A veteran scout once described baseball to me as a “big man’s game.” When you spend some time in clubhouses, particularly around starting pitchers, that certainly seems to be an indisputable fact. Many starters are beginning to resemble tight ends or wing types in basketball.

But there are always exceptions. There are always outliers. And those cases are particularly interesting, at least to this author, because they represent instances in which a player has weathered whatever selection bias exists and found his own path to the pinnacle of the sport.

Zach Davies is an outlier.

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I can tell you the instant Josh Hader made me sit up and take notice. We’re going back a week and a half, to what was, for me, a lazy Friday night. I was watching the Brewers attempt to close out the Nationals, and the Brewers held a 1-0 lead in the top of the eighth. Hader took the mound, in relief of Jimmy Nelson.

Right away, Hader attacked Trea Turner and struck him out on three pitches. It was impressive, but, ehh, Turner will strike out. The next batter was Wilmer Difo, and Hader struck him out on six pitches. It was also impressive, but, ehh, Wilmer Difo. The third batter was Daniel Murphy. Murphy has developed into a power hitter without sacrificing much at all in the way of his making contact. Murphy remains one of the premier bat-to-ball hitters in either league. With two down and the bases empty, Hader went to work.

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Slumps and downturns are inevitable. They’re a part of baseball, a part of markets, a part of life. If you create a 15-day rolling wOBA chart of any player at FanGraphs, you’ll probably find a trend line that ticks up and down like the display on a heart-rate monitor. Such charts probably have a look similar to the performance of your investment portfolio. If we could create rolling, 15-day charts documenting the fortunes of our day-to-day existences, they’d have similar fluctuations, too.

While slumps are inevitable, that doesn’t mean they’re welcome. Ideally, it would be possible to minimize the troughs while extending periods of peak performance. Naturally, this of some interest to major-league clubs. Organizations have become curious about how they can reduce the length of slumps, exploring areas like rest and nutrition.

But there’s also a personal, psychological element. What leads players into slumps? Do they sense the arrival of one like an oncoming cold? And how do they dig out of it?

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

8/28

Tom de Blok, RHP, Detroit (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: NR  Top 100: NR
Line: 7 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
de Blok has been one of the more interesting stories in minor-league baseball this year. He was signed out of the Netherlands by Seattle in August of 2013, but he didn’t enjoy his time training in Arizona, some of his things were stolen, and de Blok retired during extended spring training the following year.

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Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the National League Central. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Chicago Cubs (Preseason List)

1. Adbert Alzolay, RHP
2. Victor Caratini, C/1B
3. Oscar de la Cruz, RHP
4. Jose Albertos, RHP
5. Thomas Hatch, RHP
6. Aramis Ademan, SS
7. Alex Lange, RHP
8. Brendon Little, LHP
9. Mark Zagunis, 3B
10. D.J. Wilson, CF

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Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
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Evaluating relievers is difficult given their small sample of work in any given year and their volatility from year to year. But, given the fact that the most active sector of the trade deadline ended up being relievers, it makes sense to put them all in one place and wonder who got the best one. Might there be a surprising answer since the Padres ended up holding Brad Hand’s production on their roster?

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

Luis Ortiz, RHP, Milwaukee (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 3   Top 100: 57
Line: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 1 R, 7 K

Notes
After walking five hitters on July 13, Ortiz hasn’t issues a free pass in two starts since then. He has good glove-side command of his fastball and has kept his body, which drew Rich Garces comparisons when Ortiz was 19, in check. Reports of his slider’s effectiveness, especially within the strike zone, have become mixed but Ortiz is purposefully working with his changeup more often, even against righties, and not getting as many reps with the slider. His curveball remains about average. Ortiz has had hamstring issues this season and various ailments throughout his career, but he’s still just 21, pitching pretty well at Double-A and projects as an above-average big-league starter.

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Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline is a mere five days away. As it nears, we’ll be treated to all the rumors and hypothetical proposals the internet is capable of providing. Many of them will be nonsensical. Some won’t. In every case, though, we’re likely to evaluate the likelihood of a prospective deal based on the same sort of variables considered by Dave Cameron in his annual Trade Value series — variables like projected WAR, salary, team control, etc.

But those aren’t the only factors at play when real people from real front offices attempt to work out a trade. There are other questions to ask. Which teams link up often and which teams avoid each other? What’s the role of familiarity in trade deals? Does it matter if the teams belong to the same division?

With the help of crack data and visualizations man Sean Dolinar, I went to work trying to answer some of these questions. Below are five statements supported by the historical data.

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White Sox general manger Rich Hahn isn’t messing around.

And the Brewers are asserting themselves as buyers, at least modest ones.

Chicago is reportedly sending reliever Anthony Swarzak to Milwaukee for Triple-A outfielder Ryan Cordell.

Hahn began an inspired rebuild of the White Sox this winter and was widely applauded for the return he received for stars like Chris Sale and Adam Eaton.

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