Over the All-Star break, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred addressed the Oakland A’s, their quest for a new ballpark, and their remarkably low payroll. With regard to the last of those items, Manfred exhibited little concern, suggesting there was almost no correlation between a club’s capacity to spend money and its ability to win games. John Shea reproduced and retransmitted the following comments, care of Manfred, at the San Francisco Chronicle.

“I categorically reject the notion that payroll should be the measure of whether somebody is trying to win in our game today. I reject that not because I prefer low payrolls to high payrolls. I reject that because I know that the correlation between payroll and winning in baseball is extraordinarily weak.

“You do not guarantee yourself wins by having a high payroll, and as the Oakland A’s have showed, you can win with a low payroll. So I really reject the premise of that question. Those are the economic facts.

“Falling into this notion that payroll is a measure of whether an owner is trying to win is literally sophistry.”

I’ve got good news and bad news for the Commissioner. The good news is that, in six out of the last seven individual seasons, the correlation between wins and payroll hasn’t been very strong, as the graph below suggests.

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The Nationals started to unload yesterday, making moves that, depending on your perspective, were either a few weeks too late, or a week and a half too early. It had been easy for a while to say the Nationals just needed time to come around, and our projections never really lost faith, but at some point a baseball team has to make up ground, and they were unable to get into a groove. There’s plenty to be written about what’s happened to the Nationals, but that might be better left for another day, or for another time when we can have a greater understanding.

The moves the Nationals made on Tuesday mean hardly anything for their future. It was more about just giving up on the present. And as far as the individual deals are concerned, you can see how Matt Adams should have a role on the Cardinals. Likewise, you can see how Daniel Murphy should have a role on the Cubs. And yet it was far easier to see how Daniel Murphy could’ve had a role on the Rockies. The Rockies being one of the teams with a higher waiver priority than the Cubs. Murphy wouldn’t have gotten to the Cubs in the first place had another team from the National League put in a claim, and while Murphy could’ve helped anyone, it sure seems like he could’ve made the biggest difference for Colorado. I don’t really know what they were thinking in allowing him to go by.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Bubba Thompson, CF, Texas Rangers
Level: Low-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 5   FV: 45
Line: 4-for-6, HR

Notes
Were Bubba Thompson wrapping up his season with poor numbers, I’d be excusing it based on context. A multi-sport high-school athlete who had focused solely on baseball for just one year, Thompson also had his reps limited, after he signed last summer, due to nagging lower-body issues. I expected him to hang back in extended spring training and then head to Spokane in June. Instead, after a month in extended, Thompson was pushed by Texas to a full-season affiliate as a 19-year-old. He’s hitting .295/.350/.460 with 28 extra-base hits in 323 PAz and 28 steals in 35 attempts. He’s projects as a center fielder with power.

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Trevor Bauer has been probably Cleveland’s best starting pitcher this year. In his long-awaited breakout, Bauer has racked up 5.9 WAR in just 166 innings on the back of a 51 ERA- and 57 FIP-. His peripherals fully support his performance: a 31.5% strikeout rate and 23.2-point K-BB% are nothing short of elite. His fastball, curveball, cutter, slider, and changeup, meanwhile, have all been well above-average offerings by pitch values. In other words, Bauer’s been Cleveland’s ace, and that’s no small feat on a team with Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco.

So it was a pretty significant blow last week when Bauer suffered a stress fracture in his right leg, the result of being hit with a line drive off the bat of White Sox slugger Jose Abreu.

Bauer is without a firm timetable to return. He also has a history of proposing novel and ill-advised medical procedures like sealing a cut with a soldering iron. The combination of those facts led Michael Baumann, writer for the Ringer, to tweet this.

This is a joke. Colloidal silver is the quintessential snake oil, with no efficacy for treating diseases and potentially serious side effects ranging from skin discoloration (as in, you turn blue) to organ failure. Still, it continues to be marketed as a treatment or cure for the common cold, despite that advertising likely being illegal. In short, colloidal silver is quackery, and as Baumann related later, he assumed we’d know that and get the joke.

I assumed that my joke about Bauer using blood transfusions and colloidal silver to cure his injured fibula was so ridiculous it would be impossible to mistake it for actual serious reporting.

Never underestimate the capacity of humanity to prove your assumptions wrong.

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Zac Lowther has been deceptively good. In 20 starts this season between Low-A Delmarva and High-A Frederick, the 22-year-old southpaw boasts a 2.11 ERA and has punched out 134 while allowing just 76 hits in 106.2 innings. He came into the campaign No. 10 on our Orioles top-prospect list — no other publication had him ranked higher — and his propensity to miss barrels is due in large part to his delivery. Eric Longenhagen described the 6-foot-2, 235-pound hurler as “a low-slot lefty with vexing funk.”

Lowther has heard similar things from opposing hitters.

“I don’t have overwhelming velocity, but guys tell me the ball kind of jumps out of my hand,” related Lowther, whom the Orioles drafted 74th overall last summer out of Xavier University. They’ll say, ‘I don’t know what you do,’ and I’ll be like, ‘I just throw the ball as well as I can.’ It’s not something I actively think about. It’s more of them telling me I’m deceptive, as opposed to me figuring it out.”

Which doesn’t mean that he hasn’t figured out. Pitchers almost always understand what makes them effective, so Lowther knows as well as anyone why he induces a lot of uncomfortable swings.

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Unable to escape the gravitational pull of .500, the Nationals finally waved the white flag on Tuesday. They let Matt Adams return to the Cardinals via a waiver claim. They traded Daniel Murphy to the Cubs for “an exciting Class-A prospect,” according to general manager Mike Rizzo. They put Bryce Harper through waivers as well — all three of these players actually hit the wire on Friday — but while he was reportedly claimed by the Dodgers, his waiver period expired without a deal transpiring, meaning that he’s staying put. Alas, the novelty of seeing the 25-year-old slugger in a new uniform, and the buzz such a transaction would create, will have to wait.

Despite his 30 home runs (tied for second in the NL) and 91 walks (first), Harper’s age-25 season has been something of a disappointment. He’s hitting .246/.380/.511 for a 133 wRC+, the last figure significantly below both last year’s 156 and his career-best 197, set in his NL MVP-winning 2015 season. His fall-off, however, isn’t the reason the Nationals’ 2018 is down the tubes. From injuries to several key players (Murphy, Sean Doolittle, Adam Eaton, Anthony Rendon, Stephen Strasburg, Ryan Zimmerman) to replacement-level-ish production from their catchers (-0.1 WAR) and bullpen (0.8 WAR), to questionable management by rookie skipper Dave Martinez, there are no shortage of reasons why the Nationals reached this stage and no shortage of fingers to point. It’s true that had Harper been more productive before July 31, perhaps by a couple of wins, Rizzo could have taken a more aggressive approach at the deadline, shoring up a weakness or two on a 54-51 team that was 3.5 games out of both a Wild Card spot and the NL East lead instead of shrugging his shoulders at a 52-53 squad. We’ll never know.

The Nationals are doomed, but Harper has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball in recent weeks, in stark contrast to the first few months of the season. Here’s a breakdown, using the All-Star break as the divider:

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The Orioles became the first team in Major League Baseball to be eliminated from all theoretical playoff contention in 2018, the first team to cross to the “other side,” where even Harry and Lloyd can’t say there’s a chance. As such, the Baltimore Orioles become our first team in our series of post-mortems for the 2018 season, in which we’ll talk about where each team was, is, and where they’re headed.

The Setup

After a 75-87 season in 2017, the Baltimore Orioles were in no mood for a rebuild. The season marked the team’s first losing campaign since 2011, a stretch that marked the most successful sustained non-losing run by the Baltimore Orioles since the early 1980s, a happier time featuring Eddie Murray, Jim Palmer, Ken Singleton, Cal Ripken a little later on, and until his first retirement, legendary manager/tomato grower/curse-word innovator/umpire fighter Earl Weaver.

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With the Nationals under .500 and their playoff hopes growing slimmer, the club decided to put a few pending free agents on waivers. One of the more prominent names is that of Daniel Murphy, who is headed to the Cubs. The deal was first reported as close by Craig Mish and then confirmed shortly thereafter by multiple sources.  Jon Heyman came through with the return, so here’s the deal:

Cubs receive:

• Daniel Murphy

Nationals receive:

• Andruw Monasterio
• Cash or PTBNL

The trade is an interesting one for several reasons. First, because the Cubs were the team to claim him and trade for him, that means that every other team in the National League passed on Murphy. The 33-year-old lefty was in the final year of his three-year, $36 million contract that pays him $17.5 million this season with $5 million deferred to the following two years. That means Murphy is owed about $4 million for the rest of the season. The money, plus a lack of need at Murphy’s position of second base, likely caused other contenders to pass and land in the lap of the team with the best record in the National League.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Johan Quezada, RHP, Minnesota Twins
Level: Low-A   Age: Turns 24 on Saturday   Org Rank: 46   FV: 35+
Line: 3.1 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 6 K

Notes
This was Johan Quezada’s first career appearance in full-season ball. An imposing mound presence at a towering 6-foot-6, he has recovered from the shoulder surgery that cost him all of 2017, and his velocity has returned. He sits 94-97 with extreme downhill plane created by his height, and he’ll show you an average slider every once in a while. Quezada’s breaking-ball quality and command need to develop as they’re understandably behind due to his limited pro workload. He’s a older-than-usual arm-strength/size lottery ticket. On the surface, he seems like a candidate for extra reps in the Arizona Fall League.

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On Sunday, Justin Verlander played the stopper, withstanding a trio of homers by the A’s to grind out 5.1 unspectacular but much needed innings to help the slumping Astros regain sole possession of first place atop the AL West. It certainly wasn’t an outing fit for hanging in a museum, but the fact that it was Verlander’s 200th career victory did significantly increase the likelihood that his own likeness will hang in Cooperstown one day. While only three out of the 12 starting pitchers the BBWAA has elected since 1992 finished with fewer than 300 wins (2011 honoree Bert Blyleven plus 2015 honorees Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz), only one starter with fewer than 200 wins has been elected since 1956, namely Sandy Koufax (1972).

At the moment, Verlander, Bartolo Colon (247 wins), and CC Sabathia (244) are the only active pitchers with at least 200 wins. Zack Greinke (184) is about a year away from the mark, while Jon Lester (172), Félix Hernández (168), Max Scherzer (157), Cole Hamels (155), and Clayton Kershaw (150) will need several years. As for 300 wins, who knows when we’ll see another. The careers of both the 45-year-old Colon and the 38-year-old Sabathia are on their last legs, almost literally. For as iconic as Colon is, he’s also a replacement-level pitcher at this point. Sabathia, though still effective, has mulled retirement, and his arthritic right knee, which requires regular injections for maintenance, recently drove him to the disabled list yet again.

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