Weird things about baseball fascinate me. One of those things is the concept of discarded players. Every once in awhile, you’ll see a player doing well and think to yourself, “Hey, wasn’t he on our team at one point?” David Carpenter is one such player. Watching him face the Red Sox this week, I couldn’t help but think that it would be sure nice if the Sox had him right now instead of Craig Breslow. Sure, the world will keep on spinning, and Carpenter wouldn’t make or break the 2014 Red Sox, but every little bit counts, and the Red Sox gave him away for free after just five weeks on the roster. In situations like these, we often jokingly say (or at least I do), “Hey, I wish we could get guys like that!”

I don’t mean to pick on the Red Sox, because every team does this. If you scan rosters, you’ll find one such player on just about every roster. And originally, my intention was to run down that list and look at them all individually. But then I got a look at this trade. On July 31, 2010, the Atlanta Braves traded Gregor Blanco, Jesse Chavez and Tim Collins to the Kansas City Royals for Rick Ankiel and Kyle Farnsworth. Take a look:

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In baseball, as in life, perspective is crucial. In terms of the terribly struggling Atlanta Braves offense, Jason Heyward’s 79 wRC+ is merely one issue among many, because this is a team that’s also rolling out Ryan Doumit (34 wRC+), Dan Uggla (40), B.J. Upton (68) and Chris Johnson (also 79) on a semi-regular or more basis. When the entire offense is so wretched that as a team, their .302 OBP — and yes, I have filtered out the pitchers, so this is only the guys actually paid to hit — is No. 28 in baseball, it’s hard to single out the guy who’s been more “meh” than “flaming poisonous tire fire” when there’s more than one of the latter around.

In terms merely of Jason Heyward, who debuted at 20 with hype commensurate to Bryce Harper, homered in his first plate appearance, and is the owner of seasons of 4.6 and 6.4 WAR, this can only be seen as a huge disappointment. That 79 wRC+ is equal or essentially so to Curtis Granderson and Carlos Santana, each hitting under .200; to Allen Craig, who has looked like he’s playing a different sport; to Eric Young, who is inexplicably getting playing time over Juan Lagares; to Chris Colabello, all but assured of a minor league stint in his future.

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Let’s talk about slumps. Mike Trout is drawing some attention for his elevated strikeouts, and he’s on pace for 21 fewer batting runs than he produced a year ago. Prince Fielder’s had some trouble adjusting to his move, and he’s on pace for 29 fewer batting runs than he produced a year ago. Robinson Cano up and changed sides of the continent, and he’s on pace for 34 fewer batting runs than he produced a year ago. These are all pretty big statistical declines, and while the players are each too good to give up on after so little time, their numbers are getting noticed. People are impatiently waiting for the players to look like themselves. I should note that Trout’s still been amazing, on account of being Mike Trout, but one can be simultaneously amazing and worse.

You know what nine or ten runs mean. You know the rule of thumb is that’s about what a win is. A win’s a pretty big deal, so those declines above are pretty big deals. And, of course, offense isn’t the only area where numbers fluctuate. Defensive Runs Saved, as shown on FanGraphs, updates daily. A year ago, as a shortstop, Andrelton Simmons was worth 41 runs above average in the field. This year he’s on pace for +4. He’s a full-time player on pace to be worse by 37 runs, and that’s an enormous gap that to my knowledge no one’s discussed.

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We’re into that sort-of in-between part of the early season, the part where it’s early enough where you can see ridiculous things like Charlie Blackmon hitting .379/.425/.621 and know that the dreaded “small sample size” caveat is absolutely in play, but also to know that it’s not that early any longer and that the things we’re seeing count. Whether it’s to further inform us about a player or a team, or just to have added value and wins now that will be important later even if the current production can’t be maintained, what we’ve seen over the first month matters. It’s just up to us to decide how much it matters.

That’s where we are with the Atlanta Braves, who have somehow managed to keep their early run of insanely good pitching alive and well through the end of April. And when I say insanely good, I mean just that. Even after Alex Wood got hit hard in Miami on Tuesday night, Atlanta’s rotation ERA- is 55. Since Jackie Robinson integrated the game in 1947, the lowest rotation ERA- we have on record for a full season is 73, by three teams, including the 1997 and ’98 Braves of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. If it’s unfair to compare a month of play to full seasons, well, then you might like to know that since the 1968 “Year of the Pitcher,” only three other teams have had a rotation ERA below 2.00 in a month of at least 25 games, as the Braves currently do. Each of those teams — the 1976 Dodgers, 1992 Braves and 2011 Phillies — had at least one Hall of Famer in the rotation or someone with a strong case to be there in the future.

That the 2014 Cardinals sit second behind the Braves on the ERA- list further shows you how early it is, that the Braves won’t continue pitching like this, and that regression is coming. Obviously. Aaron Harang and Ervin Santana aren’t going to pitch like Maddux and Smoltz all year. I imagine it isn’t shocking, breaking news that the 2014 Braves aren’t going to end up as the pitching version of the 1927 Yankees.  Read the rest of this entry »

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Raul Mondesi, SS, Kansas City Royals (Profile)
Level: High-A   Age: 18   Top-15: 3rd   Top-100: 46th
Line: 89 PA, .304/.382/.430, 1 HR, 9 BB, 23 K

Summary
One of the game’s top shortstop prospect is holding his own against much older players.

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As I write this, it’s still early in the 2014 regular season. But, as I write this, Ervin Santana has one of baseball’s better adjusted ERAs. He has a top-five adjusted FIP and a top-10 adjusted xFIP. He has a top-10 strikeout rate, an upper-level strikeout/walk ratio and a top-five contact rate allowed. He’s been absolutely dominant against right-handed hitters, and he’s been only slightly less dominant against left-handed hitters. Santana was late to sign — and it took some injuries to get him to Atlanta — but through a handful of starts, Santana has demonstrated a new level of ability.

And, looking back, perhaps we were tipped off. Think about how you used to think about Ervin Santana. He was homer-prone — in your head and in the numbers — and he was an example of a fastball/slider starting pitcher. He never mastered a third pitch, so he never frequently threw a third pitch. And while his slider was good enough for him to get by, the limited repertoire set him a lower ceiling. Santana, we assumed, was a known entity. Then we heard something at the end of December.

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The best and the worst thing about baseball is that, during the season, it’s almost never not going on. Every single day brings a new slate of games, and if you actually step back and think about it, it’s kind of overwhelming. The Brewers are off to a hot start, at 15-6. All they have left is another 141 baseball games. The upside is that, if there’s a lousy baseball day, there could be a better baseball day right around the corner. The downside is that, if there’s an incredible baseball day, in a short amount of time it’s yesterday’s news. Baseball allows for only so much time to reflect.

Case in point: it’s Wednesday, and at this writing, on Wednesday, the Marlins and Braves have already finished a game. Because the Marlins and Braves have already played Wednesday, there’s less will to think about what the Marlins and Braves did Tuesday. But just Tuesday night — last night — the Marlins and Braves competed in a classic. As things turned out, Jose Fernandez and Alex Wood put together at least the pitchers’ duel of the season, and perhaps the pitchers’ duel of the last many seasons.

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Around the start of the offseason, there was talk that Nelson Cruz was after a $75-million contract. He eventually settled for $8 million. At the same time, there was talk that Ervin Santana was after a $100-million contract. He’s now settled for $14.1 million. Put those numbers together and you have $175 million requested and $22.1 million received. That difference of $153 million is the amount for which the Yankees signed Jacoby Ellsbury. So, that’s some perspective.

Santana reached a one-year agreement with the Braves Tuesday, and it became official early Wednesday. Over the weekend, all the talk was about how Santana would be choosing between the Orioles and the Blue Jays, but then the Braves developed a desperate need, with Kris Medlen preparing for probable Tommy John surgery. In need of a starting pitcher, the Braves signed pretty much the only available free-agent starting pitcher, and so Santana will pitch in the National League for the first time in his career. Probably, that’s a big reason why he made the decision he did.

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Watching the Braves rotation grab appendages has been tough this spring. Kris Medlen has ligament damage in his elbow, Brandon Beachy has biceps soreness, and Mike Minor survived a scarred urethra only to encounter shoulder soreness. None of the three is a lock to make the opening day rotation. And this is a team that brought two veteran free agents in for depth and had extra youth at the back end of their rotation. They might be fine without Ervin Santana, but yet that team does inspire a question. How many major-league ready starting pitchers should a competitive team field in a given year?

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At this rate, every person in the metro Atlanta area will receive a long term deal from the Braves before the end of spring training. Their extension spree continued today with a seven year, $58 million deal for shortstop Andrelton Simmons that will keep him locked up through his age-30 season while also providing some new benchmarks for both inexperienced players and defensive specialists.

For the Braves, this deal is very similar to the contracts they’ve already agreed to with Freddie Freeman, Julio Teheran, and Craig Kimbrel. In each case, they prioritized locking up the player’s prime years for the right to not be on the hook for the age at which we expect their skills to begin to deteriorate. For reference:

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