Heading into the 2018 season, the NL East picture appeared to be pretty clear. The Washington Nationals — while having just one more year of Bryce Harper — entered the campaign as presumptive favorites. The Mets, despite possessing a talented roster, were conducting their affairs in an all-too-familiar way, while the Marlins were conducting their affairs in a way that made their roster much less talented.

In Atlanta and Philadelphia, meanwhile, the future was on the horizon. The Braves boasted a stable of young arms, Freddie Freeman, and the best prospect in the game (mon-Ohtani division). The Phillies supplemented their equally impressive young core with the signing of Jake Arrieta, announcing that they were ready to end the rebuild and begin contending. It only seemed a matter of time before the division would be theirs.

A couple months into the season, the picture is somewhat less clear. Indeed, it seems as though the future has arrived a little early in the NL East. As of this morning, the Braves sit atop the NL East at 35-25, with the Phillies just a couple games behind in third. (The Nationals sit in second.) The two teams have gone about things in different ways: where the Braves — led by Ozzie Albies, the aforementioned Freeman, and a surprising Nick Markakis — boast a top-five offense, the Phillies have benefited from a top-five pitching staff.

Whenever a young team makes this sort of run, it’s inevitably accompanied by discussions concerning the importance of experience. Experience, so it is said, leads to more staying power over the course of a long season or playoff run. Young teams are then expected to fade or fall short, thus earning some “much needed experience” and checking off that box on their development path.

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Monday afternoon, I wrote about Max Muncy. A few months ago, I didn’t think I’d ever be writing about Max Muncy again, but he’s suddenly emerged as a surprising value for the Dodgers, and at a critical time. Muncy is a 27-year-old with a 142 wRC+. In spring training, he was a non-roster invitee. He has what’s becoming a somewhat familiar profile: fringe big-league hitter who’s apparently reached the next level after making some significant swing changes. You could interpret those as changes made to try to save a career.

Most of the time, that’s how it goes. Muncy was a bubble player. J.D. Martinez was a bubble player. Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson, Justin Turner, Yonder Alonso, and so forth — many of them, bubble players. It tends not to be the proven guys who make major changes. They’re just not confronted with the same incentives, and besides, in order to become an established major-league veteran, a player is most likely to be close to his optimum approach. It’s a risk to change someone who’s already been good. Quite simply, there can just be more to lose.

Francisco Cervelli and the Pirates aren’t afraid, I guess. Cervelli has been a perfectly fine hitter, especially for a catcher. Coming into this season, nobody questioned that Cervelli would be the starter. It would’ve been easy for him to remain as he was. Still, he’s turned into a project. And the early results are both very dramatic and greatly encouraging.

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If there’s one thing to understand about the Dodgers’ season so far, it’s that it hasn’t been very good. The team has more losses than wins, and presently sits in third place in its division. If there’s a second thing to understand about their season so far, it’s that it could be so much worse. The Dodgers have the best Pythagorean record in the NL West. They have the best BaseRuns record in the NL West. They have the highest playoff odds in the NL West. And the team has already been put through the grinder.

Before the year, Clayton Kershaw was projected to lead the team in WAR. He ranks 10th, and he’s hurt. Corey Seager was projected to be second on the team in WAR. He ranks 14th, and he’s hurt. Cody Bellinger was projected to be third on the team in WAR. He ranks 16th, and there have been whispers of a demotion. Justin Turner was projected to be fourth on the team in WAR. He ranks 27th, because he was hurt. Rich Hill was projected to be sixth on the team in WAR. He ranks 39th, and he’s hurt.

The Dodgers are very much alive in the race, and they might very well be the favorites. And that’s despite the top of the roster having a strikingly unusual look. If it weren’t for a handful of surprise performances, they might already be too far underwater. The improbable team leader in WAR is Matt Kemp, a guy the Dodgers didn’t even want. The player in second is Ross Stripling, a starter who began in relief. And there’s another player who’s closing in on the lead. He homered twice on Sunday. Not long ago he was a 27-year-old spring training non-roster invitee. Max Muncy is slugging .551.

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Evan White doesn’t fit a traditional mold. As a matter of fact, the 22-year-old University of Kentucky product was, in the opinion of Eric Longenhagen, “perhaps the 2017 draft’s most unique player.” As Longenhagen explained when putting together our Mariners prospect list, White not only bats right and throws left, he’s a first baseman whose athleticism and offensive skill set are more akin to that of a center fielder.

Last June’s 17th overall pick doesn’t project to hit for much power, but the Mariners were certainly enamored of what he accomplished as a collegian. In his three seasons as a Wildcat, White slashed .356/.414/.527 while playing exemplary defense. In the opinion of many scouts, he possesses Gold Glove potential — assuming he remains at his current position.

A native of Columbus, Ohio who grew up rooting for the Cincinnati Reds — Joey Votto remains a favorite — White is currently slashing .284/.356/.407, with three home runs, for the Modesto Nuts in the High-A California League. He discussed his game, including the ways it differs from the norm, in mid-May.

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White on throwing left and batting right: “I have an older cousin, and when I was a little kid, my grandpa cut down a golf club for him. It was a right-handed golf club and I started picking it up and swinging it. Ever since then — from around maybe four or five years old — I’ve swung right-handed. I’ve always thrown left-handed.

“My dad kind of messed around with me being a switch-hitter when I was growing up. He tried to get me to do it, but I never liked it. To be honest, I kind of like the thought of being unique. You don’t see many guys throwing left and hitting right. It’s something that’s always appealed to me.”

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We’ve talked a lot in these pages about stadium deals. We’ve talked about the Marlins and how Miami’s deal with the team deteriorated into a lawsuit. We’ve talked about the Diamondbacks and how their search for a stadium deal resulted in a lawsuit. And in recent years, teams like the Braves and Rangers have decided to construct new stadiums even where the existing buildings were relatively young. Leave it to the Mariners, of all teams, to buck the increasing trend. Per the Associated Press:

The Washington State Major League Baseball Public Facilities District has approved terms of a new 25-year lease with the Seattle Mariners for Safeco Field.

Combined with options for two three-year extensions as part of the agreement approved Wednesday, the new lease could keep the Mariners at the stadium through the 2049 season.

As part of the lease terms, the Mariners agreed to pay 100 percent of maintenance and operations costs at the stadium and “contribute to ongoing capital improvements that will be needed in the decades to come.”

The new lease is five years longer than the original 20-year agreement when the ballpark was constructed and opened in 1999. The current lease was set to expire at the conclusion of the 2018 season.

There are a couple of interesting facets to this deal. Remember when we talked about the Diamondbacks’ lawsuit? That was about stadium maintenance costs, with the team arguing that Maricopa County was responsible for maintaining the facility. But here, the Mariners voluntarily agreed to assume all of the maintenance costs and 80% of required capital expenditures. On one hand, it seems like a great deal for the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District (PFD), which owns the ballpark. On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that Safeco Field cost about $520 million, of which $390 million was paid by taxpayers. Unlike some teams, however, the Mariners are making a legitimate effort to repay taxpayers for their initial investment, as Ryan Divish explains:

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Though he was voted into the starting lineup of the American League All-Star team last year and finished third in MVP voting, as well José Ramírez is still something of an under-the-radar star. Perhaps it’s because he plays in Cleveland rather than a larger, more glamorous market. Maybe it’s because he plays alongside — but also the shadow of — Francisco Lindor, an elite shortstop who’s 14 months younger. It’s conceivable that Ramirez’s early-career struggles and the fact that he shares his name with a Braves pitcher contribute to his lower profile as well.

Regardless, with the strong start to his 2018 season — and particularly a torrid May, during which he recorded a 214 wRC+ and 2.6 WAR, tied with Lindor for the MLB high) — the 25-year-old switch-hitter is now fifth in WAR since the start of 2016, behind only Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Kris Bryant and Jose Altuve (15.6 WAR, 0.7 ahead of the sixth-place Lindor). By any standard, he deserves to be considered among the game’s top-tier players.

What’s more, Ramírez has put himself in position to do something that no third baseman has ever done: post a season of at least 10 wins (hat-tip to reader GERB who pointed this out in my most recent chat). Through Saturday, he had compiled 4.1 WAR in the Indians’ 57 games (he sat out one), an 11.7 WAR pace, though he’s not the only player on such a breakneck clip. Trout entered Sunday on an astonishing 13.5-win pace (4.9 WAR in 59 Angels games), and Betts on a 10.5 WAR pace (4.1 in 63 games — the number the Red Sox will have played when he’s eligible to come off the disabled list on June 8).

Ten-win seasons at any position are, of course, quite rare, and while there’s nothing magical about that plateau beyond our inherent fascination with the decimal system, getting to double-digits is still pretty cool. Via FanGraphs’ methodology, there have been just 51 different 10 WAR seasons since 1901, one for every 249 batting title-qualified player-seasons. Just over half of those (26), occurred before World War II (one for every 139 qualified seasons) when the wider spread of talent made it easier for individual players to dominate. Babe Ruth (nine) and Rogers Hornsby (six) account for more than half of those prewar seasons, with Ty Cobb (three), Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, and Ted Williams (two apiece) the other repeat customers. Eddie Collins, Jimmie Foxx, and Tris Speaker round out the prewar group, and Williams is the only player to have a 10-win season during the war (1942, before he himself missed three seasons in the military).

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CLEVELAND — Jason Benetti is notable in many ways. He’s one of the youngest television play-by-play men in the game at 34. Only Dodgers’ voice Joe Davis (30) is younger. Benetti is one of the few broadcasters to have a law degree (Wake Forest, 2011). He is one of the few (perhaps the only?) play-by-play broadcaster who has MC’d the Saber Seminar in Boston. His credentials suggest he’s open-minded to FanGraphs-style analysis. His age, meanwhile, suggests he might represent the next wave of baseball broadcaster — one, in this case, who is more comfortable with advanced analytics and who sees the game from a new perspective. While Benetti has an appreciation and understanding of new-age numbers, he still considers himself a storyteller first and believes including “humanity” in a broadcast is as important as any metric.

His duties have gradually expanded as he replaces long-time broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, who broadcasts only select games, and who will retire at the end of the season. Benetti, a Chicago native and lifelong Sox fan, will tell you he has his dream job, towards which he worked while spending 10 years broadcasting in the minor leagues from independent ball, to Salem, Va. (2007-08), to the Nationals’ Triple-A Syracuse affiliate (2009-14).

For a long time, Benetti balanced law studies with broadcasting in the spring and summer. He intended to have a law career. But the game kept coming back to him, he told me — including his big break when he was hired by the White Sox in 2016. He will tell you, as he told The Chicago Tribune, cerebral palsy is only a small part of who is.

I found Benetti in the White Sox road clubhouse Tuesday, where one can almost always find him before games talking to players, gathering information. In a way, he’s part reporter and part data analyst. He agreed to speak to me about what he feels his responsibility is as a broadcaster, how he prepares, how he balances calling a season for a team in transition, and how he sees the broadcast industry evolving and adapting to modern challenges:

FanGraphs: A reader might spend five or 10 minutes with a piece at FanGraphs or another media outlet (and that’s if they become engaged with it). But if a viewer watches the entirety of a game, you have their ear for three hours. I’d argue there’s no greater influential platform in a local media. Do you see it that way? Do you feel a sense of responsibility?

Jason Benetti: The level of responsibility comes in both fairness and accuracy. We need to be honest about what we are seeing and know what we are seeing is anomalous or not. So I think the tendency is to see a play that happens and is poor and immediately reach for, ‘Oh, you gotta make that play.’ And that’s what fans do and that’s what I did when I was a kid. But I also think there’s a part of it where you have to understand that baseball is such a long year that there are going to be outliers. Michael Jordan missed shots. I’m not saying that Michael Jordan is on the current White Sox. But I am saying that I think responsibility lies in knowing what people’s tendencies are, knowing when they are breaking them, and being as well informed as we possibly can as to what we are seeing fits what we know about that person — or it breaks the mold enough that we need to rethink the person overall.

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Adam Haseley was drafted eighth overall last year, so his potential goes without saying. That doesn’t mean there aren’t question marks in his profile. When Eric Longenhagen blurbed the 21-year-old University of Virginia product in our Philadelphia Phillies Top Prospects list, he cautioned that “Some scouts have concerns about his bat path.”

I asked the left-handed-hitting Haseley why that might be.

“My interpretation would be that I was wanting be more direct to the ball,” responded Haseley, who put up a .761 OPS last year between short-season and low-A. “Something I’d started doing at UVA was trying to create more launch angle — I wanted to hit balls in the air with true backspin — but coming into pro ball there was more velocity than I’d ever seen in college. I had to adjust to that, and my way of adjusting was to get more direct, which resulted in a flatter angle. Now I’m trying to find that happy medium between the two.”

His quest for middle ground remains a work in progress. Two months into his first full professional season, Haseley has a 48.4 GB% and just three home runs in 217 plate appearances with high-A Clearwater. Compare that to his final collegiate campaign, where as a Cavalier he went deep 14 times in a comparable number of chances. Read the rest of this entry »

This past weekend, the San Diego Padres completed a trade, sending Janigson Villalobos to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for Phil Hughes.

The precise players involved aren’t of particular significance. The Padres’ prospect list contained 75 names and Villalobos was not among them. As for Hughes, he had recently been designated for assignment after pitching poorly over the last three seasons. Much of that subpar performance was due to injury and included thoracic outlet surgery. As Jay Jaffe recently chronicled, few pitchers return to prominence after TOS.

By designating Hughes for assignment, the Twins appeared willing to eat the roughly $22 million remaining on his contract through next season. The Padres are taking on some of that obligation in exchange for a competitive balance draft pick, so the functional part of the trade looks like this.

Padres get:

• 74th pick in 2018 draft and $812,200 in bonus pool money that goes with it.

Twins get:

• $7.6 million, with $7.25 million paid next season, per Jon Heyman.

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