Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Royals are overachieving. They’d probably consider that an insult — I imagine they’d say they’re properly achieving — but the Royals have a winning record to go with a negative run differential, and right now they cling ever so barely to a would-be playoff spot. It’s a crowded race, to be sure, and the Royals could fall out of position any day, but they are very much in it. In what’s assumed to be the final ride with the current core, the Royals are again gunning for the playoffs, and they’re even within easy distance of the inarguably underachieving first-place Indians.

The Royals don’t have major young pieces to subtract. Nor do they have the budget flexibility to take on someone expensive. Yet, like any other team, the Royals have been looking to improve. Monday, they’ve done that. They just had to go to the Padres, and they’ve come away with a pretty fascinating stretch-run asset.

Royals get:

• Trevor Cahill
• Ryan Buchter
• Brandon Maurer

Padres get:

• Matt Strahm
• Travis Wood
• Esteury Ruiz

This is a package that includes several semi-familiar names, and Esteury Ruiz. Every single player is individually interesting, but it’s Cahill who most captures my attention. He’s a risk and a rental, but he could provide a jolt for the Kansas City starting staff.

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Can the home-run spike be enjoyed equally across the game?

Some hitters are in better position to take advantage of what might be a juiced ball. Some environments, like Yankee Stadium II and Chase Field, are more favorable to fly balls from the hitter’s perspective. With home-run rates rising per fly ball (HR/FB) across the game, however, it seems at times as though no park is immune to the invasion of the long ball. It seems like we’re running out of pitching-friendly environments.

So that brings me to the curious case of the Padres.

The Padres lead the National League in percentage of runs scored via the home run (46.2%). They Padres would have not been my first guess, but I asked FanGraphs’ own Joe Douglas to research teams’ share of runs off home runs and this is what he found:

Now, the Padres are also last in runs scored (305) — in large part because of their league-worst .295 on-base percentage — so it’s not as though this penchant for the long ball has translated directly to offensive proficiency. But the club ranks second in fly-ball percentage (37%), trailing only the outlier Mets (43%), and is tied for third in GB/FB ratio (1.20). The Padres, despite their home, are hunting fly balls and homers and are having some success.

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If you don’t follow the Padres, this might be the first time you’ve heard of Phil Maton. For that reason, we’ll start with the pronunciation of his name — it’s “May-tawn” — and the fact that he’s a 24-year-old right-hander whom San Diego drafted 597th overall in 2015 out of Louisiana Tech. Since being called up from Triple-A last month, he’s made 12 relief appearances, 11 of which have been scoreless.

And then there’s his calling card. Over 10.1 big-league innings, Maton’s four-seam spin rate has been 2,446 rpm, which is well above the MLB average of 2,222 rpm. For him, it’s actually lower than usual. According to Padres beat writer Dennis Lin, Maton’s spin rate was 2,572 in the minors last year, which would have ranked second to Matt Bush among big-league pitchers who threw at least 500 four-seam fastballs.

I saw the pitch in action, in Cleveland, on July 5. Facing the Indians, Maton threw 22 fastballs and three sliders while retiring five of the six batters he faced. He fanned three, with all of the strikeouts coming on his four-seam. Per usual, the pitch sat around 93 mph.

I talked to Maton prior to the game. Later, I spoke both with his pitching coach, Darren Balsley, and San Diego’s primary catcher, Austin Hedges. Those conversations centered around Maton’s explosive fastball and his work-in-progress slider. I also touched base with three of the Cleveland batters he faced — Jason Kipnis, Francisco Lindor, and Bradley Zimmer — to get their first impressions of the up-and-coming right-hander.

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Phil Maton: “I didn’t find out about [the spin rate] until I got drafted. When I was in short-season ball, the video guys told me that my spin rate was one of the highest they’d ever seen. At the time, I didn’t really think much of it. I was like, ‘Alright, cool, but I don’t really know how that helps me out.’ As I’ve progressed, I’ve realized that is what allows me to pitch up in the zone. My four-seam carries a little better, carries longer, than the average person’s four-seam.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Jacob Nix, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
Level: Hi-A Age: 21   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: HM
Line: 9 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 11 K

Notes
A groin strain sidelined Nix until late May. Since returning, his fastball has been in the mid-90s, touching 97, and his curveball flashes plus. He has an inning-eater’s build (I have a Jon Lieber comp on the body) and throws lots of strikes. He’s rather firmly an overall top-100 prospect.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Thomas Szapucki, LHP, New York NL (Profile)
Level: Low-A  Age: 21   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
Szapucki missed all of April and May with a shoulder injury. Sunday was his fourth start of the year and he worked more efficiently and missed more bats than he had in his previous three appearances. Szapucki already boasts a plus fastball/curveball combination and he’s a potential No. 3 starter if he can develop a changeup and/or plus command of his breaking ball. Should he fail to, then there’s some concern that Szapucki’s low-3/4 arm slot might be an issue against upper-level right-handed hitters and limit his effectiveness and role. He’s had a back and shoulder issue during his pro career and made many starts on extended rest. Sunday’s came with a full week between starts.

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It’s now been six years since Buster Posey lost most of the season due to a broken leg bone suffered in a home plate collision. Two years later, Major League Baseball adopted Rule 7.13 to deal with collisions at home plate, meaning we are now in the fourth year of the rule designed to prevent serious injuries like the one Posey suffered as well as limit the damaging effects of concussions. There are two parts to the rule, one for catchers and one for runners, and together, collisions at the plate have become pretty non-existent. That’s what makes Monday night’s collision–when Anthony Rizzo barreled down the line into Austin Hedges–notable. It’s now a rarity, but Rizzo’s play was in clear violation of the rule.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Dedgar Jimenez, LHP, Boston (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: NR   Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 8 H, 0 BB, 1 R, 7 K

Notes
Jimenez has 60 strikeouts and just 17 walks over 57.1 innings this year. He’s big — 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds — but is a good athlete who repeats his delivery and not only throws a lot of strikes but often throws them exactly where he intends to. His stuff is fringey, his best pitch an average slider which he uses heavily, and he’s surviving purely off of command right now. Without any physical projection, it’s hard to envision him competing at upper levels with this stuff, even if he has plus command.

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When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.

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Hunter Renfroe had a huge game last night. The Padres outfielder hammered a two-run double in the second inning and followed with a two-run homer in the 10th. The latter was a walk-off, giving San Diego a 6-5 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. The blast was his seventh on the season, tying him with Josh Bell and Cody Bellinger for the lead among NL rookies.

Renfroe’s overall numbers aren’t great — his slash line is .217/.273/.406 — but he’s showing signs of breaking out. Over his last six games, the 25-year-old former first-round pick is 6-for-18, and four of those safeties have gone for extra bases. Every bit as notable is the fact that he’s drawn seven free passes. Selectivity has never been a strong suit for the slugger, but given his ability to propel baseballs long distances, a more-discerning eye could very well be his ticket to stardom.

There’s no questioning his raw power. The Mississippi State product left the yard 30 times last year for Triple-A El Paso while capturing Pacific Coast League MVP honors. He added four more dingers after a late-September call-up. Six of the 11 home runs Renfroe has hit in a big-league uniform have traveled over 400 feet.

Renfroe discussed his power-laden gap-to-gap approach, and his views on launch-angle data, prior to the start of the regular season.

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Renfroe on launch-angle data: “I’m obviously aware of it, but the ball is moving. It’s not sitting on a tee, so you can’t stand in the box and think about things like launch angle when the ball is coming at you 98 mph. You hit it, and whatever it does… you know? Hopefully you hit it on the barrel at a good angle, and it makes it over the fence, or at least goes for a double, or even a single.

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This a companion piece to what I wrote earlier today on Trevor Story, in which I wondered if a hitter can become too extreme with regard to a certain approach. In Story’s case, the specific approach is one designed to lift the ball into the air.

This is also a status update on a comment made by Eno Sarris regarding Ryan Schimpf back in early March, after Schimpf had just produced the most fly-ball-oriented season on record. Wrote Sarris:

And maybe that’s the lesson in the end: Ryan Schimpf is so extreme that two things are true. On the one hand, he won’t be as extreme next year, because only one person has ever been as extreme as Schimpf was last year, and that player also didn’t play a full season. But it’s also true to say that Schimpf will probably a hit a ton of fly balls next year, even with regression.

Schimpf was not a qualified hitter last year, recording just 330 plate appearances, but among single seasons of 100 plate appearances or more, no hitter on record had produced a higher fly-ball rate or a more extreme ratio of fly balls to ground ball.

Schimpf is always going to be a fly-ball hitter, because he’s always been a fly-ball hitter. Schimpf routinely posted sub-0.60 GB/FB ratios throughout his lengthy, winding minor-league career. But he’d never produced a ratio like the 0.30 mark he produced last season in a half-season’s worth of work. Surely he was going to regress nearer his minor-league career average this season, nearer normal MLB batted-ball distribution, right?

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