It was an eventful 24 hours for the Cleveland Indians outfield. On Tuesday, left fielder Michael Brantley sprained his ankle in a game against the Colorado Rockies, so Wednesday, the team put him on the disabled list and promptly traded for his replacement, Jay Bruce.

Because Bruce cleared waivers last week, the transaction was fairly straightforward. The Mets already knew they weren’t going to get much for him, as every team in baseball passed on taking on the remaining $4 million of his contract. So when Cleveland suddenly needed an outfielder, it represented a chance for the Mets to at least save some money while also freeing up playing time for Dominic Smith at first base. In exchange for assuming responsibility for the remainder of Bruce’s contract this year, Cleveland surrendered just RHP Ryder Ryan, a player so notable that this is the first time his name has ever been mentioned on the site.

Here’s what you need to know about Ryan: he was a 30th-round pick in the 2016 draft and is pitching in relief in A-ball as a 22-year-old. This trade isn’t exactly like the Indians claiming Bruce on waivers and the Mets just letting him go, but it’s basically that.

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

Ike Davis, LHP, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
Level: Rookie AZL   Age: 30   Org Rank: He’s 30   Top 100: It’s Ike Davis, guys.
Line: 1 IP, 3 K, 0 H, 0 BB

Notes
He’s not a prospect, but Davis was 88-92 last night and struck out the side in a perfect inning. Davis was a two-way player in college at Arizona State and last pitched as a pro in 2015, during which he made two appearances for Oakland. The Dodgers have frequently tried reclamation projects like this. They moved Stetson Allie — who looks like the pizza-eating stoner son of the cop from Stranger Things — back to the mound this year (he’s only thrown two innings but was up to 99 in the one that I saw) and tried Jordan Schafer as a pinch-running LOOGY. Eventually, one of these laboratory experiments will work out, if only for a brief while.

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Corey Kluber has been really good for a quite some time.

He’s a Cy Young Award winner and has finished in the top 10 in voting for three straight years. He trails only Clayton Kershaw and Chris Sale in wins above replacement since 2014, with 22.4 WAR.
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The man with a 96 mph fastball and devastating changeup looks more himself these days. Danny Salazar is back up with the Indians, dealing, and was even name-checked by his General Manager as a deadline acquisition that should make their rotation hum this postseason. It could just be two good starts, but his pitching mix is radically changed. And though that change looks drastic, the driver of change might actually be more subtle.

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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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Cleveland’s bullpen has been very good this season, but it could still be improved upon. Some of the members at the back end — or the front end, depending on your perspective — could be upgraded. Enter Joe Smith, who was acquired from Toronto as we entered the final hour before the trade deadline this afternoon.

Here’s the deal, with details from Cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes:
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We’ve known for some time that Bradley Zimmer is unusually tall. We’ve also known for some time that Zimmer can move, and more recently we’ve found out that he’s one of the fastest sprinters in the game. When Zimmer gets himself to full speed, he’s practically the same as Billy Hamilton, and while that doesn’t say anything about the time required to get to full speed, it’s still a little surprising. Zimmer can rightfully be considered extreme, in terms of his running skill.

He’s got another one of those! Another extreme skill, I mean. Perhaps it’s not *as* extreme, but it’s close enough. We here at FanGraphs have measures of outfielder arm value. There’s arm value according to Defensive Runs Saved, and there’s arm value according to Ultimate Zone Rating. I don’t know which is better or worse, so I went ahead and combined the two. After adding and dividing, here are this year’s top 10 most valuable outfield arms:

Zimmer is in second place. What’s more, look at the innings column. Zimmer has played a good deal less than all these guys. Still, his value is where it is. As you probably understand, arm value can be a noisy statistic, and things like assists can sometimes be fluky. So it goes. To paint a more detailed picture, here’s a selection of this year’s center fielders, plotted by assists — as a rate metric — and the rate with which they’ve held would-be advancing baserunners. The held% statistic comes from Baseball Reference, and Zimmer is the point in yellow.

Zimmer has held an above-average rate of runners. More importantly, he already has seven assists. He’s one off the league lead in that department, despite the playing-time deficiency. The other extreme point here, for what it’s worth, belongs to Leury Garcia. He also has seven assists. He’s done well, but this is a Bradley Zimmer post.

By the results, Zimmer looks good. He also looks good if you dig in a little deeper. Eric Longenhagen put a 60 on Zimmer’s arm, and there’s also this relatively recent highlight clip:

Now, last season, according to Statcast, Aaron Hicks uncorked a throw four miles per hour faster than that one. Aaron Hicks has a crazy arm. Zimmer presumably doesn’t have the strongest arm in the league, but now we know it’s at least among them. As you can see in the highlight, that was 2017’s fastest throw for an assist. Zimmer has a strong arm, and so far it’s been sufficiently accurate. That leads to both held baserunners, and dead ones.

Incidentally, in the same game in which Zimmer made the above assist, he made another assist, with another strong throw. Previously, Bryce Harper had recorded the fastest outfield assist in 2017. Zimmer knocked that down to third place in one day. The arm is for real, is the point, fluky statistic or no. In the long run, Zimmer’s arm is likely to be an asset.

Brandon Guyer recently gave Zimmer a Kevin Kiermaier comp. Guyer has played with them both. Comparisons don’t get much more flattering. Zimmer will continue to work on his offense, and he’s going to have his bad games and his better ones. As a defender, Zimmer has near-league-leading speed, with near-league-leading arm strength. That takes care of two of the five tools.

I don’t know if the Cubs are actually coming out of their funk, but it sure looks like they are. It feels like a matter of days before they re-claim first place in the NL Central, which is the outcome we’ve all long expected. There’s still work to do yet, but as the Cubs improve, it sends more eyes over to the Indians. The Indians have been in a funk of their own, and while they’re already sitting in first, they’ve been unable to shake the Twins and the Royals. Even the Tigers remain within conceivable striking distance, and they’ve begun to sell. The Indians were supposed to be better than this, and the clock, as a clock does, is ticking.

Struggling team? Check. Trade deadline approaching? Check. Observers are wondering how the Indians might look to get better in the week and a half ahead. One thought has been that the club could look to add another starting pitcher. With Danny Salazar about to return from injury, perhaps that wouldn’t be necessary. But for me, the key isn’t the return of Salazar. Rather, it’s the emergence of Mike Clevinger. Clevinger has stepped up in a big way, giving the Indians more than they thought they might have.

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I’m not a particularly fast person. I was born in Jamaica, though, and Usain Bolt has practically been the country’s patron saint for the last decade, so particularly fast people amaze me. And what’s most amazing about Bolt isn’t even his raw foot speed, but rather that foot speed relative to his height. At 6-foot-5, he stands out among the crowd, from the blocks to the finish line, taking up to 15% fewer strides while breaking records.

We sort of have our own Usain Bolt in the major leagues. His name is Brad Zimmer and he patrols center field for the Cleveland Indians.

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“[Jose Ramirez] is an All-Star baseman. If I were to have told you that four years ago, you’d have been scratching your head, ‘Wait. The guy who is playing second base and is known for his defense? He’s an All-Star third baseman?’”

Those words were spoken by Cleveland Indians team president Chris Antonetti, who went on to say that “development isn’t always a linear process; it’s difficult to predict where guys are going to end up.”

That’s certainly true for Ramirez, who will start at the hot corner for the American League in tonight’s midsummer classic. As Antonetti alluded to, the expectations for the Dominican native were quite different just a handful of years ago. The 2013 Baseball America Prospect Handbook opined that Ramirez has “little power and limited physical projection,” and that he “lacks a high ceiling.”

Feel free to put that scouting report in the shredder, because the 5-foot-9 Ramirez’s ceiling currently resembles that of the Sistine Chapel. The 24-year-old infielder heads into the break with a .332/.388/.601 slash line, and — drum roll, please — an eye-opening 17 home runs. Ramirez has, quite simply, developed into a star.

He isn’t exactly verbose when it comes to talking about his emergence as an offensive force. At least that was the case when I spoke to him — with the assistance of Indians translator extraordinaire Anna Bolton — prior to a recent game. But while Ramirez wasn’t particularly forthcoming, he did share a few a noteworthy nuggets.

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