The Orioles are in the thick of a playoff race once again After their dominating performance last night in San Francisco, they are just 1.5 games out of their second wildcard appearance in a row. Some of this year’s Orioles heroes are the same: Chris Davis, Adam Jones, Wei-Yin Chen. Manny Machado has used last season’s call-up as a springboard for a tremendous 2013. Nate McLouth has been a tremendous budget pickup.

Few would name Nick Markakis to the list of big contributors to the current run. In 2012 Markakis had his best wRC+ (125, .298/.363/.471) since his tremendous 2008 (138, .306/.406/.491). Thus far this year, Markakis is having the worst offensive season of his career, with just a 95 wRC+ (.284/.339/.377). The primary cause appears to be a serious power outage.

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Bud Norris is heading to Baltimore, it looks like. Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Orioles will send the Astros the much-traveled LJ Hoes along with a second prospect and a draft selection to Houston in exchange for Norris, who is under team control through 2015. At first, it may seem like a flawed prospect isn’t much to pay for a proven, cost-controlled starter who has struck out over 21% of the batters he’s faced so far in his career, but on the other hand, Norris has deep flaws that make his acquisition less of a steal and more of a gamble.

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If it seems like there’s always a lot of talk about all-time records in the earlier months of seasons, there’s a good reason why. With less and less of a season complete, the sample sizes are smaller and smaller, and over smaller sample sizes, one will observe greater statistical volatility. Basically, it’s easier to be on a record pace after a month or three than it is after five months or six. The trouble with on-pace statistics is that they fail to factor in regression, and regression is a part of our reality. Sometimes record paces are kept up, but most often they aren’t after a player starts to play more like his normal, non-record-setting self.

This season, we’re hearing about some records that might fall, and these days there’s a lot being written about Chris Davis‘ pursuit of the “legitimate” home-run record. But one of Davis’ teammates is also pursuing a long-standing record, as Manny Machado is approaching the single-season record for doubles. Earl Webb’s record isn’t as sexy as Roger Maris‘ was, and still is in some corners, but Machado’s pursuit has drawn attention to itself as Machado the player establishes himself as one of the game’s elite young talents.

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The last time I wrote about Edge% it was in the context of the Tampa Bay Rays using it to get their pitchers into more favorable counts on 1-1. But now I want to take that topic and drill a little deeper to understand how often edge pitches are taken for called strikes.

Overall, pitches taken on the edge are called strikes 69% of the time. But that aggregate measure hides some pretty substantial differences. Going further on that idea, I wanted to see how the count impacts the likelihood of a pitch on the edge being called a strike.

Here are the results:

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For fans of Carlos Marmol, it’s been a confusing few days, even beyond the usual confusion baseline. On Tuesday, Marmol was shipped from the Cubs to the Dodgers. On Wednesday, there were initial reports the Dodgers were cutting ties, but now it’s clear they simply intend to send him to the minor leagues for a little while, in theory to get him “straightened out.” Marmol, at some point, should pitch for the Dodgers, and they have more interest in him than they had in the now-departed Matt Guerrier. Cynics will note that the solution to an inconsistent Brandon League isn’t adding another one, but if the odds are X% that League turns it around, the odds are greater that one of League and Marmol turns it around.

Of course, Marmol was just designated for assignment. There’s not a lot there, beyond the strikeouts, the frequency of which is plummeting. Since 2011, among pitchers with at least 150 innings, Marmol ranks 14th-worst in OBP allowed, at .355. He’s hanging around the likes of Dallas Keuchel and Derek Lowe and Edinson Volquez, and though Marmol generally limits batting and slugging, his career isn’t on the way up. Marmol, probably, can be useful, but since 2011 he has a 105 FIP-. Guerrier has a 109 FIP-. Lots of relievers can be useful and Marmol isn’t going to pitch the Dodgers into first place.

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And the trade season is officially here. We have our first significant trade of the year on July 2nd, and the timing of this move is not a coincidence.

First, the details, per Keith Law.

Orioles acquire Scott Feldman and Tony Clevenger from the Cubs for Jake Arrietta, Pedro Strop, and int'l bonus slots.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) July 2, 2013

For the record, he meant Steve Clevenger, but he’s a throw-in in this deal, and it’s not like Baltimore is acquiring him to unseat Matt Wieters or anything. This deal is basically Feldman for two pitchers and, in a first for MLB, pool allocation money that will allow the Cubs to be more aggressive in international free agency. We’ll get to that part of the trade in a second. First, let’s start with what the Orioles are getting in Scott Feldman.

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In the past I’ve written on a handful of occasions about how sometimes I like to just get lost playing with Barry Bonds‘ statistics. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate Bonds’ performances at the time — it’s that I think it can take years to appreciate what he did fully. One could make it his life’s pursuit to arrive at a true understanding and appreciation of Bonds’ statistical record. There were good players, and there were great players, and then there was Barry Bonds, who occupied his own level. Sure, maybe he only got up there with the help of a biochemical jetpack, but lots of people were using the machinery and couldn’t get far off the ground. If you just want to look at numbers, Bonds’ are the best to look at, because they’re straight-up absurd.

Given what Bonds accomplished, then, one has to be careful not to be too casual about drawing comparisons. There is no more flattering offensive comp, so few will ever exceed the threshold of acceptability. But Chris Davis is, if nothing else, giving it his best try. What follows is a comparison between Davis and Bonds, and the frightening thing is I don’t think it’s a stretch. This isn’t a thing one notes lightly.

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Chris Davis has had power for as long as he’s been a professional, and probably longer. His first year, in Low-A, he slugged .534. The next year he slugged .598. In Triple-A he slugged over .600. The power is what got Davis to the majors. But Davis now is taking things to new levels. It wouldn’t be right to say Davis has been hitting everything, because he’s missed quite a lot. But he’s hit more things than he used to, and that’s why he’s currently leading the majors in home runs, with 20. His isolated slugging percentage is more than double Adrian Beltre‘s career number. It’s more than double Robinson Cano‘s. It’s got 50 points on Babe Ruth’s. If baseballs had snot in them, there would be a lot of snot on Chris Davis’ uniform.

Davis possesses what you might call “easy power.” Several people have characterized it as “effortless.” According to FanGraphs commenter farrpar, “He has the most effortless power in baseball, no doubt about it.” According to this guy, “Wow! Chris Davis! Effortless Grand-slam!!! Go O’s.” According to David Miller, “The thing about Davis is that his swing looks so effortless on homerun balls like the one he hit on Sunday.” According to OsLuvrInKy, “Gotta love it. His swings just look so effortless.” Last season, in fact, Davis hit a home run on a broken bat. Because Davis is all the some of the rage right now, I’ve decided to prepare a top-five list of his most effortless home-run swings of the 2013 season so far. One way to measure effortlessness would be biomechanical examination. Another way would be guessing.

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A couple of weeks ago, you the attentive reader, will surely have observed the introduction of our depth charts and standings pages. It was a long time coming, and we remain pretty freaking excited about it. As such, we thought that every two weeks that we’d take a look at some sort of change or happening or goings-on that occurred.

We’re not going to cover every team, because let’s face it, there really is only so many times that one can write a variation of “the Marlins aren’t even trying” without wanting to scrape out your eyebones with a rusty screwdriver. But we’ll still try to pry out an objective look in some way. This week, we’ll take a look at the three biggest movers — one positive and two negative — in terms of ranking of projected full season winning percentage. (One note — the looks here are from last Tuesday, the 14th, to this morning, but in future editions we’ll likely use Monday as the cut-off day for a number of reasons, nearly all of which involve my sanity.)

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Rick Peterson looked on from the Bowie Baysox’s dugout as Kevin Gausman stated his case. The Orioles’ prized right hander decimated the Trenton Thunder over six innings, striking out ten and allowing few well hit balls. With Baltimore four games behind the American League East division leaders and their rotation in shambles, expect Gausman to earn a promotion after the super-two deadline passes in mid-June. In eight starts with Double-A Bowie, Gausman has been nearly untouchable. He’s third in the Eastern League in FIP, and owns a 25.7% strikeout rate and a 2.6% walk rate.

The high-waisted 6’3″ right hander has a long, lean frame and he’s listed at just 190 lbs. There is plenty of room for growth throughout his body, if he should choose to cultivate mass. In the windup, Gausman has a high leg kick. He brings his left leg to his hands, which rest chest high at takeaway before he delivers the ball from a high three quarter arm slot.

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