It could have worked out so perfectly. The Yankees’ acquisition of Vernon Wells appeared to be unwise at the time, but they’d be looking to him as a backup, who needed only to fake it as a starter while Curtis Granderson was hurt. Pretty bad gamble, sure, but we’re given only one reality, and when Granderson debuted on May 14, Wells had an .875 OPS. It was up in four-digit territory through the first three weeks, and all the talk was about how Wells had found a new home, and a new life, more like his old one. Wells had done more than enough, and with Granderson healthy, he could be reduced to a role player.

Granderson got hurt again, and Wells hasn’t stopped playing. Wells has stopped hitting, even though he hasn’t stopped getting opportunities. Wells, now, owns the worst rate numbers of his career, a small step down even from what he did with the Angels. Wells didn’t just regress from his hot streak — his numbers over-corrected, such that he’s been more of a burden than a boon.

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“Nothing has ever come easy for me, especially the first time around,” — Oakland third baseman Josh Donaldson

Josh Donaldson played baseball for two high schools. Add to that college, two minor league sytems, and the pros, and he’s had to start over in a new place often over the course of his career. And, for the most part, he’s had a hard time at first. But with hard work and a few changes to his approach, he’s come back and been dominant. The process of acclimating, to Donaldson, is equal parts understanding himself and understanding the new situation.

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Chris Davis has been playing out of his mind. In a different sort of way, Ike Davis was playing out of his mind, too, before getting demoted. If you already knew those things, you might not need to read the rest of this post. But things do get a little more complex.

We’re to the point, now, where a lot of players have amassed fairly significant sample sizes of regular-season data. Manny Machado, for example, has 323 plate appearances, and that makes for an awful lot of repetitions. What players have done so far should tell us something about what they’re going to do going forward. After all, the most recent past is the most important. But we also can’t yet discard the less recent past. This is the whole point behind rest-of-season projections, and we’ve got two of them right here in ZiPS and Steamer.

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Now that the draft is behind us and we’re only six weeks away from the trade deadline, we’re officially in rumor season. This time of year, we’ll be treated to an almost daily look at which teams might be buying or selling and what players could be changing uniforms before the end of July. The Phillies are probably the most interesting potential seller, because their roster is littered with big name players who would draw headlines if traded. Ruben Amaro has been clear that he does not intend to “blow up” the roster, but that doesn’t rule out making any trades at all, as he even noted that he didn’t think the Red Sox “blew up” their roster last year when they traded three of their most expensive players in one deal.

So, assuming the Phillies fall far enough back in the race to convince Amaro to be a seller, Jonathan Papelbon is probably going to be one of the most talked about trade targets of the summer. Contenders are always looking for bullpen help, and certain contenders — yes, Detroit, we’re talking about you — have glaring holes at the back end of their bullpen that could use a significant upgrade. Papelbon is still a terrific reliever, and his postseason track record will appeal to teams who put a lot of stock in experience in the ninth inning role.

However, I have a suggestion for any team that is considering giving up talent and taking on a good sized chunk of the roughly $34 million left on Papelbon’s deal; trade for Jesse Crain instead.

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Last year I reintroduced VOL, a custom metric that attempts to measure the relative volatility of a hitter’s day to day performance. It is far from a perfect metric, but at the moment it’s what we have.

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It is a fact undeniable that people don’t often talk about the San Diego Padres. The reasons for this, presumably, are numerous. The Padres haven’t been good for a while. They have a relatively small fan base, and a limited payroll, and they’re overshadowed by bigger deals up north. They play out West, for whatever that might matter. They don’t have any stop-what-you’re-doing superstars, and the good players are frequently talked about in trade rumors. It’s just hard to talk about 30 different teams evenly, and if you’re in the business of ratings or traffic, the Padres aren’t a big draw. But the Padres as a team perform independent of the buzz. And on Sunday, in San Diego, they knocked off the Diamondbacks 4-1.

That capped off a series sweep, that followed another series sweep. This might have escaped your attention, but the Padres are now a game over .500, at 35-34. They’re right in the thick of things in the National League West, and if you forgive the arbitrary cutoff, since April 24 the Padres are tied for the second-best record in baseball. They started 5-15, slipping off whatever radars they might’ve been on in the first place. They’ve made it all the way back, quietly, and they’ve done so because of their position players. Almost entirely.

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Hi! This is a post. You either want to read it or you don’t. This is last week’s edition of this post. You either wanted to read it or you didn’t. I really don’t care what you decided because I get paid just the same, and I’m just in it for the big FanGraphs take-home. If you don’t read these posts, you’re not reading this introduction. This introduction is selective for those of you who follow this series, so, thanks for your support. You are wasting your time reading this paragraph.

Here come the five wildest swings, from between June 7 and June 13. These are the swings at pitches that PITCHf/x says were the furthest from the center of the strike zone, which is one way of measuring this. There are other ways, but this is by far the easiest for me to investigate every Friday. In theory I exclude hit-and-run swings, but I have yet to encounter one. In practice I exclude checked swings, and that always makes this post take an extra while, because turns out there are a lot of those at really wild pitches. These posts consequently go up late, meaning you might well be reading this on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. If it’s a weekend, don’t complain about the .gifs. You’re not in a rush. Slow down, take a breath, we don’t take enough breaths. Onward!

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In 150 at-bats back in 2011, Brett Lawrie captured our attention and imagination. “If he could hit nine homers in such a short time, Lawrie could have 30-homer potential over the course of a full season,” is likely a sentence you read before the 2012 season. It’s probably a sentence I wrote, as a matter of fact. In the season and a half since though, Lawrie has hit just 16 homers, and has battled a myriad of injuries. He’s just 23-years-old, but perhaps it’s time we stopped waiting for Lawrie to be a star.

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Hey there, Pauls and non-Pauls, and welcome to the first part of the tenth edition of The Worst Of The Best. For the first part of the ninth edition, go here. For every post in the series, go here. This is what you have elected to do for the next five or ten minutes. This is how you’ve chosen to spend your time. How did you arrive here? Did you seek this out on purpose, or did you mindlessly click a link out of habit? How many mindless decisions do you make throughout your day? To what extend does this mindlessness end up controlling your time? It is important to free yourself of mindless behavior, of automation. It’s not like a switch you can flip, but, consciously involve yourself in all things. Actively make your decisions, and in this way you might re-wire previously inefficient networks. Thank you for reading!

There’s going to be a top-five list of the wildest pitches from between June 7 (not yesterday) and June 13 (yesterday). These are the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone, according to PITCHf/x and math, and of each pitch there will be images, including .gifs. It would be great to have .gifs that only load when you click on them or mouse over, but at present we don’t have that capability, so. We’ve talked about it. Some pitches just missing this list: Francisco Liriano to Barry Zito on the 12th, Jeff Locke to Alfonso Soriano on the 9th, and Jason Hammel to Ben Zobrist on the 7th. We’ve still got some Jason Hammel for you, though, to fulfill all of your various Jason Hammel needs. We’ll begin with the fifth-wildest pitch, like we always do literally every time.

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Major League Baseball handed down suspensions as a result of the Dodgers-Diamondbacks brawl on Tuesday night, and Ian Kennedy got the headline penalty, as he’ll be unable to pitch for 10 days after he decides to strategically drop his appeal. And, looking at the Diamondbacks schedule, that will almost certainly happen on Monday, and Kennedy will become the latest starting pitcher to be suspended by MLB without actually being punished in any real way.

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