Near the end of the game between the Blue Jays and Rays yesterday, the camera panned to center field. Evan Longoria was at the plate, and the Jays broadcast team was talking about the third baseman’s power. “He’s got some power to right field, too, now, and I think that’s why you’ll see the outfielders, especially the center fielder and right fielder playing a couple steps back,” said Dan Shulman. “Look at how deep Kevin Pillar is in center field. That’s only a couple of steps, it seems like, for Pillar, from the warning track!” he continued. “We have not seen Kevin Pillar play that deep,” concurred Buck Martinez.

It was impressive. That little dot in center is Pillar. Looks like a wallflower at a middle-school dance.

He was 361 feet from the plate at that moment. It makes sense, given Longoria’s spray chart this year. You’ll notice that Pillar is shaded a little bit to right, which is where Longoria hits many of his deep outs.

Source: FanGraphs

But the Blue Jays were pushing the envelope a bit. Call it situational defense, maybe, because Pillar was playing more than 30 feet further back than the average center fielder against Longoria this year. Given that there were two outs in the eighth inning of a tie game and Brad Miller and Nick Franklin were scheduled to hit behind Evan Longoria, there’s a certain amount of making sure to stop the big hit doesn’t sink the team. In a league where it probably pays to play deep, this was playing just a bit deeper on a guy who hits them deep.

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On Saturday night, Rich Hill was perfect. The Marlins sent 21 batters to the plate against him, and all 21 walked back to the dugout. But when the 22nd batter came up to hit, he did not see Rich Hill; he saw Joe Blanton instead. Faced with a choice of letting Hill chase history or preserve his team’s #2 starter for the postseason, manager Dave Roberts chose the latter, removing Hill from after seven perfect innings and 89 pitches thrown. After the game, he explained his decision.

“I’m going to lose sleep tonight,” Roberts said. “And I probably should.”

His voice was gravelly and low, unable to find joy even as hip-hop blared in the clubhouse. He suspected he will never “have to make a tougher decision” than the choice he made in Saturday’s seventh inning.

…

“I’m very, very sensitive to his personal achievements,” Roberts said. “I really am. But nothing should get in the way, or compromise, our team goal.”

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His season is over and Kyle Garlick is headed home. Like most minor leaguers, the 24-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers outfield prospect will spend his offseason working. He has a pair of part-time jobs lined up, which will help him make ends meet until spring training rolls around. He’ll then resume his underdog quest to make it to the big leagues.

He’s already exceeded expectations. A 28th-round senior sign in 2015 out of Cal Poly Pomona, Garlick dominated A-ball last year, putting up a .987 OPS between multiple stops. This season he slashed .293/.348/.508, with 42 doubles and 19 home runs, between Rancho Cucamonga and Double-A Tulsa.

As recently as two years ago the one-time Oregon Duck was uncertain about his baseball future. An injury, followed by a family health issue, preceded a season in which he put up mediocre numbers and was subsequently bypassed in the 2014 amateur draft.

Garlick talked about the challenges he’s overcome — and the ones still in front of him — prior to suiting up for the final game of his 2016 season.

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Garlick on what it’s like to have the minor-league season end: “A couple of weeks ago I would have told you I was really excited. This being my first full season, my body wasn’t feeling too great. I was drained, both physically and mentally. But now that the last game of the year is here, I’m actually feeling kind of sad. I don’t really want it to end. I love playing this game and I’m going to miss is it over the next five months or so.

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Jose De Leon made his debut over the weekend and he allowed four runs in six innings to a mediocre Padres lineup. Though he came away with the win, it would be easy to scan the box score and conclude that he probably didn’t deserve it. Just another amped-up rookie going through some major-league jitters. It’s not an uncommon course of events. The first time for everyone ought to be a freebie.

The Dodgers, though, would tell you that De Leon pitched better than that. And even the box score itself would tell you that De Leon pitched better than that. Along with the four runs, De Leon whiffed nine without issuing a walk. Of course, yeah, it was just the Padres. And you don’t ever want to allow four runs. No one’s quite sure when De Leon is going to start again. But the reality of his debut is that he looked exactly as advertised. There are reasons why De Leon has never been traded.

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Heading into the season, the Dodgers’ outfield looked remarkably deep, and the big question was how Dave Roberts was going to find enough playing time to keep everyone happy. The starting trio of Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, and Andre Ethier all looked like solid regulars, but because of the depth, the team was likely to run a bunch of platoons: Scott Van Slyke would share time with Ethier in left, Enrique Hernandez would give Pederson a break against lefties in center, and Carl Crawford would play some days as well, probably at the expense of Puig on days right-handers were on the mound, with Ethier shifting back to right field on those days.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Ethier broke his leg in spring training and has missed the whole season. Crawford played poorly enough to get released. Hernandez and Van Slyke have struggled with injuries and poor performance, and have seen their playing time reallocated to Howie Kendrick and Trayce Thompson, respectively. The team tired of having Puig around, so they traded for Josh Reddick in July.

But despite cycling through a half-dozen internal options and making a deadline acquisition for a former All-Star, the Dodgers are currently being carried by an outfielder that they could not have imagined would be playing a significant role for them this year. Last night, after getting down early in the second game of a double-header, they came from behind to beat the Rockies 10-8 on the strength of a grand slam from rookie Andrew Toles. It would have been more shocking if Toles hadn’t been torching big-league pitching since making his debut in July.

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As if Rich Hill needs another way to be unique. How many other pitchers experience their career breakout at 35 and become one of the best in the league? How many other pitchers throw their curveball half the time? How many other pitchers who typically throw overhand freeze batters by occasionally dropping to sidearm? How many other pitchers speak fluently about their pitch axis, perceptual velocity, vertical and horizontal planes, and name drop DRA in interviews? Hell, how many other pitchers develop blisters on their fingers which require more than a month to heal? Rich Hill doesn’t need another thing to make him unique, and yet here we are.

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Last night, the Dodgers and Phillies made a deal that, on the surface, is your typical minor August move of minor role players. The Dodgers landed Carlos Ruiz, a 37 year old catcher, in exchange for A.J. Ellis, a 35 year old catcher, and a prospect of dubious quality. The impetus for the trade seems pretty clear; Ruiz can still hit lefties a bit, and so he’s a better fit as Yasmani Grandal’s platoon partner in the postseason. Ellis isn’t much at the plate these days, so by adding Ruiz, the team has slightly upgraded their offense against left-handed pitching.

But the trade was a big deal because, as was immediately apparent given the reaction to the news of the deal, A.J. Ellis was beloved by his teammates, and especially, by the team’s ace.

Ellis described Kershaw as “shocked” by the trade. The two men wept together, he said.

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughTimes) August 25, 2016

Ellis and Kershaw are obviously quite close, but other members of the team also showed their support for Ellis, and made it clear they will miss him.

It’s rare that a player can wholly embody a club’s energy and ideals. Dodgers inside and outside the clubhouse walls will miss @AJEllis17

— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) August 25, 2016

By trading away a beloved part of the clubhouse for a minor bench upgrade, the media has been handed a very simple narrative: nerd-run team doesn’t value chemistry, tears apart clubhouse in the process. The fact that the Dodgers were one out away from being no-hit on the night Ellis got traded didn’t do anything to slow that story down. But of course the Dodgers do care at least a little bit about chemistry, or Yasiel Puig wouldn’t be hanging out in Triple-A right now. So, six days away from roster expansion, when Ellis could have kept hanging around the team even after they acquired Ruiz, why did the Dodgers trade A.J. Ellis?

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The price of relief pitching is on the rise. Baseball die hards are currently having a fierce debate about reliever valuation, but it’s relatively clear that teams are willing to pony up for quality back of the bullpen arms. The recent deals for Ken Giles, Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Will Smith demonstrate as much. Clubs want good relievers (who can blame them!) and they are allocating more resources toward their acquisition.

I’m not an economist, but I imagine teams would rather acquire a high-quality reliever who isn’t expensive than one who is. Unfortunately, market forces tend to get in the way and you wind up trading lots of prospects for a couple seasons of reliever help. Unless you’re the Dodgers. If you’re the Dodgers, you take a gamble on Joe Blanton’s 2015 season and get a setup man at utility-infielder prices.

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The Reds are bad, and the Dodgers just clobbered them. As a part of that clobbering, Adrian Gonzalez socked three dingers. Here, you can watch them all! Each is impressive in its own way, I suppose. They’re most impressive as a group.

There was a time when Gonzalez’s power was absent. He hit three home runs in April. He hit three home runs, combined, in May and June. The fairly obvious culprit was a back injury, and it takes no imagination at all to figure out how an achy back could affect a swing. Gonzalez got some treatment. He insisted his back felt better. The numbers still didn’t quite show up.

Now they’re showing up. From the looks of things, Gonzalez is indeed healthy again, and it simply took him a short stretch to re-find what previously had made him successful. Adrian Gonzalez is looking like Adrian Gonzalez again. The most compelling evidence is probably what follows, as drawn from Baseball Savant. Here are nearly two years of Gonzalez’s batted balls, as tracked by Statcast. This plot shows rolling average launch angles.

That dip is impossible to miss, as an injured and compromised Gonzalez plummeted toward 0. He’s reversed that, again successfully putting batted balls in the air. And he’s once more hitting with authority. Here’s a rolling-average plot of hard-hit rate, and this doesn’t include Monday’s game, not that it would make a huge difference:

Gonzalez is getting his swing back, and he’s also showing a better ability to hit the ball hard to right. Of course, at his best, he’s been more of an all-fields threat — and Monday, he pulled two homers while sending another the other way. I know it was a day game in Cincinnati against the Reds, but big-league homers are big-league homers. Gonzalez can hit them again, and he can do other things, and suddenly he’s up to a 123 wRC+. That’s in line with where he’s been for a while.

The Dodgers are still playing without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers are still winning without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers, of course, would love Kershaw back, but since the All-Star break, Gonzalez has been a key part of what’s been the best offense in the National League. Kershaw’s important. He’s pretty far from being everything.

It feels like ages ago, but back when he was a high-level prospect, George Springer was absolutely fascinating. In Springer, the Astros had a phenomenal athlete with almost unparalleled bat speed. But Springer’s game also came with a lot of swinging and missing, whiffs to such a degree that there were real questions about how he’d be able to handle the bigs. You know how this has gone: Springer has established himself as a quality outfielder, after having dramatically improved his contact skills. Getting better at contact is not an easy thing to do, but Springer made himself an outlier, and now he’s a star.

Springer’s big gain came between 2014 and 2015, and this year he’s actually taken another step forward, in terms of getting the bat to the ball. As a rookie, Springer posted baseball’s very lowest contact rate. As a rookie himself, Joc Pederson posted baseball’s sixth-lowest contact rate. There’s long been concern about Pederson’s own ability to make consistent contact. His swings and misses could get exploited, but Springer demonstrated improvement could be possible. And now Pederson is following in Springer’s footsteps.

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