keep him out until at least August. Gallardo, once an ace for the Milwaukee Brewers, was traded in the offseason for a package of prospects that contained more quantity than quality. Gallardo has provided a solid return for the Rangers, just finishing a 33.1-inning scoreless streak and serving as the team’s best pitcher as the Rangers hover around .500 with perhaps an outside shot at a playoff spot. A more realistic look at the team suggests Gallardo’s value is as high as it will be and the Rangers should begin shopping him as the trade deadline approaches.

With Darvish and Holland, the Rangers might have had a playoff-caliber team, one deserving to be buyers instead of sellers. Given the replacement-level pitching at the end of the rotation an extra three wins up to this point and another three wins going forward would put Texas in the mid-80s in terms of wins and a major trade for a player like Cole Hamels might make them the favorite to catch Houston in the American League West. The Rangers have not had their best pitchers healthy and missed time for Adrian Beltre has left them below .500 and quickly falling out of the playoff race. With Gallardo under contract only through the rest of the season, he is an ideal candidate to be moved, and while Gallardo might like it in Texas, he also might welcome a trade that would put him in a pennant race and prevent a qualifying offer at the end of the season making him more valuable on the free-agent market.

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There is no good known method for rating all the front offices. Every team has a front office, consisting of a general manager and a bunch of other guys, and fans talk about those front offices, but critical evaluation is hard. One could, I suppose, just think about wins and losses, but that seems an over-simplification. So this is the second part of a project, a project that depended upon your participation. Just the other day, I posted polls for every team in baseball, and I asked for front-office ratings. It’s crowdsourced evaluation, and while there’s a difference between crowd evaluation and the actual truth, I’m no less interested in perception of the front offices. Presented below is how people think. Who isn’t interested in how people think?

How good is a front office? It’s a very simple question, that’s also an extremely complicated question. I tried to untangle the front office from ownership. I tried to untangle the front office from the player-development people. The question is, basically: if a front office were given average resources, how many championships would it win over a million season repetitions? More than average, fewer than average, or exactly average? That’s not a possible thing to know, but that doesn’t mean the community didn’t have opinions. Some of them were very strong.

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Carter Capps allowed a three-run single on Tuesday. That’s both pretty bad and pretty weird. Three-run singles might be a post topic of their own, but the most interesting thing didn’t have anything to do with the play result. Before Xander Bogaerts ever swung the bat, Capps threw a fastball, and I’ll excerpt conveniently from an MLB.com entry by Ian Browne:

Bogaerts hung in on a pitch that had a perceived velocity of 105.55 mph, the highest number of any pitch in the Major Leagues this season, according to Statcast™. The pitch looked that fast to Bogaerts, thanks to an extension of 9.5 feet by Capps.

This sounds complicated, but it’s simple to understand. Not a whole lot of time passed between Capps releasing the ball and the ball arriving around home plate. That’s all perceived velocity is — a kind of measure of flight time. According to Statcast, this year, no pitch has had a smaller flight time than the one Bogaerts drilled for a hit. That’s remarkable, on Bogaerts’ part, and that’s remarkable, on Capps’ part. Capps’ part, we’re becoming more familiar with.

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As Craig Calcaterra correctly points out at Hardball Talk, Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost has somewhat joylessly brought ultra-utility types aboard the American League All-Star roster instead of selecting players with bigger reputations.

But can ya blame Yost? You might recall that he got wicked close to winning a World Series just nine months ago. In a Game 7 where every last doggone base was weighted with incomprehensible leverage, playing that game at home nudged forward the Royals’ chances at winning by precious, precious percentage points. With this year’s Royals actually plausible World Series contestants — as opposed to their then-implausible candidacy at this time last year — Yost has unique motivation to play the All-Star Game to win.

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If you’ve been paying attention to baseball during the past month, you probably know that J.D. Martinez has been on a pretty good run. That might be an understatement: he’s hit 15 home runs in the past 31 days, four more than the next-best mark (Albert Pujols). If home runs aren’t your thing, he’s also first in wRC+, wOBA, and ISO over that span. Martinez has been out of his mind recently, and he’s been out of his mind in an even more extreme way than we’re used to seeing from him.

Let’s start with a few names. Below is the complete list of right-handed hitters who have hit a home run to either center field or right field at Comerica Park this season:

• J.D. Martinez
• Miguel Cabrera
• Nick Castellanos
• Ryan Braun
• Avisail Garcia
• Tyler Flowers

It’s not an extensive list, because hitting home runs to those areas of Comerica Park is difficult if you’re right handed: the right-field fence is 11 feet tall once you get toward right center, and center field is, quite simply, where fly balls go to die. The names on this list have to possess a lot of raw power, obviously. Exhibit A, Martinez’ first hit of the season:

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As hard as it might be to believe right now, Oakland front office asked center fielder Billy Burns to consider ending the switch-hitter experiment and bat solely from the right side when they acquired him. “It was presented as an idea, and it wasn’t something they wanted to do during the season,” Burns admitted, but they did mention it. And it makes a little sense, since Burns came to switch-hitting in professional ball, and he slugged about 20% worse from the left side in the minors.

What’s the strangest about this revelation is that Burns has been so good from the left side in the major leagues so far. And though batting average on balls in play is complicated, and small-sample results aren’t any better when you’ve cut them in half, there might actually be some evidence that Burns is a better hitter from the left side. His approach from that side fits his tools better.

Maybe the Athletics were right. Maybe Burns should stop switch-hitting. Maybe he should only hit from the *left* side.

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Over the past several years — going back to 2010 — there have been seven bunt doubles in Major League Baseball. Had I written this story a day ago, I would’ve said there have been six. On Tuesday in Kansas City, Alcides Escobar put down a bunt for a double in the eighth inning of a game against Tampa Bay. Escobar didn’t end up scoring — and the game story was entirely about the ninth-inning hero — but this isn’t a page about game recaps. The Royals won, but I’m more interested in the hit.

What does a bunt double look like? I’ve written about these a couple times before, but I do that because they’re so curious. Just off the top of your head, a bunt double doesn’t seem like it ought to be possible. Infielders always have bunts surrounded. How does one end up with a bunt double instead of a bunt single and an error? Using what video is available, let’s break down what’s probably an incomplete list of the ways. I’m sure there are other ways, but this is what recently has happened.

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A little over a month ago, I asked which player would get a major-league hit first: Jon Lester, or Kyle Schwarber. Lester had just set an all-time record for the longest hitless streak to begin a career. But, it’s not like the Cubs were about to remove Lester from their rotation. Schwarber, meanwhile, was a hell of a hitting prospect, but he was in the minors, so that was a hurdle. By nearly a 3-to-1 margin, the audience voted for Lester. By nearly a 3-to-1 margin, the audience was wrong. Schwarber was briefly promoted, and he registered a hit. Then he registered another seven. Lester continued making outs.

Until Monday! Monday, Lester recorded his first-ever knock, off John Lackey in the second inning of a game in which Lester, for a time, had more hits than his opponent. For Lester, it was career at-bat number 72, and career plate appearance number 79. The hitless-streak record still belongs to Lester, and there’s nothing about that to be done, but now he’s officially no longer an o’fer. And while Lester himself would’ve preferred a win to a single, just because he won’t dwell on it doesn’t mean we can’t. Here’s to dwelling.

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The Tampa Bay Rays are taking a relatively novel approach to divvying up innings between starters and relievers. Injuries have robbed the team of Alex Cobb for the season, Matt Moore and Drew Smyly for much of the year, and Jake Odorizzi for a time as well. Despite those problems, the team climbed to a 41-32 record a few weeks ago thanks to a splendid season from Chris Archer, good seasons from Odorizzi, Nate Karns — and even Erasmo Ramirez has pitched in to help the team form a solid rotation. The team has slid back to the pack in the difficult-to-decipher American League East, but still finds itself just two games back of the Yankees after losing nine of their past 12 games. Rays’ starters have been effective, but have not pitched deep into games, leaving the outcome of many games to a set of inexperienced relievers who have been shuffled between the big-league club and the minors all season long.

The Rays’ strategy appeared to be related to to two potential issues. First, the rotation was so depleted at the beginning of the year, they twice pitched bullpen games, letting Steve Geltz pitch a couple innings until his spot in the batting order. The other problem is that the deeper pitchers tend to pitch into games, the worse they tend to do. Getting a pitcher out of the game after two times through the lineup can limit damage to the starters and it can work so long as the team has a deep and effective bullpen. The Rays’ starters have averaged just 89 pitches per start, the fewest in MLB. Ted Berg noted a few weeks ago that the Rays were on pace for the second-lowest total of plate appearances (to the 2012 Colorado Rockies, who experimented with a four-man rotation) three times through the lineup in the last decade.

The graph below shows innings pitched by every bullpen this season.

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