At 53-53, the Rays aren’t bad, but they’re also not anywhere close to the race. At 54-52, the Cardinals aren’t much better, but a wild-card slot remains within reach. Given that, you’d think, if anything, the Cardinals would be improving, while the Rays would be selling. Instead, we have a trade that goes in the other direction. It’s a little bit of a surprising deadline maneuver, yet the Rays are gearing up for a run next season. And the Cardinals are just making more room for Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill. I’ll give you the specifics:

Rays get:

• Tommy Pham
• $500,000 international bonus-pool money

Cardinals get:

• Justin Williams
• Genesis Cabrera
• Roel Ramirez

On the surface, you can understand the Cardinals’ perspective here. Pham is 30 years old, and his numbers don’t look like they did last season. Pham and the organization haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, and besides, Bader looks like one of the better defensive outfielders in either league, so it makes sense to play him more often. I can see why they might’ve wanted to make a trade. Still, it feels like they’ve sold Pham low. The Rays are getting a possible difference-maker here, and you don’t have to dig too far into the numbers to see it.

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This post has been updated to reflect the Washington Post’s latest report about Harper’s availability.

Last week, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Nationals, who at the time were 50-51, “might need to win three of its next four games in Miami to stave off growing internal pressure to sell.” While the team trounced the Marlins in the series’ first two games, they lost the final two, capped by a two-hit shutout by Jose Urena and three relievers on Sunday. Now 52-53, they’re 5.5 games back in the NL East and six back in the Wild Card race. On Monday night, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported that they’ve made it known that pending free agent Bryce Harper is available:

[Update] On Tuesday morning, via the Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo proclaimed the team’s intention to keep Harper:

Mike Rizzo just reached out with this message:

"Bryce is not going anywhere. I believe in this team."

— Chelsea Janes (@chelsea_janes) July 31, 2018

Harper, of course, is not having his best season. Though he’s first in the league in walks (84) and second in homers (25), he has struggled like never before when it comes to hitting against infield shifts; both his .240 BABIP and 42 wRC+ in such situations are career lows. In all, he’s hit .220/.369/.473 for a 121 wRC+, down from a 139 career mark, and his 1.6 WAR in 103 games is less than half of last year’s 4.9 in 111 games.

Even before Janes’ report, FanCred’s Jon Heyman suggested that Rizzo may not have been earnest about moving the 25-year-old slugger:

That jibes with Rosenthal’s report, which suggested that money is at the root of the Nationals’ concerns, but that not all of the team’s decision-makers were onboard (a situation that may have changed in the ensuing days):

“According to sources, ownership is pushing Rizzo to sell, particularly with the Nationals projecting to be over the $197 million luxury-tax threshold. That ownership preference, first mentioned by MLB Network Radio’s Jim Duquette, is shared by some in the front office who believe it might be time to retool. Rizzo, however, is not inclined to concede, and other sources suggest ownership is simply ‘riding it out’ and waiting for Washington to play better.”

Per Cot’s Contracts, the Nationals’ payroll for luxury tax purposes is $208,548,348. As second-time offenders, they would pay a 30% penalty on the amount over the threshold, which comes to all of $3.46 million, about what they’re paying Howie Kendrick this year — peanuts, by major-league standards. For the sake of comparison, the Dodgers paid $36.2 million in taxes and penalties last year, the Nationals just $1.45 million.

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Roberto Osuna made his major-league debut in 2015. Since then, among all relievers with at least 100 innings, he ranks in the 88th percentile in park-adjusted ERA. Even better, he ranks in the 95th percentile in park-adjusted FIP, and he ranks in the 95th percentile in strikeout-minus-walk rate. For the most part, when Osuna has been able to pitch, he’s been very, very good, and he’s blossomed into one of the game’s better closers. It’s just that he hasn’t pitched in the majors since May 6. Not because of an injury — Osuna’s arm, presumably, is just fine. Rather, he’s currently serving out a 75-game suspension for domestic violence. He’s eligible to return this coming weekend.

The Astros want for Osuna to return wearing their uniform. And so Monday has brought news of a trade.

Astros get:

• Roberto Osuna

Blue Jays get:

• Ken Giles
• David Paulino
• Hector Perez

The Astros are trying to repeat as World Series champions, and they identified an opportunity to land a cost-controlled, elite young reliever. Osuna’s controlled another two years after this one. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, identified an opportunity to buy low on a cost-controlled, potentially elite reliever. Giles is also controlled another two years after this one. Paulino and Perez, as well, are intriguing power-armed prospects. As a baseball trade, there’s enough here to be fascinating. But this isn’t just a baseball trade.

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Over the past few weeks, the Brewers have seemed to be in desperate need of a new second baseman. With Asdrubal Cabrera, Brian Dozier, and Eduardo Escobar all available, the market looked promising for the Milwaukee. The Brewers, however, acquired none of them.

Instead, the club went another route, trading for third baseman Mike Moustakas. Milwaukee’s third baseman at the time was Travis Shaw. After arriving from Boston prior to the start of the 2017 season, Shaw has been pretty great for Milwaukee,producing a 118 wRC+ and 6.0 WAR. Those figures actually exceed Moustakas’ numbers during that time; the now former Royal has recorded a 110 wRC+ and 3.7 WAR during the same timeframe. In order to accommodate Moustakas, however, Shaw has moved from third base to second. It’s a roundabout way to solving the second-base problem. Is it an effective one, though?

Let’s figure out some reasonable expectations for Shaw and draw some too-early conclusions based on his first day on the job.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the nineteenth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Marco Estrada, Brad Hand, and Jake Odorizzi — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Marco Estrada (Blue Jays) on His Changeup

“I never really threw a changeup in high school or college. When I got to High-A, I met a kid named Clint Everts who threw a really good changeup, so I asked him how he held his. It was a pretty simple grip. I grabbed it and threw it a couple of times, and it came out pretty good. I actually took it into a game two or three days after that, and got a lot of swings and misses on it. That’s basically where it began.

“The way I hold it has been the same ever since, although I feel the action on it has been a little different lately — last year and this year. There’s a lot of talk about the balls being different and whatnot, and maybe that’s affecting it a little bit? But I just don’t feel that it’s been what it was. There are days where I throw a good one and kind of tell myself, “What did I do different?’ It felt the exact same, so, is it the ball? I don’t know what it could be.

Marco Estrada’s changeup grip.

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The purpose of this post is to announce that this week’s chat schedule — because of the deadline and also because of Kiley McDaniel’s extensive contract rider — is slightly different than during other weeks of the year. The amended schedule appears below, with times presented in the more sophisticated 24-hour format to reflect the sophistication of this site’s readers.

Monday
14:00 Dan Szymborski

Tuesday
12:00 Justin Mason
15:00 Kiley McDaniel and Travis Sawchik Deadline Chat
16:00 Brad Johnson

Wednesday
12:00 Jeff Sullivan

Thursday
12:00 Jay Jaffe
14:00 Eric Longenhagen

Friday
12:00 Meg Rowley
15:00 Paul Sporer

There are only 24-ish hours remaining until baseball’s trade deadline and, truth is, I’m a bit impatient. Until free agency opens up in about a hundred days or thereabouts, this is truly our last great opportunity to let our imaginations run wild. Sure, we can conjure up some fun trades in August, but our whimsical mind-meanderings just aren’t as exciting when all of the players we trade have to go through imaginary revocable waivers.

Against my worse judgment, to which I typically cater, I endeavored to make my last-minute deadline trades to retain at least a whiff of plausibility. So, no blockbuster Mike Trout deal, no winning Noah Syndergaard in a game of canasta, and no Rockies realizing that they have significant other needs other than the bullpen.

Bryce Harper to the Yankees

Washington’s playoff hopes have sunk to the extent that, even if you’re as optimistic as the FanGraphs depth charts are and believe the Phillies and Braves are truly sub-.500 teams as presently constructed, the Nats still only are a one-in-three shot to win the division. If you’re sunnier on Philadelphia or Atlanta, those Nats probabilities lose decimal places surprisingly quickly.

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Growing up, the closest minor-league club to me was the Richmond Braves. This was the late 90s and many top prospects who would go on to major-league careers came through town for a season. My scorebook from those years is filled with games that included former major leaguers Andruw Jones and Bruce Chen, along with lesser luminaries such as Wes Helms and Odalis Perez. The Braves moved to Gwinnett after the 2008 season, and the Flying Squirrels — the Giants’ Double-A affiliate — would move to Richmond in 2010.

The parade of prospects slowed a bit after the Flying Squirrels arrived. Buster Posey skipped Double-A, Brandon Belt’s 2010 breakout helped propel him to a top-100 prospect. However, without question, the biggest prospect who stayed in Richmond for any length of time was Kyle Crick. He arrived in 2014 as the 32nd-best prospect in baseball according to MLB.com. He proceeded, however, to stay in town for three seasons without being promoted or demoted. Needless to say, his prospect light dimmed during that period.

When Crick was promoted to Fresno in 2017, it was more out of a need to see if he had any chance of reaching the majors that season, as he was eligible to become a minor-league free agent at the end of the year. He would eventually make it to the Giants’ bullpen and then, later, to Pittsburgh as part of the Andrew McCutchen deal.

In Pittsburgh, Crick has become a serviceable bullpen option, combining with Richard Rodriguez and Felipe Vazquez to helm a bullpen unit that ranks among the league’s top 10 in K/9, FIP, and xFIP. The success of all three has been unexpected — Crick included, despite his prospect pedigree. By leaning on his long-held strengths and gaining a modicum of control over his weaknesses, Crick has been able to end his long minor-league odyssey and has found success in the majors, albeit in a role which he had hoped to avoid.

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They can’t all be Mike Trout, and this year, with the Millville Meteor posting a career-best 191 wRC+, the rest of the center-field pack has been as unproductive as any time in recent history. The collective 95 wRC+ recorded by all center fielders (including Trout) is the lowest it’s been since 2006, back when Trout was a high-school freshman.

Even with that fairly modest production, only a small handful of contenders — which for this series I’ve defined as teams with playoff odds of at least 15.0% (a definition that currently covers 15 teams) — are receiving less than 1.0 WAR from their center fielders, which makes them eligible for a spot among the Replacement-Level Killers.

By the way, since I don’t have anywhere else to put it — this is the last article in the series, since the RLK concept doesn’t work so neatly for pitchers and just one AL team has a DH who could be classified a Killer. Sorry if that was awkward; continue as you were…

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The outfield corners are traditionally home to heavy hitters. Currently, the combined wRC+ of MLB’s right fielders (108) is just a point below those of first basemen and AL designated hitters, with left fielders (105) lagging by a few points. The last of those is a bit strange given the inherently lesser defensive responsibilities — less throwing, mainly — but many teams have taken to stashing their speedy, slappy non-center fielders there, a trend that seems to have begun back when the White Sox won it all in 2005 with Scott Podsednik.

Despite that generally robust production, several contenders — which for this series I’ve defined as teams with playoff odds of at least 15.0% (a definition that currently covers 15 teams) — are barely getting by at one corner or another, by which I mean receiving less than 1.0 WAR at the spot, which makes them eligible for inclusion among the Replacement Level Killers. If you’re a regular reader of my work, it won’t surprise you that one contender is somehow on both lists… as well as a forthcoming one.

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