Anyone who has ever studied statistics generally, and sabermetrics or other analytics specifically, will have at least a passing familiarity with the idea of sample sizes. I’m not a sabermetrician – nor do I play one on TV – but you can’t be a good trial lawyer without at least a decent understanding of statistics. And regardless of the statistic, it’s generally true that one game isn’t really all that useful. I mean, it’s useful in the sense that being entertained is useful, but it’s usually not useful in the sense that you can determine talent levels from it.

Enter the Nationals and Mets. They are both, in theory, Major League Baseball teams. They both play on the East Coast. And on July 31, as major league teams are wont to do, they played a baseball game. And when they were done, this had happened.

And as you might expect for a team that scored 25 runs, a lot went right for the Nationals. Daniel Murphy had three hits, hit two homers, and drove in six, yet had just a 0.10 WPA, because that’s what happens when your team scores 25 times. Tanner Roark, the Nationals’ starting pitcher, tossed seven innings of one-run ball and had two hits, including a bases-clearing double. Matt Adams and Mark Reynolds both homered for Washington, and neither of them even started the game. The Nationals walked eight times, had a hit batsman, racked up 26 hits and, as a team, hit .520/.593/1.000, which, in case you were wondering, comes out to a 311 wRC+ and a .646 wOBA. In other words, the Mets’ pitching staff allowed eleven more batters to reach base (35) than they got outs (24).

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Less than three weeks ago, in the context of a July 11 game that featured the longest pitching appearance by a position player since 1988, the earliest mound entry by one since 1979, and the first instance of multiple position players tossing multiple innings in the same game since 1956, I noted that the count of such instances for this season had already reached 29 (not including those of Shohei Ohtani), essentially guaranteeing a smashing of the single-season record of 36 (or 32, depending upon how you feel about Christian Bethancourt, whose conversion to the mound didn’t take), set just last year. In the 21 days since then — four of which were part of the All-Star break — an additional 17 non-pitchers have taken the hill, an average of one per day. On Tuesday night, we saw the worst of them, and perhaps the nadir of the entire genre, when the Mets’ Jose Reyes was battered for six runs by the Nationals while throwing 48 pitches in a single inning of work.

Reyes, who already has little business being on a major-league roster given his ineptitude as a position player (.182/.254/.240, -1.1 WAR entering Wednesday, when of course he homered twice!), entered a game in which the Mets trailed 19-1 in the eighth inning. Working with a fastball that averaged 81.5 mph and topped out at 86.9, and a curve that averaged 63.5, he retired Ryan Zimmerman on a fly ball, and then proceeded to allow the next six batters to reach safely: Juan Soto won a 10-pitch encounter with a double to rightfield, Matt Adams followed with a two-run homer to right-center (21-1), Michael Taylor and Matt Wieters both walked, pinch-hitter Mark Reynolds followed with a three-run homer (24-1), and then Trea Turner singled. Reyes got Anthony Rendon to fly out, but then Wilmer Difo tripled (25-1). Good grief, Charlie Brown.

Reyes then hit Zimmerman with a 54-mph curveball, after which Zimmerman pretended as though he might charge the mount. Finally, Soto flied out to end the debacle.

While a position-player pitching appearance is supposed to be either a break-glass-in-emergency desperation move (generally in extra innings) or a lighthearted farce that draws attention away from an otherwise unpleasant blowout, this was unpleasantness itself. In all, Reyes’s 48 pitches were three more than Jacob deGrom threw in a single inning on June 17 before being pulled out of concern for his health. Regardless of Reyes’s current playing ability or his status as a pariah in the wake of his 2016 domestic violence suspension, manager Mickey Callaway allowing him to toil that long was irresponsible, though it was at worst the second-most irresponsible act of the night following a dead-armed Steven Matz being torched for seven first-inning runs and then later examined for complaints of forearm tightness. Chalk it up as the umpteenth data point illustrating the team’s incompetence and lack of accountability when it comes to protecting its players.

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Episode 826
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen recently traveled from Phoenix to Baltimore to Washington DC to Chicago to Catasauqua to Hartford to Wilmington, not necessarily in that order. What he does in this episode of FanGraphs Audio is to recount his travels.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 11 min play time.)

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Back in May, the Mariners agreed to a lease deal that would keep them in Safeco Field for another 25 years. At the time, I wrote that the Mariners appeared to be bucking a trend by foregoing public money for a new stadium in favor of staying where they were.

Then, last week, things seemed to change.

Predictably, this was not well received.

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Kyle Gibson turned a corner midway through last season, and an eye-opening email was a big reason why. The 30-year-old right-hander received a valuable piece of information from the Minnesota Twins brain trust, and he’s used it to his full advantage. Gibson went 7-3 with a 3.76 ERA over the second half, and this year he’s been even better. In 22 starts for Derek Falvey and Thad Levine’s ball club, he has career lows in both ERA (3.47) and FIP (3.73), and his 8.80 strikeout rate is also a personal best.

Gibson talked about his career-altering adjustment, and his overall approach to pitching, when the Twins visited Fenway Park this past weekend.

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Kyle Gibson: “When I got sent down last year, Derek and Thad emailed me, breaking down each of my starts over the past two years. It was the percentage of time I got my fastball in the strike zone, and it was astounding. When my fastball had an in-zone percentage over 50%, I hadn’t been beaten. That really opened my eyes.

“It was at that point when I started to figure out how my four-seamer plays early in the count, and how I can use my fastball to get guys to be more aggressive. My outlook on how I use that pitch has really changed. Before, I’d been thinking about executing fastballs in the right part of the zone. I’d been overcomplicating things. Now I’m simply trying to throw more fastballs in the zone.

“It’s about attacking middle early. You can’t pitch in the middle of the zone, but you can try to pitch to thirds. It started with, ‘Get more fastballs in the zone.’ Like, OK, how can we… my sinker, right? I relied so much on chase my first two years in the league — throwing sinkers in the zone and then just out of the zone. Well, let’s figure out how to keep the sinker in the zone. Let’s figure out how the four-seamer plays, both up and down. From there, let everything else fall into place. My fastball usage hasn’t increased. I’m just more efficient with it, and it’s helped make my offspeed better.

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For as pitching-rich as the Braves may be, they could not afford to stand pat at the non-waiver trade deadline, particularly given the recent struggles of their rotation, the uncharted territory towards which their top starters are heading innings-wise, and a 31-games-in-31-days stretch that has only just begun. On Tuesday afternoon, they dealt four prospects and $2.5 million in international signing bonus slot money to the Orioles in exchange for 27-year-old righty starter Kevin Gausman and 35-year-old righty reliever Darren O’Day It’s the second deal in three days between the two teams, following Atlanta’s acquisition of 32-year-old righty reliever Brad Brach, also in exchange for slot money.

At 56-47, the Braves entered Tuesday half a game back in both the NL East (behind the Phillies) and the Wild Card races (behind the D-backs, .001 ahead of the Rockies). They’ve generally gotten good work from their starters this year, at least in terms of ERA, as the rotation ranks third in the NL (3.68). They’re a shakier eighth in FIP (4.19), with a gaudy 9.8% walk rate, the league’s second-worst. The team’s 9-13 record this month owes plenty to the unit’s recent struggles; their 4.90 ERA and 4.95 FIP in July both rank in the bottom third of the league.

All of that has been a problem, but if the Braves stay In This Thing, they’ll have another:

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The Dodgers have seemingly courted Brian Dozier for years. Last offseason, they seemed to settle for Logan Forsythe to fill their second-base needs. But the desire lingered and, in the final hour leading up to Tuesday’s 4 p.m. non-waiver trade deadline, the Dodgers and Dozier finally got together.

The price of Dozier on Tuesday was cheaper than it was two years ago when the Twins refused an offer of Jose De Leon, who was later shipped to the Rays for Forsythe. To acquire Dozier, the Dodgers sent Forsythe and minor-league pitcher Devin Smeltzer and corner bat Luke Raley to the Twins. Neither was ranked by FanGraphs among the Dodgers’ top 21 prospects in the spring.

While the cost came down, Dozier, 31, is nearly two years older and perhaps not the same player. He’s also headed to free agency after the season. Still, this is a trade about today for the Dodgers. Second base is a real need for Los Angeles, and even a subpar Dozier, whose 91 wRC+ represents a six-year low, is a real upgrade.

Dodgers second basemen have produced an anemic .213/.303/.287 slash line to date, ranking 28th in the majors in wRC+ (66) and 27th in second base WAR (-0.3). Forsythe (55 wRC+), Chase Utley (84 wRC+), and company were just not getting the job done, producing a drag effect on the lineup.

The Dodgers have ridden the game’s macro-level trends about as well as any team in recent years. They’ve manipulated the 10-day DL, have employed an opener, limited pitchers’ trips through lineups, and were willing to give more dollars and years than any other club to Rich Hill’s unconventional pitch mix two winters ago. (Hill’s usage is now becoming more and more conventional.) Justin Turner has preached the power of the air ball to teammates like Chris Taylor. In Dozier, they get another hitter with natural loft and pull-side power.

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I think of the Pirates and Rays as being similar to one another. The A’s belong to the same small group. There are differences, obviously, and the organizations each have their own specific approaches, but these are smaller-budget operations that adhere to similar roster-building philosophies. They try not to ever completely tear down, accumulating years of team control while aiming for something close to .500. Constant churn is an unavoidable reality. It’s almost a feature instead of a bug. In a case like this year’s A’s, a club can get hot, but I’m used to seeing these teams in similar positions. So I wouldn’t expect them to swing major trades with one another.

Less than a month ago, the Rays were 11 games back of the second wild-card slot. In the other league, the Pirates were 10 games back of the second wild-card slot. Both of the teams were expected to sell, because competing down the stretch was unrealistic. Since then, the Rays have won nine times and lost nine times. The Pirates, however, have gone 15-4. The Rays are still very much out of the hunt, but the Pirates are within 3.5 games of the playoffs. That imbalance in the short-term outlooks has led us to a blockbuster. This is the time of year when a very small sample can dramatically change a team’s course. Because they caught fire at just the right time, the Pirates have decided to go for it.

Pirates get:

• Chris Archer

Rays get:

• Austin Meadows
• Tyler Glasnow
• (some player to be named later)

Both the Rays and Pirates already thought they could be close in the future. The Pirates’ last 19 games have made all the difference. They’ve opened up a shot in 2018, which was enough to tip all the necessary scales.

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Ahead of the deadline, the Brewers traded for bullpen help in the form of Joakim Soria. They appeared to need a second baseman, but then they traded for Mike Moustakas and moved Travis Shaw to second base in an unusual experiment. With those needs met, the Brewers turned their attention to the starting-pitching market. Then Chris Archer went to the Pirates, Kevin Gausman went to the Braves, Matt Harvey stayed in Cincinnati, and Kyle Gibson remained in Minnesota. Without seeing any other starting options available, the team landed another infielder in the form of Jonathan Schoop of the Orioles.

Brewers receive:

• 2B Jonathan Schoop

Orioles receive:

• 2B Jonathan Villar
• RHP Luis Ortiz
• SS Jean Carmona

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After arriving in the majors back in 2012 as a relatively unheralded prospect, Twins second baseman Brian Dozier entered the 2018 campaign having produced five consecutive above-average seasons. The All-Star middle infielder’s 2016-17 performance (11.2 WAR) places him second among qualified second basemen during that time, behind none other than Jose Altuve. Even accounting for his 2018 struggles — a relative term, since he is still tracking for league-average performance — Dozier ranks third among all second basemen over the last three calendar years, trailing Altuve by a sizable margin and Robinson Cano by a half-win.

Roughly two-thirds of the way through a season in which the Twins expected to contend — having acquired Lance Lynn, Logan Morrison, Addison Reed (among others) all at market value or less — the Twins haven’t succeeded on that front, having struggled in a very weak AL Central. They find themselves seven games under .500 and trail the Indians by eight full games; as you might expect, they are expected to be less productive than the Indians for the remainder of the season, too.

With that serving as background, the club dealt one of their central pieces today. A combination of ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick and NBC LA’s Michael Duarte reported the deal, as follows.

Dodgers get:

• 2B Brian Dozier

Twins get:

• INF Logan Forsythe
• 1B Luke Raley
• LHP Devin Smeltzer

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