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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The Oakland A’s lost by four runs on Thursday. Granted, it was a two-run game in the bottom of the eighth. But, still. Four runs. The A’s currently have the worst record in the American League. They’ve lost by at least four runs 11 times. The Royals easily have the best record in the AL. Kansas City has lost by at least four runs 15 times. Four runs is an arbitrary cutoff, but this helps to demonstrate something you’ve probably already heard: The A’s are badly underperforming, and in the weirdest way. By the standings, in the AL, no team has been worse. By other metrics, in the AL, arguably nobody has better.

For a more rich and representative 2015 A’s experience, consider Wednesday. Sure enough, the A’s lost to the New York Yankees — but they lost by one. The game ended with the tying run in scoring position. The Oakland bullpen coughed up four runs; the Oakland defense coughed up the other one. It’s not that the Yankees didn’t do enough to win. It’s that the A’s did, too. Yet they came up short. The market is just waiting for Billy Beane to sell.

It isn’t new that the A’s are underperforming the numbers. It’s already been written about here, there and everywhere. Just in April, the team went 9-14 while outscoring its opponents. Lately, the team has been more successful, despite its recent setbacks. But while you’re probably tired of hearing about Oakland’s misfortune, you might not be aware of the magnitude of what’s happened. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens to someone every year.

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As hard as it might be to believe right now, Oakland front office asked center fielder Billy Burns to consider ending the switch-hitter experiment and bat solely from the right side when they acquired him. “It was presented as an idea, and it wasn’t something they wanted to do during the season,” Burns admitted, but they did mention it. And it makes a little sense, since Burns came to switch-hitting in professional ball, and he slugged about 20% worse from the left side in the minors.

What’s the strangest about this revelation is that Burns has been so good from the left side in the major leagues so far. And though batting average on balls in play is complicated, and small-sample results aren’t any better when you’ve cut them in half, there might actually be some evidence that Burns is a better hitter from the left side. His approach from that side fits his tools better.

Maybe the Athletics were right. Maybe Burns should stop switch-hitting. Maybe he should only hit from the *left* side.

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If a person came up to you and made the claim that Josh Donaldson was the best player in baseball, you would actually have to refute his or her case with legitimate evidence. If someone said Rajai Davis was the best player in the league, you could just roll you eyes and get on with your day, but Josh Donaldson is close enough to the top of the list that a counter-argument is required. Is he a better player than Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, or even Bryce Harper? Probably not, but he’s worth considering.

He’s worth considering, in large part, because he’s a great hitter. Donaldson ranks 18th in wRC+ since 2013 (min. 500 PA) at 140. An average defensive third baseman with a 140 wRC+ is something like a 6 WAR player over a full season. But, as I’m sure you know, Donaldson is not an average defensive third baseman. He’s one of the very best.

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“Have you ever heard of a submariner throwing a riseball?”

Athletics Media Relations and Broadcasting Coordinator Zak Basch almost had a crazy look in his eye as he asked. But as soon as I understood what he was asking, there were two intense people in that Oakland dugout, contemplating insane things. Because it’s almost an impossible idea, the riseball released from a submarine angle. They physics of releasing the ball down under makes it almost impossible to get backspin on the ball, and backspin is what gives fastballs “rise” — backspin helps the ball drop less than you’d expect, given gravity.

That’s why, when you ask current submariners, they mostly just shake their head. “I’ve heard stories of this myth before,” laughed Javier Lopez of the Giants. He struggled to name any active low-slot pitchers that have ever thrown a riseball on purpose.

But it’s not impossible. Basch, a former pitcher for the University of Nevada (Reno) himself once threw one in game action, and it only took a couple dozen failed attempts to get there. Just to get an idea of how difficult it is to get backspin on the ball from that angle, Basch modeled the delivery and spin for a traditional submarine fastball and then how you might throw a rising fastball.

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Overshadowed by last week’s series of momentous decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, Major League Baseball recently filed a brief with the Court urging it to reject an appeal by the city of San Jose, California in the on-going dispute over the future home of the Oakland Athletics. As I noted at the time San Jose filed its appeal back in April, the city is hoping to challenge MLB’s refusal to approve the proposed relocation of the A’s to the city in court under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Over the last two years, however, both the trial court and court of appeals have dismissed San Jose’s suit in light of professional baseball’s nearly century-old antitrust exemption. The city is now asking the Supreme Court to take its appeal and overturn the controversial doctrine in order to hold MLB accountable under the Sherman Act, like all of the other major U.S. professional sports leagues.

As one might expect, MLB’s brief instead argues that San Jose’s appeal should be rejected for several reasons. In particular, MLB devotes much of the first half of its brief to the contention that San Jose lacks standing to sue — a requirement in which the plaintiff must show that it has a personal stake in the outcome of an actual legal case or controversy (as opposed to a hypothetical, future dispute) — and therefore can’t sustain its case against the league.

MLB challenges San Jose’s standing on several grounds. The primary basis of MLB’s attack, however, focuses on a recent California state court decision holding that an option agreement between the city and the A’s for the land on which a new stadium is to be built is invalid under various state and municipal laws. Specifically, the California court determined that San Jose had illegally transferred the land to a governmental authority in an attempt to circumvent laws requiring that a public referendum be held to approve the use of any tax dollars to build a sports facility.

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Not every breakout comes with a complicated story. Sometimes it’s super simple. Sometimes, as Josh Reddick put it, a player just comes to “a recognition.” For Reddick, it was recognition born of who he is. He became better by becoming more like himself.

Look down at his numbers, and it seems as straight forward as Reddick makes it when he told me, “It’s just staying on pitches in the zone as opposed to pitches outside of the zone.” Reddick has halved his career strikeout rate by swinging less than he’s ever swung.

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O.co Coliseum prepares for the Athletics’ LGBT Pride Night.

The Athletics had an LGBT Pride event Wednesday night, and the night was peppered with love for many people that haven’t always felt comfortable at the ballpark.

Opera Singer Breanna Sinclaire, the first trans singer accepted into the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s master’s program according to the San Francisco Chronicle, sang the anthem. According to Major League Baseball, she was also the first trans singer to perform the anthem.

MLB ambassador of inclusion Billy Bean was in the building, and was part of the impetus for the event, as the news of this event came out after he addressed the Athletics in Spring Training.

Sean Doolittle’s partner Eireann Dolan helped improve the event, as she not only offered to buy back tickets from disgruntled ticketholders with a heartfelt and funny letter, but also started a GoFundMe to help pay for even more donated tickets to members of Our Space, AIDS Project East Bay and Frameline, a nonprofit LGBTQ cinema foundation.

It seemed like a good time to ask the ballplayers willing to comment about the issue at hand: is baseball ready for an openly gay player, and what obstacles might they face when it happens? Even with a few “no comments,” the opinions given all had their own unique angle, and showed that even a ready country and sport will not make the first openly gay player’s professional life easy.

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The A’s and Red Sox are both last-place teams so perhaps you weren’t riveted to your screen Friday night when the two met for the first of a three-game set in Boston. If not, you missed the major-league debut of a 29-year-old relief pitcher. Your life is undoubtedly sadder now. But have no fear because you’ve stumbled upon this here article which will fill you in on said 29-year-old relief pitcher. Settle in for some fun!

We’re not in the habit here at FanGraphs (or, really, anywhere else) of cataloguing the debuts of old relievers, but this one is odd enough to be special. Pat Venditte threw his first major-league pitch Friday night left-handed. It was to Brock Holt the first batter he faced. Then, after Holt grounded out to first base, he threw the first pitch to Hanley Ramirez, the second batter he faced, right-handed. That’s because Pat Venditte is a switch pitcher.

We can start off with this:

That’s the last switch-pitcher, Greg Harris. So, you know, this stuff isn’t easy. Unlike Harris, Venditte has been switch-pitching his whole life so he can actually throw it to the catcher with both arms! But actually, he’s even better than that.

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