On May 12, Max Pentecost played his first game in nearly two years. Drafted 11th overall in 2014 by the Blue Jays out of Kennesaw State, the right-handed-hitting catcher was just 25 games into his professional career when he was shelved with a shoulder problem. It took three surgeries to get him back on the field.

A lot of head-scratching was involved. Pentecost went under the knife for a second time last spring — the initial surgery having failed to alleviate the pain — and once again the results were insufficient. His throwing shoulder still ached, and no one could explain why.

The a-ha moment came when a member of Toronto’s medical staff attended a talk by Dr. Craig Morgan, an orthopedic surgeon who had operated on Curt Schilling’s shoulder. The symptoms Morgan described were markedly similar to what Pentecost had been experiencing. An MRI followed, and soon thereafter Pentecost was undergoing yet another surgical procedure, this one a subacromial decompression. Based on early results, it appears to have done the trick.

Hurdles remain. The 23-year-old former first-rounder is getting closer to full strength, but he’s yet to return behind the plate. The Blue Jays have limited him to DH duties, which means he has some catching up to do defensively. Offense hasn’t been a problem. In 267 plate appearances for the low-A Lansing Lugnuts. Pentecost has slashed a lusty .314/.375/.490 with seven home runs.

His next at-bats will come with Dunedin. Pentecost has already reported to Toronto’s High-A affiliate and will be activated once he’s fully recovered from a minor injury unrelated to his thrice-surgically-repaired shoulder.

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Pentecost on his third shoulder surgery: “A lot has gone into it and I still don’t really know what was in there. We don’t know for certain if that was the original injury or if it was something caused by having pretty much a newly structured shoulder. But something was wrong and we got it fixed. So far it’s helped a lot, and hopefully my shoulder continues to get better.

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It’s been a big season for Michael Saunders, and for his career. He’s long been dogged by injury questions, and a season ago he was limited to just nine games played. For 2016 he’s been able to stay on the field, and his bat has done the talking. He’s been part of a loaded Blue Jays lineup, but he’s still third on the team in wRC+, below Edwin Encarnacion but ahead of Jose Bautista. The Jays now have sole possession of first place in the AL East, and given some of what they’ve gone through, it makes sense that they might owe Saunders a great deal of gratitude, his recent slump aside. He’s mostly been stable, and he’s become rather strong.

Numbers are funny, though. There are different ways to spin them, even if you don’t want to spin them. It would be completely legitimate to say Saunders has been one of the best hitters on the team. You could also very legitimately say Saunders has been arguably the least-valuable hitter on the team. It’s true that he’s third in wRC+. It’s true that he’s last in WPA. In a few ways, then, Michael Saunders is having a season to remember.

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Let’s peer into the future for a moment. The time: roughly one year from now. I’m hosting my weekly Tuesday chat, and a reader wants to know: who is the most underrated player in baseball? It’s a common question. It’s a question without an answer, but an answer everyone wants to know. Ben Zobrist’s time with the belt has come and gone. It’s no longer Jose Quintana — not after winning last year’s Cy Young Award. Another one of my go-to answers for this question is Mike Trout, and I might still believe that, but I know it’s not what the reader’s looking for. No, they want the star-not-perceived-as-a-star. The guy flying under the radar as one of baseball’s best at his position without the national recognition. They want what Zobrist was in his heyday. What they want is Devon Travis.

But they’re not going to get Travis as the answer to that question a year from now, because what I’m here to do now, in the present, is exactly what they don’t want you to do in any movie that involves time travel, like that one with Ashton Kutcher or any one of the dozen Final Destination films. I’m here to do something in the present that changes the future. I’m here to prevent Devon Travis from becoming the most underrated player in baseball, because he deserves to be recognized as one of the best second baseman in baseball already.

Travis checks all the boxes of a player doomed to be underrated. The first key of being overlooked as a major leaguer is to be overlooked as a minor leaguer. Check. Travis lasted until the 13th round of the 2012 draft, selected as the 424th pick between Phildrick Llewellyn and Alan Sharkey largely because teams were wary of his 5-foot-9 stature. By 2014, he’d worked his way up to cracking Baseball America’s top-100 prospect list, but even then came in at just 84th, and shortly thereafter was traded from Detroit to Toronto for Anthony Gose, whose own stock was rapidly plummeting.

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Marcus Stroman ended June with a bloated 5.33 ERA that was mostly deserved, so he went back to the drawing board. He’s since had an ERA two runs lower, once again deserved, since he changed things in early July.

After a good start in early July, he made general reference to some adjustments after the game, and Shi Davidi went and asked pitching coach Pete Walker for some specifics. So we know some of what Stroman did to recover. He cleaned up the delivery, he moved his hands, he changed his release point, and he altered his pitching mix. It’s the kind of stuff pitchers do to bust a slump.

The most interesting thing might be where he learned these things, though. Who knows when he picked them up from the Red Sox lefty, but these adjustments have made Stroman a bit more like David Price these days. Even if Price is struggling a bit, you have to count that as a good thing compared to where Stroman was earlier this season.

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As part of yesterday’s last-minute deal involving Francisco Liriano and Drew Hutchison, the Blue Jays also received two prospects in C Reese McGuire and OF Harold Ramirez.

McGuire was the 14th-overall pick in the 2013 draft because he had a favorable profile as a glove-first catcher with a plus arm and a chance to grow into viable offense. He hasn’t. McGuire’s body has matured but his bat speed is below average and his swing is completely devoid of any power-creating loft. He tracks okay and has some bat control, but I don’t think he’s going to hit enough to play everyday and he profiles as more of a back-up catcher or low-end starter than as an average everyday player.

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The trade of reliever Mark Melancon by the Pittsburgh Pirates to the Washington Nationals sent a clear message: the Pirates are in retool mode. Not rebuild mode — they’re too good for that. And certainly not go-for-it mode — the Pirates barely had a 1-in-10 shot of making the playoffs, and you don’t go for it by trading away one of the best relievers in the game. No, the Pirates were retooling, selling from the immediate future to improve in the very short-term future, and, to a lesser extent, the long-term future. The crux of the return, left-handed reliever Felipe Rivero, will contribute for the Pirates both immediately and moving forward. That’s the difference between he and Melancon — he’ll be sticking around for more than one season. Prospect Taylor Hearn is the longer-term play; small-market teams like the Pirates live for long-term plays.

Which is what makes Monday’s last-minute deal for broken pitching prospect Drew Hutchison — one which allowed them to dump Francisco Liriano’s salary on the Toronto Blue Jays but also cost them prospects Reese McGuire and Harold Ramirez — so puzzling on the surface. While neither prospect cracked Baseball America’s recent top-100 update, McGuire and Ramirez are both legitimate prospects, the type of pieces that can be essential to a franchise like the Pirates by providing cheap value, allowing them to continue chugging along at an affordable operating cost while retaining the pieces that really matter. McGuire is regarded as one of the best defensive catching prospects in the minors, one whose receiving ability alone gives him a near-certain path to the majors. Ramirez is an athletic bat-to-ball outfielder with a plus hit tool who’s playing center in the minors even if he’s likely to move to a corner.

In Hutchison, the Pirates get back a Ray Searage reclamation project, and little more. Hutchison’s still just 25 with some former prospect shine, but the career ERA in more than 400 innings is nearly 5.00, and he’s got a serious home-run problem. Maybe Searage can coax some ground balls out of him.

But Hutchison’s not so much what this deal was about. The motivation behind this deal was clear. It was a straight salary dump. The Blue Jays are taking on the entirety of Liriano’s salary, which amounts to roughly $17 million through the end of next season. They had the space available to take on the money — though it is interesting to wonder how this could impact their ability to re-sign Jose Bautista or Edwin Encarnacion in the offseason — and they were willing to do so for the price of the prospects.

To rationalize this deal from the Pirates’ perspective, you’ve got to believe the organization thinks it can do more with the $17 million and Hutchison to help it win next year and moving forward than it could with Liriano and the prospects. It may be a tough sell, but it is what it is. And to believe that, you’ve got to believe the organization views Liriano as broken.

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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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Here’s some things that happened. The Blue Jays got a swingman in return for a swingman:

#bluejays getting Mike Bolsinger for Jesse Chavez from #Dodgers

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) August 1, 2016

And then minutes later, they gave up a Chavez to get another Chavez:

Source: Astros are getting Guadalupe Chavez from the Blue Jays for Scott Feldman.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 1, 2016

The “other” Chavez, in this instance, being Scott Feldman, an early-30’s swingman himself. Both are free agents at the end of the year. It doesn’t make total sense, and it’s not the most interesting thing that happened at the trade deadline, but bear with me.

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San Diego’s sole return for Melvin Upton Jr. is 19-year old Dominican righty, Hansel Rodriguez. This trade’s roots run back to 2013, when the Blue Jays selected LHP Brian Moran in the 2013 Rule 5 draft and immediately flipped him to the Angels for $240,000 worth of international pool money, which was added to the yet-to-be-spent $127,000 they had remaining from that year’s original pool amount. Early in 2014, Toronto signed Rodriguez for $330,000. Moran is currently pitching in Indy ball.

Rodriguez spent the early portion of 2016 in extended spring training before moving on to Toronto’s Appalachian League affiliate in Bluefield, where he had thrown 32.1 innings over six starts. He allowed 25 hits and 11 walks while striking out 26 hitters during that span, sporting a 3.06 ERA.

The strikeout totals aren’t mind-blowing because Rodriguez’s stuff simply isn’t very good yet. Instead, this is San Diego betting on a body and delivery. Rodriguez has a solid pitcher’s frame at 6-foot-2 and a listed 170 pounds. He’ll likely fill out a bit more — at least enough to counterbalance the increased workload he’ll undertake as his pro career moves forward. He has a loose, quick arm and incorporates his hips into his delivery, though he can fly open a little too hard at times and loose some command. It’s possible we see Rodriguez makes some changes to become more direct to the plate and create better extension, but his arm speed is impressive.

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Although I’m a hardened cynic at heart thanks to my upbringing in the world of Philadelphia sports, even I can freely admit it’s always more fun to talk about a player who is doing well than one who is struggling. It’s even more fun to talk about a player who’s doing well and made a noticeable change prior to a stretch of success. Today, the player that fits that bill is Blue Jays left-hander J.A. Happ.

When Happ signed his three-year, $36 million deal with the Blue Jays this past winter, it raised a few eyebrows. You’d think we’d understand now that any player who can provide even moderate utility on a major-league roster is able to pull in spectacular amounts of money on the free-agent market. That said, the prospect of a 33-year-old pitcher who has rarely been more than a #4 during his career signing a multi-year deal of this magnitude still might require some getting used to. Any reflexive shock at all those zeros next to Happ’s name wore off pretty quickly, though. He was coming off a phenomenal second half with Pittsburgh and was exactly the sort of rotation stabilizer the Blue Jays needed.

Through the first three months of the season, Happ prevented runs at a reasonably efficient rate (3.70 ERA, 86 ERA-) but his peripherals depicted him as a more middling pitcher. His 16.9 strikeout and 7.6 walk rate — combined with a .270 BABIP — resulted in a slightly below league average 4.47 FIP (104 FIP-). It was difficult to find much optimism that Happ would be able to build upon his superficial success. But then something changed when the calendar flipped to July. Before we get to what’s different, let’s take a look at his numbers over his four starts this month:

That’ll do. It’s worth noting that these four starts weren’t against woefully inept offenses. His opponents were Cleveland, Detroit, Oakland, and Seattle. Oakland is clearly the weakest of those four and, for whatever it’s worth, he didn’t pad his numbers when he faced them. In fact, his outing against Oakland was his worst over this stretch by far.

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