Denver, we have a problem.

Actually, it’s Denver’s baseball team that has a problem — and maybe problems, plural. The club has weaknesses at right field, catcher — MLB.com’s Thomas Harding reports that the Rockies have expressed interest in Jonathan Lucroy despite his framing decline — and maybe even first base. If the team wishes to maintain and perhaps enhance their postseason chances, they ought to consider addressing their problem areas.

While we always think about the Rockies as having run-prevention issues, it’s important to understand their performance in the context of their mile-high home environment. The club’s starters actually rank seventh in the NL in WAR and ninth in ERA- (93). Colorado also ranks fourth in relief WAR. So even though the Rockies’ pitching has slumped over the last month, they’ve still enjoyed an influx of talent to the rotation and have had success (well, at least before recent weeks) with a new philosophy that includes throwing breaking balls lower in the zone than every other team in baseball.

Are the Rockies looking for pitching? Perhaps, but only because every team is looking for pitching. Their roster has greater need elsewhere, though.

For example, the club ranks 25th in first-base production (0.6 WAR), where Ian Desmond was signed as a curious fit — and has been replacement level at first and left field this season. Mark Reynolds and his game of extremes have earned the recent lion’s share of playing time. He’s projected for a precisely league-average line (100 wRC+) over the course of the season. That doesn’t require immediate attention, perhaps, but isn’t ideal for first base.

Catcher is another position where the Rockies rank poorly, and where Tony Wolters‘ framing value has declined this season, but that is likely a tougher position to fill. Wolters was expected to be an asset behind the plate and end the Rockies’ long history of poor receiving, though Lucroy wouldn’t seem to help in that area.

But the most glaring production void among all contenders, to date, comes care of the Rockies’ right-field situation, where Carlos Gonzalez and company have produced a disastrous collective line.

If you weren’t concerned about CarGo already, you should be.

Whether the issue is an injury or a mysterious Andrew McCutchen-like extended slump or perhaps a premature and dramatic decline, CarGo’s power has vanished and his increased out-of-zone swing rate suggests a player who is searching and isn’t close to an answer.

Consider what we can find from new heat-map capabilities at FanGraphs.

Gonzalez’s slugging per swing this season:

Gonzalez’s slugging per swing last season:

One chart looks like one storm cell on a weather radar reading (this season), compared to a storm front in 2016.

We’re getting close to August, which means we are approaching Monday’s trade deadline. Gonzalez has a 50 wRC+. He’s had injury-plagued seasons before this — like in 2014 when he recorded a sub-100 wRC+ — but he’s never experiened a slump like this one.

It’s been the kind of season where CarGo’s best swing has resulted in a foul ball.

It’s probably not surprising, given their trouble in right field, that the Rockies were reportedly interested in J.D. Martinez.

That interest is perhaps indicative of the club’s level of concern with Gonzalez’s performance. And as Morosi notes, Martinez would have helped against the high volume of left-handed pitchers in the division. (And in hindsight, keeping Martinez away from the division- and Wild Card-rival Diamondbacks would have been helpful, particularly given the low cost.)

The Rockies could call upon Raimel Tapia again, who didn’t show much power but slashed .314/.369/.480 in limited plate appearances — and who, unlike Gonzalez, has produced above replacement-level value. Another internal option is David Dahl, who was activated off the 60-day DL last week and has just 60 minor league plate appearances this season.

There are still a number of possible trade short-term targets. Jose Bautista, Jay Bruce, Matt Joyce, Daniel Nava, and Steve Pearce are among the outfield options detailed at MLB Trade Rumors.

At 58-44, the Rockies have a firm grasp of the No. 2 Wild Card spot at the moment, and their +52 run differential suggests they are a quality group that isn’t outperforming their true talent level. But FanGraphs projections have the Rockies going 29-32 with a -17 run differential the rest of the way. FanGraphs playoff odds give the Rockies a 69.8% of reaching the postseason, and, interestingly, a 31.8% chance of reaching the division round of the playoffs. This is a Rockies team to bet upon.

To protect their position, hedge against continued dearth of production in right field, to strengthen a possible postseason roster, it could help to upgrade right and perhaps first base, with, say, fly-ball machine Yonder Alonso.

The Rockies are in a rare position. The market for position players seems to favor buyers by a lot. Their greatest needs are arguably position players. They can upgrade and hedge against continued disappointment. And given the fickle nature of pitching, particularly young pitchers on the steppe just east of the Rocky Mountains, the Rockies could do worse than try and upgrade the soft spots in the lineup. Martinez would have been an excellent fit at a low cost, but the good news for the club is there are other affordable options available.

Time is ticking toward non-waiver deadline, but there is still time for the Rockies to build upon their best team of the last decade.

Andrew Stevenson made his big league debut with the Washington Nationals on Sunday. His call-up came in a time of need — injuries and a bereavement leave had left the Nats short of outfielders — but the call-up wasn’t without merit. The 23-year-old former LSU Tiger had put himself back on the fast track after a slow start in Triple-A.

It was a dogged climb for the speedy 2015 second-round pick. Promoted to Syracuse on May 1 after hitting a heady .350 with Double-A Harrisburg, Stevenson found himself straddling the Mendoza Line six weeks later. Then he picked up the pace. From June 10 onward, he went 48 for 159 (.301), hitting safely in 30 of 40 games.

His modus operandi is slash and burn. Stevenson’s stroke is geared toward the gaps — he has just six home runs in 1,216 professional plate appearances — and he’s a running threat once he gets on. The native of Lafayette, Louisiana swiped 39 bags a year ago, and he was 9 for 10 in stolen base attempts after joining the Triple-A Chiefs.

His Double-A manager sees some raw power lurking in Stevenson’s lanky frame, but he largely concurs with the slash-and-burn label. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Matt Swartz’ sixth piece as part of his July residency at FanGraphs. A former contributor to FanGraphs and the Hardball Times — and current contributor to MLB Trade Rumors — Swartz also works as consultant to a Major League team. You can find him on Twitter here. Read the work of all our residents here.

Unlike findings about statistical persistency or the physics of batted balls, any discovery about Major League teams’ propensities to spend is based on something less than an inviolable law. As I showed in my previous article about the decline in OPP Premium, teams wising up to an inefficient spending pattern can adjust their behavior in a way that collectively eliminates it.

A related finding from my earlier work on cost per WAR is that players get paid very different amounts per WAR by position. I remained agnostic about whether this was evidence of irrational spending patterns, so much as a feature of competitiveness.

Because teams have become smarter about their free-agent contracts, I decided to review this pattern to see if any changes had occurred. To do so, I looked at positional cost per WAR figures from 2006 to -11 (which was pre-discovery) and then also 2012-16 (the post-discovery era), roughly lining up with my first public work on this topic.

Although there’s some evidence of teams spending on free agents based on outdated valuation methods, there’s also some notable evidence that competitiveness for different positions in free agency plays a role in spending on those positions. When evaluating the numbers, I isolated “defense-first” positions, which included catcher, second base, third base, and shortstop, from “offense-first” positions of first base, outfield, and designated hitter. The key feature of the “offense-first” positions is that many players can easily move between those positions and often do, so teams with a player under contract at the same position as a potential free agent could still safely bid on that player, knowing that one of the two could be shifted to another position. The high cost per WAR of center fielders contradicts the idea that teams were undervaluing players at important defensive positions, because center field certainly is a crucial spot on the diamond. But the inferior center fielder can easily move to left or right field if a team wants two of them under contract. The common thread in high cost per WAR positions is positional flexibility rather than defensive importance.

Pitchers can also be moved around as needed. A great ace can easily be moved to the No. 2 slot in a rotation if another great ace is available as a free agent. A solid closer can become a setup man. The price per WAR for pitchers is definitely higher than defense-first positions, for whom the market is often more likely to be limited.

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Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline is a mere five days away. As it nears, we’ll be treated to all the rumors and hypothetical proposals the internet is capable of providing. Many of them will be nonsensical. Some won’t. In every case, though, we’re likely to evaluate the likelihood of a prospective deal based on the same sort of variables considered by Dave Cameron in his annual Trade Value series — variables like projected WAR, salary, team control, etc.

But those aren’t the only factors at play when real people from real front offices attempt to work out a trade. There are other questions to ask. Which teams link up often and which teams avoid each other? What’s the role of familiarity in trade deals? Does it matter if the teams belong to the same division?

With the help of crack data and visualizations man Sean Dolinar, I went to work trying to answer some of these questions. Below are five statements supported by the historical data.

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With the trade deadline swiftly approaching, it’s time for some updated KATOH rankings. I know you’re not here to read about assumptions and caveats, so I’ll keep the non-list part of this article short and sweet.

• For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, but due to their objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated.
• KATOH+ incorporates Baseball America’s midseason top-100 list and Eric Longenhagen’s preseason FV grades for players excluded from BA’s list. Stats-only KATOH does not consider prospect rankings.
• These projections account only for minor-league stats. While I’ve done work with college players, I have not yet attempted to merge college and minor-league data. These projections also do not account for any major-league performance.
• All players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced in 2016 and/or 2017 were considered.
• This isn’t “Chris Mitchell’s Top 100 List,” and certainly not “FanGraphs’ Top 100 List.” This is simply the output from my far-from-perfect statistical model.

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Back in March, Yonder Alonso explained to Eno Sarris that his focus during the offseason was to more frequently launch batted balls into the air.

“Did some mechanical things but also intent was important,” Alonso said in camp. “I’m trying to punish it more, get it in the air.” He agreed that aiming to put the ball in play in the air more was the major key for him this offseason as he worked.”

Alonso’s intended goal has worked out magnificently: he’s having a career season in a walk year.

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If you want to understand why the Dodgers have such a good record, I can share with you a fun fact. Right now, as I look at the leaderboard, the Dodgers have six players within the top-30 in National League WAR. They have five players in the top-20, and three players in the top-10. I think there’s been some kind of understanding that the Dodgers have been built around depth, instead of stars. They have stars. They have, at least, star-level performances.

Yet the Nationals, I think, can top that fun fact. The Nationals aren’t better than the Dodgers, and the Dodgers are likely to be the favorites for the pennant. But what the Nationals have is the guy in third place in the NL in WAR. They also have the guy in second place. And they also have the guy in first place. According to this one method, the top three players in the league have all played for the same team. You expect Max Scherzer to be dominant, and Bryce Harper was projected for a rebound season. The player in first, though, is Anthony Rendon.

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The Detroit Tigers should probably undergo a massive sell-off and rebuild, effective immediately. They’re a mediocre, aging team with a bunch of huge contracts set to hurt the franchise for years if they’re not moved. In truth, Detroit probably should have begun to rebuild a year or more ago, when Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander might have brought a better return and required less money to go from the Tigers to another team. Detroit has already begun to sell a bit, moving pending free-agent J.D. Martinez for a few middling prospects. Reliever Justin Wilson seems likely to go. The team could and probably should move Verlander for whatever they can get and then net some prospects for Ian Kinsler, as well. All that said, there’s an argument for keeping the core of the Tigers together this year and going for it again next season, too.

The Tigers do have a sliver of hope this season, owing to how the hunt for the AL Wild Card has become a race to the bottom and not the top. That said, whatever decision Detroit makes in the coming month-plus, it won’t really concern their present, but rather their future generally. The Tigers could save some money in the near term by trading some of their long-term deals, but they’ve never hesitated to spend the money required to field a contender.

What the club really needs to consider is how long it’s willing to stomach a rebuild. Holding on to Cabrera and Kinsler and Verlander — and even Michael Fulmer — would only extend and water down any possible rebuild effort. A more effective method would probably be for Detroit to purge itself of its current roster and attempt to start over. That being said, the allure of going for it one more time does have its appeal.

The first argument for trying to contend in 2017 has little to do with the Tigers and more to do with the division of which they’re a member. Take a look at the American League Central in 2017. The Chicago White Sox have done a great job with their own rebuild, but their outlook for 2018 isn’t good. The Kansas City Royals are making one last run with their current group, but are likely to see three of their four best players depart from a team that’s already mediocre. The Minnesota Twins have a few good players in Brian Dozier and Miguel Sano, promising development from Jose Berrios, and untapped talent in Byron Buxton, but given their current level of talent and general spending habits, it seems difficult to believe the Twins are going to be a real threat for contention.

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On Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field, with the Cardinals trailing the Cubs 3-2 heading to the seventh inning, Mike Matheny called on left-handed reliever Zach Duke to replace his starting pitcher Carlos Martinez. Duke turned around Ben Zobrist to bat right-handed, inducing a fly out to left field, before snaring a weak liner back toward the mound off the bat of Anthony Rizzo. With the right-handed hitting Willson Contreras due next, Duke was relieved by right-handed throwing Matt Bowman, who promptly recorded the third out. All told, Duke threw just six pitches, three for strikes.

On its own, Duke’s appearance doesn’t appear noteworthy. Nothing spectacular happened, and Duke has pitched in a lot of games. In fact, over the past three full major-league seasons, Duke was about as likely as anyone in the league to make an appearance on the mound in a game.

So what made Duke’s appearance special? To understand that, it’s necessary to begin with the fact that this was his first appearance in an MLB game in 2017. As the regular season ended last season in early October, the Cardinals reported that Duke had undergone Tommy John surgery while also having a flexor muscle repaired in this left arm.

Tommy John surgery has become something with which all baseball fans are familiar. At this point, it’s no longer shocking to hear that a pitcher has torn a UCL in his throwing elbow. By my calculations, over 26% of pitchers who appeared in an MLB game last season have had this type of procedure.

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What follows is an excerpt from Chapter 6 — “The War on WAR” — of Jay Jaffe’s new book, The Cooperstown Casebook, which is out in stores today. You can also read Paul Swydan’s review of the book over at The Hardball Times.

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