No matter how you look at Michael Fulmer, you’ll probably come away impressed. Today’s Tigers starter is making good on his sophomore season and currently has the 10th-best ERA among qualified starters. But if you look at strikeouts and walks, traditionally thought of as the outcomes over which a pitcher exerts the most control, Fulmer is 43rd best among that game group. Which ranking is more indicative of his true talent? His changeup might have the answer.

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On Tuesday, the White Sox completed their latest trade, sending Todd Frazier, David Robertson, and Tommy Kahnle to New York for a trio of prospects and Tyler Clippard, who was included as a salary offset. In the span of four major trades, the team added 15 minor leaguers, including most of their best-ranked prospects now. And when you look at where these guys rank on the Baseball America mid-season Top 100, it’s easy to see why White Sox fans are excited about the organization’s now-bright future.

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After they shipped Todd Frazier to the Yankees in exchange for prospects earlier this week, the White Sox replaced him on their roster with Yoan Moncada. Moncada was hitting a healthy .282/.377/.447 at Triple-A, highlighted by his 12 homers and 17 steals. He hits for average, hits for power, steals bases, and even draws walks. Very few players can hit like Moncada does while also providing value in the field and on the bases. That’s why he was a fixture at the top of midseason prospect lists this summer. Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus both ranked him No. 1, while Keith Law put him at No. 13.

But for all his strengths, Moncada has some weaknesses that we shouldn’t overlook. Most notably, he strikes out a bunch. Moncada’s struck out in over 28% of his trips to the plate this year. Though it’s been somewhat hidden by his high batting averages, Moncada has had a lot of trouble making contact against minor-league pitchers. This suggests he’ll have even more trouble doing so in the big leagues, which is exactly what happened in Boston last September when he struck out 12 times in 20 plate appearances.

There’s also the matter of Moncada’s defense. He’s primarily played second base since emigrating from Cuba, and the prognosis for minor-league second basemen isn’t great. The fact that he’s already been deemed “not a shortstop” is a knock against him in KATOH’s eyes. Furthermore, his defensive metrics at second base aren’t great. He’s been right around average there by Clay Davenport’s fielding data this year and was several ticks worse than average last year. This suggests he may not be a defensive asset in the infield.

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The Yankees are stuck in a tailspin, being tied for last in all of baseball in wins since June 13. And if I change tabs real quick, then I can confirm that…right…now, the Yankees just lost again, this time to the Twins by five runs. That’s the bad, and the bad colors the interpretation of the present. Recency bias tells us to downplay the fact that the Yankees remain in a playoff position. Their story, for now, remains a good one, and the Yankees are still very much alive as a contender.

Even a week ago, they were a contender with some questions about the starting rotation. Then Michael Pineda was found to require Tommy John surgery, opening another hole. It seemed like the Yankees needed a starter, and a first baseman. Tuesday, they made a trade! They got a possible first baseman, in Todd Frazier. And they got two pitchers — just, two pitchers who are relief pitchers, in Tommy Kahnle and David Robertson. Additions, sure, but not the ones you might’ve expected. The Pineda gap is still there.

And the Yankees, for their part, will continue to entertain the thought of dealing for a starter. But they might’ve just indirectly addressed that very need. Starters are required to handle innings before the bullpen. The Yankees bullpen now looks like a potential deep absurdity.

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PITTSBURGH — The Brewers are probably the greatest surprise among the league’s 30 teams this season. The club remains atop the NL Central for a number of reasons — the triumphant return of Eric Thames to the States, a breakout year from Travis Shaw. Among Milwaukee’s 25-man roster, however, the player most directly responsible for the team’s success is probably Jimmy Nelson, who ranks 10th among all pitchers with 3.1 WAR. Nelson entered the season with four career wins above replacement covering 440 innings.

Earlier this year FanGraphs’ Jeff Sullivan said the Brewers might have serendipitously found an ace in Nelson. Sullivan noted Nelson was among the game’s biggest improvers by strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%), particularly against left-handed hitters.

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I’m not a particularly fast person. I was born in Jamaica, though, and Usain Bolt has practically been the country’s patron saint for the last decade, so particularly fast people amaze me. And what’s most amazing about Bolt isn’t even his raw foot speed, but rather that foot speed relative to his height. At 6-foot-5, he stands out among the crowd, from the blocks to the finish line, taking up to 15% fewer strides while breaking records.

We sort of have our own Usain Bolt in the major leagues. His name is Brad Zimmer and he patrols center field for the Cleveland Indians.

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Last night, the Diamondbacks acquired J.D. Martinez, one of the very best hitters in baseball. In order to land the best power hitter available, they surrendered… well, three people who play baseball for a living. As Carson likes to remind me regularly, everyone we talk about here is an elite baseball player, relative to the human population. Compared to you and me, these guys are awesome. The Tigers have two more world-class baseball players today than they did yesterday.

But, relative to other professional baseball players, well, these guys aren’t exactly the ’27 Yankees. Dawel Lugo, the main piece in the deal by the Tigers’ own admission, was graded as a 40 Future Value guy and ranked as the Diamondbacks’ 10th-best prospect over the winter. Sergio Alcantara is a glove-first shortstop whose upside is probably Nick Ahmed, or something along those lines. Jose King is an 18-year-old in Rookie ball and signed for $75,000 not that long ago.

Based on what other players have gotten traded for, this return feels very light. And that’s not exactly a controversial opinion.

There are always going to be disagreements in the valuation of players, and projecting young players is really hard. The last time the Tigers got universally crushed for trading a good big leaguer for some questionably valuable prospects, they received Robbie Ray in return. And then they gave him away a year later. But maybe Lugo turns out to be the hitting version of Ray, developing into a far better big leaguer than expected as a minor leaguer. It happens. It happened to the very guy these guys all got traded for!

But when we see trades like this, where pretty much everyone in the public sphere agrees that one team got the better end of the deal, we can either choose to believe that a major-league organization made a very public mistake in valuing the players involved in the deal, or we can try to figure out why an apparently lopsided deal happened in the first place.

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Yankees general manager Brian Cashman needed time and salesmanship to sell ownership on a dismantling at last year’s deadline, as he explained to FanGraphs earlier this spring.

It perhaps took less time to convince ownership to return to status as buyers, to build a potentially dominant bullpen, and to prevent — if only momentarily — the division-rival Red Sox from addressing one of their most glaring weaknesses.

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The Red Sox need a third baseman — at least, if they’re not going to give Rafael Devers a shot, like I think they should — and maybe some more relief help. This isn’t any kind of secret. Dave Dombrowski is even openly talking about it. And Todd Frazier, a walk-year player on a team trading everything that isn’t nailed down, was an obvious fit. He’d have been a fit if they wanted to keep the spot open for Devers, since he could have played some first base too, potentially giving them an upgrade over Mitch Moreland if Devers came up and mashed.

Like every other contender, they could also use another reliever or two. Their bullpen has been good so far, but also heavily worked, and no one every really has enough good bullpen arms. The White Sox were also selling good relievers, including a young controllable arm that Jeff just wrote up today. A deal between the two Sox franchises seemed like an obvious fit.

So, of course, the Yankees are apparently getting in the way, and according to reports, are closing on a deal for Frazier, David Robertson, and Tommy Kahnle.

Source confirms reports by @JonHeyman and @Joelsherman1: #Yankees gaining momentum toward trade for Robertson, Frazier and Kahnle. @MLB

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) July 19, 2017

Chase Headley has been decent enough at third base that Frazier would probably play first base in New York, or at least give them options to run some platoons at the corner infield spots with Frazier bouncing between the two spots. But for New York, this is probably more about getting two more good arms for a bullpen that has been pretty lousy so far, and then keeping Frazier away from their division rival because why not?

Given what Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle cost, I’d imagine this trio is going to fetch a decent return, depending on how much of Robertson’s salary the Yankees are picking up. If they’re absorbing all of the ~$18 million he’s owed through next season, that might lighten the package a bit, but Kahnle was likely going to cost a lot, given his dominance this season and remaining years of control. Odds are the Yankees simply outbid the Red Sox, and I wouldn’t be surprised if making sure the Red Sox didn’t get better easily was at least partly about the reason the Yankees got involved here.

Since the deal isn’t yet done, we don’t know what price New York is paying, but I certainly wouldn’t want to try and come back against this potential bullpen in October. Kahnle, Robertson, Dellin Betances, and Aroldis Chapman would be a pretty rough group to try and score off of.

When it comes to making moves for pending free agents at the trade deadline, it’s hard to say that any pure rental is going to be a bargain. In recent seasons, the most successful trade for a soon-to-be free agent is probably the New York Mets’ acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes from the Detroit Tigers two years ago. Cespedes caught fire over the last two months of the season, putting up a 156 wRC+ and helping the Mets to the World Series. The cost was steep, however: part of Detroit’s return, Michael Fulmer, came in at 22 on Dave Cameron’s Trade Value Series this year.

If there’s a Yoenis Cespedes-type player available this year, it’s the guy whom the Arizona Diamondbacks just acquired. And they don’t appear to have conceded any top prospects for him, either, with Detroit opting for some players further away from the majors, potentially indicating where their future is headed.

Here’s the deal in full:

Arizona gets

• J.D. Martinez

Detroit gets

• Dawel Lugo
• Sergio Alcantara
• Jose King

Arizona is win-now mode. Also, they don’t have a great farm system, and Daniel Descalso has been their regular left fielder of late. Even if the injured Yasmany Tomas returns, he’s still just a replacement-level player. J.D. Martinez, meanwhile, provides at least a one-win upgrade over the course of the rest of the season.

Nor does the price appear to have been particularly high. The Diamondbacks retain top prospect Anthony Banda. As for the players they dealt, Lugo was the Diamondbacks’ 10th-best prospect coming into the season. The 22-year-old second baseman has some power and is holding his own in Double-A. Alcantara is a strong-armed shortstop putting up an average line in High-A, while King is an 18-year-old infielder getting his first exposure in the US in Rookie-level ball in Arizona. Detroit seems to have opted for some lottery tickets in exchange for potentially the best hitter on the market.

You might be forgiven for not totally believing in J.D. Martinez. His career got off to a poor start, and of late, he can’t seem to stay healthy. You might even be forgiven for thinking that Martinez is an aging slugger in decline. He’s not that, though. Teammate Victor Martinez fits that bill, and J.D. certainly has the old-man skillset of power and walks while offering little on defense. J.D. Martinez is just 29 years old, though, and since he joined the Tigers in 2014, he has been one of the very best hitters in baseball.

A champion of the fly-ball revolution, Martinez has put up a 146 wRC+ since joining Detroit, which is ninth in baseball over that span, just behind Nelson Cruz, tied with Anthony Rizzo, and ahead of Josh Donaldson, Giancarlo Stanton, and Justin Turner.

Martinez isn’t relying on 2014 and 2015 to prop up his stats, either. Since the beginning of last season, his 148 wRC+ trails only Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman, Joey Votto, Jose Altuve, and Daniel Murphy. This season, Martinez has been even better, hitting .305/.388/.630 with a 162 wRC+. It’s possible the season has flown a little under the radar, as his name is absent from the leaderboards. That’s only because Martinez missed the first month of the season with a sprained ligament in his right foot, however. As a result, he’s accumulated just 232 plate appearances, not enough to qualify for the batting title. If Martinez had hit 16 homers with a 162 wRC+ in April and May instead of May and June, he probably would have made the All-Star team. He didn’t, and while we are mostly talking about past performance, his projections look great, as well.

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