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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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Royals are overachieving. They’d probably consider that an insult — I imagine they’d say they’re properly achieving — but the Royals have a winning record to go with a negative run differential, and right now they cling ever so barely to a would-be playoff spot. It’s a crowded race, to be sure, and the Royals could fall out of position any day, but they are very much in it. In what’s assumed to be the final ride with the current core, the Royals are again gunning for the playoffs, and they’re even within easy distance of the inarguably underachieving first-place Indians.

The Royals don’t have major young pieces to subtract. Nor do they have the budget flexibility to take on someone expensive. Yet, like any other team, the Royals have been looking to improve. Monday, they’ve done that. They just had to go to the Padres, and they’ve come away with a pretty fascinating stretch-run asset.

Royals get:

• Trevor Cahill
• Ryan Buchter
• Brandon Maurer

Padres get:

• Matt Strahm
• Travis Wood
• Esteury Ruiz

This is a package that includes several semi-familiar names, and Esteury Ruiz. Every single player is individually interesting, but it’s Cahill who most captures my attention. He’s a risk and a rental, but he could provide a jolt for the Kansas City starting staff.

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Khris Davis has elements of being a very good player. No matter what his reputation might be, he’s perfectly good at tracking down fly balls. He runs fairly well, all things considered, and he’s swinging at a career-low rate of pitches out of the zone. What’s most important, as you already know, is that Davis has power. Major power, big-time power, the kind of power that plays in any park. Davis swats a bunch of home runs. He does so while rarely popping up. He has a career wRC+ of 122, which ties him with Carlos Santana and Yoenis Cespedes.

The A’s are happy to have Davis. Any lineup would be happy to have Davis in it. There’s just — look, it’s not like I take extra pleasure in this. I’ve got nothing against Khris Davis. I just feel obligated to point out some numbers. A short while ago, I wrote about Bradley Zimmer’s outstanding throwing arm. It’s no secret that Davis doesn’t have an outstanding throwing arm, himself. It’s a known weakness, but this year has still been exceptional. In the Zimmer post, I combined DRS and UZR arm-value measures into one. I showed you the current top-10 arms. Here are the current bottom-10 arms.

Just as in the Zimmer post, here’s how 2017 left fielders have done defensively, in terms of holding baserunners, and throwing them out. Davis is the point in yellow.

Davis has recorded one assist. There are 40 left fielders with more than that. And when Davis has had a chance, he’s prevented a baserunner from advancing 52% of the time. The league average for left fielders is a hair over 63%. Obviously, when the surface numbers are bad, the underlying numbers must also be bad. These are bad numbers.

Davis is already at -8.5 runs. That’s the number from the earlier table, and while all these arm-value numbers are estimates, they’re the best we’ve got. That’s the third-worst arm-value rating since 2003, which is as far back as we have both DRS and UZR available. And I’m writing this on July 24. The two players with worse outfield arm seasons played nearly twice as many innings in the outfield as Davis has to date. And their arm values were worse by tenths of one run. To put everything on a consistent scale, why not establish a denominator of 1000 innings?

That’s what I’ve done. I looked at every player-season since 2003 in which someone played at least 500 innings in the outfield. I calculated UZR arm per 1000 innings, and I calculated DRS arm per 1000 innings. I figured I should show them both, since they’re somewhat different. Davis, one more time, is shown here, highlighted.

By UZR arm, no one’s been worse. By DRS arm, no one’s been worse. Combine the two, and 2017 Khris Davis is at -13.3 arm runs per 1000 innings. That would be easily the worst in the sample, with the second-worst season belonging to 2013 Juan Pierre, at -9.7. Davis is taking this and running away with it.

Because the season hasn’t finished, Davis could recover. His arm could play better from here on out. But that’s likely to require some luck, since the arm isn’t good on its own. Davis seems to be having the worst arm season on recent record. It’s usually not the kind of thing you worry about, but in this particular case, it’s been costing the A’s actual runs. I don’t know what you do about it, given that Davis appears too good at running down flies to be a DH. This is just a part of the Oakland reality.

The one assist to 2017 Davis’ name? Jose Ramirez was the victim.

Ramirez lost track of the ball, and froze. Davis identified what was happening, and hit his cutoff. In one sense, it was a gimme assist. In another, was it, really?

Several trades occurred while I was on vacation. I’m profiling the prospects involved in those deals in a belated nature. First among these is the deal that netted the Chicago Cubs LHP Jose Quintana. A breakdown of the big league side of that trade is available here.

Just a reminder of the players exchanged:

Cubs get

• LHP Jose Quintana

White Sox get

• OF Eloy Jimenez
• RHP Dylan Cease
• 1B Matt Rose
• INF Bryant Flete

The blockbuster’s headliner was power-hitting outfielder Eloy Jimenez, who has arguably the best in-game power projection in the minors. That power was preordained by Jimenez’s broad-shouldered 6-foot-4 frame which, even when he was 16, seemed to promise exceptional future raw pop. Jimenez’s body has developed a bit faster than many had expected (at age 20 he’s already closer to 250 pounds than his listed 205) and helps him generate power from foul pole to foul pole. At times, Jimenez barely squares up pitches and is still able to drive balls to the wall for extra bases, seemingly by accident. He’s very likely to hit and hit for power, the latter perhaps at an elite level, placing him firmly in heart of whatever batting order he occupies as a base-clearing force.

Defensively, Jimenez’s below-average speed and average arm relegate him to an outfield corner and, probably, left field. But the bat is going to profile anywhere Jimenez ends up on the defensive spectrum.

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We’ve known for some time that Bradley Zimmer is unusually tall. We’ve also known for some time that Zimmer can move, and more recently we’ve found out that he’s one of the fastest sprinters in the game. When Zimmer gets himself to full speed, he’s practically the same as Billy Hamilton, and while that doesn’t say anything about the time required to get to full speed, it’s still a little surprising. Zimmer can rightfully be considered extreme, in terms of his running skill.

He’s got another one of those! Another extreme skill, I mean. Perhaps it’s not *as* extreme, but it’s close enough. We here at FanGraphs have measures of outfielder arm value. There’s arm value according to Defensive Runs Saved, and there’s arm value according to Ultimate Zone Rating. I don’t know which is better or worse, so I went ahead and combined the two. After adding and dividing, here are this year’s top 10 most valuable outfield arms:

Zimmer is in second place. What’s more, look at the innings column. Zimmer has played a good deal less than all these guys. Still, his value is where it is. As you probably understand, arm value can be a noisy statistic, and things like assists can sometimes be fluky. So it goes. To paint a more detailed picture, here’s a selection of this year’s center fielders, plotted by assists — as a rate metric — and the rate with which they’ve held would-be advancing baserunners. The held% statistic comes from Baseball Reference, and Zimmer is the point in yellow.

Zimmer has held an above-average rate of runners. More importantly, he already has seven assists. He’s one off the league lead in that department, despite the playing-time deficiency. The other extreme point here, for what it’s worth, belongs to Leury Garcia. He also has seven assists. He’s done well, but this is a Bradley Zimmer post.

By the results, Zimmer looks good. He also looks good if you dig in a little deeper. Eric Longenhagen put a 60 on Zimmer’s arm, and there’s also this relatively recent highlight clip:

Now, last season, according to Statcast, Aaron Hicks uncorked a throw four miles per hour faster than that one. Aaron Hicks has a crazy arm. Zimmer presumably doesn’t have the strongest arm in the league, but now we know it’s at least among them. As you can see in the highlight, that was 2017’s fastest throw for an assist. Zimmer has a strong arm, and so far it’s been sufficiently accurate. That leads to both held baserunners, and dead ones.

Incidentally, in the same game in which Zimmer made the above assist, he made another assist, with another strong throw. Previously, Bryce Harper had recorded the fastest outfield assist in 2017. Zimmer knocked that down to third place in one day. The arm is for real, is the point, fluky statistic or no. In the long run, Zimmer’s arm is likely to be an asset.

Brandon Guyer recently gave Zimmer a Kevin Kiermaier comp. Guyer has played with them both. Comparisons don’t get much more flattering. Zimmer will continue to work on his offense, and he’s going to have his bad games and his better ones. As a defender, Zimmer has near-league-leading speed, with near-league-leading arm strength. That takes care of two of the five tools.