With a 6–16 July dropping their record to 46–54, it’s increasingly clear that 2021 is not the Nationals’ year. Even with the Mets refusing to run away with the NL East, Washington is 7 1/2 games out of first place entering Wednesday and an even more daunting 11 1/2 games back in the Wild Card race, with cumulative playoff odds of 1.0%. The team appears likely to be sellers at the deadline, and short of trading Juan Soto, just about every player might be available, including ace Max Scherzer and All-Star shortstop Trea Turner — though there’s no guarantee either gets moved.

“I think if we turn into definite sellers, everything will be on the table,” said general manager Mike Rizzo on July 20 when asked about his deadline approach. At the time, the Nationals were 44–49, but Rizzo said that they were taking a dual approach, talking to teams about potential acquisitions if they escaped from their tailspin. Two wins and five losses later, it’s clear that the needle points to selling, particularly with the Nationals no longer able to look to the return of Stephen Strasburg, whom the team announced will undergo season-ending surgery to alleviate neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. Washington is also still without Kyle Schwarber, who may not be available for another week or two as he recovers from the right hamstring strain that has sidelined him since July 3.

The most obvious prize if the Nationals are selling is Scherzer, whose seven-year, $210 million contact expires at the end of this season. Scherzer, who celebrated his 37th birthday on Tuesday, has been worth every penny and more of that deal, helping the Nationals to their first championship in 2019, winning two Cy Young awards, and making a very strong case for a spot in Cooperstown. He’s in the midst of another solid campaign, pitching to a 2.83 ERA and 3.47 FIP in 105 innings and striking out 35.1% of hitters, matching his career-high. He’s also 74 strikeouts away from becoming the 19th pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts, a milestone he projects to attain by the end of this season.

Trading for Scherzer isn’t as simple as just offering up a couple of quality prospects. The biggest issue is his 10-and-5 rights (at least 10 years of major league service, the last five with the same team), which allow him to reject a trade to any team. In late June, agent Scott Boras told NBC Sports that to agree to a trade, “The reality of it is it’s going to have to lead to something.” That was taken to mean a contract extension, but Boras later clarified, saying. “When players are traded, and you refer to contract amendments, it does not necessarily mean an extension. It could be any amendment that gives him a reason to exercise his rights. That’s up to the player at the time. Max and I have never discussed the subject.”

Scherzer could use his no-trade protection to direct himself toward a team, and reportedly, he’s said to prefer the West Coast. In the epic NL West race between the upstart Giants, defending champion Dodgers, and lagging but aggressive Padres, any one of those teams could view him as the difference between a division title or playing in the Wild Card game. And for as strong as each of those contenders are, the fronts of their rotations are showing some wear and tear. The Dodgers are without Clayton Kershaw, who’s working his way back from a bout of forearm inflammation that has sidelined him since early July; he threw a three-inning simulated game earlier this week. They’re also without Trevor Bauer, whose administrative leave has been extended through at least Aug. 6 as both the Pasadena Police Department and Major League Baseball conduct separate assault investigations; a longer suspension remains possible. The Padres’ rotation has a 5.60 ERA and 4.81 FIP this month, with Yu Darvish particularly struggling (7.32 ERA, 5.95 FIP). For the Giants, neither Kevin Gausman (4.87 ERA, 4.63 FIP) nor Johnny Cueto (5.57 ERA, 4.67 FIP) have fared well in July.

Those three teams are hardly alone. Via The Athletic’s Jayson Stark, at least eight others are known to be in pursuit:

These are the 8 teams known to be in on Max Scherzer, via multiple sources:

Dodgers
Giants
Padres
Red Sox
Rays
Blue Jays
Astros
Mets

Also heard Yankees checked in & were told he was unlikely to OK a trade there. Mets could be a long shot for the same reason.

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) July 27, 2021

SNY’s Andy Martino was even more definitive regarding the Mets, reporting, “Scherzer does not want to play in New York… even if he did, the Nationals wouldn’t want to do that.”

Beyond Scherzer’s 10–5 rights is the money factor, which is both considerable and complicated. Here’s MLB Trade Rumors, with input from The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal:

The roughly $11.8MM remaining of Scherzer’s $35MM salary for 2021 is entirely deferred until 2028, so a new team wouldn’t have to pay that money out for seven years. However, Scherzer’s luxury tax number would also be around the $11.8MM mark, which is certainly a factor for teams trying to avoid a tax payment. Scherzer has another $7.5MM in signing bonus money due this September, but Rosenthal notes that this bonus payment “is solely the Nationals’ obligation.”

Right now, the Dodgers are the only team over the $210 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold, but the Red Sox, Astros, and Padres would all cross it if they acquired Scherzer without subtracting elsewhere, as would the two New York teams.

As if all of that weren’t daunting enough, Scherzer was scratched from his scheduled start on Saturday due to inflammation in his right triceps, which he believes is related to swinging a bat in the wake of his mid-June stint on the IL for groin inflammation. The good news is that he underwent an MRI last Friday, which revealed no strain or other structural damage.

As for what Scherzer could bring back in trade, two years ago Baseball America‘s Cameron Levy evaluated the previous four deadlines worth of deals (2015–18), which included the rentals of David Price (traded from the Tigers to the Blue Jays in ’15) and Darvish (traded from the Rangers to the Dodgers in ’17). Levy concluded, “As far as pitchers on expiring deals, frontline starters set to become free agents at the end of the season generally bring back one Top 100 Prospect and a top-30 player from the other team’s system.” In the Price deal, the top-ranked prospect, Daniel Norris, entered the season 18th on BA‘s list, though Matthew Boyd, 29th on the Blue Jays’ list at the outset of the season, has had more success in the majors. The Darvish return was headlined by Willie Calhoun, who was 92nd on BA‘s preseason list but vaulted to 36th the next year. The Astros’ August 31, 2017 acquisition of Justin Verlander, who wasn’t included in the study because of the different deadline and less time remaining, was headlined by Franklin Pérez, who entered the season 54th on BA’s list and climbed to 35th the next spring.

Still, it’s clear the market for Scherzer’s services is a busy one. Per MLB Network’s Jon Morosi, there’s a belief that a deal could happen as early as Wednesday night.

Sources: Max Scherzer trade talks have continued to intensify, and those close to the conversations believe a deal could be reached by late tonight. The Giants, Dodgers, and Padres are among the top suitors, but other clubs are involved. @MLBNetwork @MLB

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) July 28, 2021

Beyond the availability of Scherzer, the biggest question regarding the Nationals is whether they’ll trade Turner. He didn’t appear to be available until MLB Network’s Peter Gammons reported on Tuesday that Nationals ownership doesn’t plan to extend the 28-year-old shortstop, who can become a free agent after the 2022 season:

Keep hearing Washington ownership isn’t going to do anything long term with Tre Turner. Talk about a market changer…

— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) July 26, 2021

The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes reported that Turner is drawing heavy interest from teams “but would need to be presented with a total no-brainer of a deal.”

Turner is in the midst of a stellar campaign, hitting .320/.368/.519 (136 wRC+) with 18 homers and 4.2 WAR, a mark that ranks third in the league behind Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuña Jr. Including last year’s shortened season, he’s hit .327/.378/.546 with 30 homers, 33 steals, a 145 wRC+ and 7.0 WAR in 155 games; among shortstops, only Tatis has a higher wRC+ or WAR, and only Tatis and Marcus Semien have more homers. As Javier Báez, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, and Trevor Story look to their big free-agent paydays this winter with Francisco Lindor’s 10-year, $341 million deal as a yardstick, it’s clear that Turner is in line for a major deal. The fact that he’ll be heading into his age-30 season, though, and that injuries and bad timing have limited him to just two seasons of 100 or more games (this will be the third) during his seven-year career, probably leaves him short of a Lindor-sized haul.

While players with a year of club control remaining bring back bigger hauls than rentals, Turner fell off our Trade Value Top 50 list last year, then played his way back to Honorable Mention this year. As an impact player, he might net a couple of Top 100 prospects, perhaps with a 60 FV type in the mix, though it’s unknown if that would be enough to compel the Nationals to deal him. The chances of them doing so anyway were lowered on Tuesday, when he left their game against the Phillies after the top of the first inning because of a positive COVID-19 test. If he’s not vaccinated — manager Dave Martinez declined to comment on whether he was but noted that vaccinated players, coaches and staffers don’t get tested regularly (ahem) — he’ll miss a minimum of 10 days.

Even if the Nationals choose to hold onto Scherzer and Turner, they have several other players likely to be dealt; the possibility of bundling any of them into a package with one of the aforementioned names could create a more impressive return. Most notable among the trade candidates are pending free agents Brad Hand, Daniel Hudson, Yan Gomes, and Josh Harrison. Every contender is looking for bullpen help, and the Nationals can offer both a lefty and a righty with closing experience, which isn’t to say that they don’t come with dings. After a stellar 2020 with Cleveland, during which he led the AL with 16 saves and posted a 2.05 ERA and 1.37 FIP, Hand was solid through this season’s first half, converting 19 of 21 save chances with a 2.43 ERA (but a 3.91 FIP). After going 12 days between appearances due to the All-Star break, however, he’s been scored upon in four out of five outings, taking losses in three straight games over a six-day span and blowing three saves within a nine-day span; his ERA has risen to 3.67, his FIP to 4.40. Hudson, after a disastrous 2020 as closer (6.10 ERA, 6.29 FIP, 10-for-15 in saves), has pitched to a 2.20 ERA and 2.45 FIP in a setup role, but he missed nearly four weeks in June and July due to inflammation in his right elbow.

Gomes is currently on the IL for an oblique strain, though he’s believed to be nearing the point where he can go out on a rehab assignment. The 34-year-old backstop is hitting .266/.320/.439 (101 wRC+), though his pitch framing, which from 2013 to ’18 was 19.3 runs above average, has declined to -4.7 runs this year, his third straight below-average season. Still, he might have great appeal to a contender getting replacement-level work out of its catchers, as the Astros, Padres, and soon-to-be Guardians are. Harrison is hitting .282/.358/.406 (109 wRC+) while making 59 starts at second, 12 in left, seven at third, two in center, and one in right. After spending the first half as the team’s regular second baseman, he covered left in the final week before the All-Star break once Schwarber went down, then moved over to third when Starlin Castro was placed on administrative leave in connection with a domestic violence investigation.

As for Schwarber, whom the Nationals signed to a one-year, $10 million deal after he was non-tendered by the Cubs, the 28-year-old slugger has hit .253/.340/.570 (137 wRC+). Though he hasn’t played since July 2, his 25 homers still rank second in the NL, that after an incredible 18-game binge during which he hit 16 homers from June 12 to 29. There’s no timetable for his return, but as of July 23, he had resumed jogging and taking batting practice, with Martinez noting on July 26 that while he was making good progress, he had yet to run the bases. Thus, a team trading for Schwarber would not get an immediately available player (a situation that could actually work in its favor if it has a post-deadline roster crunch) but would have to finish overseeing his rehab. Plenty of teams could use the power boost that he would provide if healthy, even if that’s not until the second or third week of August; whoever gets him will inherit the $11.5 million mutual option and $3 million buyout in his contract.

While there are other Nationals who could be dealt, they’re less immediately enticing; Patrick Corbin and Jon Lester have both been dreadful this year, for example. Still, en route to a second straight sub-.500 season following their World Series win, the Nationals appear headed for a shakeup. We’ll soon see just how major it is.

The trade deadline is nearly here and once again, team behavior will be driven, at least in part, by 40-man roster dynamics. Teams with an especially high number of both rostered players under contract for 2022 and prospects who would need to be added to the 40-man in the offseason have what is often called a “40-man crunch,” “spillover,” or “churn,” meaning that the team has incentive to clear their overflow of players by trading for something they can keep — pool space, comp picks, or, more typically, younger players whose 40-man clocks are further from midnight — rather than do nothing, and later lose players to waivers or in the Rule 5 draft. In an effort to see whose depth might augment trade behavior, I enjoy assessing clubs’ 40-man futures every year. This exercise is done by using the RosterResource Depth Chart pages to examine current 40-man occupancy, subtracting pending free agents (on the Team Payroll tab), and then weighing the December 2021 Rule 5 eligible prospects to see who has the biggest crunch coming and might behave differently in the trade market because of it.

Some quick rules about 40-man rosters. Almost none of them contain exactly 40 players in-season because teams can add a player to the 40 to replace a player who’s on the 60-day Injured List. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra spots for injured players and have to get down to 40, so if they want to keep some of the injury fill-ins, they have to cut someone from the 40-man to make room.

In November, clubs have to add prospects to the 40-man to protect them from the Rule 5 draft. RosterResource is the most accessible resource for tracking the prospect timelines. Most teams add a handful of players every offseason, while some add just one, and others may add as many as 10. Read the rest of this entry »

Most deadline trades follow a familiar coda. A team with fading hopes and eyes full of prospects gets rid of an overperforming reliever, or perhaps a soon-to-depart slugger. A contender who needs more pitching (so, all of them) gives up on its prospect-hugging ways long enough for a few to slip through its grasp. Wham-o! It’s a trade. This one is … well, it’s not that:

Source confirms: Astros acquire RHPs Kendall Graveman and Rafael Montero from Mariners for IF Abraham Toro and RHP Joe Smith. Montero had been designated for assignment. First: @brianmctaggart

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 27, 2021

Kendall Graveman is definitely the aforementioned overperforming reliever. He’s been incredible this year, one of the best closers in the game. No longer a middling starter, he converted to relief in 2020, added velocity and started dominating. His 0.82 ERA is better than he’s actually been — shocker, that — but he’s cooked up an enviable mix of strikeouts and grounders, and he’s done it when it counts; he’s recorded 18 shutdowns this year (adding at least 6% of win probability) and only three meltdowns (losing 6%).

Rafael Montero? He hasn’t been that. He has 12 of those fancy shutdowns, but 12 meltdowns to match. The Mariners are 23–8 in one-run games, but it’s been because of Graveman, not Montero. In fact, they’ve swapped roles; Graveman now finishes games, and Montero sets him up. He, too, is a capable pitcher. But he’s been dicey this year, even at the underlying metric level, and that 7.27 ERA — ew!

Anyway, neither of them are Mariners anymore. The Astros snapped them both up, and they’ll fold them into their middle-of-the-road relief corps; they’ve been only 16th in baseball in park-adjusted ERA and 20th in park-adjusted FIP. Ryan Pressly has been great, but he’s a man, not an entire bullpen. Houston could certainly use the help.
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On Tuesday, July 20, Chris Taylor led off the bottom of the first inning with a double off the Giants’ Alex Wood. But he was still hungry, so he homered twice and drew a walk later in the same game.

On Wednesday, Chris Taylor led off the bottom of the first inning with a homer off the Giants’ Logan Webb. But he was still hungry, so he later singled off Webb.

On Thursday, Chris Taylor led off the bottom of the first inning with a single off the Giants Anthony DeSclafani. But he was still hungry.

On Friday, Chris Taylor led off the bottom of the first inning with a double off the Rockies’ Chi Chi González. But he was still hungry, so he later singled off Daniel Bard.

On Saturday, Chris Taylor led off the bottom of the first inning with a single off the Rockies’ Kyle Freeland. But he was still hungry. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 20, the Cardinals dropped a game to the Cubs despite going into the ninth inning with a 6–1 lead. Based on Greg Stoll’s win expectancy calculator, when the home team is winning by five runs in the top of the ninth, that’s a victory 99.7% of the time. The Cardinals acted accordingly, bringing in veteran journeyman Luis Garcia for his 2021 debut. This was mop-up duty … until it was not.

Garcia struck out Patrick Wisdom to start the inning, but he was able to reach first base on a dropped third strike. Nico Hoerner followed Wisdom with a single, and Jake Marisnick walked. The odds were still in the Cardinals’ favor; the win expectancy calculator gives the home team in this spot (up five, no outs and the bases loaded) a 97.2% chance of pulling it out. Nevertheless, manager Mike Shildt felt the heat enough to bring in his closer, Alex Reyes. But things did not go as planned. Reyes went walk, strikeout, walk, single, double; a 6–1 lead had turned into a 7–6 deficit in the blink of an eye.

The double did the most damage, but the walks are a theme with Reyes. The surface-level numbers are fantastic; dig one step deeper, and things look a little concerning. On the season, he has posted a 29.3% strikeout rate but also a 19.2% walk rate, leading to a 1.38 WHIP (league average is 1.29) and a 1.53 K/BB ratio that’s about 41% worse than the average pitcher. Reyes’ FIP is 3.68 despite the issues with walks, a testament to his strikeout prowess (led by a slider, curveball, and changeup that generate whiff rates of 46.4%, 57.9%, and 40.0%, respectively, per Baseball Savant) and his ability to induce groundballs with his bowling-ball sinker.

Still though, that walk rate is an issue, but what I want to do here is assuage some of the concerns and help reinforce a point made by Baseball Prospectus’ Jonathan Judge on Twitter just last week: that often a walk or hit-by-pitch is the next best outcome after a strikeout (compared to a ball in play). He noted that while Reyes is toeing the proverbial walk rate line, he has the tools to make that extreme profile work, especially with his ability to generate groundballs with his sinker.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s July, which means the A’s are trading to improve their bullpen. Whether it’s Jake Diekman, Mike Minor, Jeurys Familia, or any of a seemingly unending number of other moves, they always seem to find an arm they can bring in to redo their leverage roadmap and provide a little extra playoff oomph. Last night, they acquired Andrew Chafin in exchange for Greg Deichmann, Daniel Palencia, and cash, as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand first reported.

Chafin has been downright spectacular this year. In 39.1 innings, he’s allowed only nine runs, good for a 2.06 ERA. He’s done so by limiting home runs; he’s only given up one all year, and while that’s unlikely to persist, he does plenty of things right that should continue to limit homers. He gets grounders, with a 50% groundball rate so far this year. He’s limited hard contact, too: opponents have barreled up only 5.1% of their batted balls and have hit only 32.3% of them 95 mph or harder.

Do those two things, and homers are harder to come by. Baseball Savant’s xHR, which is a descriptive estimate of home runs based on contact quality, thinks Chapin “should” have allowed only 1.1 dingers so far this year. That doesn’t mean it will keep happening — it’s based on the actual contact allowed, which is volatile — but it’s a good sign that he hasn’t given up 20 warning track blasts or anything of that nature.
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Depending on how one frames Monday’s Yankees and Pirates swap of reliever Clay Holmes for upper-level minor leaguers Hoy Park and Diego Castillo, it can look pretty rough. Holmes, who is out of options, is walking over five per 9 IP and has an ERA just a shade under 5.00 in a middle relief role for one of the worst teams in baseball, while Park and Castillo are annihilating the upper levels of the minors and play valuable defensive positions. But even though my shoot-from-the-hip reaction to this deal was that the Yankees took a bit of a bath because I think Castillo has the most long-term upside of the players exchanged, there are indications that Holmes is better than his superficial stats and really special in a few ways. There are also minor league roster dynamics at play for New York that make parting with these two middle infielders more palatable.

But let’s start with Holmes since he’s the one most likely to play an immediate big league role in the Bronx pressure cooker. He owns the highest groundball rate in baseball at 72.8%. It’s well above Holmes’ career rates, but he’s also experienced a 3 mph uptick in velocity to his fastball, cutter and curveball. For a pitcher generating a league-leading rate of groundballs, his HR/FB rate, a whopping 18.8%, feels unusually high and seems likely to regress to his career mean or below, considering how sinkery his improved, harder fastball is playing. It’s part of why his FIP and xERA are at least a run below his ERA to this point.

Holmes has also had a shift in his pitch deployment, as his cutter/slider has taken precedent over his curve. The combination of repertoire alteration, newfound arm strength, and rust (Holmes barely threw in 2020 due to a foot fracture and a forearm strain) may be contributing to that poor control. Holmes’ walk rates (15% career, 13% this year) are troubling, though he’s slowly improved in that regard every season of his career. The Yankees are walking a tight rope here. Holmes is out of options and he had forearm trouble last year (he’s about a half decade removed from a 2014 Tommy John). He’s a little wild. He’s also superlative in a particular sense and joining a team that has been one of the best at developing pitchers in the last five years. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last month after being on hiatus due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment focuses on changeups and features a pair of big-league relievers — Connor Brogdon and Garrett Whitlock — as well as Cade Cavalli, the top pitching prospect in the Washington Nationals system.

———

Connor Brogdon, Philadelphia Phillies

“A changeup was the first off-speed pitch I ever learned. It was… shoot, I was probably eight or 10 years old. When I was growing up, you weren’t taught to throw a curveball too early in your life. Mine was just a straight circle change, basically right off the grip of my four-seam fastball.

“I had the same grip all the way through Little League, and even into high school. When I got to college, I started messing around with grips to see if I could throw it for a strike more consistently. I ended up talking to one of my teammates at Lewis Clark State College, Henry McAree, and picked his brain on some things.

“I finally settled on a grip that felt comfortable to me, then took some of his tips. One was to lay on your back and flip the ball up in the air, focusing on turning your wrist. By that, I mean physically taking a baseball, laying on the ground, or on a bed, and just flipping it up into the air, seeing the rotation of the ball and focusing on pronating your wrist to get that action — kind of that side-spin action you want to get. Read the rest of this entry »

Slowly falling behind in the divisional race, the Padres shook up their roster on Sunday, acquiring second baseman Adam Frazier from the Pirates. Frazier, under team control until the end of the 2022 season, is having easily the best season of his career, hitting .324/.388/.448 for a 130 wRC+ and 2.9 WAR. Except for the slugging percentage, all of these numbers are career-bests for the 29-year-old; that WAR figure was a new personal high before the All-Star Game was even played. Heading to Pittsburgh are three players: infielder Tucupita Marcano, outfielder Jack Suwinski, and right-handed reliever Michell Miliano.

Despite the fact that they’re 5 1/2 games out and behind two teams in the NL West as of Monday morning, it would be a gross exaggeration to call the 2021 season a disappointing one for the Padres. After all, they’re on pace for 92 wins, with the fifth-best run differential in the majors. The problem is that half of the teams with better run differentials also play in the NL West. That gauntlet essentially puts the Padres, Giants, and Dodgers into an “extra” grueling round of playoffs, with two of the three teams likely to be pushed into a single-elimination game after the regular season.

As of now, the Padres are a clear underdog, with a projected divisional probability that has faded from the 43.5% in the preseason, when it was expected to be a two-team race, to 11.2% before taking into account this trade. They aren’t in even remote danger of missing the playoffs — for now — but they certainly have an obvious preference for getting a free pass to the best-of-five Divisional Series, which basically doubles their chances of collecting the franchise’s first-ever World Series championship.

With Frazier on board, the Padres’ divisional probability bumps to 16.9%. This is projected to be a photo finish, so each win is quite important! But what will that role be?

Read the rest of this entry »

For a brief period on Saturday night, it appeared possible that not only would the single-season record for no-hitters fall, but that two pitchers — the Angels’ Patrick Sandoval and the Astros’ Framber Valdéz — would spin no-hitters on the same day for just the third time in history. Neither was successful, but on Sunday, the Yankees’ Domingo Germán put in his own no-hit bid, one that not only fell short but turned into a debacle. While this season’s breakneck pace of no-hitters has slowed down drastically, with just one in June and none in July after six in April and May, the drop in the number of close calls hasn’t been quite as sharp, but even so, the concentration of such games from Saturday and Sunday was notable.

Valdéz had the earlier of the two no-hit bids on Saturday night. The 27-year-old lefty has generally pitched well this season, but in his first four outings of June had struggled with his mechanics and compromised his command, walking 15 in 22.1 innings, and getting tagged for 27 hits and 15 runs (13 earned). Even against a Rangers team that entered having lost 10 straight games, his command woes — which had abated somewhat in his July 18 outing against the White Sox, when he walked just two hitters in 6.1 innings — returned, but this time he was effectively wild, walking six in six innings without allowing a hit or a run; he threw just 53 strikes out of 99 pitches. Despite sandwiching two first-inning walks around a wild pitch, and walking two more in the second, he escaped both jams and kept the Rangers off the board. Only twice did he retire the side in order, but each of the other two walks he issued came with two outs.

Valdéz needed a game-high 23 pitches to get through the sixth, with the final two hitters of the frame — Nate Lowe, who walked, and Curtis Terry, who struck out looking — each battling through eight pitches. For manager Dusty Baker, it was a no-brainer to remove him even given that he hadn’t given up a hit. Via MLB.com’s Brian McTaggert, “If we’d left him out there to get the no-hitter, he’d be up to 140 pitches,” said Baker, who decades ago gained a reputation for pushing his young pitchers too far, one that’s no longer applicable. “You’ve got to think logically what’s best for him.” Read the rest of this entry »