Earlier today, I published a post examining the major-league success of players who were never considered top-100 prospects. It’s a favorite subject of mine, and among the most delightful things about the current Cleveland Indians is that they’re being led in no small part by both Jose Ramirez and Corey Kluber, who came up as relative nobodies. No one’s surprised when a top prospect becomes a top player. When a top player emerges after having been off the radar, though — every one of those guys has a story. Why, here’s a story from today, about Whit Merrifield. Merrifield was nothing, until he was something. Now he’s a part of the Royals’ present and future.

In running the analysis for the post linked above, I didn’t spot any meaningful trends. The number of good players who were unranked prospects has remained fairly steady. The amount of WAR coming from players who were unranked prospects has also remained fairly steady. Through that lens, it doesn’t seem like much is going on. Nothing, that is, that’s out of the ordinary. Yet, under the surface, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think I’m saying anything original, here, but these are tough times to be a minor-league scout. Anyone can evaluate a prospect, but it’s perhaps never been harder to evaluate well.

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“Cardinals’ Devil Magic” is a bit of a running joke around baseball, as every year, it seems like the organization turns some marginal prospect into a big league contributor. This dates back to guys like Allen Craig and David Freese, but Matt Carpenter probably embodies the success the organization has had turning fringe talents into stars better than anyone. Last year, it was Aledmys Diaz coming out of nowhere to put up a monster season; this year, it’s Tommy Pham, who currently ranks 15th among position players in WAR.

More than any other strength, this is what keeps the Cardinals in contention every year. They have a unique strength of finding underpowered position players and turning them into big league contributors. And while Pham has gotten most of the headlines this year, they might just be doing it again, in the person of Jose Martinez.

The only time we’ve really talked about Martinez this year was back when I was wondering why the team was bothering to play Matt Adams in left field, when Pham was stuck in the minors. I mentioned Martinez in passing as a guy who had crushed the ball in spring training, and got carried as a bench bat, which caused the team to option Pham to the minors. Previously, the only mentions of Martinez on the site came courtesy of Carson Cistulli, who included Martinez in a Fringe Five write-up in April of 2016, and picked him as “Cistulli’s Guy” on the Royals prospect list a few months before that.

Here’s what Carson said about Martinez back then.

For what Martinez lacks in defensive ability — he’s pretty much confined to an outfield corner — he compensates for it by way of offensive skill and, to the degree it can be said of a player entering his age-27 season, projection. Martinez was the best player in the Pacific Coast League last year according to a rough minor-league approximation of WAR provided by StatCorner. Nor was that performance the product entirely of statistical variance. While the line was certainly buoyed by a .434 BABIP, Martinez also benefited from his typical command of the strike zone — recording strikeout and walk rates of 12.1% and 13.9%, respectively — while also posting a .179 isolated-power figure.

Nor does any of this recognize his most notable trait — namely, his height. Martinez is 6-foot-7. Over the last decade, only 10 seasons have been logged by players 6-foot-7 or higher. All told, players around his height — which is to say, from 6-foot-6 to 6-foot-8 — have recorded a .223 isolated-power mark in 17,750 plate appearances. All of which is to say that Martinez quite possibly hasn’t reached his power ceiling yet. Paired with an above-average penchant for contact, that conspires to produce an interesting offensive profile.

As Carson correctly noted, it was pretty unusual for a guy Martinez’s size to be a low-power/high-contact guy, but that’s what Martinez had been throughout his minor league career. In fact, low-power doesn’t even really do justice to what Martinez was. In 2013, while kicking around the Braves system, he ran an .086 ISO in Double-A as a 24-year-old. In 2014, the Braves actually sent him to high-A as a 25-year-old, as he was the quintessential organizational player, hanging around to be a good influence on younger teammates and to help lower level teams try to win some games.

But after he climbed back up the ladder and had the monster year in Triple-A in 2015, the Cardinals plucked him from the Royals in exchange for some cash considerations. He wasn’t very good for Memphis last year, though, putting up just a 95 wRC+ as a 27-year-old. The contact was still there, but Martinez just didn’t hit for enough power to look like a big leaguer, given his defensive limitations.

Over the winter, though, Martinez apparently made some changes.

“All the hitting coaches I had since I’ve been playing said I needed to hit with more leverage and elevate the ball,” said Martinez. “But, getting with Miguel Rojas and Martin Prado in the offseason (in Miami) was a big help for me.”

The three Venezuelans — Rojas and Prado both played for the Miami Marlins — worked out together at a hitting facility in the Miami area and Martinez said a hitting instructor he knew only as “Sosa” (presumably, not Sammy), told him, “I’m going to help you to hit more homers and more doubles.”

If you look at Martinez’s minor league batted ball numbers, he annually ran ground-ball rates north of 50%, and it’s nearly impossible to hit for power when you’re doing that. This year, though, Martinez has lowered his GB% to 42%, a little bit lower than the Major League average. And the results have been staggering.

In part-time work, totaling 257 PAs this season, Martinez has hit .314/.379/.546, good for a .388 wOBA and 141 wRC+. And while it’s easy to just say small sample size, there’s really nothing here that looks like a fluke.

Because while this isn’t what you’d expect from a 29-year-old who didn’t hit for any power in the minors, Martinez now hits the crap out of the ball.

And now that Martinez isn’t hitting the ball into the ground all the time, he’s spraying line drives all over the field. And so by MLB’x xwOBA calculation, Martinez’s results actually indicate he’s been a bit unlucky this year.

Martinez’s success obviously comes in a smaller sample than the guys around him, but the company he’s keeping is remarkably impressive. And while small sample results absolutely need to be regressed heavily against a guy’s track record, it’s much harder to fluke your way into hitting the ball hard for this long. And we already knew Martinez controlled the strike zone; the key was always just unlocking his power.

He still doesn’t really pull the ball all that often, but with the changes he’s made to his swing and approach this year, he’s now driving the ball the other way with authority. The aforementioned J.D. Martinez has the highest wRC+ (321) on balls hit to the opposite field, but Jose Martinez comes in right behind him, with a 309 opposite field wRC+. When you’re driving the ball like this without trying to pull everything, there is obvious natural raw power there. Martinez just had to figure out how to use it. Now, at 29, it looks like he finally has.

With Matt Carpenter still around, and guys like Jedd Gyorko and Kolten Wong vying for playing time at 2B/3B, Martinez still doesn’t have a clear path to everyday at-bats in St. Louis next year. But given the changes he’s made this year, Martinez has earned a shot at a regular first base job somewhere. A high-contact guy who has unlocked his power and showing a pretty good idea of the strike zone is still a useful player, even if he’s limited to first base defensively and is a bit on the older side.

The Cardinals certainly have a logjam of position players to sort through this winter. If they don’t think they’ll have a spot to give Martinez 500 at-bats next year, he could be a very interesting trade chip. But if I’m John Mozeliak, I’d probably just keep Martinez and make him my everyday first baseman next year. Given the organization’s success with unlocking power from contact hitters, I wouldn’t be surprised if Martinez really has turned himself into a high-level hitter.

All things being equal, the Chicago Cubs find themselves in a very good position at the moment. They’re three games ahead of the Cardinals and 2.5 ahead of the Brewers in the NL Central. And while 11 of their final 17 games feature either St. Louis or Milwaukee, our playoff odds give Chicago an 87.5% chance of qualifying for the postseason, with the club avoiding the Wild Card game in almost every scenario. Last year’s World Champions, it appears, will have an opportunity to defend their title.

Yet the season seems slightly disappointing. The Cubs are likely headed to 88-90 wins instead of the 95-96 for which they were projected at the beginning of year — and well short of the 103 victories they recorded last season when they clinched the division on September 15. Given the expectations, it’s fair to wonder not only if the Cubs are underachieving but also, further, if we could have seen this coming.

Heading into the season, the Cubs were projected for around 49 WAR. Simply adding that total to the 47 or so wins a replacement-level team should garner gives you 96 wins. Right now, the Cubs are “on pace” for 88 wins. The FanGraphs model calls for 89 wins because it integrates projections (which are generally strong for Cubs players). In either case, though, Chicago will almost certainly fall short of their preseason forecast.

Let’s try and figure out where those eight wins (or, really, seven wins because 10% of the season remains) went. We can start by simply consulting the BaseRuns standing, which indicate that the Cubs would have 82 (and not 79) wins right now if the sequencing of all their hits and homers and outs was more evenly distributed. So of those seven aforementioned wins, we can account for three of them right away — unless we somehow believe that this Cubs team, composed mostly of players who won three playoff series last year, is fundamentally “unclutch,” that is. But that’s unlikely.

So, based on performance, the Cubs are at 81 wins instead of 85, essentially within 5% of their projection from the beginning of the season. That seems pretty good, not really the look of an underachiever.

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Everyone in the majors has, at some point, been considered a star. Certainly not in the major leagues, of course, but the majors select the best of the best of the best of the best. The majors pull the best players from Triple-A. Triple-A pulls the best players from the lower minors. The lower minors pull the best players from high school and college and various other countries. And even from there, those levels tend to pull the best players from the youth circuits. Players in the majors are elites at their sport, and as the saying goes, everyone used to be the best player on one of their teams.

Still, players do get separated and classified. As players move up the ladder, some are seen as better than others. Those perceived to have the most talent end up as highly-ranked prospects. Everyone else, not so much. Many of the eventual top players were seen coming. Alex Rodriguez was a highly-ranked prospect. Mike Trout was a highly-ranked prospect. Corey Seager was a highly-ranked prospect.

Something I like to revisit from time to time is the collective big-league performance from the guys who weren’t highly-ranked prospects. Obviously, there will be the occasional surprise. How many surprises are there? Let me give you a decade of data. There are more surprises than you might realize.

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My sense is that the fly-ball revolution isn’t something I even need to explain. You know the argument, you know the theory, and you know about some of the most successful cases. Ground balls are mostly unhelpful, right? So why not…not…hit ground balls? Francisco Lindor has attempted to stop hitting ground balls. He’s doubled his home-run total, from 15 to 30. Good luck finding someone who scouted him in the minors who thought he’d hit for that kind of pop.

Yet, largely, the fly-ball revolution’s very existence feels anecdotal. One can’t help but notice the league-wide numbers, and how little they’ve shifted. Compared to last year, this year’s average ground-ball rate is down half a percentage point. The league has hit 44% ground balls. A decade ago, the league hit 44% ground balls. Who cares? Is anything actually going on?

It is. It’s just a little bit hidden. Thanks to the wonders of Statcast, we can see where the league has been actively changing.

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A veteran scout once described baseball to me as a “big man’s game.” When you spend some time in clubhouses, particularly around starting pitchers, that certainly seems to be an indisputable fact. Many starters are beginning to resemble tight ends or wing types in basketball.

But there are always exceptions. There are always outliers. And those cases are particularly interesting, at least to this author, because they represent instances in which a player has weathered whatever selection bias exists and found his own path to the pinnacle of the sport.

Zach Davies is an outlier.

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While we at FanGraphs have tried to supply you with plenty of Indians-related content during their historic torrid streak — Cleveland matched the 2002 Oakland A’s for the American League record with a 20th straight win Monday night — it seems like the club’s run might be failing to receive the recognition, nationally, that it’s due.

Perhaps one reason is Major League Baseball’s criteria for what constitutes a “winning streak.” The 1916 New York Giants are credited with baseball’s longest winning streak, at 26 games. But that Giants club didn’t actually win 26 consecutive games. Over a 27-game span in September of that year, they sandwiched a 12- and 14-game winning streak around a tie.

A 26-game winning streak? Fake news!

To this author, it’s nonsensical that a “winning streak” would not feature an actual, uninterrupted, consecutive series of wins. A better way to characterize the Giants’ feat would to define it as baseball’s record non-losing streak. The “real” mark ought to belong to the 1935 Cubs, who won 21 straight and whose achievement Cleveland has the opportunity to match this afternoon against the Tigers.

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You wouldn’t believe what the Angels have had to deal with on the mound. I know that you wouldn’t believe it, because I’ve had trouble believing it, and I look at this stuff every day. The Angels aren’t the only team in baseball that’s had to work around pitcher injury and ineffectiveness, but their staff has been left in relative tatters, and still they’re pushing to advance to the playoffs. Now, when you’re thinking about the Angels, you have to think about Mike Trout, and he’s been very obviously the best player on the team. Andrelton Simmons, too, has had an outstanding five-odd months. But teams need to have some manner of pitching. The Angels have had to find ways to survive.

It’s the rotation that’s been depleted in particular. As I write this, the Angels rotation ranks 28th in baseball in WAR, with only the White Sox and Reds down below them. Out of curiosity, I pulled up every single individual team-season since 1950. For every team in every season, I identified the starting pitcher with the highest WAR. The Angels’ starter with the highest WAR this year stands at 1.2. That currently has the Angels ranked third from the bottom, in terms of having the worst best starter. And I should say, while there are a few weeks left to play out, that guy at 1.2 is done for the season. So if a pitcher will surpass 1.2, it’ll have to be somebody else. The 1983 Padres rank lowest, among teams that finished at least .500. Their best starter had a WAR of 1.6.

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The Shohei Ohtani show has unofficially begun. After missing over a month with a thigh issue, Ohtani returned to the mound two weeks ago, with scouts from half of the Major League teams reportedly in attendance. For his start on Tuesday night, both Andrew Friedman and Jerry Dipoto were known to be in the stands to watch in person, a start in which Ohtani was clocked at 101 mph and allowed just one hit over 5.2 innings. And after that start, reports from Japan have begun to suggest that there’s an agreement in place for Nippon to post Ohtani this winter, clearing him to come to the Majors for the 2018 season.

Yahoo’s Jeff Passan has a good breakdown of the situation.

It isn’t about the money. Athletes reflexively say this, and sports fans roll their eyes, because of course it’s about the money. It’s always about the money. Then along comes Shohei Ohtani, 23 years old, the finest baseball player Japan has produced in years, maybe decades, a once-in-a-generation sort who can throw 102 mph and hit tape-measure home runs, a player whose free-market value would start at $200 million if Major League Baseball didn’t restrict the signings of international players under 25 to barely $10 million.

Only Ohtani, it seems, does not mind the prospect of giving up literally hundreds of millions of dollars to play in the greatest league in the world. Multiple reports out of Japan on Wednesday morning there said the same thing: Ohtani, who has been called the Japanese Babe Ruth, will enter the posting system this winter and play for a major league team in 2018. This came as no surprise to the general managers and scouts who have flocked in recent weeks to watch him pitch for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. It also didn’t lessen their excitement any.

“It’s really happening,” one GM said, half-mocking, half-giddy at the prospect of the 23-year-old spicing up the free agent market this winter. And fascinating as his courtship would be in normal circumstances, the prospect of the best player available signing one of the most piddling contracts makes it unlike any free agency sports has seen: One where it literally isn’t about the money.

Because last year’s CBA raised the age of international prospects covered by the bonus-pool system to 25, Ohtani isn’t eligible for true unrestricted free agency for two more years. Rather than wait that long — and as a pitcher, two more years of good health is no guarantee — Ohtani will reportedly be posted this winter and then sign under the same rules by which 16-year-olds are bound. He’ll receive a signing bonus of some size (up to about $10 million) depending on which club he ultimately joins and then sign a standard uniform player contract that binds him to the arbitration system until he accrues six years of service time.

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