Currently in possession of a 68-56 record and standing just a half-game out of first place in the NL West, the Colorado Rockies are in the midst of an objectively good season. Actually, the 2017 and -18 versions of the club have the best combined two-year winning percentage for any pair of Rockies teams in history, so one could make the argument that this is Colorado’s finest run ever. They’ve had two MVP candidates in the starting lineup both seasons and the starting pitching, long a team bugaboo, ranks ninth in the majors by WAR over that time period. Things in Colorado aren’t bad, per se.

But they could be better, it seems, without much effort. One real problem for the Rockies has been the team’s lack of offensive depth. It’s an issue they’ve shown little interest in addressing. And it’s costing them real wins.

With Nolan Arenado and Charlie Blackmon in 2017 and Arenado and Trevor Story in 2018, Colorado’s top-end offensive talent has been as dangerous as that of any team in baseball. Once you look past the top of the roster, though, things become a bit more frightening. Despite the team’s respectable raw numbers, the club’s offensive line reads like a gothic horror story after you factor in our old friend, Coors Field.

Even with the impressive performances by the brand names — most notably Nolan Arenado, who has been a legitimate MVP contender both seasons — the Rockies rank near the bottom of baseball in offense. At five of the eight main offensive positions — I’m not considering pitcher hitting or the DH for interleague road games — the Rockies have ranked 25th or worse in baseball by wRC+.

Now, DJ LeMahieu is a very ordinary offensive second baseman, outside of his .348/.416/.495 campaign in 2016, but he more than makes up for any bat-related shortfall with his defense. You can’t say that for the other positions ranking near the bottom of baseball.

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Last week, I wrote about fiduciary relationships in the context of Scott Boras and Jayson Werth, citing the seminal case of Detroit Lions v. Argovitz as a model to better understand an agent’s responsibilities to his client. (If you didn’t read that piece, you should, because it’s the prerequisite for everything which follows.)

Anyway, a number of commenters asked me to look at a slightly different configuration of the sports-agent fiduciary problem: what happens when an agent potentially has a conflict of interest which results from representing more than one player?

Before we answer, a few caveats. First, we are not analyzing actual situations here. This is not a guide on how to avoid disciplinary action by your state’s bar or your league’s player union. Second, this is a bird’s-eye view from about 50,000 feet, which is to say that we are oversimplifying things greatly. There is a lot more to it than what you see here, but submitting 20,000 words to my editor on conflicts of interest in fiduciary relationships (which is surprisingly possible) would likely draw his ire. Third, this is a broad overview based on American law. This is actually an international issue, which means that Canada and Australia, for example, have different rules. Finally, please don’t start a sports agency based on what you see here.

Now, moving on. There’s a couple of different ways to analyze the question posed above. On the surface, it may seem that having a multiple clients is not, in and of itself, a conflict of interest. And while that’s frequently the case, remember that a fiduciary owes a duty of loyalty to the beneficiary — to the exclusion of everyone else. As attorney Robert Kutcher explains,

Whenever one party places trust and confidence in a second person with that second person’s knowledge, it is possible that a fiduciary relationship is created. Such a relationship imposes on the fiduciary the duty to act in the best interest of the person who has placed his or her trust and confidence in the fiduciary. As a result, the fiduciary may not simply deal with that party at arm’s length, guided only by the morals of the marketplace.

It’s also possible to go to the other extreme. Since sports agents are fiduciaries, you could also argue that taking on more than one client is an inherent conflict of interest, because every minute dedicated to one player’s case is a minute not dedicated to another’s, to whom a fiduciary duty is owed. But that can’t be right either, because Scott Boras, for instance, has lots of clients. Most agents have multiple clients.

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Clay Buchholz has been rejuvenated in Arizona. Signed off the scrap heap in early May — the Royals had released him — the 34-year-old righty is 6-2 with a 2.47 ERA in 12 starts since joining the Diamondbacks. He twirled a complete-game gem on Thursday, holding the Padres to a lone run.

Health had been holding him back. Buchholz has battled numerous injury bugs over his career, particularly in recent seasons. Cast aside by the Red Sox after a tumultuous 2016 — a 4.78 ERA and a six-week banishment to the bullpen — he made just two appearances for the Phillies last year before landing on the disabled list and staying there for the duration. Frustration was clearly at the fore.

Truth be told, he’d rarely been his old self since a sparkling 2013 that saw him go 12-1 with a 1.74 ERA — and even that season was interrupted by injury. Given his travails, one couldn’t have blamed him had he thrown up his hands and walked away from the game.

That wasn’t in his DNA.

“No, this is what I do,” Buchholz told me earlier this summer. “I wasn’t ready to give it up. And while this offseason I told myself I wasn’t going to go through the whole minor league deal again, I swallowed my pride and did that for a little bit. It was for the best, because it helped me get to where I’m at now. It feels good to be able to go out there and throw without anything going on, mentally or physically.”

Buchholz made five starts in the minors before being called up, and he did so with a glass-is-half-full attitude. Read the rest of this entry »

As baseball analysis has grown, the advanced metrics have begun to find their way into television broadcasts more regularly. Announcers will occasionally mention win probability in terms of game context. Pitcher FIP will be brought up alongside ERA. The slew of batter statistics — wOBA, wRC+, ISO, et al — will be used to shed further light on hitters. Even fielding metrics like UZR and DRS have slowly started creeping their way into viewers’ homes, at least from national television broadcasts.

The one quantifiable area of the game that seems to get a little less sabermetric coverage from broadcasters is baserunning. Stolen bases are of course referenced, and Statcast sprint speeds are a relatable number that does occasionally get mentioned. However, the concept of baserunning runs (BsR) has not made its way to television in the way that its fielding counterparts have.

While the introduction of Statcast sprint speeds to the public is a step forward in understanding how good a baserunner is, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Rather, it tells something more akin to the potential baserunning value that a player can bring. Activating that potential involves no small amount of baserunning instincts for basically anyone who lacks Billy Hamilton’s speed. Looking at one player in particular from 2018 clearly shows us why in explaining runner ability, broadcasts need to go beyond sprint speed.

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Once upon a time, half a decade ago, Jurickson Profar was the consensus No. 1 prospect in baseball. The 20-year-old switch-hitting shortstop had more than held his own as a teenager at Double-A Frisco in 2012 and had received a major-league cup of coffee in September. The following spring, he topped the prospect lists of Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, ESPN, MLB Pipeline, FanGraphs, and (probably) Cat Fancy. While he spent most of the 2013 season in the majors, a significant shoulder injury and subpar performance in sporadic playing time within the Rangers’ deep infield have prevented him from getting a foothold as an everyday player until this season. Amid what’s mostly been a lost year for the Rangers, the now-25-year-old Profar’s performance has been a bright spot.

Thursday night was among the brightest for Profar. In an 8-6 win over the Angels in Arlington, he not only went 2-for-3 with a solo homer (his 14th of the season), he started a triple play of a variety that hadn’t been seen in over a century. With the bases loaded and nobody out, he made a diving short-hop stop on a hot smash by David Fletcher, stepped on third to force out Eric Young Jr. (who was on second base), tagged Taylor Ward (who had wandered off third), and threw to Rougned Odor at second base to force Kole Calhoun:

Not only was it the Rangers’ first triple play since May 20, 2009, according to Stats Inc., it was the first triple play in which the batter wasn’t retired since June 3, 1912, when the Dodgers pulled one off against the Reds. Alas, there is no video available for that one, but the SABR Triple Plays Database describes that one as a 6-2-5-2-4 play, with catcher Otto Miller recording the first two outs, presumably via a forceout at home and then a second runner getting aggressive, and then second baseman John Hummel making the third out.

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Chris Davis is having a no good, terrible, very bad season. He’s hitting .163/.245/.310, good for just a 49 wRC+, and overall has contributed 25 weighted runs below average. His once-solid defense at first base seems to have deteriorated, as well: his -3.6 UZR/150 this year at that position represents the lowest figure he’s recorded since playing there in limited fashion for the Orioles back in 2012. Overall, he’s posted -2.2 WAR, and if that sounds like it’s close to historically bad, that’s because it is. And while Davis is no longer in danger of authoring the worst season ever, there’s no disputing that, as a player, his 2018 campaign leaves much to be desired.

Davis’s futility led a reader to pose an interesting question in Dan Szymborski’s chat this week: would the Orioles be better off using Rafael Palmeiro at first base in 2018 than Davis? Because this seemed like a question worth answering, I enlisted Dan’s help (in exchange for crafting some documents so he could buy the Orioles) in doing just that.

Rafael Palmeiro, in case you were wondering, is now approaching his 54th birthday. Back in his heyday, he was one of the more underrated superstars of the game. Over more than 2,800 games spread across 20 major-league seasons — mostly at first base and DH — he hit .288/.371/.515 (130 wRC+) and accrued 70 fWAR, including 10 (!!) seasons above 4 WAR. His counting stats, too, are impressive: 3,020 hits, 569 home runs, and even 97 stolen bases (including 22 in 1993). Perhaps most incredible of all, Palmeiro struck out 1,348 times in his career and walked 1,353 times , posting identical 11.2% rates.

Palmeiro was, in many ways, a complete hitter. He would probably be a deserving member of the Hall of Fame, too, had he not told Congress under oath that he’d never used performance enhancing drugs, then failed a steroid test just six weeks later. Congress even considered perjury charges against Palmeiro before concluding there was insufficient evidence to charge him in a report which, notably, called Palmeiro’s testimony “compelling” and included that he had passed a polygraph test.

But we’re not talking about prime Palmeiro. We’re talking about 2018 Palmeiro. While at first that might sound bizarre, Palmeiro is currently playing professional baseball. He and his son are teammates on the Cleburne Railroaders, a team in the independent American Association. And wouldn’t you know it, Palmeiro is raking. Though a full 26 years older than the league’s average player, Palmeiro is hitting .301/.424/.495. (His son Patrick is hitting .239 with a .654 OPS.) He has 20 walks to 25 strikeouts, showing he still has some plate discipline skills, and he’s been getting better as the season wears on, raising his OPS from .801 to .919 just since June 27.

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In some circles, Kyle Schwarber has reached mythical proportions. Nor is the rise of his legend entirely unreasonable. Consider some of his exploits to date. He reached the majors just a year after being drafted and proceeded to record 16 homers in less than half a season. He hit a monster home run that helped clinched a playoff series against the rival Cardinals in 2015. Then, after missing the entire 2016 season with knee surgery, he returned for the World Series and reached base in half of his plate appearances, the Cubs winning three of the four games he started. He’s still just 25.

In the nearly two years since that epic series, however, Schwarber has failed to live up to the hype. That said, he’s basically also fulfilled the expectations evaluators had for him as a prospect. Back before the 2015 season, this is what Kiley McDaniel had to say about Schwarber’s future.

When I first saw Schwarber last summer on a loaded college Team USA, I thought the middle linebacker-looking dude wasn’t a good bet to stick at catcher, but he was surprisingly nimble for his size with enough ability to at least consider it. I wrote that he was good enough back there to allow him to play there in the minors and develop him as a potential backup that plays once or twice a week but is a primary at left field or first base. The Cubs took him #4 overall out of Indiana and agree with my defensive suggestion; they’ll develop him as a catcher this year, but most assume his bat will be ready before his glove, meaning he’ll be a part-time catcher at best. There’s legit 30 homer power and surprising feel to hit with a realistic chance for a big league look in late 2016.

At the time, McDaniel gave Schwarber a 60 future-value grade, or roughly the equivalent of a three-win player. Nearly 1,200 plate appearances into Schwarber’s career, he’s put up a 112 wRC+ and 5.8 WAR. He has been, in other words, basically a three-win player thus far in his career. Yes, lot of his value came in that rookie season and, yes, last season might be regarded as a disappointment; however, much of his struggles last year were due to bad luck, and he’s played pretty well this season.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the twenty-first installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Patrick Corbin, Zach Eflin, and Sonny Gray — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Patrick Corbin (D-backs) on His Slider

“My slider. When I was really young, I asked my father how to throw a breaking ball, and he showed me this grip. It’s something I’ve stuck with throughout the minor leagues and the big leagues. It’s been my best pitch, and it’s kind of neat that my father showed me the grip.

“I can’t remember exactly when it was, but probably around 10 years old, maybe the first couple of times I played catch with my father. He always used to say he loved throwing it at the left-handed batter’s hip and having him freeze, only to have the ball break over the plate. That’s something I’ve always remembered and taken with me.

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Matt Kemp is in a funk. I’m not talking about the kind of funk endorsed by Sly Stone or Parliament. Kemp’s funk is more like the time a friend of mine left a chicken salad sandwich in my car over a hot weekend and it fermented into a noxious cloud of nauseating death-barfiness. Or funk metal.

I’m nearly certain the Dodgers didn’t originally expect to ever have Kemp on the roster in 2018. LA acquired him from Atlanta in exchange for Charlie Culberson, Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, Brandon McCarthy, and cash — and if the the deal were to have occurred in 2012, with those names, it would have been a blockbuster. In the winter of 2017, however, Kemp wasn’t so much a player as a tax loophole, the maguffin in a trade that was primarily about teams aligning their year-to-year payrolls in such a way as to avoid luxury tax.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the luxury tax: Kemp became interesting. For once, one of those articles about a player looking amazing in spring training actually bore real fruit. Kemp showed up to spring training in excellent shape, having lost a non-trivial 40 pounds and gained a renewed interest in playing defense.

The homecoming to Los Angeles, after a lot of hurt feelings years ago, turned out to be a positive one. When Kemp slugged .561 in spring training while also exhibiting improved defense and a real effort to be a mentor to the younger players, he gave the Dodgers enough justification to keep him on the team as a role player.

Los Angeles struggled early. Kemp, however, did not. With one of the club’s top batting marks and the promise of better defense — or at least decidedly less-atrocious defense — fulfilled, Kemp received more at-bats. Unlike in previous seasons with Atlanta and San Diego, Kemp’s playing time in this case was earned on the merits of his play and not his reputation or salary. He started in the All-Star Game.

Since the All-Star Game, though, things have not gone well for Kemp. Standing at .310/.352/.522 when baseball took its midsummer respite, Kemp’s OPS has bled about 100 points in just a month, and he’s stalled at 1.1 WAR for the 2018 season. Neither ZiPS or Steamer are optimistic about a turnaround, projecting him to finish at 1.3 and 1.2 WAR, respetively, the primary difference between the two being playing time.

Before Wednesday’s 2-for-4 performance, Kemp last had a multi-hit game on July 23rd and now has hits in four of his last 19 games. Overall, he’s 5-for-58 from that date with only a lone double. The result? A .086/.191/.103 line.

So, what happened to Kemp’s 2018?

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If you’re like me, you’ve been assuming the Dodgers would end up in first in the NL West for a while. Indeed, our playoff odds are still big fans, because it’s hard to overlook the track records of the various players around the Dodgers’ roster. If I had to make a prediction right now, I’d still settle on the Dodgers to be there at the end. Maybe that makes me smart. Maybe that makes me stubborn. Could be a little of both. I don’t like to be put on the spot.

But for however much talent the Dodgers possess, on August 16 we’re looking at the first-place Diamondbacks. The club’s been playing .500 baseball for a month and a half, yet still, they’re looming above the Dodgers and Rockies. When it comes to explaining why the Diamondbacks are where they are, credit has to go to good hitters like Paul Goldschmidt, David Peralta, and apparently Daniel Descalso. Credit also has to go to good pitchers like Patrick Corbin and Zack Greinke. And then there’s the helpful matter of so-called “cluster luck” — the Dodgers have a better run differential than the Diamondbacks do. No team reaches first place because of one reason alone.

Here, however, I’d like to shine some light on the Diamondbacks’ greatest strength. To this point I’d say it’s gone underappreciated, but I’ll show you the evidence in seven plots. The Diamondbacks have had an incredible defense.

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