In retrospect, it was inevitable. Monday night, Bartolo Colon did what once looked to be impossible and drew the first walk of his major league career. The all-time leader in plate appearances without drawing a single free pass stepped to the plate in the fourth inning against Diamondbacks pitcher Robbie Ray and seven pitches later the history books were rewritten.

It was a bittersweet moment for me. Seeing a 43-year-old player achieve something on the baseball diamond for the first time is always thrilling, but this achievement also brought an end to one of my favorite streaks. In June, I wrote about Bartolo Colon’s record-setting game in celebration of an accomplishment I’d actively watched develop for months. The problem with records like these, however, is that it takes just one plate appearance to undo everything. Ben Revere had an incredible stretch with zero career home runs… until he didn’t. Bartolo Colon had an incredible stretch with zero career walks… until Monday. One of these days, Matt Albers and Ryan Webb may even draw a save and put an end to their remarkable streaks.

During Colon’s record-setting game — his record-setting plate appearance, to be even more precise – he provided a hint that this record would not be long-lived. The previous (and now current) record holder was Tracy Stallard whose career ended with zero walks in 258 plate appearances. When Colon tied Stallard’s record, not only had he never drawn a walk, he’d worked just six three-ball counts over those 258 plate appearances. So, naturally, in the record-breaking 259th PA, Colon worked a full count.

As it turns out, the impeccably timed three-ball count wasn’t a mere fluke, but instead was indicative of a significant shift in Colon’s approach at the plate. In his first two seasons with the Mets, Colon posted a 51.6 Swing% which was the 95th highest among 546 batters with 130+ plate appearances. This season, his Swing% has plummeted to 41.2% which ranks 446th among 517 batters with 40+ plate appearances. Although his Contact% has also dropped from a bad 63.5% in his first two seasons to an atrocious 48.5% this year, going from a guy who swung too much and rarely made contact to a guy who swung rarely and hardly ever made contact was enough to set up the inevitability of a base on balls.

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I awoke to the news of the Jay Bruce trade’s initial iteration, one that included Brandon Nimmo, a prospect on whom the industry is, at best, lukewarm. The new version of the deal is headlined by Dilson Herrera who, because of the number of plate appearances he’s recorded in the big leagues, is technically not a prospect anymore. But he played in this month’s Futures Game and has spent all of 2016 in the minors and writing one more scouting report after this trade deadline won’t bring me any closer to insanity than I’ve already come, so let’s talk about Dilson Herrera.

Herrera signed as an international free agent out of Colombia with Pittsburgh back in 2010. He received a $220,000 bonus. In 2013, he played in his first Futures Game before becoming part of the Marlon Byrd waiver deal later that August. Herrera reached the big leagues at age 20 and has had brief stints with the Mets during each of the past two seasons.

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As it has been the past few years, the 2016 non-waiver trade deadline brought about a flurry of activity that was hard to keep up with even if it was the only thing you were doing. Since most of us have other things that we have to or would like to occupy our time with, we figured we would save you some hassle and create an omnibus post with all of our trade deadline content so that you have it all in one place. For clarity’s sake, I’m going to limit this to articles about trades that actually took place.

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Going into this trade deadline season, you might have thought that the Mets could use a fifth starter, or a center fielder with good glove and bat combo, or a third baseman, but instead they went and got another corner outfielder when they traded 22-year-old infielder Dilson Herrera and another minor leaguer for the Reds’ Jay Bruce.

Since the Mets have an affordable $13m option on Bruce next season, it may be a look ahead in case Yoenis Cespedes opts out of his contract. But in the meantime, Bruce makes for an uneasy fit on this roster. Sort of. Because he’s also perfect for the team, in that he’s just like the rest of the team. He makes them more like themselves.

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The Mets have been scuffling for quite a while now. After posting an impressive 15-7 record in April, they have gone 38-41 since May 1st and currently sit in third place behind the Nationals and Marlins. They’re still very much alive in the playoff race — our playoff odds give them a 32.8% chance of making it at least as far as the wild-card game — but, to state the obvious, they’re beginning to run out of time to get themselves back into playoff position. Suddenly, every loss is placed under a microscope and, over the past two days, that’s been an unfortunate development for closer Jeurys Familia.

On Wednesday night, Familia blew his first (regular season) save in almost exactly a year and then, roughly 18 hours later, he blew another. The outings themselves aren’t particularly important. There was a mix of command problems, hard-hit balls, and horrendous batted-ball luck over a span of 13 batters faced. What is important, though, is taking stock of Familia’s season as a whole and what has or hasn’t changed for the pitcher who suddenly emerged as an elite back-of-the-bullpen arm during the Mets’ stretch run a year ago.

If you remember one thing about the profile of 2015 Jeurys Familia, it’s probably that he developed and began utilizing a pitch unlike anything anyone else threw in baseball. As outlined by Jeff Sullivan last October, Familia added a splitter averaging 94 mph to his arsenal in mid-August. No one throws a splitter in the mid-90s — that’s not a thing people do. And yet there was Familia suddenly incorporating this devastating pitch just in time for the most significant stretch of Mets baseball in a decade and a half.

What made Familia particularly dominant was that he paired this new absurd splitter with an already unfair sinker. His upper-90s fastball with stellar movement was (and is) a devastating pitch in its own right. In fact, during yesterday afternoon’s rough outing, the pitch was on display in all its glory:

Ninety-eight mph with extreme run? Yeah, that’ll play. He generates 28.7% whiffs per swing on the pitch, which is second only to Zach Britton’s otherworldly 40.8% rate. When batters do make contact on Familia’s sinker, it’s typically in the form of a grounder. In fact, his sinker is generating grounders this season at the highest rate of his career per BrooksBaseball.

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Every spring, hopeful starters talk of new pitches with a gleam in their eyes. This changeup will change everything, they think. Then it comes to competitive games, and they don’t want to get beat on their fourth-best pitch, and everything goes back to where it was.

Detroit rookie Michael Fulmer had a similar story. He was flashing a plus changeup in bullpens, but not throwing it much in games. Then something changed, but he’s not sure what. From Anthony Fenech at the Detroit Free Press:

Michael Fulmer doesn’t know what happened.

He threw about 30 change-ups in one of his bullpen sessions before his start against the Rays on May 21 and something clicked.

Now, his catchers keep calling for that change-up.

“Sometimes, I’m shaking away from the change-up and they’re giving it to me again,” Fulmer said. “So, I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll throw it right here,’ and it usually works out, so by them calling it more, it’s giving me more options.”

I published a ranking last week at ESPN of the best pitches thrown by starters. Fulmer’s change doesn’t appear among the top ten. But it does appear 11th overall — and, for him, it’s impressive to see his third pitch turn up as one of the league’s best among starters (judged by z-scores for grounders and whiffs with a double weighting on whiffs).

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A few months back, Jeff Sullivan asked me what type of baseball dork I am. A big one, is probably the answer, but Jeff was inquiring on a more specific level. He asked: hitting or pitching? I answered: defense. It’s what I was best at when I played the game. It’s what my favorite players did best growing up. It’s the area of the game, analytically speaking, which most interests me. I derive more pleasure doing deep dives on defense in cases of dissenting opinion — talking about guys like Eric Hosmer, Jose Iglesias, or Jay Bruce — probably moreso than any other type of post I write. This won’t be a super deep dive. This is more of an observation, some video, and maybe a few chuckles. With Bartolo Colon, there’s always some chuckles. We’re all Bartolo Colon dorks.

Because I’m a defense dork, I hand out my own Gold Glove Awards at the end of each year, which really are just the numbers’ Gold Glove Awards, because all the different defensive metrics in one is all I use for those posts. And so, because I do that at the end of each season for the posts, I often find myself doing it at the midway point of each season, as well, just to see. I bring this up because I just did it, and that’s why this post exists. Because here’s how the pitchers currently grade out:

Total Defensive Runs, Pitchers

1. Bartolo Colon, +3.8 runs saved
2. Zack Greinke, +3.6
3. Dallas Keuchel, +3.2
4. Tyler Chatwood, +3.0
5. Justin Verlander, +2.9

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You’ll hear some hitters say that you can’t cover both the inside and the outside parts of the plate at the same time. We heard Marcus Semien talk about the difficulty both of being able to pull for power and also take the outside pitches to the opposite field just last week. And, to some extent, the high and low fastballs require different swings that suit different players. Brandon Moss told us about his problems with high fastballs, and Brian Dozier admitted that his swing was better against the high cheese.

It stands to reason — at least for the benefit of our exploration today — that a balanced hitter would be one who could handle pitches in all four quadrants. They would produce good results against high fastballs, low fastballs, inside fastballs, and outside fastballs. Conveniently, that sounds like something we can measure.

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Three seasons ago, Matt Harvey was one of the best pitchers in all of major-league baseball. Over 26 starts, his 2.00 FIP was the best among all starters. His 2.27 ERA placed behind only Clayton Kershaw and Jose Fernandez’s marks by that measure. Despite a relative deficit of innings, Harvey’s 6.5 WAR was third among pitchers behind only Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright.

The reason for that low-ish innings total? A partially torn UCL that ended Harvey’s season in August and ultimately required Tommy John surgery. Rehab kept Harvey off the mound for the entire 2014 campaign, as well, but he came back strong in 2015, posting a 2.71 ERA (82 ERA-) and 3.05 FIP (80 FIP-), and proved instrumental in getting the New York Mets into the World Series.

The 2016 campaign has been an up-and-down one for Harvey — and will feature much more down than up going forward, as reports indicate that the right-hander will undergo surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. For the Mets, the loss of Harvey is a threat to their postseason odds. For Harvey himself, it’s a threat to his career.

On May 20, Eno Sarris wondered, What’s Wrong with Matt Harvey? His conclusion: that maybe the slider wasn’t quite as good as it had been, by movement or location, and that a little bit of work on that pitch might right the ship. For a time after that, Harvey appeared to have gotten things in order. In five starts beginning May 30, Harvey went at least six innings in every start, striking out 25 against five walks with a 2.25 ERA and 2.08 FIP. His strikeouts were down a bit from last year in that stretch (25% to 21%), but his walks also decreased (7% to 4%).

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Let’s face it: As the Mets go, there’s no shortage of things to worry about. The team overall remains in a decent position, but now there’s concern regarding two pitchers’ elbows. Meanwhile, Matt Harvey still doesn’t quite look like himself. David Wright is probably done for the year. And the lineup just isn’t producing runs. Injuries haven’t helped, and Michael Conforto’s collapse didn’t help, but the pitchers are getting so little margin of error. Things in New York are frequently tense. They’re tense today. It feels a little like last season, before the season turned beautiful.

I can’t say anything about Steven Matz. I can’t say anything about Noah Syndergaard. I can’t say much about the various injuries, or about Conforto’s chances of getting it going. I don’t know where the Mets are going to go, and their struggles have helped open the door for the Marlins. What I can say is this: Offensively speaking, the Mets have been impossibly unclutch. It shouldn’t continue like this. Of course, what’s done is done.

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