In a sense, there isn’t that much wrong with the Dodgers. They won on Thursday — albeit barely — and they stand in first place in their division. You could excuse them if they’ve gotten used to that. The last time the Dodgers weren’t in first place was one night in the last week of May. Prior to that, you’re looking at the second week of the season. All year long, they’ve been positioned well, and they have two unbelievable starting pitchers, and they’re heavily favored to advance to the first round of the playoffs. The Dodgers aren’t struggling. Most of the teams in baseball would be ecstatic to be where they are.

But, of course, not every team is equal, and given the Dodgers’ resources, it feels like they should be doing better. It feels like they should be almost unstoppable, unless they were to be brought down by injuries, like the Nationals. One could reasonably assert that the Dodgers should be running away with things, and that it’s worrisome they’re still fending off the Giants. The Dodgers might not make the NLDS. It’s unlikely, but very possible. Things just feel underwhelming. Observers feel it. The players themselves feel it.

Look over the numbers, and there’s one glaring curiosity. What might be one explanation for the Dodgers’ performance? You might be familiar with wOBA, which is like a better version of OPS. Right now, the Dodgers offense ranks third in wOBA in all of baseball. They lead the National League. What could be better than pairing a good offense with two proven aces? And yet, the Dodgers rank 18th in baseball in runs scored. By one measure, they’re tremendous. By another, they’re average. This is an unusual discrepancy.

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I find that writing goes in phases, and they can be unpredictable. I don’t know when it’s going to be a good writing week. I don’t know when it’s going to be a bad writing week. And I don’t know what I’m next going to find interesting. For example, I feel like I spent a good year or two zoning in on pitch-framing, which I thought was just the coolest thing. And my current fascination appears to be player adjustments. That’s good, because players are always adjusting, and it’s bad, because adjustments can be complicated. But I feel like there should be more attention paid to what’s going on underneath, even when the surface numbers seem stable. What’s driving a player’s success or failure? What’s driving his stability?

Adjustment analysis comes in different flavors. Some are more convincing than others. Some are more subtle than others. There are PITCHf/x adjustment analyses. There are mechanical adjustment analyses. And there are just plain ordinary statistical adjustment analyses. Many times, people will argue it’s just an observation of sample-size noise. Definitely, some of the time, that’s true. Other times, the adjustments are real, even if fleeting. And sometimes they’re so significant they just about slap you in the head. You want a story of a player who made an adjustment and kept himself around the top of his game? Embrace the case of Adrian Gonzalez, who is what he was, yet at the same time very much isn’t.

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Chasing records is fun. Sometimes it’s meaningless and fun, like the famed Ryan Webb, Matt Albers games-finished-without-a-save streak. Some chases have limited meaning, but they’re fun, like Zack Greinke‘s pursuit of Orel Hershiser’s consecutive scoreless innings streak. Other are meaningful, like the 2015 Cardinals pursuit of the best park-adjusted ERA since before World War I.

Record chases exist on a spectrum of notoriety — from “Mark Simon would tweet about this,” to “my mother-in-law has heard of it and wants to discuss it.” That’s a big range. Some records are fun quirks that could happen to anyone. Some are the product of a truly great player performing at a high level. The record up for discussion these days falls into the latter category, but it’s also closer to Mark Simon tweet status than mother-in-law conversation fodder. Clayton Kershaw is trying to post the best single-season, park-adjusted xFIP ever.

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The biggest story to come out of the Dodgers camp yesterday was the acquisition of Chase Utley from the Phillies for two minor-league prospects, Darnell Sweeney and John Richy. While Utley will no doubt provide support to a middle infield that is thinner with the injury to Howie Kendrick, there was another event going on in Oakland yesterday — a major-league baseball game, in fact — and one important part of the Dodgers pitching staff once again reminded us that it too might be in need of some help.

I refer to the current state of the Los Angeles bullpen, which has, by a multitude of measures, accounted for among the worst performances in baseball during the 2015 season. On Wednesday, the Dodgers were “swept” in a two-game series by the 53-69 Oakland A’s; this was made especially painful to players and fans alike, I can imagine, considering Clayton Kershaw started the opening game of the series.

Kershaw was able to go only seven innings during that game, exiting with the score tied, and he handed the ball over to a multitude of relievers who displayed various levels of ineffectiveness. That game resulted in a 10-inning Oakland walk-off win — with the bullpen blowing a three-run lead — while the second and final game of the series saw them unable to keep the A’s close in the final frames of another tight contest. The two-game series was probably an encapsulation of a lot of what Dodgers fans have become painfully accustomed to.

Today, we’ll highlight some numbers related to the Dodgers pen, and see what options the Dodgers might have in bolstering the current weakest part of their team.

We have two statistics here, created in 2010, called Shutdowns and Meltdowns. They’re a way of measuring a given amount of win probability added or subtracted (.06 or 6% WPA, to be exact) during a relief pitcher’s performance, and they help outline the struggles we’re talking about. First, let’s take a look at the 10 bullpens in baseball that have the most Meltdowns, i.e. occasions on which a relief pitcher lowered his team’s chances of winning by at least 6%:

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The Los Angeles Dodgers made another move after a very active trading deadline, trading for life-long Philadelphia Phillies’ player and icon Chase Utley. The Dodgers, attempting to hold off the San Francisco Giants for a division title are currently two games ahead of the Giants, but are also one game behind the Chicago Cubs in the wild-card standings, making the division title potentially the only real avenue to make the playoffs. The Phillies will reportedly pay $4 million of the $6 million that Utley is owed for the rest of the season and in return receive minor leaguers Darnell Sweeney and right-hander John Richy. While the players the Phillies receive are not non-prospects — each appeared in Kiley McDaniel’s Dodgers write-up this past spring — for this season, the trade is centered on Utley’s potential contribution to the Dodgers.

For the Phillies, this trade is another in a series of transactions which represents a move away from their World Series’ runs at the end of last decade and toward rebuilding. For the Dodgers, in a tight playoff race where any additional help could mean the difference between the playoffs and going home despite a $300+ million outlay in salaries, the move for Chase Utley is no guarantee of success, but the possibility, especially when Utley had been rumored to go to the Giants, likely makes the move worth the effort. Read the rest of this entry »

Just before the trade deadline, the Braves, Marlins, and Dodgers struck a big deal, at least in terms of quantity of players and money being moved around; 13 players changed uniforms, and when the dust settled, the Dodgers came away with a trio of pitchers to upgrade their staff: starters Alex Wood and Mat Latos, along with reliever Jim Johnson. While they had been a heavily-rumored destination for frontline pitchers like David Price, Johnny Cueto, and Cole Hamels, the Dodgers ultimately decided to with depth over star power, adding multiple good arms rather than one great one.

Of course, a large driver of that decision was the relative cost, as they could acquire these kinds of pitchers without surrendering any of their best young talents, and they’ll also control Wood’s rights through the 2019 season; he won’t even be eligible for arbitration until after next year, so he’s going to make something close to the league minimum next year. So, while no one thinks Wood is on David Price’s level as a pitcher, he offered a better value when future years of control and financial obligations are factored in.

But choosing Wood and Latos over one better pitcher wasn’t just about getting a cheaper pitcher, or even just about getting a guy they could control for multiple years. In Alex Wood, the Dodgers were attempting to buy low on an asset with significant upside, which is exactly the kind of move that they’ve been making ever since Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi took over the baseball operations department last winter.

If you want to know why the Braves were willing to trade a 24 year old pitcher with four years of control remaining after this season, you can essentially sum up their reasoning in one easy table.

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This breakdown starts with the Scott Kazmir deal on July 23, but there weren’t any trades from the 16th to the 23rd, so this covers the whole second half of the month, trade-wise, up until now. I count 25 total trades with prospects involved in that span that add together to have 58 prospects on the move. Check out the preseason Top 200 List for more details, but I’ve added the range that each Future Value (FV) group fell in last year’s Top 200 to give you an idea of where they will fall in this winter’s list. Also see the preseason team-specific lists to see where the lower-rated prospects may fall within their new organization.

40 FV is the lowest grade that shows up on these numbered team lists, with 35+ and 35 FV prospects mentioned in the “Others of Note” section, so I’ll give blurbs for the 40 FV or better prospects here. I’ve also linked to the post-trade prospect breakdown for the trades I was able to analyze individually, so click there for more information. Alternately, click on the player’s name to see his player page with all his prior articles listed if I didn’t write up his trade.

I opted to not numerically rank these players now, but I will once I’ve made the dozens and dozens of calls necessary this fall and winter to have that level of precision with this many players. Look for the individual team lists to start rolling out in the next month, with the 2016 Top 200 list coming in early 2016. Lastly, the players are not ranked within their tiers, so these aren’t clues for where they will fall on the Top 200.

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Update: the Braves are reportedly also sending Bronson Arroyo to the Dodgers, which works out to saving about $8 million. So, that’s a small benefit for Atlanta, which isn’t discussed below.

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Update No. 2: the Dodgers are taking on some of Arroyo’s money, but not all of it. So the Braves are saving less than that $8 million. Glad we could get this straightened out.

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A valuable lesson we all learned yesterday is that a trade isn’t official until it’s officially official. In the case of this trade, it still isn’t totally complete, so, who knows? Something else we’re aware of is that the structure is complicated. As the Braves, Dodgers, and Marlins work through their three-way exchange, this seems like the current picture of the Braves’ side of things:

Get:

• Hector Olivera
• Paco Rodriguez
• Zachary Bird
• Competitive balance draft pick

Lose:

• Alex Wood
• Jose Peraza
• Jim Johnson
• Luis Avilan

Because it isn’t official, it could always fall apart. Alternatively, it could always change its form. Beyond that, even if this does go down as understood, there are plenty of moving parts. Real people, having their lives changed in an instant! A draft pick, just after the first round! So what I’m about to do is over-simplify, but what this is really about, from the Braves’ perspective, is swapping Wood and Peraza for Olivera. The rest of it more or less cancels out, given the cost of relievers at the deadline. The Braves, perhaps, weren’t comfortable with the risk of keeping Wood and Peraza around. They’re more comfortable with the risk of Olivera, who they tried hard to sign only a few months back.

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The Dodgers, Marlins and Braves have pulled off a massive trade that sends Mat Latos and Alex Wood to the Dodgers, and a whole slew of other players (plus a draft pick) in other directions. The prospects involved include Jose Peraza, Kevin Guzman, Jeff Brigham, Victor Araujo and Zachary Bird. Here’s what the data say about these players. (Note: WAR figures denote WAR through age-28 season.)

Jose Peraza, Los Angeles Dodgers, 8.7 WAR

Jose Peraza is easily the most highly touted prospect who changed hands in this deal. The 21-year-old second baseman was playing in Triple-A this year, where he was hitting an admirable .294/.318/.379 with 26 steals. He put up much better numbers in the lower levels of the minors, however, including a .339/.364/.441 showing between High-A and Double-A last year.

Peraza’s offensive game is centered entirely around contact and speed. He’s struck out in just 8% of his trips to the plate this year, and has struck out less than 13% of the time in each of his five years in the minors. Peraza’s lack of strikeouts, along with his solid BABIPs, have enabled him to hit for high averages throughout his minor-league career.

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The headline isn’t the way the Marlins would put it. It’s not the only way to interpret Wednesday’s trade — it’s just one way to do so. The Dodgers, who’ve been in the market for rotation help, convinced the Marlins to sell them Mat Latos. The price for Los Angeles: accepting, along with Latos, Michael Morse. To soften that blow, the Marlins have thrown in a competitive-balance draft pick, to be made after the end of the first round. Now, technically, the Dodgers are sending the Marlins three minor-league pitchers. So it’s not a pure sale, and we don’t know who those players are, so maybe a conclusion shouldn’t be jumped to, but this one feels pretty safe. Those pitchers are presumably the equivalent of nothing. They won’t be as valuable as the player that draft pick turns into. The Marlins sold an asset at the deadline, and they’re the ones effectively losing the best prospect.

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