Repeat something often enough and you start to take it for granted. For example, something I’ve taken for granted is that the National League Rookie of the Year race will inevitably come down to Ronald Acuna vs. Juan Soto. I mean no disrespect to, say, Brian Anderson or Walker Buehler or Dereck Rodriguez, but this is where I am, and I know I’m not alone. Soto and Acuna have been absolutely sensational, and they’ve drawn themselves a lot of attention. The Braves have a franchise player on their hands. The Nationals do, too. These are two guys who could one day end up in the Hall of Fame.

Something I’ve realized, though, is my position has been unexamined. I haven’t looked at the competitors in a while. And this was brought to mind by something I read by Ken Rosenthal earlier this morning:

The NL Rookie of the Year race is evolving into a showdown between the Braves’ Ronald Acuña and Nationals’ Juan Soto, but another outfielder — the Cardinals’ Harrison Bader — might receive some third-place votes.

Some possible third-place votes for Harrison Bader. There’s no shame in not winning the Rookie of the Year. In last year’s NL voting, Rhys Hoskins finished fourth. Awards are secondary; on-field performance is what everyone cares about. But I’ve realized Bader deserves more credit than he’s been getting. We all assume the race will come down to Acuna vs. Soto. The race probably will come down to Acuna vs. Soto. But, should it? Bader has a surprisingly convincing case. Forget third-place votes. Bader maybe ought to finish first.

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No team plays a completely balanced scheduled over the course of a season. Some divisions, naturally, are better than others. Because intradivisional games account for roughly 40% of the league schedule, there is necessarily some irregularity in the strength of competition from club to club. Interleague play, which represents another 10% of games, also contributes to this imbalance. Given the sheer numbers of games in a major-league campaign, the effect of scheduling ultimately isn’t a major difference-maker. Talent and luck have much more influence over a club’s win-loss record. In any given month, however, scheduling imbalances can become much more pronounced.

Consider this: at the beginning of the season, just one team featured a projected gain or loss as large as three wins due to scheduling. The Texas Rangers were expected to lose three more games than their talent would otherwise dictate. Right now, however, there are eight teams with bigger prorated schedule swings than the one the Rangers saw at the beginning of the season — and those swings could have a big impact on the remaining pennant races.

To provide some backdrop, the chart below ranks the league’s schedules, toughest to easiest, compared to an even .500 schedule.

The Diamondbacks have a pretty rough go of it. Outside of five games against the Padres, the other “worst” team they play is the San Francisco Giants. They have one series each against the division-leading Astros, Braves, and Cubs along with a pair of series against both the Dodgers and Rockies. If Arizona were chasing these teams for the division or Wild Card, their schedule would present them with a good opportunity for making up ground. Given their current status, however, it just means a lot of tough games down the stretch.

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The St. Louis Cardinals brought 1B/“OF” Matt Adams back to his old stomping grounds, picking him up from the Washington Nationals after claiming him on revocable waivers.

Bryce Harper hasn’t been traded yet — and that would be a big one if it actually happens — but the departure of Daniel Murphy (about whom Craig Edwards will soon publish a post) and Adams is a likely indicator of how Washington feels about their rapidly deteriorating playoff odds. It’s a bit of speculation here, but from talking with people around baseball, I’m of the belief that ownership was less inclined to throw in the towel than team general manager Mike Rizzo.

Adams is a role player but a useful one for a team that’s starting to think about playoff bullpens. The 340-point OPS split between his career numbers against lefties (.595) and righties (.835) always made Adams a tough call as a full-time starting first baseman. Nevertheless, it gives him situational value. The Cardinals are 17th in baseball against right-handers by wRC+ versus sixth against lefties, and Greg Garcia is the only other left-handed bat available on the bench. Nor can the team dig in and grab someone from Triple-A: the only lefty Redbird hitters are Justin Williams, recently picked up in the Tommy Pham trade, and Max Schrock, who only has a .666 OPS and I think was the secondary bad guy in Batman Returns. Williams may have a future on the team, but if you just need a lefty bat off the bench, Adams is more valuable at this point.

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Clay Buchholz has been rejuvenated in Arizona. Signed off the scrap heap in early May — the Royals had released him — the 34-year-old righty is 6-2 with a 2.47 ERA in 12 starts since joining the Diamondbacks. He twirled a complete-game gem on Thursday, holding the Padres to a lone run.

Health had been holding him back. Buchholz has battled numerous injury bugs over his career, particularly in recent seasons. Cast aside by the Red Sox after a tumultuous 2016 — a 4.78 ERA and a six-week banishment to the bullpen — he made just two appearances for the Phillies last year before landing on the disabled list and staying there for the duration. Frustration was clearly at the fore.

Truth be told, he’d rarely been his old self since a sparkling 2013 that saw him go 12-1 with a 1.74 ERA — and even that season was interrupted by injury. Given his travails, one couldn’t have blamed him had he thrown up his hands and walked away from the game.

That wasn’t in his DNA.

“No, this is what I do,” Buchholz told me earlier this summer. “I wasn’t ready to give it up. And while this offseason I told myself I wasn’t going to go through the whole minor league deal again, I swallowed my pride and did that for a little bit. It was for the best, because it helped me get to where I’m at now. It feels good to be able to go out there and throw without anything going on, mentally or physically.”

Buchholz made five starts in the minors before being called up, and he did so with a glass-is-half-full attitude. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Carpenter just hit another home run. Here, look at it:

That home run was hit on August 13, and for Carpenter, it was his career-high 33rd. He had set a new career high with his 29th, and so this is all just uncharted territory. Right now, Carpenter leads the National League in wRC+. He also leads the National League in Statcast’s expected wOBA, so it’s not like this is all luck. Carpenter has been absolutely outstanding, and he’s likely to generate support for the league MVP. He’s helped to fuel the Cardinals’ recent run toward a wild-card spot, and heaven only knows where the club would be without him.

I should also point out that, according to Statcast again, Carpenter’s top exit velocity this season ranks in the 35th percentile. We’re mostly accustomed to sluggers who slug the ball. Carpenter would never be confused for another Giancarlo Stanton. So let’s quickly walk through how Carpenter makes this all work. To a certain extent this is all pretty basic, but Carpenter happens to be one of the world leaders in bat control.

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At 53-53, the Rays aren’t bad, but they’re also not anywhere close to the race. At 54-52, the Cardinals aren’t much better, but a wild-card slot remains within reach. Given that, you’d think, if anything, the Cardinals would be improving, while the Rays would be selling. Instead, we have a trade that goes in the other direction. It’s a little bit of a surprising deadline maneuver, yet the Rays are gearing up for a run next season. And the Cardinals are just making more room for Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill. I’ll give you the specifics:

Rays get:

• Tommy Pham
• $500,000 international bonus-pool money

Cardinals get:

• Justin Williams
• Genesis Cabrera
• Roel Ramirez

On the surface, you can understand the Cardinals’ perspective here. Pham is 30 years old, and his numbers don’t look like they did last season. Pham and the organization haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, and besides, Bader looks like one of the better defensive outfielders in either league, so it makes sense to play him more often. I can see why they might’ve wanted to make a trade. Still, it feels like they’ve sold Pham low. The Rays are getting a possible difference-maker here, and you don’t have to dig too far into the numbers to see it.

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In somewhat of a surprise move, the Cardinals have traded outfielder Tommy Pham this morning. In somewhat of another surprise, the team acquiring Pham hasn’t added him for the purposes of contending this season. While the Tampa Bay Rays haven’t been mathematically eliminated from a place in the playoffs, their chances of earning even a Wild Card berth are effectively zero at this point. Pham has value to the organization beyond 2018, though.

Even as rumors continue to circle around Chris Archer, the Rays have added a much needed outfielder not only for the remainder of the season, but also for the future. In trading away Pham, the Cardinals appear to be receiving multiple minor-league depth pieces.

Rays receive:

• Tommy Pham
• $500K international bonus-pool money

Cardinals receive:

• OF Justin Williams
• LHP Genesis Cabrera
• RHP Roel Ramirez

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The Mariners and Cardinals swapped relievers today, the latter sending RHP Sam Tuivailala to Seattle for prospect Seth Elledge. The deal gives Seattle a marginal bullpen upgrade in Tuivailala (probably over Casey Lawrence) for a stretch run that’s going to require them to continue winning close games. Every slightly better bullpen option is more meaningful in this situation than it is when looking at reliever value from a broader point of view. The deal is also a good fit for St. Louis, who acquires a comparable talent whose service-time calendar better aligns with their competitive schedule. Tuivailala is arbitration-eligible starting in 2020, when Elledge will probably be in his first or second year of big-league service.

Tuivailala is a fine middle reliever. He sits 93-96, will occasionally touch 99, and has two very average secondary offerings in an upper-80s cutter/slider and an upper-70s curveball. The Mariners have had success drafting low-ceiling, high-probability college relievers in the middle rounds of the last several drafts and quickly flipping them for mature big-league pieces on the margins. Elledge was the second pitcher Seattle traded from their 2017 draft class (JP Sears was sent to the Yankees for Nick Rumbelow last fall), which means Seattle’s 2017 draft has technically yielded the most subustantial big-league return in all of baseball right now.

Seth Elledge is a big-bodied, crossfire reliever with a mid-90s fastball and plus breaking ball. He was a 2017 fourth-round pick out of Dallas Baptist, a college that parades hard-throwing relievers into pro ball annually. He has a 54:14 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 38.1 innings. He might eventually be better than Tuivailala because the breaking ball is better. It’s reasonable to project a 2020 debut for Elledge, though has a non-zero chance to debut next year.

Just last week, Kiley McDaniel finished up this year’s Trade Value series. The Trade Value series represents an attempt to rank all the best assets in baseball while accounting for player skill, age, and contract status all simultaneously. One player who didn’t appear in the series was Cardinals infielder Matt Carpenter, not even in the Honorable Mention section.

At that time, Carpenter was having a fine season, having recorded a 142 wRC+ and 3.2 WAR in 378 plate appearances. However, at 32 years old and with two-and-a-half seasons of control remaining on salaries of $14.5 million in 2019 and $18.5 million ($2 million buyout) in 2020, McDaniel reasonably left Carpenter off the list.

In his first eight games after the All-Star Break, however, Carpenter added 1.1 WAR to his season total, hitting .400/.500/1.100 with a 307 wRC+ during that stretch. His WAR was 21st in baseball at the end of the first half, but now it ranks seventh in the sport and first in the National League. His .275/.384/.579 batting line is good for a 155 wRC+, which is second in the NL and eighth in baseball, just ahead of Jesus Aguilar and Manny Machado. His season totals are even more amazing when you consider that on May 15, Carpenter was hitting .140/.286/.272 with a 59 wRC+. Jay Jaffe already detailed Carpenter’s turnaround at the end of June when he was just doing really well.

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

Starling Joseph, OF, Texas Rangers (Profile)
Level: Short-Season   Age: 19   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35+
Line: 3-for-4, HR

Notes
Joseph is a physical 6-foot-3 outfielder with plus raw power. He’s raw from a bat-to-ball standpoint due to length and a lack of bat control, but the power/frame combination here is interesting for a 19-year-old. Joseph has a 67:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio in domestic pro ball and is as high-risk of a prospect as you’ll find, but he has the power to carry the profile if he ever becomes sentient in the batter’s box.

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