Certain people on a baseball field possess the type of abilities that lend themselves to being noticed. It’s very easy to notice Giancarlo Stanton when he hits a massive home run. It’s tough to miss Noah Syndergaard pumping 101-mph fastballs in the first inning. Others possess the type of abilities that only become noticed when things go wrong. We don’t really notice the first-base umpire until he blows the call that ruins a perfect game. Nobody knows the third-base coach’s name until he holds the runner that could’ve changed the World Series. And then there’s a third group who possess extraordinary abilities, one way or another, that go completely unnoticed. Someone is the best in the world at playing ricochets off the wall in the outfield, but we’ve got no real way of knowing. There’s a king of the “second-base-glove-flip-to-first,” but we haven’t crowned him.

For some time, Javier Baez existed in that third group, of having an elite skill that’s not as obvious as hitting a home run or throwing 100. Lately, he’s been moving into group one. It’s getting hard not to notice Javy Baez’s tag game.

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Just yesterday, I wrote about some concerns regarding Jake Arrieta. In particular, over time, Arrieta has gotten worse against left-handed hitters, losing the effectiveness of his best pitch while also losing his pinpoint command. This can be traced back to Arrieta losing the remarkable consistency of his mechanics. Arm speed and release point are everything, and for the last little while, Arrieta has been fighting uphill. He needs to get himself right before the playoffs.

Arrieta remains plenty good, but he has some stuff to work out. Kyle Hendricks, meanwhile, has nothing to work out. And compared to Arrieta, Hendricks has followed kind of the opposite course. He’s gotten better against left-handed hitters. He’s essentially added a new pitch while honing his pinpoint command. His mechanics are as consistent as they’ve ever been. Right now, we’re seeing the best version of Kyle Hendricks. You’ve probably read about him limiting quality contact. When you dig in, it’s no mystery how it’s happened.

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Any Cubs fan could tell you Jake Arrieta just doesn’t seem quite right. This has been the case for a number of weeks, or months, and we’ve touched on it before. It’s funny to think about the hand-wringing over a pitcher sitting on a sub-3 ERA. But, he really has gotten meaningfully worse, and he’s the staff ace of a World Series favorite. Cubs fans don’t have a whole lot of negatives right now. Arrieta might be turning into one, and he had a clunker against Pittsburgh just Monday.

Last week, I wrote about the curious disappearance of Arrieta’s unbelievable slider. It hasn’t killed him or anything, with the fastball picking up the slack, but that’s not something Arrieta would’ve wished for. The slider going away is a symptom of something. I can present to you now another symptom of something. And it’s related to the slider’s deterioration — Arrieta’s developing a platoon split. He’s having some trouble with lefties, and, it turns out there are lefties everywhere.

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My hunch is that it’s easier for pitchers to make adjustments on the fly than hitters. In part this is because pitchers are simply more in control — they can aim for different areas, while hitters simply have to respond. Pitchers also get more and longer breaks between appearances, and sometimes a pitch can just click. Everybody everywhere is always tweaking something, and I’m no authority, but I’d guess that hitters make their biggest changes over offseasons. That’s when they have the best opportunity to identify a flaw and get to overwriting the old muscle memory.

Yet you do see midseason adjustments. Some players are just better at adjusting than others. Some players are more aware of themselves than others. Some adjustments stick, and some adjustments fade away. Muscle memory is a fickle thing. I can tell you that Addison Russell has changed on the fly. For a while, it seemed like he’d need to either improve his contact or improve his power. His power now is trending up. He is 22 years old.

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Khris Davis has maintained excellent exit velocity all year, and has 33 home runs to his name, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t pressed at times with his new team. His walk rate is less than half what it used to be, and his swinging-strike rate is up nearly 20%.

The Oakland outfielder admitted that his decision on when to swing hasn’t been at its finest this year. “I was putting pressure on myself in a new environment,” he told me recently before a game against the Indians. “It was mental. Just kinda settled down.”

It’s something we can easily see in his swing percentages — but, perhaps more importantly, it’s totally normal and has happened very often to other big bats changing teams.

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Kris Bryant is everything you could want in an MVP candidate. He hits, he runs, he plays defense, he moves around, he’s in there every day — Bryant is an outstanding player on an outstanding team. You don’t have to worry about the Cubs wasting him, and not going to the playoffs. If Bryant’s teammates are doing him any harm, it could be because there are too many good ones — even without Bryant, the Cubs would be fine. It speaks to the roster’s strength, but Bryant is the best regular. He’s maybe, or probably, the best all-around player in the National League.

There’s more than a month left to go, so various leaderboards are going to change. Performances will change, and perceptions will go along with them. That being said, Kris Bryant has to be thought of as the NL MVP front-runner. By which I mean, I assume he has the most support. And, what a player to throw your support behind! In so many ways, Bryant would be deserving. There’s just one little problem. That one little problem is basically the entire counter-argument.

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There’s a sense that Jake Arrieta isn’t quite what he’s been before. It’s not entirely untrue — a season ago, Arrieta put together a historic campaign. He set the bar so high for himself that it would be next to impossible to meet the updated expectations. But, you know, Arrieta’s still been terrific. Last year, opponents batted .185. This year they’ve batted .183. He ranks fourth among qualified starting pitchers in ERA, and even since his ERA dipped under 1 around the beginning of May, it’s been just a little over 3. Last year’s National League Cy Young came down to Arrieta, Zack Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw’s hurt. Greinke’s already allowed 19 more runs than he did a season ago. Arrieta is doing just fine.

He simply seems a wee bit less automatic. From the perspective of an observer, he’s made it more difficult to take outs for granted. From the perspective of an analyst, Arrieta’s command has wobbled. And what’s maybe most interesting here: Arrieta apparently doesn’t have a feel for his slider. Or cutter. Or whatever. You know what I mean. Arrieta has managed a low ERA while, underneath, he’s had trouble finding what had been one of the truly elite pitches in the game.

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When Willson Contreras began to shoot up prospects lists last year, it wasn’t because of his defense. The now-24-year-old third baseman-turned-catcher was a fringe prospect who had never cracked a top-100 list until he came out of nowhere to slash .333/.413/.478 in Double-A last season — his fourth year spent behind the dish. Contreras’ breakout at the plate began earning him recognition from scouts, as Baseball America, ESPN, Baseball Prospectus and MLB.com all ranked Contreras as a top-75 prospect coming into this season. Regarding his work behind the dish, however, questions remained.

BP’s Christopher Crawford called Contreras a “work in progress” behind the plate in this year’s preseason scouting report, adding that “receiving is the big focus point right now, as he’s still learning how to frame pitches and call games.” Baseball America made note of Contreras’ “inconsistent receiving and blocking skills that need more development.” Most every scouting report on Contreras echoed a similar sentiment: great athleticism for a catcher, cannon for an arm, but the receiving and blocking needed work. Receiving is far and away the most important defensive skill for a catcher to possess, and so Contreras’ development (or lack thereof) in this area would go a long way toward determining his long-term value, or even future, behind the plate.

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Yesterday, Kris Bryant did what he’s best known for; hit the crap out of the baseball. In the Cubs 9-6 victory over the Brewers, Bryant went 5 for 5 with a double and a pair of home runs, giving him 30 homers for the season. The big day raised his season line to .296/.392/.564 and pushed him up to a 152 wRC+, second in the NL, behind only Daniel Murphy. This isn’t exactly breaking news, but Kris Bryant can really hit.

But Kris Bryant is also really good at a bunch of other things that don’t get as much attention, and given his monstrous production yesterday, I thought it would be a good time to talk about all the other reasons why Kris Bryant might be the best all-around player in the National League.

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I just wrote a little bit about Joc Pederson making gains in his ability to make contact. The first commenter underneath got me thinking about Javier Baez. In the Pederson post, I began by reflecting on George Springer, but Baez was a little like Springer to an even somehow more extreme degree. When Baez was a prospect, it’s possible no one else had his maximum bat speed. But at the same time, few shared his propensity for swinging and missing. Fold in an over-aggressive approach and every single at-bat was boom or bust.

Baez got extended playing time as a rookie in 2014. During the PITCHf/x era, there have been more than 3,000 player seasons with at least 200 plate appearances. Baez posted the lowest contact rate out of all of them, at 59%. He wasn’t too hard to diagnose. Barring something almost unbelievable, Baez would need to get better at contact in order to have a real big-league career.

Good news! Javier Baez is making it. He’s 23, he has a league-average wRC+, and this is how his contact has gone:

He still misses the ball, and he still swings at a whole lot of pitches out of the strike zone, but where Baez as a rookie struck out an impossible 42% of the time, now he’s down to 25%. Javier Baez is putting things together. He should factor firmly into the Cubs’ plans, if nothing else but as a valuable trade asset. The bat is meeting the ball more often, and that was always going to be the struggle.

Shifting gears, turn your attention to the Royals. Last offseason, the Royals re-signed Alex Gordon, getting something of a hometown discount in the process. I wrote about that, and here’s a quick excerpt!

[…]one, Gordon shouldn’t hit the wall all of a sudden[…]

Gordon this year has been worth 0.3 WAR. After back-to-back wRC+ marks of 122, this year he’s down at 77. Even more troubling, Gordon hasn’t been hitting the baseball. His approach and his results were always consistent. In a sense I guess they might still be considered consistent, but they are also much much worse. Gordon’s career contact:

There’s nothing subtle about that. And you could blame a wrist injury he sustained toward the end of May, but there’s something curious — Gordon, before that, batted 166 times, with bad offense and an elevated strikeout rate. Gordon, after that, has batted 171 times, with bad offense and an elevated strikeout rate. Alex Gordon was having problems making contact before getting hurt, so I don’t know what one’s supposed to make of that. Gordon has gone through ruts before, and he’s earned the benefit of the doubt. But this is worrisome, not just because Gordon is a franchise legend, but also because the Royals are a team that can’t afford to spend such big money on underachievers. Don’t sleep on Gordon as one of the big reasons why these Royals probably aren’t getting back to the playoffs.

Baseball is wonderful and baseball is horrible. There’s evidence for both of these everywhere, but Baez and Gordon are stuck in my mind. As recently as 2014, Gordon had the higher wRC+ by 69 points. He had the higher contact rate by 19 points. Now it’s 2016, and they’ve both cleared 300 trips to the plate. Baez has been the better hitter. And so much more improbably, Baez has made more frequent contact. I’ll be damned. This is a hell of a thing that we watch.