There’s so much to like about Yasiel Puig, and the season he’s having in 2017. He has a career-high rate of walks, and a career-low rate of strikeouts. He has a career-high isolated power, and he also has a career-high 12 stolen bases. He’s remained, for the most part, totally healthy, even on a team that makes liberal use of the disabled list, and Puig’s even got easy career-best marks in both defensive runs saved and UZR. In so many different ways, Puig’s game is looking more polished. Yet his WAR is simply a hair over 2.

There’s only one thing that has held back that number. I mean, all right, sure, Puig could stand to have a higher BABIP. He’d look better if he gathered some missing singles. But there’s just one area where Puig doesn’t look good. If you know how WAR is calculated, you’re probably one step ahead, but I should issue some quick background context. Some numbers around these parts have changed.

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The Royals last scored in the bottom of the second inning of their game against the Rockies last Thursday. Brandon Moss hit a home run, and the Royals went ahead 2-0. Since then, the Royals have played the better part of five games, and after the Moss dinger, the Royals as a team have been outscored 35-0. They lost the Rockies game, and of course they lost the subsequent four. The Royals offense has managed 43 straight scoreless innings. Is that bad? Jeffrey Flanagan and Bill Chastain have the facts.

The Royals, who lost their fifth straight, now have been shut out in 43 straight innings, the longest such streak in Major League Baseball since the mound was lowered after 1968. The previous mark was 42 by both the 1983 Phillies and the 1985 Astros. The ’79 Phillies were blanked in 39 innings. The all-time mark is 48 by the 1968 Cubs and the 1906 A’s.

We’re dealing with an active, modern-day baseball record. This is a developing era of offensive rejuvenation, powered by the league-wide resurgence of the home run. Within that context, the Royals haven’t scored in a long-ass time. It’s not even that the record is now 43. It’s that the record will be at least 43. The Royals play again tonight. You wouldn’t think they’d be blanked in a game started by Alex Cobb, but they’ve just been blanked in games started by Ryan Merritt and Austin Pruitt. Sometimes it’s not up to the pitcher.

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Chicago White Sox right-hander Mike Pelfrey is a survivor of Tommy John surgery, but only in the technical sense of having returned to a major-league mound after having undergone the procedure. Prior to going under the knife, the 6-foot-7 right-hander was a solid, midrotation starter for the New York Mets. Since surgery, however, he’s been a shell of his old self. Pitching for the Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, and now the White Sox, Pelfrey is 18-47 with a 4.99 ERA over his last four-plus seasons.

Age-wise, he isn’t over the hill. The former first-round pick is still just 33 years old. And while his arm feels strong, it also feels… different. Pelfrey can’t quite put a finger on it, but ever since his ulnar collateral ligament — and subsequently an ulnar nerve — were repaired, something has been amiss. A dozen years — and countless pitches — into his big-league career, he has limited control over where the ball is going to go once it leaves his hand.

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Mike Pelfrey on his post-surgery command issues: “There’s been a little more adversity than I would like. Early in my career I was more of a power-sinker guy — I was about 75% fastballs — and my command was a lot better. In 2012, I ended up getting hurt. My elbow blew out after three starts, and I had Tommy John surgery. I’ve never been the same since. My command hasn’t quite been the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Things are going well for Arizona starter Zack Godley. He’s among the top 25 of all pitchers this year no matter how you measure value, his team comfortably occupies the first Wild Card spot, and he’s outperforming expectations. Some of those expectations might have been muted because, at first glance, he looks like a run-of-the-mill sinker/breaking-ball pitcher without a sufficiently good changeup to battle lefties. But then you look at the results on his change and you’re tempted to tinker, to suggest he should throw it more. Dig a little deeper, though, and things aren’t as clear.

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This is Ashley MacLennan’s fifth piece as part of her August residency at FanGraphs. Ashley is a staff writer for Bless You Boys, the SB Nation blog dedicated to the Detroit Tigers, and runs her own site at 90 Feet From Home. She can also be found on Twitter. She’ll be contributing regularly here over the next month. Read the work of all our residents here.

When the Detroit Tigers acquired Mikie Mahtook from the Tampa Bay Rays in January for a player to be named later – a player who would be Drew Smith – there wasn’t a lot of expectation for the role he would play on the team. Mahtook, 27, had spent the bulk of his career to that point in the Rays’ minor-league system, seeing only limited major-league reps in 2015 and 2016.

The Tigers, who had traded everyday center fielder Cameron Maybin to the Los Angeles Angels during the offseason, needed some outfield depth and were looking for a player whom they could partner with Tyler Collins and potentially JaCoby Jones, the latter of whom had shown promise in spring training. Mahtook was never intended to become a full-time center fielder. Thanks to a subpar 2016, during which he posted a grim .195/.231/.292 in 65 games, expectations for his performance were low.

The new recruit did little to defy those expectation early in the season. His April was uninspiring, his May even worse. (He recorded a line of just .179/.179/.321 over 28 plate appearances in May.) Then, in June, everything started to change. His playing time doubled and he began hitting. He produced a .333/.333/.529 slash line that month; in July, he hit an even better .346/.422/.538.

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The Twins demoted a struggling Byron Buxton, once the consensus top prospect in the game, twice last season.

The first occasion was on April 25th, after 17 games and 13 starts. Buxton was batting .156. The Twins dispatched Buxton again to Rochester, N.Y., on August 6th after Buxton had played in 63 games — 59 starts — and was slashing .193/.247/.315.

On April 25th of this season, Buxton was again struggling mightily, batting .133.

After a strong finish last season, he had issues right out of the gate this season.

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In Sunday’s game against the Pirates, Joey Votto batted five times, without recording an official at-bat. He drew five walks, none of which were intentional. It wasn’t actually the only time Votto has drawn five walks in a game in his career. It wasn’t actually the only time a player has drawn five walks in a game this season. And it didn’t actually tie a single-game walk record, thanks to Jimmie Foxx. Five walks in five trips is rare and notable. This, though — this is what really put the Votto game over the top.

If Votto bats again, record for 5 PA or fewer is 43 pitches seen. D’Angelo Jimenez, 9/7/2001

— Joe Block (@joe_block) August 27, 2017

Joey Votto batted five times and walked five times while drawing 43 pitches. Now, most articles don’t want to begin by comparing some current player to D’Angelo Jimenez. That’s not exactly a one-way ticket to Traffictopia. But pitch-by-pitch data has existed for nearly three decades. Votto just equaled a modern-day record while notching a four-digit OBP. For this one day, more than any other, Joey Votto was exhausting.

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With the proliferation of both professional and amateur coverage, it’s more difficult than ever for something to happen off of the radar. There are simply too many eyes for much of anything to go unnoticed, and in case you’re unconvinced, think about how much you already know about Rhys Hoskins. Thank about how much you’ve already read about Byron Buxton, or about Giancarlo Stanton’s home-run pace. If something happens in baseball, it’s going to generate content. That content will find its way to your computer or phone. You’re connected, so you know what’s going on.

And yet, there’s this one thing. I swear that I’m not pulling your leg, and I know this is true because I triple-checked the numbers. I was as surprised as you are right now. Today is Monday, August 28. Let’s go back to May 28 — that’s a nice, clean, even three months. Who’s been the best team in baseball over the past three months? That’s easy. The Dodgers. Everyone knows that. Who’s been the second-best team in baseball over the past three months? That’s less easy.

Only the Dodgers have had a better record than the Marlins. Sure, that gap is enormous. The Dodgers are way better than the Marlins are. But the Marlins are right there, numbering among the elite. You can forgive yourself if you hadn’t been aware. It took a while for me, myself, and this is my job. But all those Stanton home runs haven’t been taking place in isolation. There’s a whole baseball team around that guy, and it’s fresh off a weekend three-game sweep.

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You’ve probably noticed that Giancarlo Stanton has been on fire lately. After hitting exactly seven home runs in each of the first three months of the season, he powered up and hit 12 in July, the most home runs anyone had hit in a month this season besides Cody Bellinger’s 13 in June. But that was just him getting warmed up, because after his home run yesterday, he’s already hit 17 in August.

Since July 1st, Stanton has hit 29 home runs. Nelson Cruz, in second place, has hit 17. Nolan Arenado and Charlie Blackmon, who are tied for sixth-most home runs hit since the beginning of July, have combined to hit 28. And they play in Colorado. Stanton is, by himself, hitting bombs at the rate of two power hitters on hot streaks who get to play at altitude.

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PITTSBURGH — FanGraphs alum and MLB.com analyst Mike Petriello authored the following tweet last October. The social-media missive is pinned to his Twitter profile — and rightfully so, because it’s funny, and humor is often rooted in some truth.

The truth, in this case, is that Kenley Jansen has dominated with one pitch like few before him — specifically, with a cutter that he’s thrown 86.0% of the time this year and 88.4% of the time over his carer. Jansen’s usage has invited natural comparisons to Mariano Rivera’s own approach for years. Jansen has become dominant in Rivera-like fashion and now just requires ultimate postseason success to further raise his profile.

I showed Jansen the tweet recently in the visiting clubhouse at PNC Park. To get a better look, he took my iPhone in his massive catcher’s mitt of a left hand and examined it. He could have crushed it like a soda can and returned the fragments to me. I waited in suspense for his reaction.

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