We can all agree that Mike Trout is probably the best player in baseball, right? And if Mike Trout is the best player in baseball, that means Anthony Rendon is not the best player in baseball, right? OK, so it’s settled. Rendon is good, but he’s no Trout. That being said, let’s have fun!

This year, 188 players have batted at least 400 times. Of those, 90 have a walk rate that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 90 players, 49 have a strikeout rate that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 49 players, 28 have a BABIP that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 28 players, 14 have an isolated slugging that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 14 players, five have a baserunning rating that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those five players, three have a defense rating that is at least a hair better than the league average.

The three players we’re left with: Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, and Jonathan Lucroy. These players are above-average at walks, contact, hits, power, baserunning, and defense, at least as far as the 2016 season is concerned. The defense rating uses UZR, and maybe you don’t love that, but DRS likes Trout even better. We know that Lucroy is a strong defensive catcher. And DRS likes Rendon, too. So it makes for an interesting group. These are regular position players who have made positive contributions across the board. Trout’s positive contributions have been the most positive, but if you’re looking for well-roundedness, Rendon is very nearly by himself.

Injuries mostly spoiled what Rendon tried to do a year ago. If you go back two years, though, there were 209 players who batted at least 400 times. Going through all the same process as above, one would’ve been left with just two players: Anthony Rendon and Alex Gordon. So Rendon has had a season like this before, and now that he’s healthy again, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s back to being fantastic.

He could even maybe be an MVP candidate, were it not for an awful first month. Since the beginning of May, Rendon has been good for a 127 wRC+ and a WAR of 4.5. That puts him right around his 2014 pace, and back in 2014, it was Rendon who felt like the underrated borderline superstar. Last year did nothing to help his perception, but now he’s back and just 26 years old. He’s not as flashy as Bryce Harper, and he doesn’t have the offensive potential of Bryce Harper, but Rendon does a little bit of everything, which makes him enormously valuable. It really shouldn’t be a secret why the Nationals have been so good even with Harper mysteriously coming somewhat apart.

Once before, Rendon has been among baseball’s most underrated players. Now he’s back to being exactly the same. When you think about the Nationals, you think about Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg. You’re doing your own self a disservice if you stop there.

I don’t mean to stress out anybody whose teams are still fighting for a playoff spot, but the postseason is almost here. In less than two weeks fans of either the Mets, Giants, or Cardinals will be crushed as will fans of the majority of the (approximately) 82 teams vying for an American League Wild Card spot. When that time comes, the disappointed will be able to dry their tears while engaging in one of the great annual postseason traditions: overanalysis. For six months, we’ve been watching up to 15 games every night — a pace which lends itself nicely to broad, big-picture analysis more than football-esque gameday breakdowns. In the playoffs, however, that all changes and suddenly every game and series will be diced up and analyzed in every possible way, for better or worse.

One of the biggest ways this overanalysis creeps into our baseball consciousness is through an obsession over starting pitching. If you check a newspaper — I see you and I respect you, old-school newspaper folks — or open a game preview on the MLB.com At Bat app, the first thing you’ll find is that day’s starting-pitcher matchup. Is your team going to win on a given day? Better know who’s toeing the rubber to set your expectations correctly. Intellectually, we know that baseball is too unpredictable and complex to be effectively parsed down to a look at the day’s starters, but that won’t stop us. With that in mind, it’s been a rough stretch for a few playoff-bound teams who figure to see their starting rotations scrutinized under a high-power microscope over the next few weeks. I’m talking, of course, about Cleveland losing Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar to injury, the Mets losing Jacob deGrom, and the Nationals losing Stephen Strasburg.

The good news for each of those teams is that they all have at least one healthy ace-level pitcher remaining, but will that be enough when matching up against other ace-laden playoff rotations? Are any of them particularly well-suited to handle the loss? In preparation for overanalysis season, let’s take stock of what each of these injuries means to these teams and what their October rotations look like as things stand today.

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I read new baseball stories every day, and I forget most of them the instant I’m finished reading them, but I remember many of the players and anecdotes that taught me something I hadn’t thought about before. One of the stories that’s stuck with me is the tale of Carlos Gomez’s transformation. Gomez has always been fast, and because Gomez has always been fast, he was instructed earlier in his career to try to put the ball on the ground. Gomez, eventually, figured out he’d be better by tapping into his power, instead of trying to be a speed-only player. Fast players commonly end up being trapped. They run well, so that just ends up the focus.

You’re not going to find Trea Turner in a trap. An excerpt from an enjoyable article by Jorge Castillo:

[College coach Elliott] Avent isn’t the only confidant to relay this kind of advice to Turner. If not bunt, at least focus on putting the ball on the ground, the consultants advise. If the Washington Nationals’ rookie sensation can do that, he can leg out a few extra hits, the theory goes. And the more he’s on base, the more he can terrorize defenses with his speed. Turner listens and scoffs.

“People tell me that,” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Shut up.’?”

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For a good while this season, it looked like Clayton Kershaw was going to win the Cy Young Award this season for the fourth time in six seasons. It’s possible he still might: with a sub-2.00 ERA and FIP — and a WAR that still leads major-league pitchers — he has a strong case. But given his relative lack of inning (just 121 currently), he faces a steep uphill climb against those who will have spent far more time on the mound this season.

Jose Fernandez and Noah Syndergaard are likely to be mentioned for the most prestigious year-end pitching award. Kyle Hendricks is making a run at it, too. That said, no pitcher has been on the mound more this season than Max Scherzer. Only Fernandez is within 30 of Max Scherzer’s 238 strikeouts, and after a slow start this season, Scherzer is making a run at joining Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and Gaylord Perry in winning the Cy Young both in the American and National League.

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Position: Washington Nationals Baseball Research & Development Analyst

Location: Washington DC

Description:
The Washington Nationals are seeking a data analyst to join the organization’s Baseball Research and Development team. This role will focus on using data science to support Baseball Operations in player evaluation, roster construction and in-game tactics. This includes using machine learning techniques and predictive modeling to draw insights from our in-house baseball datasets. The analyst will work closely with the existing R&D team, including other analysts and developers, to design and build decision-support systems and tools for use throughout the organization.

Responsibilities:

• Statistical modeling of baseball data.
• Build automated solutions to import, clean, and prepare baseball datasets for downstream analyses.
• Create informative visualizations of our baseball datasets.
• Assist in the maintenance of our data warehouse.
• Build information systems to support Baseball Operation’s efforts to improve player health and performance.
• Review of public research in both baseball and data science.

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In January of this year, the author of this post, following some statistical perambulations, arrived at the conclusion that Max Schrock, a 13th-round selection out of the University of South Carolina during the most recent (2015) draft, would someday win an MVP award. The basis for that conclusion: no SEC batter in 2015 had produced numbers more similar to Josh Donaldson’s — during Donaldson’s own final year as a collegiate player (also in the SEC) — than Schrock. And Donaldson himself had just collected an MVP award in the American League. So, by a very liberal application of the transitive property, I concluded that Schrock would as well.

There were, of course, a number of reasons to suppose that Max Schrock would not win an MVP award in the major leagues. There remain a number of reasons. Chief among them is probably this: the best player of the current era — and possibly any one’s era ever — has received only one MVP award during his first four seasons in the majors and faces a non-negligible chance of extending that record to one in five years. If Mike Trout is capable of just a 20% conversion rate on MVP awards, everyone else’s chances are dramatically lower.

Moreover, there’s the matter of Schrock himself. Because, here’s a type of prospect who rarely develops into a perennial MVP candidate: a 5-foot-8 hitter. And here’s another kind: an infielder who’s incapable of playing a competent shortstop. And here’s a third sort: a player who’s selected in the 13th round. How many 5-foot-8, 13th-round second basemen have been recognized as their respective league’s best? I lack the requisite ambition to perform the search. But none seems like a reasonable answer. Let’s assume none or somewhere close to none. Indeed, even Josh Donaldson, whose ascent to stardom is regarded as improbable, is a former first-round selection. And features physical attributes that suggest the ability to hit for power. And offered, as a young player, the possibility of defensive value as a catcher. (And continues to offer it as a markedly above-average third baseman.) Schrock possesses none of these redeeming qualities.

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A 13th-round pick last year, infielder Max Schrock — received by Oakland today from Washington in exchange for left-handed reliever Marc Rzepczynski — has made something of a name for himself by putting up strong offensive numbers in the lower levels. He’s hitting .333 between two levels of A-ball this season, largely due to an 8% strikeout rate. That’s encouraging coming from a middle infielder with speed and decent power. As a result, he’s become a regular on Carson Cistulli’s Fringe Five column.

Despite his strong performance, KATOH isn’t a huge fan of Schrock. My system pegs him for 2.9 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 2.8 WAR by the method that integrates Baseball America’s rankings. That puts him in the #150-#200 range in terms of prospects. To help you visualize what his KATOH projection entails, here is a probability density function showing KATOH+’s projected distribution of outcomes for Schrock’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

While Schrock’s hitting has been very good, KATOH dings him for being just 5-foot-8, and also for playing second base rather than shortstop. Second baseman with good numbers in the low minors don’t pan out all that often. There are some obvious exceptions to that statement, but it’s worth pointing out that those exceptions all provide defensive value, while Schrock has been eight runs below average at second base, according to Clay Davenport’s numbers.

To put some faces to Schrock’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the undersized second baseman. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Schrock’s performance this year and every A-ball season since 1991 in which a batter recorded at least 400 plate appearances. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

As Dave Cameron pointed out, Rzepczynski is a mediocre left-handed reliever, and a month of his services probably could have been had for next-to-nothing. Schrock probably won’t win any MVP awards, but there’s a pretty decent chance he’ll be a useful role player in a couple of years. That’s demonstrably more than next-to-nothing.

One of the recurring themes over the last year has been the high price the market is putting on relief pitchers. Ken Giles and Craig Kimbrel brought back monster returns in trades last winter, while even decent middle relievers were getting two or three year deals as free agents. At last month’s trade deadline, Aroldis Chapman got the Yankees a terrific haul. It’s clearly a good time to be selling relief pitching.

And today, it looks like those rising prices have trickled down to mediocre lefty specialists, as the Nationals gave up a legitimately interesting prospect for a five week rental of Mark Rzepczynski. The guy nicknamed Scrabble is a useful situational reliever, having held lefties to a .270 wOBA in his career — don’t put any stock on his 2016 reverse split, which is all BABIP driven — but he’s useless against righties (.351 career wOBA allowed) so he’s effectively a one out guy.

Of course, the Nationals already have exactly this kind of pitcher in Oliver Perez, who they signed for $7 million over two years last winter. Perez hasn’t been as good as they hoped this year, and has been particularly bad lately, getting torched for a .473 wOBA in August. But he’s still held lefties to a .316 wOBA this year after keeping them to just a .230 wOBA last year, and is at .306 for his career; you’d have to really overreact to five bad innings in August to think that the Nationals needed to give up real value to improve their lefty specialist for the playoffs.

For the right to marginally upgrade their LOOGY, a guy who might face four or five batters in an entire playoff series, the Nationals surrendered a 21 year old currently running a 131 wRC+ in high-A ball. Max Schrock isn’t an elite prospect or anything, but he’s been a fixture on Carson’s Fringe Five all year, based on his strong contact rates and at least a little bit of power. As a diminutive second baseman, it’s easy to look at Schrock as a limited upside guy, but with Jose Altuve on the verge of getting AL MVP votes, we should remember that the idea of firm upside ceilings are much less concrete than is often thought.

Schrock’s more likely future is as a bench bat, but even if he’s just Alberto Callaspo 2.0, giving that up for a marginal gain in lefty specialists seems weird.

So why did the Nationals do this? Well, the deal was announced as Rzepczynski and cash for Schrock, so presumably, Oakland is paying some of the remaining ~$800K or so left on his contract this season. But according to sources in the game, Rzepczynski actually cleared waivers before this trade was completed, so the Nationals could have simply had him for just a the waiver fee, and kept a legitimately interesting prospect in their system.

So, effectively, the Nationals just sold a decent prospect for some cash savings in order to bolster the least important part of their bullpen. I know the value of relievers is going up, but deals like this still seem silly to me. Maybe Scrabble will get a big out or two in October and it will seem worth the long-term cost, but Rzepczynski seems like the kind of guy the Nationals should have gotten for next to nothing. When the market is inflating reliever prices to the point you have to give up a legitimately interesting 21 year old for a five week rental of a LOOGY, maybe it’s just time to stop paying market prices for relievers and go with what you already have.

There ought to be no shame in a pitcher struggling at Coors Field. Many of the greatest pitchers on the planet have been humbled in that stadium and, last week, Stephen Strasburg became merely the latest among them. Allowing nine runs before being pulled in just the second inning, Strasburg posted what was far and away the worst performance of his career. He’d never previously given up more than seven runs in a game and his game score of 1 was not only his lowest mark ever, but is tied for seventh worst in baseball this season. Ideally, this could be written off as a Coors fluke for one of the game’s best pitchers, but instead it’s served to illuminate the frustrating reality that Strasburg has struggled mightily of late.

Over his last six outings, Strasburg has given up 26 runs in 30.2 innings pitched. Crunch the numbers and you’ll find that works out to a decidedly un-ace-like 7.63 ERA. These six outings have caused his season ERA to rise more than one full run, from 2.51 to 3.59. The good news is that there’s more than a little hope to be found in his peripheral stats. Over this awful stretch, his FIP is a massively more palatable 3.25, largely on the strength of a solid 29.1% strikeout rate and a roughly league-average 7.8% walk rate. It also likely won’t surprise you to learn that he’s posted an inflated .388 BABIP during this rough patch. Unfortunately, this is not to say Strasburg’s swoon has been entirely devoid of red flags.

In mid-June, Strasburg hit the disabled list with a back injury. Considering a back injury was the primary culprit in Strasburg’s first-half struggles last season, this latest DL stint was an unavoidably alarming development. Fortunately, he made a swift return to the mound. Any hopes that he’d escape the performance struggles which plagued him a year ago, however, have been derailed by his recent stretch. Whether those struggles are directly related to the injury is unknowable, but there are observable things about Strasburg which have changed since his return.

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Bryce Harper was as good as Mike Trout, until he wasn’t. It hasn’t yet been that big of a deal, with the Nationals up in first place, but Harper has been slumping, and the slump hasn’t been short. For weeks on end, he’s hit barely .200, and though the walks have still been there, Harper’s supposed to be better than this. He’s supposed to be one of the best, actually. That’s what he just looked like, at 22 years old, and instead now he’s a 23-year-old in a lineup being carried by Daniel Murphy and Wilson Ramos. To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being on track for a four-win season. It’s just not how you want to follow a nine-win season.

There are plenty of indicators to point to. What happened to Harper’s numbers? His BABIP is a lousy .237. That’s guaranteed to come up. More discouragingly, he’s making more contact against pitches out of the zone. Last year, 70% of Harper’s batted balls came against pitches within the strike zone. That ranked him in the 67th percentile. This year he ranks in the 18th percentile. That partially explains why Harper’s exit velocity has dropped — and it has indeed dropped. That’s another thing. Harper so far has lost a tick or two on average.

Yet there’s still more. We all figured that Harper’s 2015 dramatically changed his own baseline. What if it shouldn’t have?

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