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The A’s figured 2015 would be a competitive year, and though there have been plenty of encouraging signs, at some point there’s just not enough time left to expect bad luck to reverse itself. The Astros, meanwhile, figured 2015 would be a competitive year, but maybe not this much of a competitive year, so they found themselves considering the market of short-term upgrades. So it is that a surprising A’s team and a surprising Astros team have come together on a move: Scott Kazmir is going to Houston, and now the league-wide trade market is open.

He’s not the first big-leaguer to be moved. Juan Uribe got swapped. Mark Trumbo got swapped. Welington Castillo got swapped a couple of times. But this is the first real deadline move, with the A’s conceding that it’s time for them to sell. Kazmir’s a free agent in a few months, but the Astros weren’t turned off by that. If anything, they were seeking that out. Rentals tend to cost less, and Kazmir provides important rotation insurance. The guys the A’s are getting are named Jacob Nottingham and Daniel Mengden. You’re probably not familiar with either, but that doesn’t mean the A’s just got robbed.

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With significant deadline trades, we’re going to attempt to provide an evaluation of the prospects changing teams from both Kiley McDaniel’s scouting perspective and Chris Mitchell’s statistical breakdowns. The numerical breakdown of both players appears below Kiley’s write-ups.

Today, the Houston Astros officially decided to go for it, acquiring Scott Kazmir from the A’s in exchange for for A-Ball prospects RHP Daniel Mengden and C Jacob Nottingham. Both were late cuts from my preseason prospect list list, which by Opening Day, with the Evan Gattis trade and losing Delino DeShields in the Rule 5 draft, included 22 players.

Both players were among the group of six given 35+ FV grades, so they were both in the 23-28 range in Houston’s system entering the year. I don’t have inside info on how the negotiations went down, but I’m guessing Kazmir was long a target for Houston (as they took a run at him this offseason) and Oakland was holding out for a top 10 prospect in the Astros organization. Based on the preseason rankings, this will look like a light return, but given Nottingham’s breakout season, they did indeed land a guy who would have ranked in the Astros top 10 if the list was re-done today.

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Last week at Grantland, two friends of the show in Jonah Keri and Nick Piecoro had a wonderful discussion about all things Arizona Diamondbacks, including the Touki Toussaint trade that caused many a skeptical eyebrow to be raised in the Diamondbacks’ direction. While Keri and Piecoro by no means endorsed the Diamondbacks’ recent moves, they brought up an interesting perspective on Arizona’s willingness to spend big on Cuban players Yasmany Tomas and Yoan Lopez — and thus easily eclipsing their allotted international bonuses — without spending much on international free agents from other countries. The idea: there’s a relatively slim chance that Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart — or any other general manager for any other team — would still be working in their current position when today’s 16-year-old reaches the majors. While the fan no doubt cringes at the thought of a general manager romping around the front office with nary a concern for the franchise’s sustained success, one can definitely empathize with the human instinct for self-preservation.

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As I write this, the Mets are a couple games back from a National League wild-card slot. They’re also just a couple games out of first place in the NL East, and they’re beating the Nationals in the eighth inning. As I wrote that, the lead was blown, and now things are all tied up, but the bigger point is that things are close. Regardless of how the game ends today, the Mets have a good shot at going to the playoffs. It’s true that the Nationals have been hurt by injuries. But the Mets, too, have had to deal with a lot of problems, so it’s not like they’re just benefiting from Washington’s misfortune. It’s a winnable division, and oh, by the way, here’s a screenshot of Bryce Harper, and a screenshot of his subsequent swing:

So there’s a sense of urgency. I see now the Mets are losing to the Nationals, 4-3. That’s bad. Anyway, there’s a sense of urgency, as people want the Mets to upgrade so that they don’t waste the pitching they’re getting. Due in part to all those injuries, the lineup has struggled. The Mets could use a bat, and in left field, they’ve got an aching Michael Cuddyer and a handful of backups. There are some rumors connecting the Mets to second-tier outfielders on the market, like Gerardo Parra and Will Venable. Yet there’s also some momentum to stay internal. The Mets, it seems, are now thinking more about promoting top prospect Michael Conforto. It could even happen within the next 24 hours. The hope is that Conforto might provide the jolt the offense so desperately needs. It would save the front office from having to make a trade.

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“I’ll be honest. I think pulling the ball is the best way to get hits,” Charlie Blackmon said before a game against the Athletics, as we went over the various changes in his hitting profile from year to year. Maybe that’s baseball 101, but going the opposite way has its prominent supporters.

In the age of the shift, though, is Blackmon’s assertion itself still so obvious? Pull the ball a ton and you’ll end up seeing more defenders where you want the ball to go. Unless you have a certain skill that has fallen out of favor in baseball.

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The All-Star Game is behind us, which means everyone now is paying attention to the coming trade deadline. The appeal, I think, is about two things: One, we’re just engineered to crave roster change. Two, we’re led to believe this is when winners are made. Or at least, this is when winners do something that puts them over the hump; and this is when losers can try to collect prospects. For the next week and a half, the trade deadline will be the most important thing. Regardless of whether it deserves that status, this is the annual routine. Right now, it’s all about possible moves.

Related to that, Bob Nightengale caused a stir with his report that the Detroit Tigers might sell — and might therefore sell David Price. It’s significant not just because the Tigers don’t usually sell, but also because Price is an ace, and available aces are diamonds every July. Consensus is that there’s no sexier addition than a No. 1 starter, which is why there’s also so much attention on Johnny Cueto and Cole Hamels. And Jeff Samardzija and James Shields, and so on. The idea is that a front-line starter becomes even more valuable in the playoffs. And people are inclined to believe that, in the playoffs, pitching is what matters most. So this time of year, the supposedly most desirable pieces are the best and most durable arms.

This calls for a simple analysis. Actually, this calls for a very deep and thorough analysis, but I’m not very good at those. A simple analysis is the fallback. Front-line starters have been traded midseason before. What’s happened with the teams that got them?

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Last Monday, at Just A Bit Outside, I looked into this year’s positional rookie class, and the fact that they were the best first-half class in the past ten years when measured by Wins Above Replacement. They have more overall total WAR, more individuals with over 1.0 WAR, and represent the first rookie class in at least a decade to have two rookies with over 3.0 WAR in the first half (Kris Bryant and Joc Pederson).

In short, this is a sort of renaissance year for positional rookies, and the article led me to wonder just how great 2015’s rookies are when compared to a larger sample of years, and a larger number of criteria. So here we are!

We’re going to be focusing mainly on positional players in today’s piece, as they’re really the standout group this season; rookie pitchers are having an about average year (by WAR) compared to years in this past decade, so that’s a topic for another day. As a primer, I’ll provide two charts from last week’s piece to get the ball rolling, and to get us up to speed with what was already covered.

First, I took the top-20 rookies by first-half WAR for each season in the past decade and looked at combined WAR:

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The adage that power is the last tool to develop floats around every year when trying to explain why a certain prospect has or has not realized his raw power in game situations. When I first heard the idea, it made sense. A hitter’s power develops as he gets stronger getting into his early-to-mid-20s, and… that was enough for me. The problem with this concept is that many of these hitters whose power we expect to develop sometime in the future already have the ability, just not the means to use it regularly. It’s not, in other words, merely a matter of getting it done in the weight room. And oftentimes, the smooth-stroking high-average doubles hitter never gets any attention for his power, then becomes a home-run monster as he matures. As an evaluator you need to understand how that happens and when it applies to individual hitters.

For this noninclusive inquiry, I wanted to look at two hitters lumped into the first group, those believed to have the raw power to be legitimate home-run hitters and how that power has or hasn’t manifested itself in the professional game. In looking at how hitters are able or unable to tap into their raw power skills, we can have a better idea of how to evaluate whether other players will be able to develop those skills into tangible results. Xander Bogaerts and Carlos Correa provide two excellent examples of this paradigm. Bogaerts has shown he can hit for moderate power in the minors against age-advanced competition, but has not yet brought it to Boston in his young career. Correa has started to showcase his power in the early going this year, though prior to this season it was more projection than demonstration. He was touted as a five-tool prospect going into the draft, and our own Kiley McDaniel graded him out in October as having a present 60 raw power tool (65 potential) with a 55 potential game power ability, or approximately 19-22 homers per season.

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Pitch names aren’t very imaginative. What is a fastball but a ball that’s thrown fast? The ball, in fact, thrown the fastest, relative to the curveball — which curves — or to the knuckleball — thrown as if off the knuckles. The changeup is also entirely explained by the name, although this one requires you know something about another pitch. The changeup is supposed to change things up, when a hitter is looking for a fastball. It’s supposed to represent a change of speed. Absent a fastball, a changeup is nothing but a slower fastball. The changeup needs to change something up to survive.

The game has seen a lot of pitchers. For the overwhelming majority of them, we’re sitting on pretty limited information. Surely, there have been some outliers over the years, pitchers who have done unusual things with their pitches. According to conventional wisdom, a good changeup needs to be about 8 mph to 10 mph slower than the fastball. Anything less than that, it’s thought, and there’s not enough of a change of speed. The best-known exception to this idea is Felix Hernandez, who’s been known to throw changeups in the low-90s. Felix’s changeup is one of the best in the game, so he’s served as evidence that there’s more than one way to throw a hitter off with a change. Henderson Alvarez specifically cited Felix as the reason he’s willing to throw his own changeup harder. It can be rewarding to push the limits.

Zack Greinke, too, is pushing the limits. Obviously, he’s pushing the limits of un-scored-upon-ness. But he’s also become a lot more like Felix than you might have realized.

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As I have done a few times before, I’m going to present Twitter analytics for Major League Baseball team twitter accounts concerning fan engagement. In the initial off-season analysis, the Mariners had the most fan engagement over the off-season. In May, the Cubs blew all the other teams away by responding to fans, and the Yankees scored at the bottom both times.

This post will expand upon the original engagement metrics (retweets, replies, media and favorites) and add emoji metrics. I’ve addressed emojis before, albeit briefly in regard to which emojis different fanbases used, but this analysis will look specifically at team’s social media accounts.

The interaction metrics, replies, retweets and favorites, measure how often the team interacts with fans. A reply requires the most time and retweets are a form of endorsement. These both create more engagement than a favorite. The inclusion of media and emoji does not denote a personal interaction, but they communicate in a different way than text does. Images and video can show behind-the-scenes actions, lineup cards, or highlights. Emoji, while sometimes criticized for being silly, are continually changing digital media, facilitating the communication of emotion. The fire emoji in particular is use to denote “hot” players, strikeouts or outstanding plays.

The tweets used in this analysis were collected from June 15, 2015 to the All-Star break (July 16, 2015). I detailed the original collections methods the first post. I added to these methods by counting the number of tweets that contain emojis and denoted if there was a fire emoji used. I omitted any retweets from both the emojis metrics in order to capture the emoji use of each specific team. The general emoji metric is a count of tweets with any emojis in it, and the fire emoji metric is the count of tweets with a fire emoji present.

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