The sabermetric movement has grown up over the last decade. A thing that you regularly hear now that you maybe wouldn’t have heard 10 years ago is this: I don’t know. So that’s where we start today. We don’t know what the going rate for ace relief pitchers is. That said, we do have one strong data point following this weekend’s trade of Craig Kimbrel by the Padres to the Red Sox, and it suggests that the cost to grab one of the best relievers in baseball is now substantial, akin to what it might have cost to get an ace starter some years ago.

Kimbrel is an elite relief pitcher, but it was surprising to see Boston acquire him for four prospects, including two top-50 prospects in outfielder Manuel Margot and shortstop Javier Guerra. On top of that already substantial talent the Red Sox tossed in starting pitcher Logan Allen and infielder Carlos Asuaje. That’s a ton of young talent to give up for anyone, let alone for three years of a reliever. It looks quite possibly as though the Red Sox have reset the cost for acquiring a top reliever. But have they?

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The Padres and Red Sox swung a deal on Friday night that sent Craig Kimbrel to Boston in exchange for a quartet of prospects: outfielder Manny Margot, shortstop Javier Guerra, second baseman Carlos Asuaje and left-handed pitcher Logan Allen. As Dave Cameron noted immediately following the trade, the Red Sox coughed up quite a package for the rights to Kimbrel. Not only did San Diego receive a high-quality prospect in Margot, but they got quantity as well. Here’s what my fancy computer math says about these prospects. The numbers next to their names refer to their projected WAR totals through age 28 according to KATOH.

Manny Margot, 10.2 WAR

The Red Sox signed Manny Margot as a 16-year-old out of the Dominican back in 2011, and he’s hit at every stop since then. He put himself on the prospect map in 2014 with a strong showing in Low-A, but he outdid himself in 2015 by essentially replicating those numbers in both High-A and Double-A. Margot makes a ton of contact, hits for modest power and runs wild on the base paths. All of that bodes well for his future in the show, especially considering he’s always been very young for his levels. Here are some comps that were generated using a series of Mahalanobis distance calculations.

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The Red Sox are primed to make some moves this off-season, but not much is known about what those moves will be. They might sign a big money pitcher, they might not. They might trade a bunch of prospects, but they might not. They’re very likely to do something, probably, but what that something is, nobody has any idea. That’s all true, with one exception, an exception you’re likely aware of if you read the title of this post. Hanley Ramirez, lost puppy, needs a new home, and the Red Sox would very much likely to give him one.

It was only last season that Hanley showed up in Boston, skinny, hungry, wet from constant proverbial rain. The Red Sox took him in, scratched him behind the ears, and gave him shelter, food, and $88 million on a four-year deal with a $22 million vesting option. Then he spent the better part of the season pooping on the carpet.

Ramirez’s 2015 season was so bad he cost the Red Sox two wins. For $22 million and the promise of $66 million more, Boston got -1.8 WAR. The Red Sox would literally have been better off had Ben Cherington given one of those “we just signed a new player” press conferences and then, like Clint Eastwood, spent the time talking to an empty chair. Or maybe he could have talked about the team’s prospects for the coming season while casually lighting 20s on fire and tossing them over his shoulder while subordinates ran around frantically with fire extinguishers. Had he done that, it might have been the end of Cherington’s job, but if so it only would have sped up the process by about six months.

Now Boston is run by Dave Dombrowski and Dombrowski has moved Hanley from left field, which he can’t play, to first base, which he probably can’t play but we can’t be sure yet. Instead of putting him there for the final month of the season to see if he could, you know, do it, Boston sent him home. This is known as the writing being on the wall. Instead of getting ready for next season when getting ready for next season was all that was left, Boston said, “Nah, you know what, Hanley? Just get out of here. No, no, it’s fine, we’re good. Sure, sure we are. Have a great holiday!” So Hanley needs a new place to play. The Red Sox don’t want to go into next season with a total unknown at an important defensive position, let alone one they perceive to be a player who wasn’t interested in putting out maximum effort to learn a new position. No, they’re going to try to dump him on someone else.

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Since we don’t have much more than velocity readings from Japan, it can be difficult to rely on anything but scouting reports when evaluating pitchers coming over from Nippon Professional Baseball. And now that 27-year-old Kenta Maeda is once again rumored to be coming to America through the posting system, we’re once again left wondering how to place him in context.

We have his Japanese strikeout and walk rates, which we can compare to recent postings to find comparable countrymen. We also have his velocity readings and a general sense of the quality of his pitches that we can use to compare him to pitchers beyond just ones that have come from Japan. We even have one game of PITCHf/x data to help us look at the movement of his pitches.

And the few comparable players we produce might be the best we can do from out here in the public sphere.

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No, we aren’t just going to do a leaderboard sort for best movement in each direction and call it a day. It’s a little bit more complicated to figure out the best changeups by shape and speed, mostly because it’s all relative. The changeup, as the name implies, functions off of the fastball, as a change of pace and movement. So we need to define anything the changeup does relative to the pitcher’s fastball.

Then we can do a sort and call it a day.

In order to define fastball movement, let’s just group together all of the fastballs thrown by a pitcher. It’s probably more nuanced than that; the concept of tunneling or sequencing shows that pitchers can pair their changeup with one fastball or the other for different results. But some of this comes out in the wash: by averaging movement across fastballs, their selection of different fastballs will weight the movement in the direction of the pitcher’s usage.

So then our x and y movement, and velocity, are defined against this average fastball for each pitcher. Using a minimum of 50 changeups thrown, and z-scores to sum up the values, we can get a list of best changeups quickly.

First, the relievers.

Best Reliever Changeups by Movement, Velocity

Pitcher	FB (pfx_x)	FB (pfx_z)	FB (velo)	CH (pfx_x)	CH (pfx_y)	CH (velo)	Sum Z	CH swSTR%
Brad Boxberger	-3.3	10.6	92.6	-7.8	2.0	79.8	6.7	14%
Shawn Tolleson	-2.6	11.0	92.9	-4.8	4.0	79.8	4.9	15%
Josh Fields	0.1	11.5	94.1	-0.6	3.7	81.4	4.5	8%
Roberto Osuna	-4.2	10.7	95.5	-8.0	6.9	82.3	4.0	16%
Josh Smith	-4.1	7.6	89.9	-8.4	1.9	79.4	4.0	8%
Chasen Shreve	7.3	10.6	91.4	6.3	1.5	82.6	3.5	18%
A.J. Ramos	-3.0	8.6	92.4	-7.5	1.0	85.5	3.5	35%
Jeff Ferrell	-4.1	10.2	93.0	-7.4	4.9	82.4	3.5	20%
Danny Farquhar	-5.0	8.5	92.7	-7.5	1.0	84.5	3.2	24%
Fernando Rodney	-6.7	7.1	94.7	-9.6	3.3	82.7	3.1	17%
Andrew Schugel	-7.9	7.8	91.6	-9.6	2.3	80.5	3.1	23%
Joaquin Benoit	-6.5	8.9	94.2	-7.5	1.9	84.1	3.1	24%
Tyler Thornburg	-0.8	11.1	92.2	-5.8	6.3	83.8	3.0	19%
Arnold Leon	-5.1	9.8	91.6	-4.6	2.8	80.2	2.9	22%
Pat Neshek	-8.5	4.9	89.9	-4.6	3.7	68.4	2.9	9%
Tommy Kahnle	-1.9	7.4	94.8	-7.6	2.8	87.2	2.8	23%
Mike Morin	-4.7	8.9	92.3	-0.5	6.8	71.7	2.8	25%
Deolis Guerra	-5.1	10.0	90.8	-6.7	4.0	80.7	2.8	15%
Daniel Hudson	-6.6	8.3	96.0	-9.9	4.9	84.8	2.7	18%
Erik Goeddel	-3.9	9.2	93.0	-4.7	2.0	84.3	2.5	32%

SOURCE: PITCHf/x

pfx_x = horizontal movement
pfx_z = vertical movement
Sum Z = sum of the z-scores for the differentials between fastball and changeups in x, y movement and velocity
swSTR% = swinging strikes over pitches for the changeup
Minumum 50 changeups thrown in 2015

If you listen to The Sleeper and The Bust, you know I talk about this all the time and do the math in my head. Now the math is there for us on the sheet of paper.

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It’s 24 years ago, and for the Minnesota Twins the World Series is on the line.

Jack Morris has finished his ninth shutout frame, but it looks like that won’t be enough. The Atlanta Braves have also held Minnesota scoreless, and Game Seven of the Series is likely headed for extra innings. John Smoltz having departed in the eighth, it will be all down to the bullpens.

Except that Jack Morris has other ideas.

Mythologizing and revisionism have clouded the exact details, but the outlines are there to see. Twins manager Tom Kelly tells Morris, with gratitude, that he’s done for the night; relief ace Rick Aguilera will take over. Morris declares “I’m not coming out of this game.” Kelly mentions the 118 pitches Morris has thrown, on three days’ rest. Morris holds his ground: “There’s no way I’m coming out of this game.”

And Tom Kelly relents. He probably wouldn’t give way for any other pitcher on his team, but for this 15-year veteran with a certain old-school demeanor, he does. Kelly gives Morris the green light, then turns away and is heard to mutter, “It’s only a game.”

The last starting pitcher to go into extras in a World Series game was Tom Seaver in 1969. In Game Four, he worked around two baserunners to put up a zero in the top of the 10th, and his Miracle Mets won the game in the bottom.

Jack Morris didn’t make it nearly as dramatic. One pitch to Jeff Blauser got the first out, five more struck out Lonnie Smith, and he polished off Terry Pendleton with his eighth. Kelly’s risk had paid off—and he’d be doubling down by sending Morris back out for the 11th.

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Sometimes we here at FanGraphs like to zig when others zag. Or there are times when others zag and we zag too and then before they can say “Hey you’re zagging!” we switch back to zigging. Lots of virtual ink has been spilled recently on Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts and both are well deserving of the attention they’ve received for reasons discussed more on this site and others. But [looks both ways] [leans in] they are not alone. There is a third prospect in Boston with a high ceiling who has been overshadowed by Betts and Bogaerts. His name is Blake Swihart. Three days ago he hit two home runs in Yankee Stadium and when a 23-year-old catcher hits two homers in Yankee Stadium, well, that seems like as good a pretense as any to assess him and his season. So there’s our pretense. Assessment time!

Despite his youth, the switch-hitting catcher spent the majority of the season in Boston. But that wasn’t the original plan. Swihart came into the season slated for duty in Triple-A as he’d spent all of 71 plate appearances over 18 games above Double-A, but all of a sudden catchers started going down. First, starting catcher Christian Vazquez needed Tommy John surgery and the organization promoted backup Ryan Hanigan and picked up Sandy Leon from Washington to back him up. Then two months into the season Hanigan broke his hand and the organization was out of options. Swihart got the call.

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A year ago, Mookie Betts was one of the more divisive young talents in baseball. Mostly overlooked by scouts due to his diminutive size and lack of power — he was a 5th round pick by the Red Sox back in the 2011 draft — Betts ended up crushing minor league pitching in 2013 and 2014 to put himself on the prospect map, though opinions about his future still varied pretty widely. Over at FanGraphs, we were pretty big fans based on his overall value skillset, but our enthusiasm was met with a lot of skepticism over the perceived lack of upside from a small contact hitter who generated a lot of value by drawing walks against inferior pitching.

And those concerns were somewhat legitimate. When I first wrote about Betts on JABO a year ago — suggesting that the Red Sox keep him rather than get tempted into dealing him for a frontline starting pitcher — I developed a list of offensive comparisons based on his swing and contact rates. There were some good names on that list, including Joe Mauer and Matt Carpenter. There was also the Tony Gwynn that doesn’t make for an optimistic comparison, along with Craig Counsell, Daric Barton, and Sam Fuld. The low swing rate/high contact types almost universally didn’t hit for power, and guys Betts’ size often end up being defensive-oriented players who try to slap enough singles and steal enough bases to avoid being an offensive hole.

Well, with his first full season nearly in the books, I think it’s safe to say at this point that Betts is not a slap hitter. Last night, he launched his 16th home run of the season, and perhaps more impressively, hit his 42nd double. Add in the 8 triples and Betts now has 66 extra base hits on the year, the same number of XBH as Nelson Cruz (who leads the majors in home runs) and Jose Abreu, and ahead of Cubs slugging rookie Kris Bryant, who was the consensus top prospect in baseball in large part because of his prodigious power. And that puts him five extra base hits ahead of Andrew McCutchen, who became the popular comparison this spring, when Betts was torching the Grapefruit League in Spring Training.

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There is no one single way to be good at baseball, which is part of why it’s so amazing. Just last week we peeked into the mind of a man with one of the lowest swing rates in baseball when we asked Joey Votto how he does it. And this week? Let’s ask Adrian Beltre.

“I’m probably the opposite,” Beltre laughed when he heard Votto’s name. “I’m thinking swing first and take second. I don’t have that discipline.”

It’s hard to argue with him, but he has been a top-ten all-time third baseman. “It’s probably not the way to do it,” he said with that trademarked smile, “but it has worked for me.”

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Sam Fuld was checking out his FanGraphs page the other day, and noticed that he’s a fairly fast-paced guy at the plate. He produced in 2011 the 36th-fastest pace between that season and the present one (minimum 300 plate appearances), and he’s the 20th-fastest paced batter this year. He also noticed something about the guys around him. “They’re all slap hitters!” he told me before a game against the Rangers.

He wondered if pace was correlated to power, and if this slower pace came through the mechanism of confidence. “I’m the star here,” he said, mimicking a step back out of the box and a shrug of the shoulders that’s a little foreign to the Athletics outfielder with 12 career home runs spread over nine years and 1500-plus plate appearances.

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